Heaven in His Arms

by Lisa Ann Verge

  The knowledge had prickled her since the day she’d bargained with the savage for moccasins, since the day Tiny had slipped and revealed a bit of Andre’s past, and now she blurted out the question without pretense.

  “This is because of Rose-Marie, isn’t it?”

  Andre flinched, then he gouged a footprint in the mud as he jerked around. “What did you say?”

  “Rose-Marie.” She rubbed her raw palms against her sleeves. “You’re leaving me because of her, aren’t you?”

  “Who told? … No …” He held up the flat of his hand. “Tiny, wasn’t it? He’s the only one who knows, and he’s too loose-lipped for his own damned good.”

  Tiny hadn’t said a word other than Rose-Marie’s name, but it was more than enough. “A woman always knows when there is another woman on a man’s mind.”

  Andre swept his knife up from the ground and smeared his leggings with the mud on the blade. “If you know about Rose-Marie, then you understand how dangerous this world is, how unfit a place it is for a Frenchwoman.”

  “What rot.”

  She’d spoken without thinking; but she’d spent too much time on the streets of Paris with shifty-eyed cutpurses, worn-out whores, toothless gamblers, and drunks, people to whom life was cheap. She’d take this world over that, for at least here the water was Clean and the food was plentiful, and the only men to worry about belonged to a single tribe of warlike savages she’d yet to lay eyes upon.

  “This place is no more dangerous for me,” she argued, “than it is for anyone else on this journey.”

  “Every man here looks after himself, but I must look after you.” He shoved the knife under his belt, lightening his grip on the handle. “You’re a woman, a Frenchwoman, in a world you know nothing about. I can’t protect you from it just as I couldn’t protect Rose-Marie.”

  Jealousy bit her hard, for there was a kink in his voice when he said her name. Whoever this Rose-Marie was, she still held a part of Andre tight in her grasp; she still could control him from afar. A sister, she thought, clinging to hope. A beloved friend. May the woman be nothing more.

  “What could you possibly have done to her that was so evil?” Genevieve hated the bitterness in her voice, she hated the creature of envy chewing at her heart. “Did you lie to her about your intentions? Did you drag her hundreds of miles into the wilderness under false pretenses? Did you?” She dragged her gaze away from the muddy linen, where they had kissed and embraced only moments ago. “Did you abandon her among savages in the middle of the wilderness?”

  “Tiny didn’t tell you.”

  She tilted her chin. This is what loving a man would do to you, she thought, muddle your senses, soften your heart, fill you with worthless sentiment.

  “I killed her, Genevieve.”

  Angry words died in her throat. Her skin chilled to ice, as if the heavens had opened and drenched her in frigid rainwater. She shivered, suddenly conscious of the cold ground beneath her moccasined feet, the faint howl of the morning wind, the bite of the air on her bare chest, the plunk-plunk of raindrops on the marshy earth. She hugged herself against the cold, against what was to come.

  “I killed her, Genevieve,” he repeated, flexing his hands, holding them up to her. “As surely as if I had taken her pretty neck between these hands and squeezed. It would have been more merciful if I had.” His fingers curled into his palms. “It would have been more merciful than leaving her for the Iroquois.”

  “You’re talking madness.”

  “Yes, it was all madness.” His eyes shone dull, like pale gold coins, turned inward to some other time and place, as he looked away to scan the half-naked maples and the deep green spruces around them. “It was madness for me to roam these woods in those days. The Iroquois were on the warpath. They’d hunted the beaver on their own lands into extinction and were fighting for control of this river so they could become middlemen in the fur trade. There were bloody clashes between them and the settlers all the time … all the time.” His tousled, sun-washed hair flew into his eyes; he didn’t push it away. “But I defied them. I was eighteen years old. I was immortal.”

  Eighteen. Genevieve bit her lower lip. So young, so young. She tried to imagine Andre at Julien’s age— wide-eyed, eager, brimming with excitement, half-savage—much the man he was now without the innocence, without the shadows in his eyes, without the caution that seemed so much a part of his nature. Surely too young to be married.

  “The danger was part of the attraction.” He yanked his knife out and fingered the silvered edge, nothing showing in his face but a quiver around one eye. “I snuck past the Iroquois war parties and traded with the western tribes, and brought furs into Montreal nonetheless. My forays made me a rich man.” He stretched his lips in a mockery of a smile and laid the blade on the flat of his palm. “That pleased Rose-Marie. She’d come from a family just like mine: Both of us had escaped France after the wars of the Fronde. Both of our families had been rich and powerful, and now we had nothing. It was assumed I would marry her. Being an honorable fool, I did.”

  Oh, God. Part of her heart crumbled. Oh, God, another wife. Another woman in his heart.

  “Yes, Genevieve,” he snarled, “I had a French wife once before.”

  She willed her face still. She would not let him see, she could not let him see how the knowledge tore at her. Fool, fool she was to have opened herself to him. Fool, fool to hope for the impossible, a woman who’d been willing to sell her soul for a few months’ ration of bread.

  “Rose-Marie filled our log house on the outskirts of Montreal with the stink of France past.” He stabbed a furrow into the rind of a spruce on the edge of the clearing. The pale green inner flesh flaked to the ground. “She wanted a home, just like you, just like any Frenchwoman, a home like she’d been used to. But I had a home, a life … here in these woods. Then, as now.

  “I smelled the stink of charred wood as I crossed the Montreal island that summer after we’d married. The Iroquois had raided.” He ground his teeth as he buried the knife into the flesh of the tree. “I remember hoping that they had taken her prisoner and not killed her—for then she’d still be alive, then she might survive.” He barked a humorless laugh as he cracked out a chunk of pale living wood. “I remember thinking I might save her.”

  Genevieve hid her trembling hands in the folds of her skirts while Andre examined the chunk of tree-flesh. He flaked off a few ragged slivers, ran his fingers over the grain, then turned the hunk of wood over and over in his hands to figure the shape of it, to figure what he could carve of it that would best do justice to the wood. She stood as silent as a statue, aching for him because for all his quiet, for all his easy telling of the tale, for all his feigned distraction, his voice had grown husky, and she knew that now he waited for the moisture to return to his throat.

  “Damned fool woman.”

  He turned his back on the spruce and its gaping green wound, oozing clear sap around the edges. Genevieve dug her fingernails into her arms. She didn’t need to know the rest; she’d heard enough from him about Iroquois torture. Her heart reached out to Andre for what he’d lost, but at the same time she wondered how she was ever going to battle against the loving memory of a woman who was no more than a ghost.

  “I got my wish. She’d been taken prisoner, with some others.” Heaving his arm back, he launched the block of wood deep into the woods, where it clattered with a crack to the ground. “I even caught up with them.”

  “Andre …”

  “No, Genevieve, you’ll hear it all, then maybe you’ll come to your senses. I caught up with the Iroquois war party just in time to see my wife throw herself off the canoe into the river, with her hands and feet bound.” His smile turned ugly. “Killing herself. To save her honor. Presumably, for me.”

  Honor. Suddenly, Genevieve could picture Rose-Marie in her mind’s eye: sweet, lovely, full of grace and purity .. . and honor. Like Marie Duplessis. The kind of woman who would kill herself before bargaining away her
honor in the alleyways of Paris.

  “Unlike my wife, I choose survival over honor, woman.” Suddenly, he stood before her, his eyes glittering strangely, his hands on his hips. “You’re staying at Allumette Island—where it’s relatively safe, where the risks are known. You’re not coming into the unknown with me. I will have no more women’s blood on my hands.”

  He looked powerful, standing with his feet planted firmly in the earth, the butt of his pistol and the well-worn handle of his long knife sticking out from his Indian sash, the muscles of his chest and arms straining against his buckskin, his bare thighs visible and hard, his lips tilted in mockery, hiding a pain that she now knew furrowed deep inside him. Part of her yearned to reach out and touch him, to give him the comfort he needed, but his eyes defied her.

  He clutched her chin hard. “I won’t have a wife. I already have a mistress, and this wilderness has proven herself a jealous, vengeful creature.”

  Andre released her chin. He strode to where the rabbit lay, discarded on the ground. He picked it up and tossed it in the cook’s canoe. Then he returned and lifted the muddy makeshift net from the ground, stamping on the imprint of their bodies until nothing remained but a muddy morass.

  She didn’t understand this; she didn’t know how to fight it. All she wanted to do was love him—yes, love him, she thought, with sudden fervent conviction. The truth had come to her in the midst of passion, but she knew it was true even now, for never had she felt such yearning for a man; never had she felt such warmth in anyone’s presence as she had with Andre.

  Genevieve thought of her mother and Armand, both risking their lives for the chance to be together, fighting against all the powerful forces trying to tear them apart. There were no such forces between her and Andre—they were married, they were together— yet he spurned a chance at the kind of happiness that only comes once in a lifetime, all because of the guilt from a past he couldn’t let go. She watched as he strode about the clearing, her heart growing colder by the minute. The only conclusion she could reach was the one she feared most.

  He doesn’t love me. Genevieve squeezed her eyes shut to prevent her tears from spilling. He loved his damned life in these forests, he loved his freedom, perhaps he still loved his former wife enough to enshrine her memory by never taking another; but he didn’t love her, for if he did, he would never consider abandoning her to her fate.

  Listen to me! Talking about love as if I could ever have it, talking about it as if I deserved it. What had made her think a man like Andre would ever fall in love with a woman like her? What had happened to her these past weeks? She had lived in the dirty underbelly of Paris; she understood the cruelty of humans and the heartlessness of the world, she knew the power of a man’s lusts. All along he had planned to abandon her like a leaky canoe. She was a stone-headed dullard to believe there was anything more to his lusty embraces these past weeks than the need to deceive her until they reached Allumette Island.

  All for the damn trading voyage, all for a dream that had already destroyed his late wife.

  She blinked her eyes open, trying to clear them even as she tried to clear her mind. What had made her so weak that she dreamed of things that only existed in young girl’s minds?

  Angrily, Genevieve tried to swallow, though her throat was as dry and parched as a desert. She had come to these godforsaken shores to find a husband and to have a home of her own. Somehow, silly dreams of romance had cluttered her mind, obscuring reality like a mist, and now that they had been blown away by the harsh winds of truth, she could see that her dreams were nothing but shadows of her own making, as ephemeral and flimsy as clouds.

  Genevieve tilted her chin. He still had a home. She still had a home, at least until the day this farce of a marriage was annulled. Just because her heart had been crushed to a bloody pulp in this man’s hands didn’t mean she was going to give up all her dreams, not after what she had been through to hold on to them. She wanted a home now more than ever, for in it she could hide and lick her wounds.

  Andre wadded the muddy linen in his hands, his jaw set. The coldness of reality settled over Genevieve’s shoulders. She wasn’t completely powerless. He still wanted her body, her damned treacherous body; in the end, it always seemed the only thing she had to barter. From the beginning of this wretched journey, her plan, had been to seduce him and consummate the marriage. There was no reason her goals should change now. If she succeeded, then she would have what she came to Quebec to get—a husband, a home, a new life, and security. Somehow, she would learn to live without his heart.

  “No.”

  She hadn’t realized she’d said the single word until she heard the echo among the trees. He stopped his fussing and stared at her. She calmly jerked the laces of her bodice tight, crushing the curve of her bosom beneath the boned garment, crushing what remained of her sorry little dreams.

  “Genevieve …”

  “What makes you think that I’d let you abandon me in these godforsaken woods?” she snapped, cutting him off at the quick. “I wouldn’t let you abandon me in Montreal, and I sure as hell won’t let you abandon me here.”

  “I thought you’d see reason, woman.”

  She yanked the last ties into a knot. “I see no reason in leaving me with savages so close to Iroquois country—”

  “We’re at peace with the Iroquois. The voyage is much more dangerous—”

  “The voyage has always been dangerous, but I’ve done well enough.” Her eyes narrowed on him. “You deceived, me, Andre. You made me think that we could be husband and wife. Well, you’re my husband for now, whether you like it or not. You’re going to take care of me.”

  “I’m trying, you damned fool—”

  “I intend to spend the winter in my own home, not in a skin tent with savage strangers.” She lifted her hands to her hips. “If next spring we must annul this marriage, then so be it, but until then I’m going to live in my own house!”

  His chin tightened, and flames lit his eyes. “I could tie you up—”

  “Yes, you could,” she retorted. “But I’m telling you now that as soon as I’m untied, I’ll steal a canoe and follow you, and nothing—nothing—will hold me back.”

  “You’re not that stupid.”

  ”I believed you, didn’t I? That makes me the biggest fool on earth.”

  “Damn it, Genevieve.” He curled his fingers into lists. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

  “Then you’ll have to keep me with you.” She hurled the words with all the pain in her heart. “I won’t be abandoned like Rose-Marie.”

  Their gazes met and locked, and she knew her arrow had drawn blood. I don’t care, she told herself. There was too much at stake. There was no more loom for softness in her heart, not any more. Somewhere on the river, a loon cawed a mournful wail. The dry pine needles above their head rustled in a gust. In the distance, Tiny cried, Leve! Leve! raising the men from their slumber, heralding the start of a new day.

  Andre walked toward her, that rolling, graceful, silent stride, until he stood in front of her, his eyes as hard as amber. “You leave me no choice.”

  “I thought you’d see reason.”

  “What did you think, Taouistaouisse? That you could force a man into marriage?”

  She blinked up at him in the growing light, seeing the violence latent in him, seeing the anger and the ruthlessness in the tightness of his jaw. A man such as this had done many things to survive, perhaps many as ugly as the things she had done. How similar they were, deep down inside; brother and sister in spirit, survivors both. And the thought frightened her, for Genevieve knew to what lengths she would go to have her way.

  “Listen to me. You’ve been warned. You know my intentions.” His gaze roved lazily over her body. “There are some weapons you’d best not use against me.”

  He wound a tendril of her fiery hair around his finger. The heat of his breath brushed her face. A pulse throbbed in his throat, and she wondered what madness had come over him.
“What do you mean … weapons I should not use?”

  “I am only a man. I have only so much strength to resist a beautiful woman.” He brushed his finger against her cheek and lowered his head, until his lips were only a breath away from hers. “The next time you try to seduce me, Taouistaouisse, I will take it as an invitation that you will be my mistress—and nothing more.”

  He made no other move to touch her, though if she swayed even slightly toward him, or him toward her, their lips would touch and passion would ignite, and she knew all her fears would scatter away like deer before wolves.

  Genevieve’s gaze flickered from the potent attraction of his lips to his heavy-lidded eyes. He expected her to staunch this passion that raged between them still, despite all that had happened, but she feared she had no more control over it than she had over the winds. She had been depending on this desire to drive him to consummate this marriage in spite of himself, to make her his wedded wife, to give her the security she craved… .

  She leaned away from him, suddenly breathless.

  “Now I think you begin to understand.” Andre: released her hair and let it brush, whisper soft, against her skin. “If I were so willing to entice an innocent on this long journey, with no intention of marrying her, then I’m capable of much worse. I will take no more responsibility for what happens between us.”

  He brushed a knuckle under her chin. “There’s no place for honor among savages.”

  Andre backed away, his eyes bright and gold, full of danger and promise. He turned abruptly and strode into the woods toward the campsite.

  She gripped her shoulders, her blood chilling to ice. By the love of Mary, what a fool she’d been. What did you think, Taouistaouisse? That you could force a man into marriage? Sentiment… it had made her soft.

  Genevieve buried her face in her hands. She’d forgotten. She’d forgotten the lesson taught to her long, long ago, in a very different world. The Baron de Carrouges had taught it to her. Rich men lived by different rules. If the baron could kill her mother and still walk free, then another man of similar wealth Could certainly rid himself of an unwanted wife— even if she were pregnant with his child.