Heaven in His Arms

by Lisa Ann Verge

  Andre glanced at the giant, who pulled a toboggan next to him. A white crust covered Tiny’s deerskin coat and the leggings that stuck out beneath. Ice clung to his mustache and beard, where his breath had frozen around his mouth. His blue eyes gleamed between slitted lids in his red face.

  “We’re not stopping.” He took another aching step. “The fort is ahead.”

  “By the balls of Saint—” The giant waved his arms in the air, gesturing to the world. “It’s a blizzard… . We may as well be walking in the clouds!”

  “A ration of brandy says we’ll find it within the hour.”

  “Much good brandy’ll do me if I’m frozen until spring.” Tiny placed his meaty hands on his hips. “Make it two!”

  “Two it is.”

  Andre peered into the blinding snow. He and his men had been walking since dawn, when the blizzard had been nothing but a gentle sprinkling of calm flakes. Now it raged and howled, and the snow fell from the sky as thickly as the wind lifted it from the ground, swirling around them and completely obscuring the horizon. As they pulled their heavily laden bark sleds, the dark shapes of trees loomed in their path. To Andre, they were familiar trees in a familiar layout, and he knew that they were only paces from the stockade.

  For two weeks, he and five voyageurs had wandered through the lands west of Chequamegon Bay. En route, they met up with Indians from the Cree tribe and traded their European goods for the wealth of beaver furs that now sagged heavily upon the toboggans. But he gathered much more than fur. In the hot Indian lodgings, while he and the natives smoked tobacco in long red stone pipes, Andre listened eagerly to their stories of a brackish body of water west of Lake Superior, and a great river they called the “Messipi,” which led south and west to another potential sea. On some future trading trip, he vowed to follow the threads of those stories. But he had promised Genevieve he would be home for Christmas Day, and Christmas Day was tomorrow.

  His back and shoulders ached from pulling the heavy toboggan. His legs wobbled beneath him. The snow lay soft and deep and powdery, and even with the webbed snowshoes laced tightly onto his moccasins, Andre nearly sank to his knees with each step. He leaned forward, fighting the icy wind, thinking of the warmth and comfort that awaited him at home.

  Home. He smiled inwardly, despite the pain. That was Genevieve’s word. Before her, he had never thought of his temporary abodes in the wilderness as homes; they were simply stopping places, interruptions in a constant journey westward. Wherever he laid his head was his home, whether it be on spruce bows on the hardness of a granite bank, in an Indian’s wigwam, or nestled in a hole dug deep in the snow. But over the weeks that they had lived together in the small cabin in the stockade, Andre discovered that there was a pleasant difference between a home and a resting place. He also discovered that there were some distinct advantages to living with her within the privacy of four solid walls.

  The thought charged him with new energy. He bent his head and surged forward. One step. Two. The toboggan pushed the new snow forward as it rode on the ice crust beneath. He stopped to kick away the drift that had gathered to impede its progress. In the white haze beyond his toboggan, he saw the indeterminate shapes of the other three men forging their way through the blizzard.

  Tiny stopped in his tracks. “By the blessed womb of the Virgin Mother!”

  Andre looked ahead. Through the swirl of snow he saw glimpses of Huron bark houses, the flicker of wavering fires gleaming through the uneven bark walls. His dry lips cracked into a smile. The stockade could not be more than twenty paces ahead. As if to prove his point, a wavering voice called from the heavens.

  “Qui vive?”

  Andre cried out his name, mounds of snow tumbling off his shoulders as he straightened. He heard the vague squealing of the gate. He headed toward the sound. Out of the whiteness, the stockade door emerged, yawning open in welcome. He glanced at Tiny in silent triumph.

  “Aye, you’ll get your brandy,” Tiny fumbled. A gleam entered his eye as he glanced from Andre to the fort. “But only if you can beat me to the gate.”

  His laugh pierced the howling of the wind. In a minute, both of them were running—as quickly as they could through the depth of the snow with rackets on their feet and two hundred pounds of fur dragging behind them. They wove past the Huron houses and surged toward the open gate of the stockade. Andre reached the doorpost a moment before Tiny and victoriously shrugged the straps of the toboggan off his aching shoulders.

  “Twas not an even race!” The icicles were quickly melting off Tiny’s beard from the heat of his breath. “I had my strength sapped by that Cree woman and you’ve been a monk for two weeks!”

  “Tell that to the Huron squaw waiting in your hut,” he warned, “and she’ll cut your ‘strength’ right off.”

  A crowd of men burst out of the long building that served as their quarters and hurried across the snow. The sound of banging copper emerged from the gaping door, a sign that the cook was already preparing for tomorrow’s Christmas feast. The men barraged

  Andre and the others with questions as they unloaded the furs strapped in heaping piles on the toboggans. Wapishka handed Andre a pewter cup with brandy, which he drank in one gulp, the liquid burning the back of his throat and lighting a pleasant glow in his belly.

  He peered toward the tiny cabin in the corner. Golden light sifted through the oiled deerskin that stretched across the small window. He wiped his beard and mustache against the frozen sleeve of his deerskin coat, then picked up his pack, pulled off his red cap, and strode home.

  The succulent aroma of roasting meat greeted him as he swung open the door. The dry heat of a hearth fire blasted out of the tiny room, thawing his frozen limbs. Genevieve leaned over the hearth, basting a hunk of glistening meat. The firelight made her long plait glow a rich amber. She whirled around as he plunked his pack down inside the door. The spoon clattered to the floor as she launched herself across the room.

  “You’re home!”

  He bent his knees and lifted her up into his arms. She pressed against him, small and warm. Andre closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet fragrance that emanated from her hair. “I promised you I’d be back for Christmas.”

  “But the snow is heaped as high as my shoulder against the walls of this fort, and there’s a blizzard—”

  “All the more reason to race back here.”

  “Bete!” Her arms tightened around his neck. “You could have frozen to death in the storm.”

  “I couldn’t,” he murmured. “Thoughts of you kept me warm every night.”

  He held her tight, flush against his body, trying to feel her warmth through the layers of his deerskin. “You missed me, Taouistaouisse?”

  “Not a bit.” Genevieve tilted her chin defiantly. “Wapishka and The Duke and the Roissier brothers kept me entertained in your absence.”

  “Did they?” He squeezed her until she squealed.^ “I trust I won’t have to emasculate them in the^ morning?”

  “For losing four beaver pelts to me in dice?” Her eyes twinkled wickedly. “I believe you’re jealous, my husband. I’ll teach you how to play, if you’d like.”

  “There’s only one game I’m interested in right now.”

  “Is there?” She slid down the length of his body. “And I thought you’d be too exhausted from your trip.”

  He kissed her parted lips, showing her exactly how much energy he had left. Her breath was hot, eager. Her hair felt like heated silk against his frozen hands.

  She struggled away from him.’ ‘I feel like I’m kissing a snowman.”

  Andre glanced at the wet spots that stained her chest, where the encrusted snow on his shirt had melted between them. He traced a throbbing vein in her throat. “There’s another part of me I’d rather you melt.”

  “And your fingers are cold.”

  “I know a very warm place I’d like to put them.”

  She released a surprised gasp and Andre kissed her again, more demandingly. He
tugged anxiously on the laces of her deerskin dress. She clutched his hands and pulled gently away. His loins tightened at the light of promise in her eyes.

  Her voice was as husky as fire. “You’ll have to undress, my husband.” She glanced at the puddle growing at his feet. “You’ll catch your death in all those wet clothes.”

  He shrugged off the deerskin robe that covered his body and hung it blindly on a peg beside the door, then let the other fur wrappings follow. When he wore only his deerskin shirt and leggings, she took his hand and led him one step deeper into the hut. The flickering, red-orange light of the fire cast fantastic shadows above the guns, pistols, knives, snowshoes, and sundry scraping tools that hung on pegs on the walls. He sank in the luxurious pile of furs that served as their bed and took up nearly half of the room. She fell to her knees in front of him.

  Genevieve started at his feet, painstakingly picking apart the frozen knots that held the teardrop-shaped webbings to his moccasins. When she finished, she tossed the icy rackets aside, pulled off his sodden moccasins, and placed them near the fire. He watched her every move. The dress covered her from the neck to the knees, but he loved the way her hips swayed beneath the deerskin. Cinched with a belt decorated with dyed porcupine quills, the simple garb showed off the fullness of her unbound breasts and the narrowness of her waist. Leggings covered her legs to the knees, and he knew that above them she was naked.

  The thought sent blood rushing to his loins. He was painfully aware that the only thing separating them was his own breechcloth—a single layer of soft, smoke-ripened deerskin. Andre clutched her by the waist and drew her closer, burying his head in the bare, scented nook of her throat. Her hands worked busily over his body, stripping him, while his hands hungrily roamed over hers.

  His pistol and knife clattered hollowly to the boards that formed the floor. She fiddled with the snow-encrusted edge of his sash, then tossed it close to the hearth. He lifted his arms as her fingers curled around the hem of his shirt and she pulled it up, over his head, spreading cakes of snow on the floor and the pelts. He ran his hands over her body, from shoulder to hip, lifting her skirt so he could wrap his fingers around her strong thighs.

  Her laugh was deep and husky as she pulled away to undo the lacings that held up his leggings, the last piece of clothing but for his breechcloth. As she tossed them away, Genevieve placed her hands on his chest, feeling the aching muscles of his shoulders, and it was if she burned him with fire.

  “Two weeks,” she murmured raggedly. “Two weeks.”

  He lifted her, spreading her legs until she sat upon his lap, proving that no amount of trudging through blizzards would exhaust his hunger for her. Her dress rode up her legs. He felt her bare limbs against his, the skin of her inner thighs as soft as butter. Andre dragged her up his lap until she was placed squarely on his aching groin. He kissed her, slanting his lips against hers, drawing her tongue deep into his mouth and then filling her mouth with his. Her nipples hardened beneath the deerskin and lightly grazed his chest.

  He drew away. “Take it off.” Without a murmur, she untied the lacings at her throat, loosened them, then lifted the deerskin dress and the shift she wore beneath it over her head. Now all she wore were her leggings, tied tight against her calves. Bathed in the glow of the fire, her breasts stood proud and heavy. He laved one taut nipple with his tongue and felt it tighten into a knot against his lips. He pressed her pelvis against his, feeling the crisp curls of her secret place scrape his bare thighs.

  Andre slipped a hand between them and felt the moist heat of her womanhood.

  His sex threatened to burst from his breechcloth. What shaman’s spell had this creature cast upon him, to make him want her and only her, to make him turn away from the promise of distant saltwater seas, to return to the warm glow of this tiny hut? It wasn’t as if there were no other women available, for the Cree chief had pressed several wives upon him, all of them comely and lithe. He had felt nothing for them, though their dark eyes had danced in promise. He wanted only Genevieve.

  I love her.

  The thought came without preamble, without doubt, without angst. It wasn’t the first time it had come. It had slipped into his mind a hundred times since the day she fell into the rapids on the French River. And each time it entered his consciousness, he fought against it less.

  There was no time to dwell on it now. She was all fire and passion in his embrace, and his own desire overcame the thought as quickly as it had come. Andre stroked her while he kissed her breasts, her neck, her lips, feeling her grow warm and slick in his hand, feeling a power, a victory in making her want him so badly-—as badly as he wanted her.

  She pressed against him, murmuring his name, cradling his head in her trembling hands. He could stand it no longer. He tore the breechcloth from between them and lay back in the pelts, lifting her by the waist and positioning her over his aching member. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt her muscular tightness sheathe him in heat and passion. And then she moved, rhythmically, naturally. Andre felt himself buried deeper and deeper inside her heat, and he grasped her hips, pressing her still closer, aching to reach still deeper, deeper, into Genevieve.

  She cried out. He held her firm against him as she shuddered and her body pulsated in his embrace, and before he could think, before the last of her contractions gripped his member, he tilted his hips and surged into her, exploding into the warm, soft body of the woman he loved.

  Genevieve stayed atop him, his member snug inside her, long after they finished their lovemaking. Damp spots stained the pelts where ice had melted and soaked the furs. Through the cracks in the hut, he could hear the howling of the blizzard, but inside all was silent and warm. The dry heat of the fire filled the room, the wood crackling and rearranging itself on the floor of the hearth. As he lay, his heart pounding, Andre was aware of nothing but the form of the woman lying damp and exhausted against his chest. Yes, he loved her.

  The thought returned, unbidden, taunting him. He had wanted no other woman since the day he’d met her; he could think of no other woman.

  Andre stared up at the tangle of spruce boughs and poles and bark that formed the roof of the hut. He flattened his hand against her back. This wasn’t supposed to happen; he had never wanted it to happen. Lurking in the back of his mind was the knowledge that this would cause complications, this would muck up the simplicity of his life. There were repercussions beyond the warm cocoon of this room. Loving was never a simple thing. It meant responsibilities and ties; it meant a curtailing of freedom, the one thing he treasured above all else.

  “Mmm.” She snuggled against him, her breasts warm and heavy on his abdomen. “That feels good.”

  Andre realized he had been tracing tiny circles on her back. He kissed the top of her head and traced larger ones. She was curled so defenselessly, so comfortably atop him, that his heart ached just looking at her. He pushed all his burgeoning doubts away. It was Christmas Eve. He was in the middle of the wilderness, exactly where he had struggled to be for three years. He was lying in a hut in the midst of a pile of furs, in front of a blazing fire, with a lusty, naked woman in his arms … a woman he loved. There was no room in this idyllic existence for doubts.

  Genevieve turned her face so the opposite cheek lay against his chest and the firelight cast shadows on her features. She gazed toward the hearth. “I made beaver tail for you, hoping you’d be back by tomorrow.”

  He breathed in the mouth-watering aroma of the delicacy and his stomach growled in response.

  She shifted in his embrace. “You’re hungry….”

  “No, don’t move.” He held her more tightly. “Stay here a while. Tell me what happened while I was gone.”

  She settled on his chest. Her voice was lazy. He listened to her unconscious lilt, the distinct Norman accent. He wondered from what part of Normandy her family hailed, but he didn’t want to interrupt her to ask, not now. There’d be time enough to know the all of Genevieve. Tonight, he wanted only to lis
ten.

  She sounded so contented, almost joyful, living in this hut. He wondered if she would tire of the life, if she would yearn for the comforts of civilization, for the feel of silk against her skin. She was a daughter of the petite noblesse, a feisty one but an aristocrat nonetheless, and Andre feared this winter in the wilderness might be no more than a novelty to her. The doubts nudged the edge of his consciousness and again he pushed them away. All that mattered was that she was here and she seemed happy, and she filled what once were long, cold winter nights with warmth and lovemaking and conversation and laughter.

  “Father Marquette visited last week,” she continued. “His eyes nearly fell out of his head when he saw me. He had just arrived and I was perched outside one of the Huron huts, weaving a snowshoe and trying to get my tongue around the Algonquin words Tiny’s new wife was trying to teach me. When I welcomed him, he looked at me as if I were some kind of demon.”

  Andre’s lips twitched. He could imagine the Jesuit’s expression when he saw a Frenchwoman with auburn hair dressed in Huron clothes in the middle of the wilderness, greeting him as well as any member of the French court.

  “Julien had a devil of a time convincing him that I was married to you. When the Jesuit left, he called the fort a ‘veritable brothel of iniquity.’ ” She swallowed a laugh. “Of course, that was right after the drunken Huron warriors left.”

  He tensed beneath her.

  “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “Everything is fine now. For a while everyone was worried, the way those Hurons were screaming and running around naked in the snow, pulling on their scalp locks and brandishing their hatchets …”

  “Hatchets?”

  He stopped scratching her back. His stomach twisted into a knot. Andre knew what madness the savages descended into whenever they drank more than their fill of spirits. He’d seen them kill their own brothers, their own wives, while gripped in the fever of drunkenness. When it was all over, they’d blame it on the brandy or the rum, saying the demons had taken over; certainly, they weren’t responsible for their actions.