“I don’t give a damn that six loaded muskets are aimed at my back.” The words filtered through Andre’s clenched teeth. “I don’t give a damn that your chandelier is made of crystal or that you have the king’s own brandy in that tankard. I don’t give a damn who you are. If you don’t tell me where my wife is and why you took her away, I shall rip your heart out through your throat even as your soldiers shoot me down.”
Andre heard a quiet feminine gasp. He turned his head sharply. In the corner of the room sat a young woman in black clothing, her blue eyes wide with fear, her hand clamped over her mouth.
“Get her out of here.” Andre pointed at the woman. “There’s no need to shock her with the sight of your bloody innards.”
“You don’t understand.” Monsieur Lelievre swallowed and pressed back in his chair. “You don’t know who she is… .”
“I don’t give a damn if she’s the Queen of France.”
“Tell him,” Lelievre stuttered. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. He looked at the girl. “Tell him your name.”
Andre reached across the desk and crumbled a wisp of lace in his hand. He dragged the delegate up off his seat until he smelled the onions on the man’s breath. The soldiers cried out sharply. Andre tensed, waiting for the slam of musket balls in the muscles of his back.
“Stop! No, please!” The girl leapt up and waved frantically at the soldiers. “Don’t shoot, please!” She turned her frightened blue gaze on Andre. “Monsieur … you must listen. Please listen.”
He glared at the woman. She hesitated, then shrank back and gripped the arm of her chair.
“Tell him,” Lelievre implored, his voice hoarse and uneven.
“My name,” she said, “is Marie Duplessis.”
Andre frowned at her. “That’s my wife’s name.”
“No.” The woman dropped her gaze and fretted with her hands. “Your wife’s name is … Genevieve Lalande.”
Andre stared at her, as expressionless as an Iroquois. A memory returned, swift and vivid.
Don’t call me Marie. There were a thousand Maries in the Salpetriere.
Then what shall I call you?
Call me … Genevieve.
He glared at the girl. She and Genevieve were the same height, but their coloring was completely different. This woman wore fine white gloves and a well-tailored dress of black wool. The toes of her expensive leather boots peeped out from beneath the hem of her skirts. Her hair was parted in the middle and hung in ringlets on either side of her face. Her skin looked as if it had never seen the kiss of the sun.
Disbelief roared in his ears. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“If you would … kindly … release me,” Lelievre said, his voice choked and dry, “I could explain everything.”
Andre shoved the delegate back into his seat. Monsieur Lelievre coughed and readjusted the tightness of his cravat, then reached for the tankard he had offered to Andre and finished the contents in one gulp.
The woman sobbed quietly. Lelievre gestured to one of his soldiers and waved wordlessly at her. She glanced up in surprise as the soldier took her arm and began leading her out of the room. “No.” Andre barked. “She stays.”
“Please, monsieur, for decency’s sake,” the delegate murmured, “let the child leave.”
“He must know the truth,” the woman interrupted, between sobs. “Tell him everything. Everything.”
“He will give me no choice.”
Lelievre waited until the girl had disappeared through the doorway and her sobs could no longer be heard in the halls of the building. Then he pulled down the edges of his doublet, took a deep breath, and gestured to the opposite chair.
“It’s a rather complicated story, Monsieur Lefebvre. Complicated and fantastic …”
“You have five minutes.” Andre glanced at the gilded, imported timepiece clicking above the mantelpiece. “Starting now.”
After a shocked pause, he began swiftly. “I assure you that it is not in my nature to arrest a woman, especially to arrest her while her husband is away. In light of—he rubbed his reddened throat—“recent events, I believe I was wise to do so. I wanted to avoid a public scene, not for my sake, mind you, but for your own, and there’s no longer a doubt in my mind that you would have fought to the death.” The delegate gestured to the doorway. “That poor child is the real Marie Suzanne Duplessis, the woman you thought you married in Quebec this past fall. The woman in my custody—the woman you know as your wife—is named Genevieve Lalande.”
Andre waited in stony silence.
“You see, there seems to have been an incident in Paris, at the Salpetriere, the charity house.” He rushed on. “Both Marie Duplessis and Genevieve Lalande lived in that charity house, but in very different sections. Last year, when the king’s girls were chosen, Marie Duplessis was one of them, Genevieve , Lalande was not. When the time came for the girls to be transferred to the ships, Mademoiselle Lalande took Mademoiselle Duplessis’s place among the women of good family—with brute force.” He waved to the empty doorway. “As you see, Mademoiselle Duplessis still hasn’t recovered from it. She was kidnapped, tied up, forced to switch clothing—and then Mademoiselle Lalande took her place in New France. She married a man of your stature by using Mademoiselle Duplessis’s own good name.”
Call me Genevieve.
Andre’s ears rang with shock. He stood, motionless, staring at the delegate. She had never said a word, never hinted at a secret identity. He thought of all those months in the hut on Lake Superior, when she had told him stories of her mother’s harp and the hills in which she had grown up. How much were lies? How much was true? How much did he really know about the woman with whom he had fallen in love?
“You must be shocked, Monsieur Lefebvre, to discover that your wife is not a woman of quality.” Lelievre raised his brows and looked down at his open hands. “It will shock you even more to know that Genevieve Lalande was one of the unfortunates of the institution. She was picked up on the streets of Paris, from a section of the city in which few innocent women dwell. She was put in the section of the Salpetriere reserved for—” he faltered, glanced up at Andre, then forged ahead, “for women of easy virtue.”
Something snapped. Andre leaned over the desk. “My wife is no whore.”
“Please!” The delegate raised his hands in defense. “I am only telling you what has been told to me by the Mother Superior of the institution. After so many months with the woman, you would know better than I the nature of her character.”
He suddenly remembered the look on her face when he caught her with a goose in her hands, a goose she had just captured and killed. Everyone has secrets, Andre. He remembered her bartering with the Indian for a pair of moccasins, stowing away her old, muddy boots for future trading like a merchant’s wife. He remembered her swearing like an angry voyageur in his cups. He remembered her insistence on having a home, her determination to survive the voyage into the interior at all costs. But most of all, he remembered the first night they made love, under the velvet autumn sky in the land of the Hurons, when he had taken her maidenhead and made her a woman.
She was no woman of easy virtue. He had taken her virginity that night, a virginity she must have battled hard to save if she once spent time on the streets of Paris. He wondered about everything she had kept secret from him; he wondered about her life before he had married her. Andre knew the delegate’s story was true. The entire scheme smacked of Genevieve, for it was fantastic and risky, and she was so determined that it had almost succeeded. Why had she done it? What would drive her to spend the rest of her life masquerading as a petty noblewoman, in constant danger of discovery and imprisonment? Was her life in the Salpetriere so brutal? Was the chance to come to the New World her only hope?
Who are you, Genevieve?
The questions swarmed in his head. He searched for some sense in the madness. He wanted her here. He wanted to hold her and look into her eyes and ask her all the questions that rac
ed in his head. There was more to this story than this petty official was telling him. There was a whole history he didn’t know, and he wanted her to pour out her soul, to tell him everything she had been unable—or too afraid—to tell him before now.
Then he realized he didn’t give a damn what her real name was. He didn’t give a damn how she had found her way to him. He didn’t give a damn how many years she had spent on the streets of Paris or what she had done to survive them.
She had survived. A woman such as Genevieve wouldn’t throw herself overboard and take a child with her into death, for something as useless as honor. A woman such as this would fight to her last breath for one single moment more of life.
Genevieve was his wife. He loved her. He wanted her back.
Monsieur Lelievre stumbled onward, his voice an annoying drone. “… I wondered why you took her into the interior until two weeks ago, when the ship arrived carrying Marie Duplessis and orders from the authorities in Paris. I suppose your wife insisted on it; she must have known that we would catch up to her sooner or later. Unfortunately, it’s obvious that your wife is well in the family way. No one could blame you. She was your wife and you were alone with her in the wilderness for a very long time. Normally, that would make it very difficult to obtain an annulment, but considering the circumstances, I’m sure we can arrange something. …”
“There will be no annulment.”
Monsieur Lelievre started in his chair. He looked up and faced Andre’s steady glare. “I understand you are concerned about the child.”
“She is my wife and she will stay my wife.”
The delegate’s brows rose high on his forehead, almost disappearing beneath the curls of his dark periwig. He spread his hands in his lap and shrugged. “If that is what you wish …”
“I want her freed.”
The delegate started. “I’m afraid that is not possible right now.”
“Make it possible.”
“Monsieur Lefebvre …” The delegate straightened in his chair. “I’m sure you understand now that the situation is complicated. …”
“It can be very simple, Lelievre.”
“She took the place of a king’s girl, and in the process put in question the reputation of every king’s girl ever brought to these shores.” Monsieur Lelievre shook his head. “The Crown doesn’t take well to being fooled. They want her kept under guard until the case is heard by the courts.”
Andre’s eyes narrowed. He knew how this system worked. Nothing was impossible if a man were rich enough to pay for it. His gaze scanned the room, noticing the tric-trac board on a side table, the walnut commode, the Gobelin tapestries gracing the walls. This delegate didn’t pay for these expensive trifles with his meager salary—he paid for them with furs.
“In a warehouse not far from here,” Andre began, “I have stored a winter’s worth of beaver pelts.”
A gleam lit the delegate’s eyes. He leaned forward and toyed with the empty pewter tankard. “I have heard that you were in partnership with Nicholas Perrot.”
“I wintered on the western end of Lake Superior, the same place where Perrot wintered the year before. You do remember the haul of furs he brought to Montreal this time last year?”
“The finest, silkiest, blackest beaver these settlements have ever seen.”
“Find a way to free her,” he said softly, “and my share of this year’s haul is yours.”
The tankard clattered against the desk. Monsieur Lelievre stared at him in incredulity. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse. “You are aware, monsieur, that bribery is a punishable offense.”
“Consider it a donation toward the building of Montreal’s fortifications. Payable upon the safe return of my wife.”
The delegate stood up abruptly. The light from the tallow candles burning in the chandelier above gleamed off his silver buttons. Beneath the edge of his long, curled periwig, his brow creased in deep furrows. “If I could, I would give her to you immediately. Unfortunately, it has already been arranged that this situation will be handled by the Conseil Souverain in Quebec.”
Andre’s stomach tightened into a knot. The council was the highest authority in New France. Yet he knew any official in this settlement could be bribed. It was just a matter of determining the price. “If you are powerless, then take me to someone who isn’t.”
“I’m not powerless.” Lelievre’s brow furrowed more deeply. “This is a delicate situation. Let me think what must be done.”
The delegate paced. Andre stood stiffly, curling his hands into fists. He wondered where she was now— if she was within the palisades of this fortress or if she had been transferred elsewhere. He wondered if she was being kept in a small, empty room without windows. He wondered if she was still hungry or still craving the goose liver pate he had scoured the town in order to find. The thought of her imprisoned made him crazy with rage.
Andre wanted to lunge across the room and take the portly delegate in his hands, lift him up, and threaten his life if he didn’t bring her to him. But he restrained himself. She was under the king’s guard, and even in his fury he couldn’t fight a battalion of armed men. This sort of situation had to be fought with pretty words and handfuls of gold—or beaver pelts, which in this settlement was much the same thing. Where was Philippe when he needed him? Only in civilization did battles have to be fought with velvet gloves and silken words. He preferred the laws of the wilderness, where a man could be free with his fists and relied only on his strength and skill with arms to get what he wanted.
“You’ve been a coureur de bois for some time, haven’t you, Monsieur Lefebvre?”
Andre glared at the delegate. “What does that have to do with my wife?”
“More than you think.”
“I’ve been trading furs for a lifetime.”
“You were also a soldier.”
“I fought the Iroquois in ‘66, alongside the Carignan-Saliere regiment.”
“So I’ve heard.” The delegate took his tankard and walked across the room to the brandy to pour himself more. “I think there may be something we can do that will convince the Conseil Souverain to release your wife to you.”
“What is it?”
“There’s a new settlement across the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal,” he began. “It’s a small area, heavily forested. You can imagine that few settlers want to build there, with nothing shielding them from the Iroquois but hundreds of miles of wilderness. We may be at peace now, but you never know when those demons are going to strike.”
His stomach twisted.
“If you agreed to accept a small seigneurie across the river from Montreal, the council may agree to free your wife.”
Andre curled his hands over the back of the chair, his fingers digging into the fine tapestry. His blood ran cold in his veins. He knew what the delegate was suggesting. He would free his wife if he could bind Andre in chains.
“You are well born enough to warrant a seigneurie. The land would be yours. All you would be required to do is find settlers to clear it for a yearly fee of some capons and a copper or two. Of course, you’d also be required to live on it, and build a mill and some sort of defense. Your skills as a soldier will be well used… .”
“Why would the king wish to waste my skills plowing the earth like a peasant?” he retorted. “I have other skills. I’ll go west for the government. Like Talon sent La Salle west. I can explore farther than even the Jesuits.”
“Too many men have left the settlements. Our strength and our virility are drained westward every fall, and drunk into oblivion each spring. We need settlers to clear the land, not fur traders and drunkards.”
“And if I refuse?”
“It is the only option that the council may accept,” Lelievre argued. “I know how much they want a strong man to build on that shore. If you refuse, then your wife will be shipped back to Paris to face punishment.”
A drop of hot tallow fell from the chandelier and sizzled on the surf
ace of the rosewood desk.
Andre imagined himself, sickle in hand, watering the rocky Canadian soil with the sweat of his brow, coaxing maize and peas and beans to grow in the weak sunshine. Then he imagined Genevieve languished in some dark prison, dressed in rags, forced to work long hours for bread and potage.
There were many different kinds of prisons. There were many different kinds of hell.
“Tell your council that I will accept any offer.” His throat parched. “But only on one condition: that my wife be freed immediately, without trial.”
***
Dim blue twilight seeped through the cracks of the western wall of the shed. Genevieve sat upon the packed earthen floor in the small room, her head resting against the decaying log wall. Around her swirled the stench of dried manure and rotting hay. Set back in a yard behind a larger stone house, the shed collected the day’s heat and concentrated it within its clay-clogged walls. She sighed as another drop of sweat trickled between her breasts.
She had only been in this shed for a matter of hours. It might as well have been a lifetime. Since the morning, she had aged a hundred years.
He knew everything by now. She could imagine his face as that arrogant official in his neat satins told him the truth. Andre had not married a woman of the petite noblesse. He had married an urchin scooped off the streets of Paris, a common laundress in the notorious Salpetriere, an imposter in a new land, perhaps a prostitute. He would remember all the times she had shocked him—by killing the goose, by swearing, by acting like anything but an aristocrat. He would argue; she knew he would argue and fight against it. But eventually, he would bow to the truth. She had lied to him, deceived him, and she was nothing but a whore.
Pain speared through her, no duller for having already sliced her heart into bleeding ribbons. Over the long months, she had almost forgotten about the deception. She had woven a history for herself, a mottled tapestry of her early life in Normandy with her mother and what she knew of the lives of the bijoux in the Salpetriere. It was close enough to her youth that it didn’t seem like a lie anymore, and as time passed, she and Andre spoke less and less of the past and more and more of the future. It was the future that mattered, the future they would build together. The past was gone and dead and over.
Heaven in His Arms Page 34
