Heaven in His Arms (11 page)

She couldn't resist. "I promise I won't be hiding in any bushes."

He dragged her close and spoke in her ear. "Don't tempt me, woman. It would be dangerous for you to become pregnant before we reach Chequamegon Bay."

Her smile dimmed. Genevieve knew there were ways for a man to prevent a woman from having a child, ways any man would know, certainly one as virile as Andre. She nearly opened her mouth and told him her thoughts, but stopped herself in time, for Marie Duplessis would never know such things. Instead, she shrugged and hefted the case more firmly in her hand. "My mother always told me babies were found beneath bushes. Now I know what she meant."

A rivulet of sweat ran down Andre's temple, soaking the leather strap attached to his harness and pulled tight across his forehead. His thighs flexed as he climbed a steep grade, straining from the weight of the load against his hips. It felt good to stretch those muscles after spending the morning pulling the canoe through the frigid rapids. A cool breeze filtered down through the scarlet leaves of a maple tree, chilling the perspiration on his face and chest and soaking the back of his shirt.

Andre strode through the woods, brushing away saplings, crackling roots, and leaves beneath his moccasins. He filled his lungs with clean mountain air, savoring the weight of the load on his back, the wavering heat of the sun on his head, and the pounding of his heart in his chest. He listened to the forest, full of the music of birds, the crunch of dead wood, the lazy buzz of what remained of the late summer insects. If he listened hard enough, he could hear the labored breathing and the shuffling gait of the canoeman some distance behind him, and it pleased him that his years in the deafening French cities hadn't dulled his senses.

He glanced at the furrowed rinds of the pines, judging the direction in which he walked by the growth of the moss on the tree trunks. He scanned the deep, green forest floor, judging the time of day by the length of the shadows. Andre felt the bite of mist on his skin and knew that if he hacked his way through the dense growth on the right, he would soon reach the cliff that overlooked the waterfall. He scanned the ground and saw the footsteps of each of his men imprinted in the dirt and scraped upon the rocks. Then, as he reached muddy ground, he found what he had been trailing for hours—the footsteps of the woman who had propositioned him twice in twenty-four hours, the woman whose kiss he couldn't get out of his mind.

He smiled grimly as he examined the imprints. Normally, the impression of her right foot sunk deeper than that of her left, because she carried her case in her right hand. Periodically, the pattern would switch, as if she was holding the case in her left hand. The pattern had switched three times in the last fifty paces. His stubborn, seductive wife was getting tired.

Good. He shifted the weight on his sweat-soaked back and heaved himself upon a ledge. His men had stared at him in horror after he sent her off into the woods carrying her own baggage; several of them had even offered to take her load upon their backs, but he had refused. He knew what he was doing.

A few days on the journey, and the temptation itched at him.
Sacre!
What man could resist a woman who propositioned him like a courtesan, then, when he kissed her, melted into a passionate innocent in his arms? It wasn't in his nature to say no. Damned auburn-haired, sharp-tongued beauty. To sleep with her was to consummate a marriage he didn't want and he wouldn't have. The sooner she became exhausted, the sooner she would cry to return to the settlements, and the sooner he would be rid of her and the temptation.

A dead tree trunk lay across the path; he paused ;is he reached it. A carpet of lichen undulated over the log, devouring the decaying wood. Andre eased down, the weight on his back straining his knees, and touched the splintered end of a branch that stuck upright from the trunk. On the ground beyond the fallen log was a deep gulch and, farther, two sets of evenly paced footprints.

He frowned and climbed over the log. Andre heard the voices long before he reached the height of the hill, he knew who they belonged to before he saw Genevieve and Julien standing in the sunshine, huddled far too close together.

"The landing is at the bottom of the hill, pork-eater."

The two of them jumped apart as he strode into the clearing. Julien's face reddened beneath the edge of the copper pot he wore on his head. Andre's gaze paused on Genevieve, on the dirt streaking her pink skirts and caked in a lock of her hair. "Having some trouble,
ma mie
?"

She wiped the grit off her cheek. "Nothing a good scrubbing in the river won't fix."

"So you've finally discovered that the path isn't made for a lady's boot."

She plopped her hands on her hips—damned saucy hips, they were. "Don't fear, husband. I'll survive one little tumble in the mud."

"I trust," he growled, remembering their earlier conversation, "that you didn't have company in the mire."

"Julien," she grinned, flashing the boy a smile, "was kind enough to help me."

"Her skirts got caught on a branch," Julien explained. "She took a spill and I helped her to her feet."

"He's been helping me brush the muck off." Her eyes gleamed with mischief. "I never realized rolling in the mud is such a messy affair."

"Try harder to stay off your back, woman. There are no doctors in these woods."

"Your concern touches me, husband, but nothing's hurt but my vanity." She brushed at her puffed sleeves, adjusting the snagged ribbons while her lips twitched in humor. "Julien is doing everything he can to restore that."

"His job isn't to be a maidservant to my wife." Andre glared at the boy. "You should know better than to stop during a portage, especially along this stretch of the Ottawa."

The boy's fingers tightened on the dirty linen in his hand. "But Madame fell—"

"Madame is going to find herself in the slime often," he warned, meeting his wife's steady, twinkling eyes, "if she isn't very, very careful."

"Then I'll have to make sure I'm close to you, j my husband, the next time I'm feeling reckless and unsteady."

Genevieve bent over to hide her smirk. Her head-rail gaped, showing the generous curve of one breast, and it took all his will to tear his gaze away from her and settle it on the red-faced young man at her side.

"It takes no more than a second for an Iroquois to scalp a man—or a woman. Why the hell did you stop here, in the open, in the middle of Iroquois country?"

"Oh, come, Andre.'' She straightened and brushed her hair off her forehead. "Wapishka told me there's been a peace treaty between those wigmakers and the French for three years now—"

"Savages like these will break a treaty whenever it pleases them." He shifted his weight and jerked his chin toward Julien. "You, pork-eater, are lagging behind. There are penalties for delays."

Julien glanced at Genevieve apologetically and handed her the dirty linen. "At least the silt will keep away the mosquitoes."

She smiled like the sunrise. "Thank you for your help, Julien."

The boy flushed and nodded, then bent his knees and reached for her case.

"Didn't I load you up enough?" Andre barked. Julien stared blankly al his boss, the case tight in his hand. Andre nodded to it. "You're taking on an extra burden."

"Madame is tired, and the case is heavy for her—"

"The lady will carry her own fripperies."

She curled her fingers around the handle. "You already have enough to carry, Julien—"

"But...."

"Go." She glanced at her husband. "Go before your master sprouts horns and cloven hooves."

Julien reluctantly released the case and headed into the woods. Andre glared at his wife, wondering how many of his men had carried her case along the way, wondering exactly what was the meaning of the secret little glance that had passed between her and Julien before the boy turned and strode into the forest.

"Don't be so harsh with him. He was only being kind." She gazed at Julien's overloaded back, frowning. "It's bad enough that he's been baptized in every cove since we left Lachine and now he's forced to wear a pot on his head for the men's amusement."

Andre strode to her side. Sweat gleamed in the hollow of her throat and darkened a V into the head-rail. "Have you gotten bored so quickly of working your wiles on me, wife?"

Genevieve blinked, wide-eyed. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"That pork-eater is so smitten that he'll suffer more weight than he can possibly carry for your sake."

A slow smile lifted the edges of her lips. "I do believe you're jealous."

"I'm wary." He brushed a bit of caked mud off her chin, then regretted the touch the moment his finger came in contact with her skin.
Christ.
A dirty, disheveled woman with knotted hair trailing down her back was not supposed to be attractive. "Wary of a beautiful woman alone among two dozen men. Wary of the havoc she can wreak just with her presence."

"Your men treat me like a fine piece of porcelain." She shifted the case to her other hand and kicked aside a little pile of acorns. "Everything is 'Yes, madame,' and 'No, madame,' and 'May I lay the spruce boughs for your bed, madame.' I am the boss's wife, Andre, and all that havoc is in your head." Her nose wrinkled mischievously. "Of course, I shouldn't tell you this. I should keep you guessing—"

"I don't take well to wearing horns."

"Trust me, Julien won't give them to you." She swiveled and headed for the woods. "So don't punish the boy for picking me out of the mud."

"I'll have his hide hanging from the nearest tree," he growled, "for idling away in the forest instead of doing his job."

"No you won't."

"What?"

With her free hand, she hiked her skirts above her ankles, revealing a pair of splattered boots and delicate ankles, and ducked under a low bough, following the thread of a path through which Julien had just disappeared. "I said, you won't hang .....Julien's hide by the nearest tree."

"The hell I won't. . ."

"The secret is out, Andre. I know you're all bluster."

"What in blazes does that mean?"

She glanced at him over her shoulder, the fallen tresses of her hair swinging against her neck. "Julien told me the whole story. How long did you think you could hide it from me? The day you introduced me to that motley crew of yours, I knew there had to be a reason why Julien, who looks like he's never seen the side of a tavern, was canoeing with acknowledged heathens and philanderers and God knows what other criminals on the other canoes."

"Julien is a convicted thief."

"Pah! He was an indentured servant who escaped from his master. He told me you saved him from the whipping post."

Damned wench. She probably batted those eyelashes and smiled that clean-toothed aristocratic smile and wheedled the entire story from the boy. "Julien is young and strong, and he's not the first man I've hired from prison."

"But you bought him from his master, set him free, and gave him a position in your canoe as a voyageury

"He's cheap. He's working for me for the food I put in his mouth."

"Is that why you brought him on, a boy who, before Lachine, had never held a paddle?" She brushed past a sapling in her path and it whipped back, striking him in the belly. "Julien told me he had three more years of servitude with his master. You could have kept him working like a slave for you for three years and no one would have questioned it."

Andre frowned and watched her skirts sway back and forth with each step as she negotiated the rocky path down the side of the hill. The last thing he needed was Genevieve thinking he had a heart of gold, when his intentions for her were as black as they could be. "One year in the wilderness is worth three toiling in the soil. That pork-eater has no idea what he's gotten himself into yet."

And neither, my wife, have you.

"From what he told me, anything is better than his master's whip." The path twisted precipitously down and she released her skirts to grasp the sticky rinds of the trees as she negotiated the slope. "Though sometimes I wonder if being humiliated by two dozen merciless canoemen is much better."

"You're showing great sympathy for a boy who ran away from his obligations."

"Anyone looking into that boy's eyes can see that he's honest." Genevieve clambered over a jutting stone, lifting her skirts high enough for him to see the frayed stockings covering her shapely calves above the edge of her boots. "And you should talk, the man who took pity on a convicted thief." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "Julien isn't the only man on this journey that you've set free. Wapishka told me—"

"Jesus! I see now why my men are slow on this portage." He shifted his shoulders to loosen the burden on his back. "They've been telling tall tales and waiting on you hand and foot."

"Wapishka used to be a slave, he told me. It was that tribe—those wigmakers—who took him captive from the settlements. They took him to their village because they had never seen a Negro, but then they began to torture him." She switched her case to her other hand and flexed her reddened fingers. "Wapishka told me you saved his life."

"My men are braggarts."

"He was bragging about you."

"I was nearby, with the soldiers from the Carignan-Saliere regiment. We were going to attack, anyway—"

"But you didn't wait."

"I don't relish the sound of a man screaming in agony as his burned fingertips are being chewed on by sharp-toothed children."

"A strong slave like him would have brought you a fine purse of gold." She whirled around a twist in the path and stopped for a moment, eyeing him. "His original owner would have paid you well for his return. You set him free and gave him work."

Andre nodded to a fallen trunk across the path. "Watch where you're going."