Heaven in His Arms (21 page)

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.

Terror, cold and unadulterated, flooded through her veins. She hadn't felt so helpless, so frozen with fear, since the day the Baron de Carrouges had touched her and said she would take her place in her mother's house.
Oh, God .. .

If she seduced Andre, perhaps she wouldn't have a home, a husband; he might get rid of her nonetheless. Then she would be abandoned and pregnant in a hostile world, forced to do whatever she could to survive. Just like Maman.

***

"By the blessed milk of the Virgin Mary!" Tiny jerked up from his seat in the canoe and glared at Julien. "What are you doing, lying back like a whore on Sunday? We've entered the French River, pork-eater!"

Julien put aside his unlit pipe—a small carved vessel made of red pipestone that he had recently bought from the Nipissing Indians—wordlessly reached over his shoulders, grabbed two handfuls of fringe, and stripped his shirt off his back. Then he stood up and dove smoothly into the oily black waters at the mouth of the French River.

Genevieve's bright head emerged from the deerskin blanket she clutched around her shoulders, against the wind. When she saw Julien splashing around in the water, she glared at Tiny, who struggled to light his pipe from a flaring piece of tinder.

"I trust you aren't just going to leave him bobbing out there like a piece of dead wood."

"Of course not!" Tiny dragged deep on his pipe, then exhaled the blue smoke. "Come, pork-eater! Sing
Parmi les voyageurs
."

Julien, desperately trying to keep his head above the frigid water, began the song with a gurgle:

Among voyageurs, there are some good men,

who scarcely eat but often drink,

with pipes in their mouths and mugs in their hands,

they say, Friends! Pour me some wine!

Agitated, Genevieve straightened. "Tiny, the water must be close to freezing!"

"Hear that, pork-eater?" His blue eyes glittered as he stared at the red-faced boy. "Blossom thinks you're cold."

The boy stopped his singing abruptly. "The water's as warm as ale, O Mighty One."

Tiny's lips split into a smile, showing his tobacco-yellowed teeth. "More like piss-pot warm!"

"Tiny."

The giant's grin faded as Genevieve glared at him.

He waved his pipe expansively. "Arise, boy! You've been baptized in the waters of the French River."

Andre frowned as he stood in the rear of the canoe. He twisted his paddle so the vessel wouldn't drift as the men settled back for a pipe break. His little spitfire of a wife had a way with them all. One look from those flashing green eyes and they collapsed like marionettes whose strings had been cut. And damn it, he was no better—because he allowed it, as he'd allowed so many other concessions. Like the rope harness he'd allowed Julien to fashion for her. The skin of her hands had already cracked and bled as she carried her case over the portages, and Andre didn't want to bother with bandaging them every night—so he told himself. He was a lying bastard.

The stubborn wench should have stayed on Allumette Island.

Andre twisted his paddle to heel the boat toward Julien. Blue curls of pipe smoke twisted up into a sheet of cold gray sky. Ten days, and already the warmth and color of the hardwood autumn leaves had settled into a brown mush of carpet on the earth. Gone were the warbles and chirps of the late migrating birds. The gentle forests that once rimmed the hanks of the river gave way to ice-polished sheets of rock rising like ancient castle walls, and feathered crags bearing scraggy, stunted pines. Genevieve was as cold to him as the Arctic wind.

At the end of one of the innumerable portages on the Mattawa River, Andre had found her curled on a rock, shivering like a wet dog, her hands wrapped in bloody, ripped rags of her dirty petticoat. Did the wench fear nothing? He wanted to strangle her for her stubbornness. Instead, he gave her an extra pair of his leggings to keep her legs warm, and when they reached the windswept waters of Lake Nipissing, the first thing he did was buy her a blanket from the Indian tribe that lived along the shores. Never once had she turned to him in thanks.

He was a damn fool for expecting it. She was the ice princess now, haughty and distant, as cold to the touch as marble, and just as stiff whenever he carried her to or from the canoe. But he knew the fire that burned inside; it tormented him every night when he slept under the canoes with his men, heard her mumbling in her sleep beneath the tarpaulin, and imagined her, rosy-cheeked, beneath him, her lashes casting shadows on her cheeks, her lips parted and her head thrown back ...

"Steady," Tiny warned, the canoe rocking as Julien clutched the lashed gunwale. "Steady!"

Andre dragged his attention back to the situation at hand, twisting his wide paddle deep as Simeon and Gaspard grabbed the boy beneath the armpits and heaved him over. The wench will be the death of all of us, he thought, cursing his distraction. He set himself to straightening the boat as the boy lay shivering, naked but for breechcloth and leggings, as the men laughed and taunted Julien for looking like a plucked chicken in the morning sunshine.

The boat swayed. She was staring at Julien, at the lean muscles of his back, muscles that had finally emerged beneath his young flesh, muscles that now bulged hard and knotted, after hundreds of miles of paddling and portaging. Andre didn't like that look; he didn't like the way she assessed each of his men as a potential husband in the past ten days.

"Take your place, pork-eater." Andre dug his paddle deep into the water and felt the first pull of the upcoming rapids. "We've got five miles of rapids to run."

The men knocked their pipes on the sides of the canoe. The embers sizzled as they hit the water. Shaking, Julien took his place and retrieved his paddle. Genevieve shrugged off her deerskin blanket—the one Aehad given her—and tossed it across the boy's wet back.

Andre barked for the men to get to work and concentrated on the slice of the canoe through the water. He navigated the vessel down the deep, elongated bay, around shoals and fingers of smooth granite rock. He dug his paddle deeper, too deep, and The Duke glanced back in surprise as the canoe bucked. Andre scowled and he shifted his paddle, then set his mind on the task to come. The French River was the first west-flowing river they had encountered during the journey, and soon they'd be riding down B brutal sweep of raging white water. He'd have to keep his mind on the watery road ahead and not on the quagmire of a relationship he had with his wife if he intended to keep his men, his wife, and all his merchandise dry and whole.

The men knelt and lifted their paddles out of the water as they passed through a narrow channel and rounded an island bristling with pines. The water rippled and eddied as the current clutched the belly Of the canoe. Ahead, a narrow staircase of rocks fanned across the river. Andre bobbed from the knees as the canoe bucked beneath him, scanning the river for haystack waves that concealed no harm and ragged crests of foam that hid boulders and, beyond, dangerous eddies and holes.

They shot down in the rapids—Little Pine Rapids—and it was like sliding down a sheet of ice. Grit-(ing his teeth, Andre watched for standing waves and souse holes, barking out orders to the men to keep in the narrow thread of water that wound through the danger, that would bring them most swiftly down the river, twisting and turning his paddle like a rudder. A black strip of soaked stone marked the low water level on either side of the shore, and rocks Andre had never before seen on this route now crested above the froth. Faintly, he heard the excited cries of the men in the canoes following as they, too, entered the white water and felt the rush of power beneath their feet. But soon even that noise was drowned out by the thunder and roar of the water as it tumbled over its bed of stones. His men, all well trained but for Julien, knew how to drag their paddles against the current, or paddle with it, or veer the bow or stern to one side or another, or raise their paddles as they faced an oncoming wave; they knew how to react instantaneously to his commands, and Andre felt the rush of exhilaration as they tumbled down the water as smoothly and easily as if they had raced like the wind across a choppy lake.

The rapids followed in succession: Big Pine Rapids, Double Rapids, the treacherous Ladder, Little and Big Parisian Rapids, the Devil's Chute, and Crooked Rapids, five miles of unceasing white water, five miles of the cold wind biting his skin above his beard, filtering like ice through his hair, feeling the canoe below him as if he were an extension of the vessel, as if he were riding a horse bareback across the hills of Provence as he had done with his brothers as a child. The men whooped and laughed as the vessel careened through narrow chutes, as it slid down slick tongues of current, as spray as clear and sparkling as diamonds rose and splattered over them. Andre's heart pounded in his chest, hard and loud, and when the rapids finally spit them out on a long stretch of calm water, he, Wapishka, and The Duke, smiling and triumphant, rent the silent, scraggy woods with piercing Indian shrieks.

Heaving and exhilarated, he glanced down at Genevieve, expecting to find her clutching the canoe as if her life depended upon it, expecting to find her shocked and quivering from fear.
There, woman, is a man's risky pleasure.

But she swiped water from her face and laughed with all the rest.

"By the head of Saint John!" Water gleamed in Tiny's beard as he twisted at the sound of her laughter. "We ought to give you a paddle, Blossom, and see how you ride the waves!"

"It's like. . ." Water dripped from the bright length of her braid as she twisted it. "It's like tumbling down the side of a hill!"

Andre suddenly thought of her as a little girl, rolling down the side of a slope, giggling, her skirts rising above her knees.

"Julien had my knees clattering with all his talk." She nudged him playfully. "He told me it was like dropping off the edge of a cliff."

The boy shrugged, shamefaced. "I've never run the rapids before, either."

"Reason enough for another baptism," Simeon suggested, his teeth visible beneath his black beard.

"Why bother?" Wapishka gestured to the boy's soaking shirt. "He's already been baptized by the river herself."

"There are more rapids, aren't there?" Genevieve asked. "Somewhere downstream?"

"There are more," Andre snapped, "but we won't run them."

"Why not? It's so much faster than portaging."

She tilted her head and looked up at him, and for a moment she was his
Taouistaouisse
again, bright-cheeked, excited, all the haughtiness melted away. The rapids had done this, the rush and tumble of the water, the buck and roll of the canoe in the fresh open air; the danger and excitement of it stripped away all pretense and revealed the pith of a man— or a woman. Andre's hands tightened on his paddle.
What kind of creature are you, woman? What does it take to make you scream?

"It's dangerous, that's why," he argued. "The water level is too low. We could tear a hole in the bottom of the canoe and lose everything."

Her gaze skittered away, as if she suddenly remembered to whom she was talking. She shrugged beneath her deerskin blanket, which Julien had long returned to her in favor of his shirt. "If it can't be run, then it can't be run, but it's just so much more fun to rush down with the current than plod along the shore."

He thought of the falls ahead that gushed into the river, leaving a sliver of turbulent water for the canoes to pass by; he thought of the jerky drop just beyond, and the breath-stealing rush of froth and mist before the ribs of the canoe connected again to the water. A wicked grin twitched his lips.

"I didn't say it couldn't be run,
Taouistaouisse
."

Tiny, Wapishka, and The Duke glanced over their shoulders in astonishment. Genevieve tilted her head, a sparkle of excitement lighting her green eyes.

"We'll walk the shore and take a look at the run." He twisted his paddle and steered the canoe toward the shore. "Then we'll do it."