The Pelican Bride (21 page)

Geneviève could hear Angela’s screaming groans from two blocks away. The two little boys must be terrified.
Dear Father in heaven, help us know what to do.

She and Sister Gris looked at one another, then simultaneously
started running. The nun, gasping for breath, tried gamely to keep up with Geneviève’s lighter step and reached the Lemays’ front door not far behind. Geneviève grabbed her arm and all but pulled her up the stairs, then left the nun to care for Angela while she hurried back to the ground floor. She looked all over the house, but the two little boys had vanished.

“Oh, no. What now?” she muttered, walking out to the front gallery. Where could they have gone? Anxiously she looked up and down the street.
If I were a frightened little boy,
where would I go?

Levasseur’s cabin across the street caught her eye. Was she going to blush in shame every time she looked at the place for the rest of her life? There was no shame, she reminded herself, in a bride having marital relations with her lawful wedded husband.

Her eyes widened, and she put her hand to her flat stomach. What if she had become
enceinte
during that short night with Tristan? Could it happen that fast? What if she were left to bear a child alone and raise it on whatever she could make, baking for Monsieur Burelle?

Geneviève!
she scolded herself.
Don’t ask
for trouble. You must find those children!
Pulling in her careening emotions, she tried to think.

The little boys she’d known in France had been fond of climbing, fighting, and hiding. Here in the middle of the settlement, the biggest trees had been cut down for lumber, even had the boys been tall enough to climb them. Frowning, she went back inside. Maybe she had missed something.

She looked at the empty staircase again, wincing in sympathy as another guttural groan found its way down the stairs. She walked over and sat down on the next-to-bottom step where Serge and Émile had been playing with the wooden spinning toy earlier. As Angela’s cries faded to whimpering, she heard something else, possibly a faint giggle . . . from
below
? She stood up and peeked around the banister, which Xavier had sanded and
polished to a buttery smoothness. The space beneath the stairs had been walled in to form a closet with a small door. Smiling, she pulled the latch.

And there they were, huddled side-by-side in the dark like a couple of puppies, Émile with his thumb in his mouth and Serge scowling like a pirate.

Serge scooted backward. “We ain’t coming out.”

But Émile started crying. “I want Mama.”

“Shut up, you little baby.” Serge gave his brother a patronizing look. “Mama don’t want us no more, now that she’s getting a new one. We got to take care of ourself.”

Geneviève’s already bruised heart broke in two. She sat down in the closet doorway and propped her elbows on her knees. “Your mama was very worried when she couldn’t find you. As soon as the baby comes, I’m to bring you in to meet him.” She fixed Serge with a stern look. “You mustn’t frighten your brother. Did your mama stop loving you when he came into the family?”

Serge’s feathery brows came together as he considered her question. “I guess not.” He shrugged.

“Of
course
she didn’t.” Geneviève leaned forward and touched her nose to his. “Your little brother will need you two big boys to watch out for him. That’s a big responsibility.”

“Mama said it might be a
girl
.” Oceans of scorn dripped from the word.

She laughed and sat back. “Then she’ll need you even more. Come, let me fix you something to eat.”

The thumb popped out of Émile’s mouth. “Eat?”

“Yes, my little rooster. What would you like for lunch?” She got to her feet, then reached for Émile’s hand.

Within a short space of time, she had settled the little boys in their cubby with bowls of gruel and left them to run up the stairs to check on Angela and Sister Gris.

The scene she walked in on was one of chaos and sweat and
blood and noise. Angela sat up against the beautiful carved headboard of her bed, groaning, knees apart, straining to deliver a child who seemed to be as reluctant to enter the room as Geneviève, who gripped the doorframe with both hands, thinking that all she had to do was retrace her steps, walk out the front door, and pretend she’d never heard Angela Lemay’s cries for help.

You
are no coward
, she reminded herself, embarrassed that she could even think of running away. Straightening her spine, she let go of the doorframe. “Sister Gris, how may I help?”

The nun looked over her shoulder. Wimple askew, her round face nearly as red and wet with perspiration as her patient’s, she leaned over Angela, holding her hand. “Come get her other hand. This baby has been too long in the birth canal. We have to make him come, or she’s going to—”

“Yes of course.” Geneviève darted to the other side of the bed. “Angela, take my hand. I’ll help you.”

But her friend had slumped against the stained bolster behind her back. Tipping her head back, she let out a sobbing moan that seemed to come from her toes. “I can’t. I’m too tired.”

“You have to. You want this baby, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. But he’s—just like Xavier. Stubborn.” A weak giggle told Geneviève that the fight was not yet over.

She gripped Angela’s hand hard and exchanged glances with Sister Gris. “Then you’ve got to push again. Wait till the pain comes again, then—”

“Pain? Why, this is—” She lurched off the backboard and shrieked, “—
nothing
!”

Geneviève felt the bones of her hand crunch together, and the next few minutes seemed to last for days as Angela pushed and panted and screamed and pushed again, until at last a little dark-crowned head appeared. She and Sister Gris assisted as best they could, though Geneviève felt that it was little enough. The pain of birth—God had said it must be so. The Bible predicted that a
woman’s desire would be for her husband, and the product of their union must result in agony as well as ecstasy.

She had seen and experienced that paradoxical truth this very day.

Our God, we are
only women. Help us trust you to keep us in
what you give us to bear.

12

H
e was probably going to have to kill her too.

As he waited for Geneviève Gaillain to meet him at the gate, Julien took his stepmother’s letter from the pocket inside his coat and read it again. He had long since memorized it, probably should have burned it, but there was something about the weight of it in his hand, the curl of the words on the page, that steadied and focused the anger that now fueled his every waking thought.

Of course I knew about the other boy, for what man of your father’s virility has not had one or more indiscretions? But because he—the boy, not your father—went off to live in the Canadian wilderness with his mother, and one never heard another word of him, praise to the Almighty, I deemed it prudent to withhold his existence from dear Gilbert, and I presume he—your father, not the boy—wouldn’t have any reason to mention him—the boy, not your father—to you or your mother.

“The boy,” of course, was Tristan Lanier, and it had taken the countess half a scrawling page to clarify the fact that his father
had managed to sire not one, but two, illegitimate sons presently living in the wilds of America. Furthermore, her reason for suddenly divulging this shocking information was due to his father’s inexplicable decision to legitimize his eldest son and confer on him all due rights of inheritance—to the exclusion of the other two. The letter had rambled on for another page or two before coming to the point: Anne Chevalier, Comtess de Leméry, expected Julien to politely murder his half brother, as well as Father Mathieu, the priest who had journeyed to Louisiane to inform him of his good fortune.

Several implications had occurred to him in succession that day, when he had opened and read that fateful letter. First was the bare fact of a third contender for his father’s name and fortune. Having grown up knowing that he was a bastard, Julien had more or less come to terms with the idea that he would never receive the privileges of legitimacy. His father might be negligent and somewhat arrogant toward his younger son, but Julien had never wanted for any physical necessity. He had been educated, groomed for gainful employment, and taught manners appropriate, as the comtess acknowledged, for his station.

Discovering that he was not the comte’s only love child put to death any notion that his father had ever loved his mother. She had been merely a mistress—one of two, probably many. And she hadn’t even been the first.

Tristan Lanier was his brother.
Tristan Lanier is your brother
.

He said it aloud. “Tristan Lanier is your brother.” The words still tasted metallic on his tongue.

Standing here in the sun waiting for Lanier’s wife, he knew a burst of rage so hot he thought his head might explode. A man who loved his child so little that he would send him and the mother across the ocean to live with another man—that kind of man was his own sire.

The latent pride that Julien had always kept well hidden, pride
that he was the son of the
noble
Comte de Leméry, died a violent death in that moment.

Pride gave way to resolve. There weren’t many things Julien knew how to do better than revenge. He had never murdered anyone, but as he searched himself, he knew that he could do it. Brothers from the beginning of time had done what they must in order to survive. Cain had served well, and what thanks had he received? Rejection.
Abel’s
sacrifice is better.
Julien understood perfectly why the insult required blood.

The thought of killing the priest gave him pause. But he understood that if the priest lived, it would be more difficult to hide what he had done. Father Mathieu would ask questions, and questions would inevitably lead to one who would profit from Lanier’s death. Two accidental deaths in this wild and dangerous land would not be so remarkable. Yes, it would have to be done.

Of course, once he had taken care of Lanier, there would be Gilbert himself, and possibly his mother.

He opened his hand and smoothed the letter, which he had crumpled in his distress. He read it once more, biting his lip. Anne Chevalier was a twit, but like most women, understood self-preservation. What did she mean, precisely, by a “proper reward”? He would want more than money—at least a title and some of the de Leméry lands. Gilbert was easy to persuade.

Shoving the letter back into his uniform coat, he began to pace along the stockade. He must find a way to do the thing without it being traced to himself. Perhaps he should start with Geneviève. If he’d known his half brother was going to wed the girl before departing for Indian territory, he would have found a way to prevent it. But it had never occurred to him that Tristan Lanier would overcome his antipathy for white society and choose a Frenchwoman as his bride. In fact, in a twist of diabolical irony, by the looks of it, Lanier had fathered a couple of illegitimate Indian whelps of his own and foisted them on the unsuspecting son of the Mobile chief.

He’d watched Lanier carefully every time he appeared at Fort Louis. There had been no sign of attachment to any of the
Pélican
girls, let alone the standoffish Geneviève Gaillain. So while Julien had turned his back for less than a day, Lanier took the woman to wife and bedded her without anyone else the wiser.

Bienville was, of course, apoplectic that one of his expensive
Pélican
brides had married the renegade Lanier, leaving one less family with which to convince the king of the settlement’s growth and prosperity. As soon as word reached him, the commandant had convened a tribunal of officers to interrogate the woman. Julien had sat amongst them, outwardly icy, watching Geneviève’s white face flush as Bienville did his best to undo what Father Mathieu had done—and humiliate her in the process.

Bienville’s main objection was that the marriage had taken place outside the authority of Father Albert or Father Henri, a fact which Henri himself loudly decried. Ironically, in other circumstances Bienville might have stood in support of the Jesuit Father Mathieu, with whom he was politically aligned. However, there was nothing anyone could do about a signed and witnessed marriage contract. Vows had been—according to the crimson-faced bride—duly consummated, and she refused to consider annulment.

In the end, Bienville had to let her go, coldly informing her that the financial support of the Crown had come to an end for her. She must scrape together a living for herself as best she might.

With a dignity that would have befitted the Queen herself, Geneviève had given the commander a brief curtsey and quitted headquarters without a word or a glance for anyone else in the room.

Julien could only admire her composure, though the marriage created one more obstacle in his bid for his late father’s fortune. If Geneviève should be with child, Julien’s claims upon the de Leméry dynasty became even more distant, and the route he must take to bring himself back in line became that much more complex.

He paused in his endless perambulations as he tried, not for the
first time, to untangle Father Mathieu’s role in the family drama. If the priest were functioning as legal as well as spiritual counselor to the comte, logically he would have been apprised of Julien’s existence, which did not seem to be the case. After reading the comtess’s letter, Julien had almost confronted Father Mathieu. Erring on the side of caution, however, he had simply watched the priest’s eyes for recognition or signs of a hidden agenda. In vain.

“Good morning, Monsieur l’Aide-Major. I am sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Julien turned to find his companion for the day picking her way through the muddy trampled grass around the stockade entrance. He sketched a bow, extending his arm to assist her around a puddle. “No apology necessary, mademoiselle.”