BLUE BAYOU ~ Book I (historical): Fleur de Lis (16 page)

Françoise lay on his back, staring up into the darkness of the rafters. His leg throbbed, but if he tried to shift his weight, he feared he would awaken the young woman. Still fully dressed, she slept soundly in the bed across from him.

Nicolas had done remarkably wel
l in his choice of brides. Françoise had expected very little in the way of beauty; in fact, he had not been overly concerned with the looks of a prospective bride. His active sexual appetite would have overcome such a minor problem. He sincerely enjoyed women, but he had taken a wife to make children with, not to love.

Yet a woman of uncommon beauty slept near him. She had a low, smoky voice that he caught himself listening for. In addition, she was intelligent and cultured, with a certain . . . what would one call it .
. .
a je ne sais quoi
.

The last puzzled him. He was not naive enough to think that all the casket girls came from g
ood families, as the church proclaimed. He had expected to take a wife from one of the girls of destitute families or out of the orphanages, one who found the alternative to the alms house appealing. Doubtless, there were also prostitutes and criminals mixed in with the lot, as Nicolas had warned. But a young woman of gentle breeding . . . He couldn’t quite fathom it.

Perhaps she was running away from a difficult situation at home—a tyrannical father, a jealous sister, an arranged marriage with some doddering widower.

He had not pressed her for her story. There was plenty of time to learn. A lifetime.

He heard Nicolas rise from his pallet in the kitchen and quietly leave the cabin. So, his partner couldn’t sleep either. The man
needed his own wife. Of course, the
coureur des bois
would never be one to settle down. Like that timber wolf he had had, the half-breed in him would prowl in the dark of night in search of a female to ease his lust.

The sassy black wench of Commandant St. Denis flitted through
François’s thoughts. He groaned with the unrelieved need that quickened in his groin. This damnable leg would keep him from exercising his husbandly privilege for a while to come. His hand began the easing of his own lust.

§
CHAPTER TWELVE §

“Merde
!” Françoise swore from the other room.

Natalie, kneeling before the hearth, tensed. During Nicolas’s three-week absence to fetch a bride, the wound in his shin had worsened considerably. Since her arrival, he had been running a low-grade fever. She felt helpless and, as was becoming a habit, had to rely on Nicolas.

She didn’t think she could have made it through those first few days without the trapper’s help around the house. She knew nothing about cooking or cleaning or making soap. With Françoise abed, she depended entirely on Nicolas to instruct her. He did so, without making her feel imbecilic—a few quiet words here, a mere gesture or example there. Only by dint of washing and rubbing and scrubbing with the aid of lime had she been able to make the cabin clean. In the meantime, he continued to do most of the cooking.

With no candles or lamp oil that first night, he had ingeniously captured a few remaining fireflies in a bottle as a source of light. The next day, he had procured lamp oil from somewhere. Yes, she was lucky that
Françoise had convinced him to stay until spring.

Even now, Nicolas sat at the table, preparing a salve of beaver
oil and castoreum. She stirred the salt water in the kettle suspended over the fire. The warmth of the dancing flame flushed her skin—or perhaps Nicolas was responsible for her heated flesh.

She was always conscious of his presence, of his contempt veiled by the polite formality customary between strangers. How long would he keep his counsel?

He rose from the bench and crossed to stand behind her. Civility demanded that she acknowledge him. She looked up over her shoulder into the fierce countenance. “Is the salve ready?”

He held out the wooden bowl. Not for the first time she noted his hands—a ferocious power in repose. “Between this and the salt water, his pain should be eased and the swelling drawn out.”

She made no move to take it. “You’re not going to—you want me to apply it?” she whispered.

Impatience flickered across his face and was gone just as quickly. “He’s your husband.”

“He’s your partner! If you hadn’t left him alone, this might not have happened.”

He crouched on his haunches before her and stared her down. Her eyes lowered. “Sooner or later,” he said in that low, wondrously musical voice, “you’re going to have to assume all of your wifely duties. You owe him that much.”

Reluctantly, she accepted the bowl. Tending Françoise would require a certain intimacy that even after a week had not been established between them. She was extremely grateful that his injury prevented him from fulfilling the husband’s role. Nicolas was right, though. Eventually, when Françoise was well again . . . Of course she could make herself go through with it. She would close her eyes and will herself to believe it was Philippe who held her and made love to her.

Philippe, with the laughing eyes. Philippe, dear one, what kind of torment are you enduring at this moment?

Her eyes misty, she turned from Nicolas’s steady regard back to the salt water that was beginning to simmer. “I’m quite aware of my wifely obligations,” she said briskly. “It’s merely that Françoise is not a small man, and I will need help in removing his pants.”

How matter-of-fact she sounded.

“I’m sure you’ve had some experience in that area, Madame de Gautier.”

She shot to her feet. Her hands trembled so that the offensive smelling salve in the bowl she still held quivered like marmalade. In her eyes flashed the unquenchable spangle of green-silver. “Don’t you dare to judge me!”

He rose, too, and braced his hand on the fireplace’s stone wall, blocking her path. “Do you think the lie you’re living is fair to Françoise?” he asked in a low voice.

She lowered her lids against the contained force of the jet-black eyes. The
coureur des bois
was entirely too perceptive. “Françoise wanted a wife to care for his home—and bear him children,” she whispered. Her head raised, and she glared back at Nicolas. “The first I am attempting to learn. I’ve never done this sort of thing before.”

“And the latter?” he asked lightly. “Don’t tell me you’ve never done that sort of thing before. Your footprints give the lie to your words. You are no virgin, Madame de Gautier.”

Her hands tightened about the bowl, and he said, “Uh-uh. Don’t do it. Caring for François’s wound is more important than salvaging your pride.”

“Françoise hasn’t demanded the latter,” she hissed, her conscience prickling her to justify herself, then blushed furiously at her bald admission.

“Angelique,” Françoise called feebly from the other room.

Nicolas lifted a raven-wing’s brow but shoved off the wall, allowing her to pass.

She went to kneel before Françoise. His fine linen shirt was damp with sweat, as were the curly locks plastered to his forehead. She smoothed them back, thinking that he was a very attractive man. She should be grateful that she hadn’t married a hunchback. She certainly could be worse off. Furthermore, he hadn’t forced himself on her.

Sooner or later, as Nicolas had starkly pointed out, that moment would have to be reckoned with.

Françoise captured her fingers and held them to his feverish lips. The intimate gesture startled her, and she tugged her fingers away reflexively.

He managed a faint smile. “I suppose in my condition I’m not quite the gallant I usually am with the ladies.”

“No, that’s not . . . It’s that I’m still adjusting to being a bride,” she finished lamely.

“
Eh bien
,” he said, closing his eyes again. Then he managed, “Aristocrat for a frontier bride . . . moves like a marquise.”

Her breath caught. He could
n’t know. He was slightly delirious, that was all. Nonetheless, her innate mannerisms were giving away her background. Soon, she would have to come up with a plausible story.

She chewed on her lower lip, uncertain just where to begin in tending
François’s wound. Philippe’s valet had always dressed him. She knew nothing about men’s clothing. She could unfasten the buckle at the knee, she decided, and push the pants leg up past the wound. That way she wouldn’t have to remove the pants entirely.

The garter and ribbed cotton stocking came away easily, despite
François’s moan of protestation. For a moment, she stared at the finely muscled leg, crisply matted with hair. Having never really seen Philippe’s body in bright daylight, she felt a little brazen staring at Françoise even though nothing more than his leg and foot was exposed.

There was something sort of improper about a naked foot, she decided, marking the way hair was sprinkled across the long toes. The corners of her mouth crinkled at the humor of the situation. Why did she feel like giggling uncontrollably at times of gravity? Really not at all the behavior of a lady of strict upbringing.

Her smile faded when she pushed the pants leg up over the knee. Common sense told her that the red streaks, radiating upward from the puckered and purple horizontal slash, weren’t part of the normal healing process.

“Nicolas,” she called, trying for
François’s sake to keep the panic from her voice.

When Nicolas didn’t reply, she told
Françoise she’d be right back, but he was drifting in and out of a feverish sleep and wasn’t cognizant of her leaving.

She hurried to the front door, where she spotted Nicolas out near the willow racks used for drying the green animal skins. He was dressing a turkey he had killed earlier that day. “Nicolas, come quickly!”

His easy, loping strides covered the intervening distance with incredible speed. When he reached her, she whispered, afraid that Françoise would overhear, “The wound—it doesn’t look right!”

He flung the headless turkey on the table and strode into the
other room.

“What the . . . ?” Françoise said, lifting his head when the other man bent over him to prod the puffy flesh around the wound gingerly.

Nicolas pressed him back down. “Just be still.” Then he ripped at the pants leg, tearing the broadcloth up to the groin. His lips tightened at what he saw.

“Bathe the wound in the salt water,” he told Natalie, his voice carefully void of emotion, “but forget the salve. I’ll be back shortly.” As she tended the wound, Françoise cursed weakly. He seemed rational, but she didn’t think he realized how serious his condition was. When the bowl was empty, she rose to leave.

“Stay and talk to me,” he said with an irritable scowl caused by what she knew had to be pain. He closed his eyes, adding, “A month abed can drive a man crazy.”

Compliantly, she sat on the opposite bed and folded her hands. “Tell me something about Natchitoches, about the people who have settled here,” she said, taking the initiative.

“No. I want to know about you. You’re my wife,” he grumbled, “and I don’t even know what part of France you’re from.”

“St. Maixent. Near Poitiers.”

“Your family—were they of the nobility?”

“My father was in the military,” she hedged. “My mother died when I was a child.”

“But your family must have had money,” he persisted. He opened one eye and turned his head to fix her with an accusing look. “You have been brought up to move in
le beau monde
.”

“Yes . . . I was.”

How could she admit the truth without actually admitting she had married him fraudulently? “My father was a soldier,” she improvised, “not a businessman. He made a poor investment, we lost the family estate. So . . .” She spread her hands. “I decided to put my name on a list of the
filles a la cassette
.”

“But surely you had a suitor, some
gentilhomme
interested in marrying you?”

“
Tiens
! None for whom I formed a
tendre
. My fancy was captured by the idea of seeking my future in the New World.” Her lips twisted ruefully, thinking of John Law’s inaccurate representation of the New World.
Ciel
, she couldn’t wait for the day it was safe to return to civilization!

François’s eyes had closed again, and she wasn’t sure if he was
merely thinking about what she had told him or if he had drifted off once more. Unaccountably, she felt wretchedly guilty about her deception. When that day came for her to leave, how would she explain her deception to Françoise? What she was doing wasn’t fair to him, but then what had happened to her had not been fair either.

She could only resolve to do her very best by him while she lived in his house. After all, he had wanted a wife. What if he had taken one, only to have the poor woman die on him, which was entirely possible in such a godforsaken wilderness. He would have been cheated just as much by the woman’s death as by her own departure.

She knew she was rationalizing again. She was tired of chasing the problem around like a dog after his tail. For just a moment, she stretched out on the bed, thinking that the mattress of Spanish moss, bolstered underneath by one of cornhusks, was surprisingly comfortable.

Light, seeping through nameless tormented dreams, awakened her. Sleepily, she sat up to see Nicolas hunkered next to François’s bed, applying some kind of ointment on the wound from a small leather pouch. A betty lamp burned on the mantel, casting flickering shadows on Nicolas’s stern and severely chiseled features.

Françoise stirred and muttered peevishly but didn’t awaken completely.

She swung her legs over the bed and went to kneel beside Nicolas. “What is it?”

“Rosehips.”

She looked up into the cruel charm of his eyes, liquid black with absurdly long lashes. “Where did you learn about medicine?”

He glanced down at her and went back to rubbing in the ointment. “It may surprise you to learn that Indians have as much medicinal knowledge as apothecaries. Perhaps more, for they don’t stupidly apply leeches to an already ailing man. Or prescribe ass milk for an infected leg, as Louis the Thirteenth’s doctors did.” He frowned. “But I confess I don’t know enough. I think it’s too late to counteract François’s infection.”

“What will happen?” she breathed.

He sat back on his heels with a grunt. “The leg will have to come off.”

“No!” she gasped. “You can’t do that to him.”

“If I don’t, he will die.”

“Can’t we wait? The ointment might work.”

“We’ll wait through the night.” His lips flattened over his perfect teeth. “After that . . .” He rose to stand over her. “Go back to bed. You’re going to need the rest, no matter what happens.”

She tossed restlessly the remainder of the night, with the sounds of François’s incoherent mutterings worming through her dreams. It was still dark when she awakened, but dawn was nearing. When she went to kneel before François’s bed, she could actually feel, without touching him, the heat radiating off his body.

“Bon Dieu
!" she whispered, frightened.

From the doorway, Nicolas said in a tired voice, “He’s worse, isn’t he?”

She looked over her shoulder, unable to force the truth to her lips. Within the dim room, Nicolas’s eyes glowed like black coals. In that long moment of sharp silence, before dawn breaks and nature awakens, they stared at each other, seeing the same agony in one another’s expression.