Heaven in His Arms (27 page)

She pressed against him, murmuring his name, cradling his head in her trembling hands. He could stand it no longer. He tore the breechcloth from between them and lay back in the pelts, lifting her by the waist and positioning her over his aching member. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt her muscular tightness sheathe him in heat and passion. And then she moved, rhythmically, naturally. Andre felt himself buried deeper and deeper inside her heat, and he grasped her hips, pressing her still closer, aching to reach still deeper, deeper, into Genevieve.

She cried out. He held her firm against him as she shuddered and her body pulsated in his embrace, and before he could think, before the last of her contractions gripped his member, he tilted his hips and surged into her, exploding into the warm, soft body of the woman he loved.

Genevieve stayed atop him, his member snug inside her, long after they finished their lovemaking. Damp spots stained the pelts where ice had melted and soaked the furs. Through the cracks in the hut, he could hear the howling of the blizzard, but inside all was silent and warm. The dry heat of the fire filled the room, the wood crackling and rearranging itself on the floor of the hearth. As he lay, his heart pounding, Andre was aware of nothing but the form of the woman lying damp and exhausted against his chest. Yes, he loved her.

The thought returned, unbidden, taunting him. He had wanted no other woman since the day he'd met her; he could think of no other woman.

Andre stared up at the tangle of spruce boughs and poles and bark that formed the roof of the hut. He flattened his hand against her back. This wasn't supposed to happen; he had never wanted it to happen. Lurking in the back of his mind was the knowledge that this would cause complications, this would muck up the simplicity of his life. There were repercussions beyond the warm cocoon of this room. Loving was never a simple thing. It meant responsibilities and ties; it meant a curtailing of freedom, the one thing he treasured above all else.

"Mmm." She snuggled against him, her breasts warm and heavy on his abdomen. "That feels good."

Andre realized he had been tracing tiny circles on her back. He kissed the top of her head and traced larger ones. She was curled so defenselessly, so comfortably atop him, that his heart ached just looking at her. He pushed all his burgeoning doubts away. It was Christmas Eve. He was in the middle of the wilderness, exactly where he had struggled to be for three years. He was lying in a hut in the midst of a pile of furs, in front of a blazing fire, with a lusty, naked woman in his arms ... a woman he loved. There was no room in this idyllic existence for doubts.

Genevieve turned her face so the opposite cheek lay against his chest and the firelight cast shadows on her features. She gazed toward the hearth. "I made beaver tail for you, hoping you'd be back by tomorrow."

He breathed in the mouth-watering aroma of the delicacy and his stomach growled in response.

She shifted in his embrace. "You're hungry...."

"No, don't move." He held her more tightly. "Stay here a while. Tell me what happened while I was gone."

She settled on his chest. Her voice was lazy. He listened to her unconscious lilt, the distinct Norman accent. He wondered from what part of Normandy her family hailed, but he didn't want to interrupt her to ask, not now. There'd be time enough to know the all of Genevieve. Tonight, he wanted only to listen.

She sounded so contented, almost joyful, living in this hut. He wondered if she would tire of the life, if she would yearn for the comforts of civilization, for the feel of silk against her skin. She was a daughter of the petite noblesse, a feisty one but an aristocrat nonetheless, and Andre feared this winter in the wilderness might be no more than a novelty to her. The doubts nudged the edge of his consciousness and again he pushed them away. All that mattered was that she was here and she seemed happy, and she filled what once were long, cold winter nights with warmth and lovemaking and conversation and laughter.

"Father Marquette visited last week," she continued. "His eyes nearly fell out of his head when he saw me. He had just arrived and I was perched outside one of the Huron huts, weaving a snowshoe and trying to get my tongue around the Algonquin words Tiny's new wife was trying to teach me. When I welcomed him, he looked at me as if I were some kind of demon."

Andre's lips twitched. He could imagine the Jesuit's expression when he saw a Frenchwoman with auburn hair dressed in Huron clothes in the middle of the wilderness, greeting him as well as any member of the French court.

"Julien had a devil of a time convincing him that I was married to you. When the Jesuit left, he called the fort a 'veritable brothel of iniquity.' " She swallowed a laugh. "Of course, that was right after the drunken Huron warriors left."

He tensed beneath her.

"Don't worry," she murmured. "Everything is fine now. For a while everyone was worried, the way those Hurons were screaming and running around naked in the snow, pulling on their scalp locks and brandishing their hatchets ..."

"Hatchets?"

He stopped scratching her back. His stomach twisted into a knot. Andre knew what madness the savages descended into whenever they drank more than their fill of spirits. He'd seen them kill their own brothers, their own wives, while gripped in the fever of drunkenness. When it was all over, they'd blame it on the brandy or the rum, saying the demons had taken over; certainly, they weren't responsible for their actions.

He had ordered David not to give any brandy to the natives. The brandy was only for the Frenchmen. He nudged her head up and glared into her eyes. "Genevieve ..."

"Oh, bother, I didn't mean to say anything. It's all over now, so there's no need to worry. Right after you left, a dozen Hurons arrived with all kinds of pelts slung over their backs. They came to trade, but they didn't want pots or beads; they wanted brandy." Genevieve wiggled beneath him, urging him to continue scratching her back. "David refused. They camped outside for a few days. They challenged the men to an Indian game—the voyageurs called it La Crosse—and Julien and Anselme and some of the younger men took them up. The voyageurs won, which seemed to anger the Hurons, and it angered them more when they returned to camp and found Gaspard in the tent of one of their squaws."

Andre groaned.

"Wapishka nearly killed him. So did the Indians. But after a lot of talk, David assuaged them by giving them brandy and gifts and shutting them out of the fort. That's when they spent the night yelling and running around." She yawned. "The next morning they packed up and left, and that was it."

The thought of a crowd of Huron warriors dancing in a brandy-crazed haze around this wooden fort made his blood pump hard through his body. Genevieve was here, defenseless, and he was out roaming the wilderness, ignorant of her danger. What the hell was Gaspard thinking? Weren't there enough savage women around from whom to choose a wife? Why did he have to sleep with another Indian's squaw?

They were too far into the wilderness to start making enemies out of tribes with whom they were allies, and any slight would be enough incentive to send the Indians on the warpath.

He suddenly remembered Rose-Marie, white-faced and determined, launching herself over the edge of the Iroquois canoe, her belly swollen with his child, his babe. . . .

"Andre ... I can't breathe."

He loosened his grip, then rolled over until she lay beneath him, cushioned in the pelts. Her brows drew together in curiosity as he traced the soft curve of her cheek.

God, he had been a fool to drag her all the way out here. He could not protect her always, not in this place where the dangers were unknown. He would do what he had to do, what he'd vowed to do a long time ago. Come spring, he would bring her back to the settlements, deep in the protection of the settlements, safe from the savage unpredictability of the wilderness.

I won't let you die, Genny
.

His heart chilled with fear. Fear. He knew the feeling: wet palms, cold sweat, trembling. He might fail again. He might lose another wife. Another babe. More blood on his hands, more crimes on his conscience.

"What is it, Andre?"

The words surged on his tongue—
I love you, Genevieve
—but he knew better than to say them. To say them was to give her false hope. He wouldn't keep her ... he couldn't.

So he kissed her swiftly, greedily. They had this day, this night, and the nights to come, no more than that. She responded, arching her lean, curvy body against him. Andre buried his hands in her hair, his loins stirring anew. He was hungry for her. Again. This time he delayed sating himself, instead sharpening his appetite by tasting her in places she had never been tasted before, by pleasuring her twice before sinking himself deep into her warmth and wetness.

Then he lost his fear, his doubts, his heart, and himself in the open arms of his loving wife.

***

Genevieve's joy was like a great bubble in her chest, expanding and growing tighter and tauter and fuller each day until she thought she would burst.

It was Christmas Day. She woke up in the shelter of her home—her own home. The fire wheezed in the primitive hearth, providing little warmth from the frigid morning air seeping in through the ill-fitting logs of the cabin, but she didn't mind. Nor did she mind the small puddle that lay on the floor beneath the skin-covered window. She had slept in draftier rooms, certainly in dirtier houses, and definitely in more dangerous places. Here, in this cabin, she was as warm and safe as she could ever want to be. She lay snug beneath a half-dozen thick bear, fox, marten, and lynx furs, her nose pressed against her husband's broad chest.

Genevieve had everything she had ever wanted in the world. A home. Safety. A place where she belonged. But more than that, she had a man she loved, and he was home from his wanderings. Andre was like a gift from the heavens—wonderful and strong and totally unexpected—and she had never been happier.

He shifted, and she felt his lips on her temple.
"Joyeux Noel, ma mie."

A slow smile slipped across her face. It was a merry Christmas—the merriest one ever. Her last Christmas had been in the Salpetriere, her only gift a day off from laundering and an extra piece of two-day-old bread. How far she had come in a single year. Genevieve rubbed her face between the plates of his chest, wrinkling her nose as the crisp hairs tickled it. Outside the warm cocoon of their home, she heard male voices—lusty cries of
Joyeux Noel
and calls for food and brandy—but Genevieve felt no urgency to rise and join the imminent festivities. She lingered, her thigh draped between his, savoring this precious, private moment.

"Listen," she said, her voice muffled against him.

"Barely dawn and they're already calling for brandy," he mused. "Father Marquette will harangue them for hours if they're bug-eyed drunk during Mass."

"No, not the men. Listen." As the voyageurs' voices faded, silence wrapped around the little house, broken only by the crack of an icicle snapping away from the eaves and sluicing into the snow just beyond the walls. "Can you hear it?"

"Yes,
Taouistaouisse
."

"It's like there is no one around for hundreds and hundreds of miles."

"No screaming peddlers. No clomping of horses and clattering of carriages. No stink of civilization." He poked his head above the furs and glanced at the embers of the fire. "Of course, it would be nice if we had someone around to add a log to the fire. ..."

"I'm warm enough."

"This hut has more drafts than a wigwam." Andre glanced down at her, nestled firmly against him. "What will you give me if I stoke the fire?"

"Breakfast."

He nodded to the pot hanging in the hearth. "It's already made."

"Breakfast doesn't always come in a pot, my husband."

Andre chuckled and pulled away, emerging naked from their tent of furs. Through heavy lids, she watched the sleek, well-muscled body of the man she loved as he threw more kindling and a new log onto the fire. He squatted and poked at the flames. Genevieve reached out and traced the hard, sinewy muscles of his upper arm. When the fire blazed high enough for her to feel the heat on her face, he tossed away the poker, smiled wickedly, and dove beneath the furs. His skin felt like ice and she scrambled to the other side of the bed, trying to get away from his chilled limbs just as he reached for her, trying to steal warmth from her body. They rolled in the tangle of pelts, laughing. The touch of their limbs soon created a different sort of heat. The laughter died away, drowned in quiet gasps and deep-throated moans. They kissed and caressed and he feasted on her, in a way that made her squirm in passion, and then he filled her and stroked and they both reached that sweet explosion of pleasure while wrapped in each other's arms.

The fire quickly filled the room with dry heat and the spicy scent of burning resin. The furs, kicked off during their lovemaking, lay twisted around their limbs. Sated, Genevieve kissed Andre on the throat and rose reluctantly from their bed. She searched for her deerskin dress and leggings amid the tangle of discarded clothing on the floor. Once dressed, she stirred the sagamite in the pot she had hung over the fire the evening before, spooning out two bowls for their breakfast—it was the least she could do for him, she teased, for making the room so warm for her.

Genevieve chattered while he ate, encouraged by the bright look in his tawny eyes. It had been lonely in the fort while he was gone. In anticipation of his return, she had stored up anecdotes like a squirrel stored nuts, and now, their passion sated for the moment, she yearned to share everything with him. She told him about the mistakes she had made trying to ice-fish, about the lessons in how to scrape and oil and treat the sundry furs the men brought back from hunting trips, about her first shocked taste of smoked moose meat. She told him she had bartered nearly everything in her woven case—a handful of silver pins for another deerskin dress, two linens for a log mortar and wooden pestle to crush corn into corn-meal, her old corset strings for a deer jaw scraper— and Andre commented, with a twinkle in his eye, that it was about time she sent that woven case to the bottom of Lake Superior. When she was finished eating, he walked to the door and fiddled with the ties to his pack, the one he had taken with him into the wilderness. He pulled out a deep-piled gray pelt, wrapping it around her shoulders.

''My Christmas present to you," Andre murmured, yanking her closer and kissing her on the lips. "It's a caribou pelt. I bought it from the Cree."

Genevieve buried her fingers into the lush fur. She felt like a queen in coronation robes—certainly ermine could not be as soft and warm as the fur now draped on her shoulders. All she had for him for Christmas was a pair of snowshoes she had painstakingly woven until the webbing was as tight as a harp's strings, but suddenly she felt that nothing short of her heart would be adequate. Then she had an idea.

"I can't give you your present until later," she murmured, wrapping herself in the pelt. "I'll give it to you tonight. After the feast."

His lips twitched beneath his beard. He glanced at the bed of tangled furs. "And I thought I already received my presents."

"So did I." She shrugged deeper into the robe, and looking into his eyes, she felt like she was wrapped in pure love. She wanted to race with him. She wanted to run through the snow. She wanted to scream her joy to the entire world. "Let's go outside," Genevieve said. "The games must have started long ago."

He put on his long deerskin coat, strapped on his belt and weapons, then they pushed open the door to their home. Feeling the crack of the crisp, cold air, Genevieve blinked, for the blanket of pristine new snow blinded her with its brightness.

When her eyes adjusted to the light, she noticed that the stockade gate gaped open and all within the perimeter was silent.

"The men aren't here." He tilted his head. His breath misted in front of him. Andre glanced over the pointed ends of the palisades toward the north. "I hear them. They're near the lake."

They half walked, half ran through the gate of the stockade, and she led him like an excited puppy. Outside, every proud pine sagged under the weight of a new cloak of fresh white snow, and the world was muffled and wonderfully silent. Their leather-bound feet crunched through the virgin glitter as they headed through the woods toward the lake. The air was so crisp it bit her lungs as she drew in each breath, but it was as invigorating as a shocking cold bath in the summertime.

Genevieve and Andre met up with the men and the Indian women on a small slope. They had dragged all the empty toboggans out of the stockade, and now they took turns riding the bark sleds down the slope and over the solid surface of the lake. Andre took her hand and helped her climb up the ridge, then commandeered one of the sleighs. He sat on it and planted her, caribou robe and all, firmly between his thighs. With a push, they slid down the slope at breathtaking speed, the frigid air whizzing through her hair as she laughed aloud at the thrill of it.

They spent the morning frolicking like children. Genevieve raced down the slope on the toboggan with him, then raced up again, jumping up and down in excitement and complaining when he dallied. When she became too breathless to speak, Andre picked her up and tossed her in a snowbank, and she retaliated by pelting him with hard-packed snowballs, a skill she was familiar with from her winters in Paris. But Genevieve soon found out he had much more experience. She gave up—willingly—when he had pinned her down flat on her back. Then they played with Indian snowsnakes—long, thin wooden sticks— which were thrown on a cleared patch of ice on the lake to see how far they could slide, with an extra portion of brandy going to the winner.

By the time Father Marquette arrived, Genevieve was so exhausted she could barely stand, and her body steamed in the cold air. Andre picked her up, tossed her on a toboggan and, looping the straps over his shoulders, started tugging her home. Tiny, not to be outdone, directed his squaw to sit on his toboggan and began pulling it behind him. Soon others joined the race, and the laughter of the women mingled with the arrogant cries of the men as they ran forward like sled dogs, racing for the gate of the stockade.

They all piled into the men's quarters, toasty warm after the cold of the outside. They stripped off their frozen outer garments and left them hanging on the pegs that lined the wall. The men stood solemnly while the Jesuit said Mass. The mouth-watering aromas of the feast wafted around them, teasing them all into madness, and as soon as Father Marquette finished, they rushed to set up the tables and benches in the middle of the room. The squaws brought in wooden and bark trenchers of meat: juicy hunks of elk from an animal that had been caught and killed only days before and stewed with the last of the dried blueberries; flat silver-gray slivers of precious beaver tail; heaping plates of wild rice that Andre and the men had purchased from Ojibwa Indians during their travels; a tender, sweet meat that tasted like pork and turned out to be beaver stewed decadently in its own skin; roasted porcupine; platters of aromatic sturgeon from the lake; the ever-present sagamite, and brandy—plenty of it—five day's worth of rations for each man.

They spent the afternoon eating. Tiny began to sing and the men joined in, banging their wooden and box-turtle shell cups on the tables in rhythm to the music. Some of the Indian women swayed to the melody and the men tried to teach them to imitate the stately dances of the nobility. Genevieve laughed to see them mincing around the log cabin like aristocrats in cork-heeled shoes rather than woodsmen in deerskin and breechcloths. Their voices grew so loud and their antics so wild that the hanging snowshoes rattled against the log walls. As the celebration continued and the songs became more and more bawdy, she slipped away from Andre's side. She whispered in Wapishka's ear to keep her husband in the men's quarters for an hour or so—she had to complete his Christmas present before the night was ended. Then she slipped out the front door and scampered across the fort in the crisp blue twilight to their home.

An hour later, Andre concluded that all the arm wrestling matches and drunken toasts to the beauty and fertility of the Indian women had been done solely for the purpose of keeping him away from his missing wife. Brushing his men off, he left the room and headed across the packed snow toward his cabin. He swung open the door.

Startled, she whirled around and faced him. His breath caught in his throat. Her hair shimmered like polished copper, drawn up smoothly in the back of her head, with a froth of curls brushing her cheeks on either side of her face. Not since Montreal had he seen her wear her hair like this. It showed off the grace of her throat and the fine bones of her face. His gaze drifted down and he felt as if someone had ripped the air from his lungs.

Her body was encased in a length of emerald green velvet, her breasts molded like round, ripe fruits above the edge of the low, wide neckline, her shoulders emerging like snowy caps on a green sea. The stiff bodice cut down to her small waist, and her skirts flared out in deep folds.

Shyly, she pulled out a pair of snowshoes from beneath the furs on the bed and walked toward him, her skirts whispering against her legs. "Wapishka's wife taught me how to weave rackets." She shrugged, and the tops of her breasts bobbled seductively. "I worked on them while you were away."

He drank in the sight of her, all shimmering white skin, all curves. The spray of freckles across her nose showed starkly against her skin. Her eyes glowed dark green, full of hesitation and hope. He lifted a finger and touched her cheek, noticing for the first time how fair she was compared with the callused skin of his hands, how tiny were her face and her features.
His little aristocrat.
Weaving rawhide thongs through a bentwood framework and presenting them to him like the finest silk embroidery.

He took the rackets from her and ran his fingers over the taut webbing. "They're beautiful, Genevieve."

Her lips parted. He bent down and drew her lush lower lip into his mouth, releasing it before the passion became too strong for him to control.

"Take off your clothes."

She began tearing at the ties to her bodice. He put the rackets aside, leaning them against the wall, then stopped her by engulfing her hands in his.

"No, little bird, not like that.'' He felt the pounding of her heart beneath his hands. "I want to watch you take them off . . . slowly. Lace by lace. Petticoat by petticoat."