Heaven in His Arms (6 page)

"Yes. Do you know that I already have a wife?"

She looked at him as if he were crazed.

He spread his hands and sighed. "I married only recently."

The girl's bosom heaved. A fiery flush infused her cheeks. Her eyes glowed with new flames, reducing to ashes any hopes he had of spending the night with her. When she finally spoke, her voice was full of incredulous fury. "You don't know who I am, do you?"

If she could shoot venom through her eyes, he'd be dead a hundred times over. He shrugged helplessly. "It's been a few years since I've been in Montreal... ."

"You wretch!" She wiped the back of her hand against her lips. "All this time, you thought I was just some whore throwing herself upon you—"

"Would that all women be so passionate," he interrupted. "I wish I were the man you're seeking . . . but you've mistaken my identity."

"Mistaken!'' She planted her fists on her hips. "You didn't mind pretending you were the man you thought I mistook you for!"

"You're too tempting a morsel not to bite."

"Oh!" She sucked in her breath through clenched teeth, then swirled in a swish of skirts. "I shouldn't be surprised at all!"

"You shouldn't, not when you enter a strange man's bedroom after dark."

"You're married!"

"I'm not dead."

"You've got the morals of a stray cat!"

"You dropped into my lap like manna from heaven,
cherie.
" He glanced with appreciation at her body. "And you're a creature that would test a Jesuit's own chastity."

"Am I?" Her fists slipped off her hips and she leaned forward, tantalizing him with a glimpse of deep cleavage. "That's good to know. You'll be easy to cuckold."

"I told you, I'm already married—"

"I'm your wife, you fool!" Andre choked on the word.

"Yes. Wife."

Impossible. Impossible.
This couldn't be his wife. His wife was a pitiful little thing with red-rimmed eyes and dark freckles against gray-tinted skin. She didn't have hair like burnished copper ... but then again, she had been wearing a linen headrail when he'd married her, and her hair had been soaked with perspiration. He struggled against the fog of memory. She had been half dead that day in Madame Bourdon's house, a weak, tiny thing clinging to his arm for support and slurring her vows. Undoubtedly, she was still at the Hotel-Dieu, recovering from her illness ... if she weren't already dead.

Illness. What had this woman said about illness when she first arrived?

"Has your memory returned yet?" She swayed closer to him, emboldened by his silence, clutching the edges of her cloak. "Let me refresh it for you. My name is—was—Marie Duplessis. We married in Madame Bourdon's home in Quebec, in the presence of Philippe Martineau and about a dozen other couples. Then you abandoned me at the Hotel-Dieu."

He stared at her. With a start, he noticed a spattering of freckles across her nose, paler now against skin that had flushed an angry rose.

His blood ran cold when he realized how close he had come to consummating his own marriage.

"That's more of the reaction I expected from a man caught cheating on his wife with his wife."

"Last time I saw you," he argued, stepping back and meeting those sparkling green eyes with a new wariness, "you were retching at my side."

"It was nothing more than shipboard fever, my husband."

"You're supposed to be at Marietta's."

"I didn't come across the ocean to be the governess to another woman's children. Yes, yes, I went to Marietta and she told me you'd planned to keep me there until you returned. But I did not come to Quebec only to be abandoned by my husband. ..."

"I didn't abandon you." He snapped the words and turned away from her. The candle sputtered in the corner on the desk. A sheaf of papers balancing precariously on the edge of the bed slipped off the pile and swept over the floor. "I left for a voyage already long delayed. I made arrangements—"

"For my burial."

Guilt twinged at him. Damn it. His gaze swept over her, from the jiggle of her curls to the hem of her skirts, and anger started at a slow burn, sizzling away from the guilt. All Frenchwoman . .. worse, all aristocrat. The breeding showed in her long, white neck, her delicate skin, her pointed chin and cheekbones. He'd noticed the signs in her sickness, and now, in the full of health, she stood before him the embodiment of the one kind of creature to whom he wanted no commitment.

A woman like this didn't belong in his world. He couldn't protect her, he couldn't keep her safe.

"You didn't look like this when I last saw you," Andre argued, raking his hand under his wig. "I made arrangements for you to stay in a safe place in a warm house with people I trusted, in the closest thing to civilization you'll find in this country."

"For how long? Forever?"

"Didn't Philippe tell you my plans?"

"Which ones? Burial or slavery?"

He frowned. She'd been too sick to remember her own name at their wedding, let alone understand his plans, and he had been too busy making arrangements for his voyage to check on her at the Hotel-Dieu. He'd told Philippe to take care of everything— including explaining his intentions to his new wife. Philippe, with his usual distaste of unpleasant tasks, had delayed this one too late. Marietta had probably down into a rage when this woman appeared on her doorstep, most likely seeing to it that she was on a boat to Montreal within minutes of her arrival. He crossed his arms in front of him, steeling himself for the inevitable confrontation.

"You've come a long way to hear what Marietta could have told you."

"I wanted to hear it from the coward's own lips." She looked him up and down, her nose wrinkling in an aristocratic sneer. "I also wanted to know what kind of swine would abandon his wife so quickly."

"You won't be my wife for long."

Something murderous in his eyes must have given her pause. She stepped back, stumbling over one of his abandoned shoes. "If you touch me, I'll scream so loud that every man in this inn will come running—"

He cut her short with a jerk of his hand. "I'm a fur trader, not a murderer."

"How comforting," she snapped, kicking away the offending shoe and giving him a view of a slim, booted ankle beneath a muddied froth of skirts. "Fur traders don't kill their wives. They only abandon them after they get their trading licenses."

"Then you know about Talon's ruling."

"You're not even going to deny it!" she sputtered. "How noble! A brigand who's honest about his treachery."

"This marriage is a convenient one for both of us."

"It isn't convenient for me to care for someone else's children, in someone else's house, or wait nine months for my husband to return from God knows where to tell me what he plans—"

"If I hadn't married you, someone else would, and you'd have very little choice in the matter."

"I had no choice in the matter when a ruthless lecher plucked me off my deathbed."

"I'm giving you a second chance. Come summer, when I return to Quebec, I'll have our marriage annulled. Then you'll be free to marry again. ..."

"So you will get rid of me." She tossed her head of curls and crossed her arms snug under her breasts. "I thought as much. What do I do between now and summer . . . other than give you horns?"

His jaw tightened. He had no doubt she'd find a dozen willing men to quench her desire in his absence, and briefly he wondered how a daughter of the petite noblesse had managed to cultivate such passion, such spirit. "Philippe and Marietta will see to it that you behave like my wife."

"So while you're roaming in the woods, I must sit in a stranger's house for nine months, waiting for you to return so you can toss me off like an old wig?"

"Come summer, you'll have a choice of men, unlike the other girls who have to decide on a husband within fifteen days."

"I came clear across the world to start a new life in this colony. I didn't do it so I could be abandoned by my husband within days and divorced within months." She uncrossed her arms and wagged a finder at him. "You married me, Monsieur Lefebvre. You're going to treat me like a wife."

"Am I?" He let his gaze roam insolently over her lovely body. "You don't even know what that means, cherie."

"It means," she said, ignoring his look, "that you put me in your house and not leave me with utter strangers."

"I don't have a home here."

"None?"

"I've nothing but an abandoned old hut on a piece of land I inherited from my father, land that has long returned to forest."

"You're supposed to be a rich man," she countered, brows as sweeping as sparrow's wings tugging together. "You must have a house bigger than Marietta's. ..."

"I don't, not a habitable one, which is why you're staying with her."

"Oh, but I'm not staying with her." She glanced around the room and saw his small bag packed in the corner. "Wherever you are going, I am going."

Amid the swirling currents of anger, Andre felt an urge to laugh. She was a stubborn creature, a willful woman-child, and the thought of her sleeping on the hard ground under the open sky or perched upon all the merchandise stuffed into a birch bark canoe was too ludicrous for him to ignore. "You have no idea where I'm going. You belong with Marietta, in civilization or what passes for it here, not in the forests."

"I've been in forests before."

He had an image of her strolling calmly through the well-tended woods of some country estate, with exotic peacocks calmly pecking in the courtyards. "Not forests like these. These are full of savages."

"So are the settlements, I've noticed." She shuffled through his scattered clothing, peering at him through narrowed eyes. "You have to spend the winter in those forests. Where are you going to live?"

A fur trader named Nicholas Perrot had built some crude buildings in Chequamegon Bay when he was last there, but Andre doubted this woman would consider them worthy of the name "home."

"You do have a home," she said, clapping her hands twice. "I'll stay there with you."

"This isn't a pleasure voyage," he argued, kicking aside a pair of his breeches and planting his hands on his hips. "Until we get to that place, we'll be sleeping on the ground with nothing above our heads but an overturned canoe. We'll be eating cornmeal mush and boiled peas for most of the trip. We'll be crossing rapids like you've never seen in Paris, and we'll be walking hundreds of miles to get around them. There's danger from bears, from wolves, from savages who for one reason or another no longer like the French and would do almost anything to have such a pretty scalp as yours."

She rolled her eyes. "I outgrew such gruesome tales when I was given my first corset."

"You're still delirious." He clutched her upper arm. "You're going back to Marietta's, and you're going back now." "Am I?"

The fire flared in those eyes—unusual eyes, a pure jade flame. She dug her heels into the floor. She was more child than woman if she thought she could impose her will on him. Andre tightened his grip on her upper arm. She tried to wrench away but failed. He thought it was a pity that she was his wife; he would have enjoyed kissing the fight out of her.

He headed toward the door, dragging her with him. "This will be easier if you don't make a scene on the way out."

"I have no intention of making this easy for you." She yanked on his arm as he pulled her out into the hallway. "I'm not going to let you just abandon me, your own wife, in a strange country. ..."

"Then I'll have to tie you up and make sure you stay tied up until you're back with Marietta."

"The governor will love to hear of that," she snapped, pink skirts flying as she struggled, tiny pointed boot tips nicking his shins. "I'll go to his house trussed up like a sack of flour, then he'll know how badly I've been mistreated."

"Don't threaten me, woman."

"I'm Marie Duplessis, your wife, not some common fishmonger! The governor will arrange for an immediate annulment when he hears about this. ... If you're not going to keep me, then I'm not waiting until next summer to get rid of you."

Andre froze in the middle of the hallway. He knew with deadly certainty that she would do exactly what she said she would. The girl was nothing if not resourceful, having made it this far and finding him. The governor would be none too pleased to be confronted with the abandoned wife of a fur trader. Andre knew exactly what the official would do when he heard this woman's story. The governor would see to it that the marriage was annulled and this woman remarried. In punishment, he would revoke Andre's trading license, when it was too late for the fur trader to do anything about it.

A door cracked on the far end of the hall. Andre whirled and dragged her back into the room. He kicked the door closed behind him.

She faced him squarely, wiping a lock of hair out of her eyes. "So, you are going to discuss this now."

"There's nothing to discuss." He tugged her arm and thrust her back against the door. "Unless you want to be a great source of entertainment to the guests of this fair inn, I suggest you shut up while I tie you up and carry you back to your boat."