Pamela Morsi (20 page)

"Yes, monsieur," she admitted. "I fell when I
was ten."

"Pardon, mamselle, I don't know where I lost
my manners to speak of it. I had merely never noticed it before. It
is not at all distracting."

Aida was still blushing.

"I . . . I, too, have one cracked," he said,
showing her a lower incisor. "Laron once hit me in the mouth with a
poling tool."

She smiled broadly.

"You must learn to duck," she told him.

Her humor was unexpectedly contagious and
Armand actually grinned back. "With my lack of height, mamselle, I
had never before needed to!"

She actually giggled at his joke.

It was a warm, pleasant moment. Reminiscent
of the friendship long past. Perhaps Monsieur Sonnier did not
really like her, but he was willing to tolerate her ignorance for
the sake of Prairie l'Acadie and Orva Landry. And he had seen her,
he had seen her flaw. Strangely she found that pleased her.

"I promise to do my best to learn what Madame
Landry tries to teach me," Aida vowed to him. "And for your sake, I
will not act any more silly than I can help."

Those words raised his eyebrows and Aida
wished she could call them back. She would look smarter, of course,
to pretend that she didn't know that she wasn't smart. Oh how she
wished he were more like the other fellows, like Placide or Ignace
or even Laron. If she could just tease and flirt with him then it
would be so easy. But Armand Sonnier was much too intelligent to be
fooled by such nonsense. And nonsense was all that she had to
offer.

"Are you two conjuring up a love affair?"
Orva Landry called out to them.

Armand jumped back as if a shot had been
fired, clearly horrified. Aida swallowed hard and kept her chin
high as inwardly she writhed in humiliation, wondering if Madame
Landry had somehow known the direction of her thoughts.

With deliberate purpose she forced a little
giggle from her throat. "Oh, we are going to be much too busy for
that this morning," she said. "You have promised to show me how to
lessen Poppa's joint pain with potato shavings."

"That I will," the old woman said. "I will
indeed. Well, mon fils," she said to Armand. "Go fetch your pen and
paper if you are to write down my words."

"Oui, Madame," he answered and headed for the
house.

Aida watched him go for a moment and then
moved to Madame Landry's side, seating herself in the cool earth at
her feet.

"I am so glad he is going to help me," she
said. "I could never remember all this."

"Of course he will help," Orva said waving
away her concern.

"I was afraid for a moment that he would
not," Aida admitted.

The old woman smiled vaguely. "Things always
work out exactly how they are meant," she said. "Remember that,
young one, exactly how they are meant. Fate. It's just that at
times we are so stubborn, we cannot trust in that to be."

Aida frowned at her words, not understanding.
The voices themselves couldn't be any harder to comprehend. She
hoped that Madame Landry would speak more plainly. It was going to
be difficult enough to fathom the treater’s knowledge without the
rarities of language.

In fact, the afternoon proved to be a lot
less difficult for Aida than she would have imagined. She was
honestly surprised at how much she already knew about the herbs.
Santolina and tansy. Marjoram and feverfew. They were as familiar
to her as jasmine and marigold. And even the cures themselves
seemed rather straightforward and commonsense. Not at all the
strange spiritual world that she imagined.

"To get rid of head lice, you wash the hair
in whiskey and powder it with sand," the old woman explained. "The
lice will get drunk on the whiskey and the sand will make them
think they are down on the ground. They'll fight each other to the
death over territory."

"Really." Aida shook her head in amazement.
Then resolutely committed the story to memory. Drunk lice will
fight on sand.

"Now if it's body lice," Madame Landry
continued, "it's a completely different problem.

Aida nodded, listening, deliberately trying
to commit Madame Landry's words to memory. It was challenging and
very difficult. She was so very grateful that Monsieur Sonnier was
writing everything down.

She glanced momentarily in his direction. He
was sitting nearby them on a cane-seat chair. His legs were
crossed, right ankle on left knee, with the breadboard he'd
appropriated from Madame Landry's kitchen serving as a writing
surface.

The tiny bottle of blue-black ink was
uncorked and held securely with the two fingers that also steadied
the paper. He was obviously listening, but he kept his eyes on his
efforts, writing continuously, with only occasional hesitations to
re-ink his point.

His face, shaded by the wide-brimmed hat, was
not visible to her. So Aida allowed herself to look more closely at
the rest of him. From her place on the ground and with the distance
separating them, Armand didn't appear little or boyish. It was
curious actually how people talked of him as if he were a small,
frail man. He may have been ill in his youth, but now, in fact, he
looked to Aida to be anything but.

Normally he wore trousers, which Aida
generally preferred on men, being so much more fashionable. Today
however he was clad in Acadian culotte and buttonless cottonade
shirt. The traditional costume suited him somehow. He looked
natural. He looked attractive. Aida was somewhat surprised at her
own thought. She scrutinized his appearance more carefully as if
checking her conclusion.

His shoulders were actually quite broad. Oh,
certainly not as broad as perhaps Laron's, but much broader than
his hips, which were narrow and lean. The afternoon sun was warm
and the sweat-dampened cottonade of his clothing clung tightly to
his form. Aida found herself measuring the length of his torso and
the width of his chest. He was fit and healthy, robust even. There
was no evidence of the sickly scholar.

Her glance skittered past the frighteningly
foreign territory at the crotch of his pants, lingering along the
thick muscled length of his thigh, at the very top of which she
could detect just the hint of a round masculine backside. Oh how
she would love to touch it.

The idea shot through her like the heat of
lightning and she wiggled a bit uncomfortably on the hard ground
where she sat. What a strange notion to have!

Determinedly she tried to concentrate once
more on what Madame Landry was saying.

"Put a small piece of mutton tallow to a
jigger of snake oil and set it near the fire. When it's melted, add
in twelve drops of attar of roses."

Aida's attention once more strayed to the man
seated at a distance from her. Primly she withdrew her gaze from
the not quite proper perusal of his nether person to the much more
socially acceptable view of his limbs.

His culotte was tied neatly at the base of
his knee. Below them his calves were bare, or mostly so. Even at a
rail length or more, Aida could see the profusion of tawny brown
hair that festooned the well-muscled curve of his leg.

Aida swallowed, but her mouth was
surprisingly dry.

Short men should have short legs, stubby
legs, she thought to herself. But Armand was not built so. He was
perfectly proportioned, as if his growth had not been stunted as
everyone said, but as if God intended for him to look exactly the
way that he did. And what God made, He made perfectly.

Aida allowed her eyes to wander the length of
his naked limbs, curious and admiring. With the wearing of culottes
Aida was familiar with the shape of men's legs. At the fais-dodo or
special dances the younger fellows often tried to draw attention to
them by tying multicolored bows at their knees, occasionally with
flowing streamers. Even in the coldest part of winter when their
nakedness was covered by durable thigh-high Indian moccasins,
leather fringes were attached to draw the eye. And the action of
the gentlemen's bow was obviously designed to show the male limb to
best advantage. Aida had cast her glance on many legs, but none had
ever before held her attention.

The intriguing fleece of masculine hair
stopped abruptly upon the top of his foot, which was rather long
and narrow. His toes were well-shaped and lean, the second one
slightly longer than the first. The sole she observed was callused
and rough, a testament to the roads he traveled. His instep was
high-arched and graceful, somehow giving the perception of both
beauty and strength.

Beauty and strength. She had never associated
either word with this man. No, not Armand Sonnier. Yet somehow,
suddenly now, she knew both words described him. She allowed her
gaze to wander back over the length of leg, the thighs covered in
closely clinging cottonade, the curve of his handsome derriere, the
strong muscled chest, the deceptively broad shoulders, the noble
jut of his chin, those brightly honest blue eyes. His—

Brightly honest blue eyes!

He was staring straight at her.

Aida lowered her gaze immediately, but
couldn't keep it down. Glancing up again, she saw she had been
right. He was looking at her, straight at her, right at her. She
couldn't turn away. He must have seen her watching him, examining
him. He must be able to see right inside her. He must know what she
was thinking, what she was feeling. The flesh on her body mottled
with goosebumps. Her womb quivered like jelly. Her bosom was tight
and high, the nipples puckered beneath the covering of her clothes.
She didn't even know what she was thinking or feeling. Aida wasn't
sure if she could still breathe. Her lips parted, inviting air into
her lungs, but the lower one trembled, trembled with something akin
to fear.

"Of course, if all else fails you can rub
parsley into it. Armand? Are you not writing this down?"

Madame Landry's words penetrated to both of
them. When he glanced away, Aida found that she could, too.
Determinedly she concentrated her attention upon her own lap. She
ached there. It was unfamiliar, unfathomable, and physical. Her
hands were trembling. She clasped them together.

He didn't like her, she reminded herself. He
thought her foolish and frivolous. He wanted her to marry his best
friend. But what did that look, that intensity, what did it mean?
She was the most beautiful woman on the Vermilion River. A lot of
men had looked at her. But no man had ever looked at her like
that.

Tears welled in her eyes. She wasn't sure if
the emotion she felt was sadness or joy. Armand Sonnier looked at
her and her whole world was changed.

"Now to make a charm against it," Orva
continued, "you slice a real thin piece of old smoked bacon, the
older the better. You stitch it into a piece of flannel and blacken
it all over with pepper. Warm it until it's all as one and then
fasten it with a string right into the craw of a man's throat."

"We are going to the fais-dodo," Armand told
Laron determinedly. "And you are going to patch things up with Aida
Gaudet."

Laron was poling the pirogue in the right
direction, the evening's entertainment was to be at the home of
Thertule Guidry, but he was distinctly uninterested in the
outing.

Armand was sitting in the bottom of the boat.
Armand was his best friend in the whole world. But Armand didn't
have any idea of the way things were in his heart.

"I will go," Laron told him. "This is my
community and family. I never want to be separated from them. But I
no longer intend to wed Aida Gaudet. I will have Helga, Armand. I
will have Helga or no one at all. You are my friend and the sooner
you accept that, the better it will be for everyone."

Armand shook his head. "Laron, it just cannot
be. I know that you love her. I have known that for a very long
time. But you cannot have her."

"You once said that I could."

Armand nodded. "I did say it, careless words,
I said. But I was wrong."

"Perhaps you are wrong now," Laron
suggested.

"I don't think so," he answered. "I don't
think so. She is married, Laron. That cannot be changed. He may
have been no good, he may have left her, but he is still her
husband and there is just no way that it can ever be undone."

Laron didn't reply. There was a way it could
be undone. Laron had thought long and hard about that way. But he
did not mention it to Armand. There were things a man knew about
himself that he could not reveal even to his best friend. Laron
knew that he was going to have Helga Shotz, openly, honestly,
sanctioned by God and man. She was going to bear his name and he
was going to be her husband. He knew that.

And he also knew the only way for it to
happen was for her to be a German widow indeed. Laron had decided.
He must kill Helmut Shotz.

"I think you have underestimated Mademoiselle
Gaudet," Armand continued. "She is so very pretty that we have all
failed to notice all the other fine things about her."

"Hmmm." Laron was noncommittal.

"I myself have been guilty of this. Certainly
the woman is no great intellect. But I have allowed myself to be so
blinded by her physical appearance that I have not noticed her
innate good sense. I told you that Madame Landry is teaching her
the charms and cures."

"So I have heard."

"She may not be clever, but she is diligent
and determined," Armand continued. "It is the most a person could
expect of another human being."

Laron was no longer listening. He was
remembering.

He had tried to stay away. He knew that it
was the thing to do. Until he could offer himself, until he had
something to offer, he should keep his distance. Not just for her
sake, or for his own, but for the children.

He ached for Jakob's loving little-boy
kisses, for Elsa's wide-eyed admiration, even for Karl's oft-times
sullen companionship. The children loved and needed him and he
realized, perhaps too late, that they were part of his heart.