Chapter Three

André gathered the papers and tossed them on the bed. He rose from the chair and strode to the window, peering between the ill–fitting shutters toward the Montreal shore. Several birch bark canoes lay belly up on the bank in anticipation of tomorrow's departure, the last caulking with pine pitch drying in the air. A half–dozen voyageurs hunkered around a campfire in the twilight, smoking pipes and passing around a bottle of brandy.

The fire illuminated a twinkling eye, a flash of laughter, a companionable grin. He would give a dozen beaver furs to be out there, drawing the stinging tobacco smoke deep into his lungs, feeling the river breeze on his face. This tiny room stifled him with its low roof, soft mattress, and smothering woolen covers. He had stayed out of the room all day long, but come evening he had no choice but to sleep in this coffin. As leader of this voyage, there were limits to how companionable he could be with the men he had hired.

André pushed away from the window. He yanked his brown silk doublet off his shoulders and tossed it on the floor, where it joined the wig, shoes, and cravat he had discarded the moment he’d entered the room. He paced at the foot of the bed in shirttails and breeches, forcing himself to think of the details, anything to take his mind off the flickering of candlelight amid the solid log walls. The cornmeal and peas had been bought and bagged, the hatchets, glass beads, knives, brandy, blankets, and other trading goods had already been packed in ninety–pound packages. He had hired and paid out one–third wages to two dozen woods–runners, most of them tough, dependable men. The canoes were pitched and ready to be loaded. All he awaited was the dawn.

Finally.

A knock on the door interrupted his musings. André glared at the portal. He had finished his business for the day. The last thing he wanted to do was haggle with a merchant over last–minute prices or argue with the authorities over the behavior of his drunken canoemen.

The knock came again, more persistent.

“You'd best have a damn good reason for disturbing my peace.”

The door swung open. A blur of pink swept in like a gust of wind. The creature stilled and fixed him with a fiery, green–eyed glare. With a start, he realized that the guest was a woman.

A beautiful woman.

“André Lefebvre?”

He stared at her like she’d dropped out of the sky. She had pouty red lips and copper–colored hair that gleamed in the candlelight, hair that fell in windblown curls over her shoulders. Dieu! She was corseted tightly, but no amount of boning could crush those curves. His thoughts whirled. He wondered if the innkeeper had sent her up to him, but one look at the rose–colored ribbon trimming her pink bodice told him that this was no public woman. Courtesans of this caliber didn't live in New France.

“Shocked to see me, are you?” She slammed the door behind her and threw a case upon the floor like a nobleman tossing a gauntlet. “I'm not a ghost, but I have come to haunt you.”

André felt a moment of unease. He peered at her features, trying to place a name to a face. When he was last in Montreal, he’d spent a few evenings with a young widow before he returned to France. What was her name? Charlotte? Colette? It didn't matter. The woman tapping her foot before him couldn't be more than nineteen or twenty years of age, which meant when he was last in Montreal, she couldn't have been more than sixteen. He avoided sixteen–year–olds as religiously as he avoided unfriendly natives.

“Well?” The point of her booted foot tapped, lifting the soggy hem of her skirts. “Are you going to stand there and stare all night, or are you going to congratulate me for recovering from my illness?”

His gaze fell to the provocative swelling of her bosom and he decided to hedge a little longer. “You appear to be in the full bloom of health.”

“How unfortunate for you.”

“On the contrary—”

“Don't you dare deny it!”

“Deny what?”

“You wanted me dead!”

He held up his hand. “I don't think—”

“You got what you wanted, and then you abandoned me.”

He figured silence was probably the better part of valor, so he kept mute even as the thought passed through his mind that no man with blood in his veins would take this woman and then just abandon her. There were few enough women in the settlements, and fewer of such generous … bounty. She definitely had the wrong person, even if she knew him by name. André had a policy about Frenchwomen that he made clear before any affair: No promises, no commitments, and absolutely no complications.

The candlelight in the room was dim—growing dimmer as twilight closed into darkness—so he approached so she could get a better look at his face. “I think you judge me too harshly, cherie.”

“Don't you dare call me darling.” Her bosom heaved against the restriction of her clothing. “You chose the wrong woman to take advantage of. I was sick, not a fool. How does it feel to be caught slipping away like a thief in the night?”

Still no doubt in those green eyes, only anger and accusation and a growing impatience. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her she had made a mistake, but the words stuck like glue to his lips. Hell, it was his last night. One final sniff of French perfume would be a fine way to say goodbye to civilization.

“I find myself,” he said, as his gaze wandered over her pale pink dress, “quite happy to be caught.”

Her lips parted in a gasp. Plump lips, moist tongue. Desire made his blood rush south. Frenchwomen always complicated a good night's worth of lovemaking with so much baggage—vows of eternal devotion, fidelity, paroxysms of guilt about their own sensuality. He wondered if she were playing some sort of vixen's game. Perhaps she had seen him in Montreal, had wanted him, but now that she had dared to join him in the confines of his room, she'd lost the courage to tell him precisely why she was here.

He took another step closer. “I think there's been a misunderstanding between us.”

“You call abandonment a misunderstanding?”

“Only a fool would abandon you.” He glanced at the woven basket she'd tossed between them. There was no doubt—she had come to spend the night. It wouldn't be the first time a woman had played an elaborate role in order to justify her own infidelity. “Come, love. Forgive me my wrongs.”

“You must be joking.”

“Not joking.” Her lower lip was fuller than her upper one, as juicy as a ripe peach, all pouty and centered with the faintest dimple. “At least let me make it up to you.”

Her mouth parted and he took the opportunity presented to him. He caught her lips and felt her breath catch. He pressed his nose against her cheek as he deepened the kiss, smelling river mist and rain, along with fresh pine–scented air, clinging like dew to soft, soft skin.

It had been too long. He clutched her shoulders and pulled her closer. She fit against him, the fullness of her bosom giving against his chest. He slid his hands down farther, to her narrow waist, digging his fingers into her side, only to come against the hard whalebone rib of her corset. Damn the Frenchwoman's clothing, all those laces and knots and rigid seams and layers—for a man’s benefit, they said, all these locks and keys. He wanted to feel bare, hot flesh, not seams and satin. He buried his free hand in the silk of her curls to pull her head back so he could fix his lips more firmly on her own.

The tips of her nails dug into his linen shirt, pinching like little cat–claws. Pleasure or resistance? He couldn't tell, and as long as her lips lay open beneath his, he refused to retreat. She parted those lips still further to gasp, and he took advantage. He tasted her mouth, sweet, and delicious, vaguely naughty, forbidden fruit—but the touch of his tongue in her mouth triggered something, because suddenly she began to struggle.

Dammit, why must Frenchwomen always fight their own passion? He would show her all the pleasure there could be between a man and a woman in lovemaking—and he would see that she would not grow big with child after he left. He held her tighter, trying to gauge if this struggle were nothing but another parlay in the elaborate game of refusal and surrender. Boldly, he ran his tongue over the silky swell of her lower lip. She started as if she had been struck with fire.

He didn't like the feel of her shock. André released her mouth and raised his head. Her eyes were misty and bright, like the color of a shallow lake in the summer sunshine. She no longer looked like the fiery woman who had burst into his room, so full of rage and self–righteousness. She looked young, confused, and thoroughly, thoroughly kissed.

She murmured, “You're kissing me.”

“You noticed.”

Her tongue darted out. He followed the journey of that little pink tongue across her lower lip. She looked like a child tasting licorice for the first time. “Does this mean,” she said, “that you'll start treating me like a wife?”

Wife.

He released her and took a step back. He examined her clothing and his suspicions grew. She dressed too well to be without family or husband. Frenchwomen arriving in the settlements were married almost as soon as they set foot upon Canadian soil, he knew that well enough. His gaze fell to the battered woven case on the floor, which was large enough to hold enough clothes for several days. Perhaps she had run away from her family. Perhaps she was looking for someone to take care of her. For the first time since she'd walked in, he began to wonder if there was more to this than he suspected—like a musket–wielding father downstairs, waiting for his daughter to emerge ruined from the stranger's room so he could force him into marriage.

Ironically, he already was married. Temporary or not, he still had a wife in Quebec. As much as he wanted to lay this woman down on his bed, spread her coppery curls over the pillow, and sink his cock into her supple, young body, he knew he couldn't let this charade continue any further.

“I think we should have a talk, you and I.” André crossed his arms. “Do you know who I am?”

“Of course.” Her brows twitched. “You are André Lefebvre.”

“Then you must know,” he said, rubbing his hand across the nape of his neck with some regret, “that I’m already married.”

The girl's bosom heaved. A flush infused her cheeks. Her eyes glowed with new flames, reducing to ashes any hopes he had of spending the night with her.

He spread his hands and said with what he hoped was apology, “I married only recently, under some duress—”

“You don't know who I am.”

If she could shoot venom through those eyes, he'd be dead a hundred times over. “It's been a few years since I've been in Montreal—”

“All this time” she said, wiping the back of her hand against her mouth, “you thought I was some whore throwing herself upon you—”

“I wasn’t complaining,” he interrupted, “and I stopped when I realized you’d mistaken my identity.”

“You didn't mind pretending you were the man you thought I mistook you for.”

“You're too tempting a morsel not to bite, cherie.”

She sucked in her breath through clenched teeth. “I shouldn't be surprised at all, not a bit.”

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

“You're married!”

“I'm not dead.”

“Have you no loyalty—”

“You dropped into my lap, cherie. And you're a creature that would test a Jesuit's own chastity.”

“That’s good to know.” Her fists slipped off her hips and she leaned forward, tantalizing him with a glimpse of cleavage. “You'll be easy to cuckold.”

“Alas, I'm already married—”

“I'm your wife.”

André’s first urge was to laugh. This couldn't be his wife. His wife was a pitiful little thing with red–rimmed eyes and dark freckles and gray skin. She didn't have hair like burnished copper but then again, she had been wearing a linen over her hair when he'd married her, and her hair had been soaked. 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?

“Permit me to refresh your memory.” She swayed closer to him, hands on her hips. “My name, before we married, 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.”

Now he noticed a spattering of freckles across her nose, paler now against skin that had flushed an angry red. Now he noticed the tiny waist, the diminutive stature, the delicate clavicle under her near–translucent skin.

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

“There,” she said, with a note of triumph. “That's more of the reaction I expected from a man caught cheating on his wife.”

“Last time I saw you,” he argued, “you were retching at my side.”

“It was nothing more than shipboard fever.”

“You're supposed to be at Marietta's.”

“I didn’t cross an ocean only to be abandoned by my husband.”

“I didn't abandon you.” He turned away from her so sharply that he bumped the bed and a sheaf of papers balanced on the edge slipped off to the floor. “I left for a voyage already long delayed. I made arrangements—”

“For my burial.”

He winced with guilt. Damn it. How could he not have recognized her? She was all Frenchwoman—worse, all aristocrat. The breeding showed in her long, white neck, her delicate skin, her pointed chin and cheekbones. He'd noticed those 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.

By God, why did these frail swan–necked creatures leave the security and ease of France to hang themselves about the necks of the men of Quebec? What did the new world give them but danger, the threat of starvation, of cold, of a hard, rude life of labor? For men there was the freedom of the uncharted forests, the challenge of the unknown, but for women there was nothing but grief and drudgery.

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

“I made arrangements,” he said, raking his hand through his hair, “for you to stay in a safe place with people I trusted, in the closest thing to civilization you'll find in this country.”

“For how long?”

“Didn't Philippe tell you my plans?”

“Which ones? Burial or being a governess to someone else’s children?”

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 too long. Marietta had probably flown 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 steeled 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.”

His words gave 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—”

“I'm a fur trader, not a murderer.”

“How comforting.” She kicked away the offending shoe, giving him a view of a slim, booted ankle. “Fur traders don't kill their wives. They only abandon them after they get their trading licenses.”

“Then you know about the Intendant’s ruling.”

“You're not even going to deny it!”

“This marriage is a convenient one for both of us.”

“It isn't convenient for me to wait nine months for my husband to return from God knows where—”

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

“Oh, did I have a choice? I don’t think so, since a ruthless lecher plucked me off my deathbed.”

“Come summer, when I return to Quebec, I'll have our marriage annulled. Then you'll be free to marry again.”

She crossed her arms snug under her breasts. “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 spirit. “Philippe and Marietta will see to it that you behave like my wife.”

“So while you're roaming in the woods, I’ll be a prisoner in a stranger's house, 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.”

“You married me, Monsieur Lefebvre.” She uncrossed her arms and wagged a finger at him. “You're going to treat me like a wife.”

He let his gaze roam over her lovely body. “You don't even know what that means, cherie.”

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

“I don't have a home here.”

“You’re lying.”

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

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

“Not one fit for a king’s girl, which is why you're staying with her.”

“So be it, then.” She glanced around the room and saw his small bag packed in the corner. “Wherever you are going, I am going too.”

André felt an urge to laugh. The thought of her sleeping on the hard ground under the open sky or perched in a pink dress upon all the merchandise stuffed into a birch bark canoe was ludicrous. He tried to imagine her negotiating the treacherous hills and ledges of the portages around the waterfalls, teetering on her heeled leather boots. She'd be battered and bruised in the birch bark canoes as they were poled upstream against the current. She'd be useless weight, unable to carry any of the goods during the portages or paddle the canoes over calm water. She'd cry when mosquitoes feasted on her pale skin, she'd complain about sleeping on the cold earth, she'd cause endless delays.

“You have no idea where I'm going,” he said. “You belong in Quebec proper, not in the forests.”

“I've been in forests before.”

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

“So are the settlements, evidently.” She shuffled through his scattered clothing. “You have to spend the winter in those forests. Where are you going to live?”

He frowned. A fur trader named Nicholas Perrot had built some crude buildings in Chequamegon Bay when he was last there. André had already sent an advance party to shore them up before the main flotilla’s arrival. Even shored up, André doubted this woman would consider a woodland hut worthy of the name “home.”

“This isn't a pleasure voyage.” He planted his hands on his hips. “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 natives who for one reason or another no longer like the French and would do almost anything to have such a pretty scalp as yours.”

“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?”

Defiance flared in those eyes—unusual eyes, pure jade. He thought it was a pity that she was his wife. He would have enjoyed tumbling in bed with 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.

“Must I tie you 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 boots nicking his shins. “I'll go to his house trussed up like a sack of flour, and then he'll know how badly I've been mistreated.”

“Don't threaten me, woman.”

“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.”

André froze in the middle of the hallway. The girl was nothing if not resourceful. The governor would be none too pleased to be confronted with the abandoned wife of a fur trader. The governor would see to it that the marriage was annulled and this woman remarried. In punishment, he would revoke André's trading license, when it was too late for André to do anything about it.

A door cracked on the far end of the hall, and someone peeked out to see what all the fuss was about. André turned around and dragged her back into the room. He kicked the door closed behind him.

She wiped a lock of hair out of her eyes. “So, you are going to discuss this now, like a proper husband?”

He should just escape the settlements tonight, before she ever had a chance to go to the governor. He could do it. He knew where all his men were sleeping. He could go deep into the interior and roam the wilderness and forget all that had happened here. But when he returned there would be hell to pay—and it was a hell he could not afford. They'd hanged the last men who'd tried to smuggle illegal furs into Quebec, confiscating everything for which they'd worked. He’d struggled so hard to keep everything legal—Christ, he had even married to keep everything legal. Short of imprisoning this woman in Marietta's house, there was nothing he could do to stop her from ruining all his dreams.

She was staring at him steadily, waiting for him to say something. He couldn't free her from this marriage, nor could he leave her here in the settlements to wreak havoc. But how could he take her with him? She was a noblewoman, for God's sake. She’d never survive a week on the trail, and by then, he'd be too far away from Montreal to spare anyone to escort her back to the settlements. She'd be dead weight, a hundred pounds of whining, crying, complaining Frenchwoman.

Then an idea came to him, as swift and straight as an arrow. He flinched when it hit, for the arrowhead was poisoned with guilt.

“Whatever you're planning,” she said, in an odd, little voice, “I don't like it.”

“You should. You’ve won.” He released her. “We're leaving at dawn for the trek to the interior.”

She narrowed her eyes like a street–wise trickster, trying to read what new game he was playing.

“I’ll make arrangements,” he said, heading for the door, “to get you another room.”

“Oh, no, no, no. I'm staying right here in this very room with you.”

He felt a heavy rush of warmth to his loins. “Such an eager bride.”

“Did you think I was going to allow you escape in the middle of the night, leaving me here alone?”

The room was stifling again, but it was a different sort of closeness, the kind that urged him to reduce the world to two warm, willing bodies in one soft bed. He admitted, he needed a woman. But he had to get away from his wife now, before he made a very serious mistake.

“Trust me, my lusty wife.” He bowed, sweeping his hand out as if it held a feathered hat. “I wouldn't leave you behind for all the beaver in Quebec.”