Chapter Six

André strode through the woods. Sweat ran down his temple, soaking the leather strap pulled across his forehead. His thighs flexed as he climbed a steep grade, straining from the weight of the load on his back. It felt good to stretch those muscles after spending the morning pulling the canoe through the rapids. Now he judged the direction in which he walked by the position of the moss on the pines. He judged the time of day by the length of the shadows. Then he searched the forest floor for what he had been trailing for hours—the footsteps of the wife whose kiss he couldn't get out of his mind.

He shifted the weight on his back. He’d been tracking the pattern of her footsteps for an hour. Normally, the impression of her right foot sunk deeper than that of her left, because she carried her case in her right hand. Periodically, the pattern would switch, as if she’d switched hands. The pattern had switched three times in the last fifty paces. His stubborn, seductive wife was getting tired.

Good. It wasn't in his nature to say no to a willing woman, so the sooner she became exhausted, the sooner he would be rid of the temptation.

André paused as he reached a tree trunk that cut across the path. He eased down, the weight on his back straining his knees, and touched the splintered end of a branch that stuck upright from the trunk. On the ground beyond was a deep gulch and, farther—veering off the path—were two sets of evenly paced footprints.

He heard the voices long before he reached Genevieve and Julien standing in the sunshine, huddled too close together. Dirt streaked Genevieve’s pink skirts all across her backside.

He barked, “The landing is at the bottom of the hill, pork–eater.”

The two of them jumped apart. Julien's face reddened beneath the copper pot he wore on his head. His wife glanced André’s way without a twitch of shame.

The small–muscles of his ribs tightened. “Having trouble, wife?”

She shrugged. “Nothing a good scrubbing in the river won't fix.”

“So you've finally discovered that the path isn't made for a lady's boot.”

She plopped her hands on her hips—and damned nice rounded hips, they were. “I'll survive one little tumble in the mud.”

“I trust that you didn't have company.”

“Her skirts got caught on a branch,” Julien sputtered. “She took a spill and I helped her to her feet—”

“He's brushing me clean.” Her eyes were a challenge. “I never realized rolling in the mud was such a messy affair.”

“Try to stay off your back, woman.” He pushed away the image of her naked and rosy under the pines. “There are no doctors in these woods.”

“Nothing’s hurt but my vanity, and Julien is doing everything he can to restore that.”

“Julien,” he barked, “should know better than to stop during a portage, especially along this stretch of the Ottawa.”

“But Madame fell—”

“Madame is going to find herself in the mud often if she isn't very careful.”

“Then I'll make sure I'm close to you,” she said, her smile an invitation, “the next time I'm feeling reckless and unsteady.”

Genevieve bent over to knock a cake of mud off her hem. Her bodice gaped, showing the swell of one full breast, and it took all his will to tear his attention away from that and settle it on the red–faced boy at her side.

He said, “It takes a second for an Iroquois to scalp a man—or a woman. We’re in the middle of Iroquois country—”

“Oh, please,” she interrupted, straightening, “Wapishka told me that there’s been a peace treaty between the wigmakers and the French for three years now.”

“They’ll break a treaty if they see something they value more.” He jerked his chin toward Julien. “You, pork–eater, are lagging behind. There are penalties for delays.”

Julien sheepishly handed her a dirty linen.

She took it and smiled like the sunrise. “Thank you for your help.”

The boy flushed and nodded, then reached for her case before heading back to the path.

“The lady,” André snapped, not liking the sharp emotion that cut through him, “will carry her own fripperies.”

Julien looked at him, stupified. Then Genevieve stepped forward and curled her fingers around the handle of her case. “You already have enough to carry, Julien. Go before my husband sprouts cloven hooves…and horns.”

As the boy climbed back to the path, André wondered how many of his men had carried her case along the portage. Then he wondered exactly what was the meaning of the little glance that had passed between them.

“Don't be so harsh with him,” she said, once Julien’s footfalls faded. “It's bad enough that he's been baptized in every cove since we left Lachine and now he's forced to wear a pot on his head for the men's amusement.”

“Have you gotten bored so quickly of working your wiles on me, wife?”

She raised one aristocratic brow. “Well, they haven’t been working so well on you, so naturally I tried them elsewhere.”

“That pork–eater is so smitten that he'll suffer more weight than he can possibly carry for your sake.”

“I do believe you're jealous.”

A slow smile lifted the edges of her lips. Sweat gleamed in the hollow of her throat. He couldn’t stop looking at the droplets slipping under the edge of her bodice.

“Careful, little bird,” he said. “You’re a woman alone among two dozen men. I won’t have discipline disrupted so you can play games with their affections.”

“Your men treat me like a fine piece of porcelain.” She shifted the case to her other hand. “Everything is 'Yes, madame,' and 'No, madame,' and 'May I lay the spruce boughs for your bed, madame.' I am the master's wife, André, and all that havoc is in your head.” She puffed a breath out of her lips and then headed for the woods. “Don't punish the boy for picking me out of the mud.”

“I'll hang his hide from the nearest tree if I—”

“Oh, please, André, stop playing the devil.” With her free hand, she hiked her skirts above her ankles, revealing a pair of splattered boots and delicate ankles. “Your secret is out. The day you introduced me to that motley crew of yours, I knew there had to be a reason why Julien, who looks like he's never seen the inside of a tavern, was canoeing with heathens and philanderers and God knows what other criminals on the other canoes.”

“Julien is a convicted thief.”

“He was an indentured servant who escaped from his master. He told me you saved him from the whipping post.”

A muscle tightened in his cheek. She’d probably wheedled the whole story from the boy by batting those eyelashes and smiling that clean–toothed smile. “Julien is young and strong. He's not the first man I've hired from prison.”

“But you bought him from his master, set him free, and gave him a position in your canoe when he’s never even held a paddle.”

“He comes cheap. He's working for me for the food I put in his mouth.”

“Julien told me he owed three more years of servitude. You could have kept him working like a slave and no one would have questioned it.”

“One year in the wilderness is worth three toiling the soil.” André didn’t watch her hips sway back and forth with each step. No, he didn’t watch the flash of her ankles. “That pork–eater has no idea what he's gotten himself into yet.”

“From what he told me, anything would be better than his master's whip.” The path twisted down a slope. She released her skirts to grasp saplings for balance. “Although being humiliated daily by two dozen merciless canoemen may not be much better.” Genevieve clambered over a fallen trunk, lifting her skirts high enough for him to see the frayed stockings covering her calves. “And from what I hear, Julien isn't the only man on this journey that you've set free. Wapishka told me—”

“Now I know why my men are so slow on this portage.” He shifted his shoulders to adjust the burden on his back, wishing he could as easily take care of the discomfort in his breeches. “They've been telling tall tales and waiting on you like footmen.”

“Wapishka used to be a slave, he told me. It was that tribe—those wigmakers—who took him captive. They took him to their village because they had never seen an African, but then they began to torture him.” She switched her case to her other hand and flexed her reddened fingers. “Wapishka told me you saved his life.”

“I was nearby, with the soldiers from the Carignan–Salières regiment. We were going to attack, anyway.”

“But you didn't wait.”

“Have you ever heard a man scream as his fingers are being burned?”

“A strong slave like him would have brought you a fine purse of gold. His original owner would have paid you well for his return. Yet you set him free and gave him work.”

“Watch where you're going.” André nodded to another trunk across the path.

“I see where I'm going very well, thank you.” She released the branch and toed her way down the hill. “I only fell once, and it was because a branch got tangled in my skirts. Stop trying to change the subject.” She tossed a knowing glance over her shoulder. “The wolf I thought I married is turning out to be a puppy. He saves young boys from the whipping posts and sets slaves free.”

“What kind of tales did you think my men would tell? They know who gives them their next meal.”

“And you would no more deny it to them than you would deny milk to a child.”

Enough.

The path widened and André took the opportunity to brush past her. His gaze slipped over the disorder of her tumbling hair, over the freckled tilt of her nose.

She wrinkled that nose at him, all mischief. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, with a storm on your face. There's something charming about a strong man with a soft heart.”

“You've listened to too many fairy tales, woman.”

He stopped and swiveled. Nose to nose they stood, so close he heard the sudden stutter in her breathing. He focused on the dirt smeared over the bridge of her nose. She had a child's nose, ridiculously small, but the lips beneath belonged to a woman. Now those lips parted, showing a glimmer of tongue, and he felt his blood slide to his loins.

“Careful, Genevieve.” He clutched her by the waist. “These woods make savages out of the most civilized of men.”

And he was no damned saint. She would know that soon enough, when those white hands of hers cracked with pain from cold and exertion, when those slim ankles wobbled under the strain of climbing, when the white skin his lips now ached to taste grew chapped with cold and wind. Yes, she was spritely now—he felt her heart racing and her cheeks were flushed—but ten days traveling the rapid–strewn Ottawa River should be enough to exhaust her. Then she wouldn’t search his face with eager eyes like this, then she wouldn’t dart her little pink tongue out to wet her lips, then she wouldn’t stretch her face up to meet his.

Ten days, he thought, and they’d be at Allumette Island. She should be screaming to go back to Montreal by then. But he had no intention of sending one of his men all the way back to Montreal so she could stir up bureaucratic trouble. No, he would leave her with the Algonquin Indians and Jesuit missionaries who wintered every year on the island. Come next spring, on the return trip, he would pick her up and bring her back to civilization.

How long would it take, he wondered, as the lack of blood in his head made his determination waver. She looked at him now with heavy–lidded eyes, her breath coming fast between her lips. It occurred to him that she wasn’t afraid. Someone had woven steel into this bit of French lace.

His shoulders tightened. It didn’t matter. He’d have to abandon her in the wilderness, just like he’d abandoned his first wife.

Then he released her abruptly. He turned away and strode down the hill, faster than safety allowed.

***

An icy wave slapped her awake. Genevieve shot up off her bed of kegs and gasped as the water soaked through her clothing.

She sputtered, “Hell and damnation!”

“Ah, the sweet music of a lady's voice.” André stood waist–deep in the water beside the canoe, grinning wolfishly as he pulled it toward the shore. “Tiny, you'll have to watch your language. My wife is learning the native tongue.”

The canoemen encircled the canoe, red–faced trying to suppress laughter. She tried to seem dignified, but that was hard for a woman who’d spent too much time taking lessons in cursing from fishmongers' wives on the banks of the Seine.

She groaned as she saw the rocky shore. “Is this another portage?”

“No.” When the water was hip–deep, he signaled for his men to begin unloading the vessel. “We're done for the day.”

Genevieve tried to stifle her relief. For the past three days, they had done nothing but pole and pull upriver, only to stop what seemed like every half mile to unload and portage over terrain that was becoming steeper, rockier, and more and more overgrown. The Ottawa River became so narrow and the water so swift that she wondered if the men were going to carry all the merchandise—six thousand pounds of it, according to Simeon—through the next five weeks of travel. The first few days, her muscles had merely been sore at night, but now they quivered with exhaustion. This morning, she barely remembered André carrying her out onto the canoe, until he woke her for the first portage. After each successive one, she would sink back down on her bumpy seat and drift back off into a jostled sleep.

She dragged her fingers through her nest of hair. Twigs and leaves fluttered to her lap. André reached into the canoe without warning and hauled her up like a keg to be carried to shore. Her stomach growled as she smelled the fires, set up ahead of time by the cook who waited upon the bank.

Genevieve winced when André released her to her feet. Blister upon blister had developed after all the walking, for Marie's shoes were a mite small for her feet. She had tried wearing her thicker wool stockings, but instead of cushioning her sores, they only made the fit of the boots tighter. She was tempted to walk barefoot from now on. Sharp stones couldn't do her feet any more damage. Genevieve envied the men their soft deerskin slippers and even their shameless leggings, and found herself wishing she weren't pretending to be a lady, so she could find something to wear other than rigid boots and a boned bodice.

She leaned forward to stretch the aches in her back, loosening the laces of her boots at the same time. The men busied themselves mooring the canoes offshore, laying one end of a long pole on the gunwale and the other end on the beach, and then piling the merchandise on the banks. The sun shimmered off the rock cliff that rose up from the other side of the river.

Julien brought her woven case, smiling at her shyly. Not for the first time, she wondered how a basketful of clothing and pins could weigh so much after a few hours of carrying. She vowed that she'd get Julien to fashion a rope harness for her like the men used for portages. Then, at least, she'd have two hands free so she could lift her bedraggled skirts and push aside the foliage that obscured the paths.

No sooner had Genevieve dropped her case on the ground and used it as a seat, when André tossed his pack by her side and joined her. She envied his ease in his buckskin and fringe.

He shoved a pewter bowl into her hands. “Dinner.”

She peered into the grainy, yellowish mixture. “Sagamité again? Can't your cook fix anything else?”

“We'll be eating it clear through to Lake Superior, if the supplies last.”

“I hope it all falls into the river and gets carried all the way to the sea.”

“If that happens, then we’ll be living on tripe–de–roche.”

“Sounds better than this.”

“Tripe–de–roche is moss scraped off of rocks, flavored with whatever juicy caterpillars happen to be upon it.”

She gave him a narrowed eye as she whirled her wooden spoon in the cornmeal mixture. “Has your cook at least added some fresh meat instead of that leather he claims is leftover venison?”

André laughed. “This isn’t Paris, my wife.”

His laugh was so bright that it drew her attention to him, sitting at ease with his sun–washed hair shining in the sunset. Then she brought herself back to earth by focusing on the woods on the far side of the clearing.

“So,” she said, “who has hunting privileges on this land?”

“No one. Everyone. The land is free to all of us.”

She looked at him in surprise. “You’ve got firearms. Let's hunt.”

“Sorry, princess, but we left the royal huntsmen in Montreal.”

“It wouldn't take huntsmen to find fresh meat. I've tripped over a dozen hares in the past few days. And the geese! They make enough noise to wake the dead. Yesterday I came so close to a doe on a portage that I nearly petted her.”

“Hunting takes time.”

“It’s only September. Why the haste?” She forced down a spoonful of her sagamité, grimacing at the far–too–familiar gritty taste. “Julien told me it's a four–or five–week trip at most.”

“It'll be four or five weeks if we paddle hard. If the weather doesn't turn. If the Iroquois stick to their treaty. If you don't slow us down. If we have no accidents.”

“Honestly, how much time could we waste hunting? An hour or two a day?”

“An hour or two tracking and killing a beast large enough to feed all these men, hours more to skin it and quarter it and roast it over an open fire. We don't have that kind of time. The men know it, too. We'll have plenty of time to fatten up when we get to Chequamegon Bay, but winter comes early in Canada. Early and hard.”

“So you say.” Genevieve ate another warm spoonful, looking around at the autumn woods. Birds still chirped high in the boughs. The sky was clear and the air warm, and winter seemed far, far away. “I can just smell the snow on the wind.”

“If we make it to All Saint's Day without a snowfall, we will consider ourselves blessed.”

“If we don’t starve first.” She glanced over to where Tiny leaned back on a rock, puffing his pipe into full smoke. His leather shirt collapsed in folds where, only a few days ago, it had been stretched tight over his belly. “Even Tiny's bulk is wasting away.”

“He was as big as a horse when we left Montreal, bloated from too much brandy and too many aniseed cakes.” His whiskey gaze slipped over her torn and stained dress. “Don't worry, wife. I won't let you starve.”

He stood up and walked back to the pot of sagamité. She frowned and followed his path. The men squatted around the steaming cauldron, eating from their bowls with concentration, their wooden spoons flashing briefly before disappearing into their mouths. Genevieve knew André and all the other men were hungry for meat, too, and she suspected that he was acting like this just out of pique.

She rose from her seat, wincing as she put all her weight on her battered feet. She swept up her case and turned toward the woods, judging by the emergence of several men which was the best direction to head for her toilette. She wandered amid the trees, humming one of the voyageurs' songs, until she heard the splash of a stream. She placed her case upon a boulder near the edge of the creek and dipped her hands into the clear, cold water. She ran her wet hands over her skin, pushing the loose tendrils of her hair out of her face.

“Don't move.”

She started as she heard André's whisper, only a breath behind her. “Why do you always follow me—”

He clamped his hand over her mouth, and then forced her to her feet. His rifle was raised, and he was staring at something in the bushes. His body was coiled tense. He released her only to push her behind him.

Following the direction of his gaze, she saw nothing but a few swaying branches, six or seven paces away. She stood with her chin pressed against the warmth of his deerskin shirt, trying to see what he saw, distracted by the scent of him, clean sweat and river water and leather, and the feel of his strong arm bracing her.

“You,” he whispered out of the side of his mouth, “have a bad habit of bumbling blindly into the woods.”

“I know exactly where I am.”

He forced her back a few paces, still talking low. “You surprised two men from a very comfortable squat during your walk to this creek. Did you know that?”

She hadn’t, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “I’m your wife. You don’t have to hide in the bushes to watch while I bathe.”

“I wouldn’t hide, woman. But we've got company.”

She still saw nothing but the movement of a few ferns. Maybe it was the wind, no more. By the way he was gripping the handle of his rifle, by the tenseness of his muscles against her cheek, he obviously thought the unexpected visitor was dangerous.

She stood on her toes to be closer to his ear, holding on to his sleeves for balance. “Is it an Iroquois?”

“If it were an Iroquois,” he whispered, “we'd both be pincushions for arrows.”

“Then what is it?”

“It might be that fresh meat you've been craving.”

Hope leapt in her breast. She stood as still as she could. She had seen lots of strange–looking wildlife over the past few days. Enormous stags with antlers like giant hands, fingers spread and palms cupped, facing heavenward. Prickly rodents the men called porcupines. Though she hadn't yet seen any, the men told stories of big, black bears with toothy jaws, of sleek, swift wildcats with sharp claws, of packs of wolves running wild.

She pressed closer to the well–muscled curve of his back, her heart pounding in her throat, grateful for the wall of man between her and whatever dangerous creature was out there. André raised his rifle as the beast waddled out of the underbrush.

The creature was black and furry and as big as a lapdog. It paused to lift its twitching black snout, and then ignored their presence to shuffle to the stream.

She came around André, grinning. “Is this one of the wild animals of the forest for which I should tremble in fear?”

He lowered his rifle. “You're lucky it isn't a wolf or a bear.”

“The most savage thing I've encountered in these woods is you, André, and we both know just how savage you are.”

He tilted his head toward the creature, who had heard them and now stood still by the water, sniffing the air and blinking in their direction. “Do you know what that is?”

“No, but it looks as harmless as a cat.”

“How do you know it doesn't eat human flesh to survive?”

“I suppose next you're going to be telling me it has piercing fangs and claws like knives.”

“It might have venom in its teeth.” He squinted to sight down his rifle. “It might have poison on its fur.”

“If you're afraid of it, my husband, I'll scare it away for you.”

He lowered the rifle. “Be my guest.”

He spoke casually, but with an edge of a dare. She gave him an eye. With a half–smile, he deliberately took two steps further back from the furry beast. For reasons she didn’t understand, he wanted her to be afraid. He’d spent this whole journey trying to make her scared.

But André didn’t know that she was familiar with the gambling halls of the Cour des Miracles in Paris—those hot, dark rooms where men risked their money and their lives, women bet their faded charms on the turn of a single card, and drunkards risked the bounty of a day's begging on the clatter of the bones on the paving stones. She knew a bluff when she saw one.

“Get away little fur ball, before my husband faints with fear.” She strode toward the creature, waving her arms. Startled, the creature turned its back to her. “Look, André,” she laughed, “your man–eater has turned tail—oh!”

A stinging spray exploded all over her. She stumbled back as the creature raised its tail and sprayed some more. A stench rose in the clearing, a burning smell of sulfur so foul that her eyes watered and it burned the back of her throat. She coughed and slapped at her skirts but that only made the odor billow, that only made the stink worse.

She stuttered against the back of her arm, “Hell and damnation!”

Laughter brought her attention back to André, who’d shot back into the protection of the trees, and now laughed at her as he covered his nose with his hand.

“Congratulations. You’ve been baptized by a skunk.” His teeth gleamed in the twilight. “He’s got a unique way of warding off predators, wouldn’t you say?”