Chapter Twelve

He did not leave her behind on Allumette Island.

He had intended to. One of the Jesuits had approached him, concerned about the presence of a Frenchwoman among the men, and offered her sanctuary for the coming winter. But André had put the cleric off. He couldn’t think about the future. He couldn’t think about anything but the story she’d told him and the maelstrom of emotions it evoked—stupid anger and a strange sense of wonder and suspicion and humility—all at once, feelings tangled inside him like a fishnet knotted in the rapids.

So when the morning of their departure arrived and Genevieve came out of her tent banging her damn case against her knees, André couldn’t explain why he behaved as he did. Tiny gave him a gimlet eye as André wordlessly—still wordlessly—let his flushed, proud, determined wife settle atop a laden canoe.

Now, wielding the steering paddle as they slipped into the mouth of the French River, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the indentation of her lower back as she sat in front of him, as stiff as a schoolgirl.

“By the blessed milk of the Virgin Mary.” Tiny twisted to glare at Julien. “What are you doing, pork–eater, lying back like a whore on Sunday? We've entered the French River.”

Julien sighed and put aside his unlit pipe, a small carved vessel made of red pipestone that he had bought from the Nipissing Indians. André knew this, for he’d been watching him every moment of the day. Now the boy grabbed two handfuls of fringe to strip the shirt off his back. With a baleful glance at Genevieve, Julien stood up and dove into the black waters.

Genevieve watched Julien flounder for a few moments, drifting away from the canoe, and the concern on her face made André’s belly clench.

“I trust, Tiny,” she said, “that you aren't just going to leave him bobbing out there like a piece of dead wood.”

“Of course not.” Tiny dragged deep on his pipe, then exhaled the blue smoke.

“Tiny,” she persisted, “the water must be close to freezing.”

“Hear that, pork–eater? Blossom thinks you're cold.”

“The water's as warm as ale, O Mighty One.”

“Tiny.”

Tiny shrugged and waved his pipe in the sign of the cross. “Arise, boy! You've officially been baptized in the waters of the French River.”

André twisted his paddle to turn the canoe broadside to the boy, thinking that one look from his wife’s flashing green eyes and his men collapsed like marionettes whose strings had been cut. He wasn’t any better—at the end of one of the innumerable portages yesterday, André had found her curled on a rock, shivering like a wet dog, her hands wrapped in the ragged hem of her dirty petticoat. He’d given her an extra pair of his leggings to keep her legs warm, and when they reached the windswept waters of Lake Nipissing, he bought her a blanket from the Indian tribe that lived along the shores. Never once had she turned to him in thanks.

She was the ice princess now, haughty and distant, as cold to the touch as marble, and just as stiff whenever he carried her to or from the canoe.

“Steady,” Tiny warned, as the canoe rocked when Julien clutched the lashed gunwale. “Steady!”

Simeon and Gaspard grabbed the boy beneath the armpits and heaved him over. The boy lay shivering, naked but for breechcloth and leggings, as the men laughed and taunted Julien for looking like a plucked chicken in the morning sunshine.

She was staring at Julien, too, and through her eyes André noticed that Julien wasn’t a skinny boy anymore. Muscles were starting to emerge in his back and arms after hundreds of miles of paddling and portaging. The way she kept looking at the boy made André’s insides twist tight.

“Take your place, pork–eater.” Against his paddle, André felt the first pull of the upcoming rapids. “We've got rough water ahead.”

Julien took his place and retrieved his paddle. Genevieve shrugged off her deerskin blanket—the one he had given her—and tossed it across the boy's wet back.

André forced his concentration on navigating the vessel down the elongated bay, around shoals and fingers of granite. The French River was the first west–flowing river they had encountered during the journey, and soon they'd be riding down a brutal sweep of raging white water. He'd have to keep his mind on the river ahead and not on the stone–silent quagmire of a relationship he had with his wife if he intended to keep his men, his wife, and all his merchandise dry and whole.

The men lifted their paddles out of the water as they passed through a narrow channel. They rounded an island bristling with pines. The water rippled and eddied as the current clutched the belly of the canoe. Ahead, a staircase of rocks fanned across the river. André bobbed from the knees as the canoe bucked beneath him. He scanned the river for haystack waves that concealed no harm and ragged crests of foam that hid boulders and, beyond, the dangerous eddies and holes that could suck a canoe down fast.

They shot down the rapids—Little Pine Rapids—and it was like sliding down a sheet of ice. Gritting his teeth, he watched for standing waves and souse holes while barking out orders to the men to keep in the narrow thread of current that would bring them down the river safely. A strip of soaked stone marked the low water level on either side of the shore, and rocks he had never before seen on this route now crested above the froth. Faintly, he heard the excited cries of the men in the canoes following as they, too, entered the white water. But soon even that noise was drowned out by the thunder and roar as the river tumbled over its bed of stones. He felt a rush of exhilaration. They plummeted down the river as easily as if they had raced like the wind across a lake.

The rapids followed in succession: Big Pine Rapids, Double Rapids, the treacherous Ladder, Little and Big Parisian Rapids, the Devil's Chute, and Crooked Rapids, five miles of unceasing white water, five miles of the cold wind biting his skin above his beard, filtering like ice through his hair, feeling the canoe below him as if he were riding a horse bareback across the hills of Provence as he used to do with his brothers as a child. The men whooped and laughed as the vessel careened through narrow chutes, as it slid down slick tongues of current, as spray rose and splattered over them. When the rapids finally spit them out on a long stretch of calm water, he, Wapishka, and The Duke, smiling and triumphant, rent the silent, scraggy woods with Indian shrieks.

Heaving and exhilarated, he glanced down at Genevieve, to find her swiping water from her face and laughing.

“By the head of Saint John.” Water gleamed in Tiny's beard as he grinned. “We ought to give you a paddle, Blossom, and see how you ride the waves.”

She said, “It's like rolling down the side of a hill.”

He suddenly imagined her as a little girl, giggling, her skirts flying above her knees.

“Julien had my knees clattering with all his talk.” She nudged the boy. “He told me it was like dropping off the edge of a cliff.”

The boy shrugged. “I've never run the rapids before, either.”

“Reason enough for another baptism,” Simeon suggested, his teeth visible beneath his black beard.

Wapishka gestured to the boy's soaked shirt. “He's already been baptized by the river herself.”

“There are more rapids, aren't there?” she asked. “Somewhere downstream?”

She looked up at him, her face open in the sunshine, and for a moment she was his Taouistaouisse again, all the haughtiness melted away.

His heart throbbed harder than before. “There are more,” he said, “but we won’t run them.”

“Why not? It's so much faster than portaging.”

“The water level is too low. We could tear a hole in the bottom of the canoe and lose everything.”

Her gaze skittered away as if she suddenly remembered to whom she was talking. She shrugged beneath her deerskin blanket, which Julien had returned to her in favor of his shirt.

André thought of the falls ahead. There was a jerky drop just beyond, and a breath–stealing rush of froth and mist. Then he thought of her a moment ago, her eyes bright, an open smile even for him. The rush and tumble of the water had done that.

He heard himself say, “I didn't say it couldn't be run, Taouistaouisse.”

Tiny, Wapishka, and The Duke all looked up sharply.

He twisted his paddle and steered the canoe toward the shore. “We'll walk the shore and take a look.”

Some time later, André's footsteps crunched on the bare stones as he and The Duke picked their way along the edge of the cliff that formed one bank of the river. Only stunted jack pines and scrubby, dry vegetation flourished atop this hill, so nothing obstructed the view into the ravine that held the rapids. The water flowed low, and in places, only the tips of rocks thrust from the surface. They were easy to see from above, but nearly impossible to see from the rim of a canoe.

“We must watch those ridges.” The Duke squatted and pointed toward a ragged line of stone. The shells knotted in his hair clanked as his ponytail slipped off his shoulder. “We must bear away from them when we reach this curve.”

André realized this chute could be run, but only if two skilled men manned the vessel and it was empty of everything but Genevieve.

Back at the camp, merchandise lay scattered about the rocky shore like so much flotsam. The men had already eaten their gritty breakfast of sagamité flavored with blackberries, and a haze of blue smoke hung in the air from the pipes and the cooking fire. The cook clanged his copper pot clean near the shore. Genevieve perched upon a boulder while Wapishka regaled her with a story that, by the amount of hand waving, was exaggerated utterly out of proportion. Her legs were crossed at the ankle and swung back and forth, her lips parting in a laugh that made him crazy, though he didn’t know why.

“Come, wife.” He gestured to The Duke, who waded out to the empty canoe. “Our carriage departs soon.”

“I thought we weren't running the rapids.” She leapt off the boulder. “The canoe is empty. The men still have to portage all these kegs over that hill.”

“An empty canoe rides high in the water, less chance of damage.”

“But—”

“I'm not running the rapids to save time. I'm running them for you.”

Her chest inflated and that steely, defiant look darkened her eyes. “I'm perfectly capable of climbing the portage by myself.”

“I know.” Was he the only man she wouldn’t accept kindness from? “I thought you’d enjoy the ride.”

Genevieve set her jaw. “No man gives a woman gifts unless he wants something in return.”

He thought of the leather pouch with its sixty–two livres, and all the unspoken things weighing between them. His instinct was to say I don't want anything from you, but that was a bald–faced lie. He’d had enough over the past two days of this cold, angry, distant Genevieve. He missed sparring with her along the portages. He missed the way she squinted one eye, tilting her head as she looked at him like she was trying to read his mind. He wanted back the woman who laughed. He wanted back the woman who tried to seduce him. He wanted to kiss those lips. He wanted to pull her into his arms, feel her hot, slick sex with his fingers, and make her throb for him, as she had that day on Calumet Island.

She was waiting for him to say something about her confession, he knew that. But he didn’t have the words for what he felt. Hell, he didn’t even understand what was happening in his head, and that confusion made him mute. It preyed on his mind that she had no maidenhead to preserve. Not just because he wanted to murder the whole Duplessis family, all the damn aristocrats who should have protected her and instead had forced her into the streets of Paris. Not just because he wanted to destroy the man who had paid for an innocent’s virginity. He was furious at himself, too, because no matter what happened—whether he made love to her or played the ascetic here in the wild—his obsessing about bedding her made him feel as dirty and foul as the bastard who paid those damn sixty–two livres.

Then he heard himself say, “Ride the rapids with me.”

He couldn’t think straight. He didn't know whether he was running the rapids to frighten her or to seduce her.

“It won't be a gentle ride,” he said. “It'll be rough and dangerous—”

“With you, I suspect it always is.”

“Say yes.”

The tension stretched between them. A flush crept over the creamy skin of her breasts. Every wretched inch of him wanted this woman.

She whispered, “All right.”

He didn't give her any time for second thoughts. He swept her up in his arms. He splashed into the water, splaying his hands over her thighs and back, trying not to stare at her mouth. If there weren't two dozen men watching them from the shore, he'd settle her in the bottom of the canoe and kiss her slow and kiss her often and show her how sweet loving could be, until she lay naked and eager and willing in his arms again.

Damn it.

The canoe rocked as he released her among the cedar ribs. Nodding to The Duke, who stood by the bow, the two of them tumbled over the gunwale. Without the weight of the merchandise to equilibrate the vessel, it wobbled with every move. With Genevieve struggling to a sitting position, it took all of André's skill to keep the vessel upright as he and The Duke steered it into the current.

There was no more time for thought. Just beyond the landing point, the river funneled into a steep canyon and the drop for the rapids began. André dug his paddle into the water. The run would be short and tight, and it required his full attention to avoid the rebounding waves. At the end of it, he would send The Duke away and he would be alone with her.

The Duke called out a warning as the canoe slipped down the first drop, gliding on a rush of current, splitting the spray. Flung against one side of the canoe, Genevieve righted herself. Above the roar of the water, André heard encouragement filter down from the edge of the gorge as some of the voyageurs who had already begun the portage watched the progress. The painted prow dipped beneath a wave and then shot up again, soaking her in her seat in the middle of the vessel. The rumble grew louder as the ravine narrowed and all sound reverberated off the granite cliffs.

For a few yards, they rode a ridge of water, formed by the velocity of the current between two rocks. He rose from his crouch in order to read the river, which had turned into a long swath of turbulence. He dug his paddle into the current, stroking one side of the canoe or the other to veer the bow away from crests of spray that hid boulders and ridges. They reached the ridge that thrust out from the wall of the ravine, and he and The Duke struggled against the force of the current to veer the canoe far to the left. His thighs burned with the strain, but he barely noticed the pain as the canoe glided past the dangers, the prow dipped into a standing wave, and a wall of frigid water battered over the bow. He shook his head, flinging droplets of water around him.

The run wasn't over. The roar of the upcoming cascade filled the ravine. The canoe careened around a bend and then he saw Recollet Falls, a long sheet of white foam plunging from the height of the gorge into a vortex at its foot, in the middle of the river. The canoe soared down, closer to the fury of the cascade, and André and The Duke put muscle into veering the vessel into the slim path between the mist rising from the crash of the falls and the perpendicular wall that formed the other bank. The fog rose as thick as cream. The vortex of the falls yanked on his paddle and he battled it, as the canoe edged its way around the thunderous sheet of spray and found its way down the next, and milder, chute.

She had her back to him and was kneeling in the canoe. The whole run had taken less than a dozen heartbeats, but they must have fallen ten meters in less than fifty of length. Genevieve turned around to look up at him, her cheeks scoured pink. Her breast heaved above the constriction of her bodice. Drops of water sparkled in her hair, but nothing could match the brilliance of her eyes or the light of her smile as she laughed, the music of the sound blending with the roar of the waterfall.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She looked as if she had just been made love to, as if he had just made love to her, and he wanted her with a sort of blind violence. Every sinew, every bone, every muscle, ached for her. He needed to plunge his sex into her soft, tight body, to hold her hips against him, to feel her energy throbbing around him like the power and fury of the rapids … to conquer her as he had just conquered the white water. This woman was as unpredictable and as stubborn as this great stretch of untamed land. A man could spend a lifetime making love to her, and it would be like riding these rapids—wild, exhilarating, bordering on the brink of control.

Then he heard The Duke shout. He felt the canoe keel as it slid down an unexpected ridge, and André realized he had taken his attention away from the river too long. Knocked to one side, Genevieve fell against the gunwale. The canoe tipped. Suddenly, her skirts were in the air, like the opening petals of a flower.

No!

Then he was suspended in the air before the cold river clutched him.

The water gorged his nostrils and flushed past his ears, creating a painful vacuum. The warring currents yanked him downstream. He extended his legs and flattened his feet to rake the rocky riverbed, searching for footing as needles of rock sliced his moccasins. Gasping, he swam up from the icy chill, filled his lungs with air, and coughed out the river. He jammed his toe into one hold and lost it, then found another as the current thrust him toward a rock. He winced as he slammed into the stone, but before the current could whoosh him around it, he dug his fingers into the grain. Lodging his feet in the cracks beneath the surface of the water, he fought against the pounding of the river.

He climbed onto the stone. The canoe rushed past him and knocked against a rock downstream. He saw The Duke's dark head as the Indian clung to the stern of the vessel and, somehow, found a foothold in the riverbed.

Instinct kicked in as his heart pounded and his sight grew sharp. He peered through the dripping curtain of his hair, sweeping the river and shore for her. A log whooshed by, crashing in a spectacle of splinters a dozen meters downstream. He sought faded pink skirts, auburn hair, pale limbs. The gorge had widened and there were places along the shore where she could hold on. If she could hold on. If she could keep her head above water in the rush of the rapids. If the river hadn't thrust her against one of its embedded rocks and knocked her unconscious.

He yelled her name, but the rapids swallowed the sound. Fear gripped him. He slid down the opposite edge of the boulder and submerged himself in the eddy behind the stone. The current swept on either side of him, encasing him in a triangle of whirling water. He balled himself up and kicked into the current. It seized him and shoved him downstream. The water was chest–deep and swift, and he struggled to keep his head above the river. He searched the shore, the treacherous scattering of jagged rocks. A sudden drop in the riverbed forced him below the surface only to be spit up like a bobbing piece of wood a few meters downstream. Ahead, he saw a scattering of boulders funneling the river into a dozen different arteries. He could not avoid them. André braced himself for a knocking, but instead a crosscurrent whirled past an outcropping of the bank and thrust him into the shelter of a cove.

His knees scraped the pebbly bottom, and the deerskin and the flesh tore. He shook his head to dislodge the water clogging his ears. The eddying current pulled at his knees as he scanned the cove, searching for her. A pile of flotsam lay on the pebbly shore, thrust there by the same current that pulled him into this small bay.

Oh, God, Genevieve.

A hundred disjointed thoughts flooded his mind. He remembered her laughing with him on the floor of the forest, her hair the color of aged claret in the last light of day. Genevieve slogging through the woods with the intrepidness and courage of any coureur de bois, looking regal nonetheless in her torn, mud–stained skirts, her arms livid with scratches. Genevieve, lying huddled beneath her blanket in the twilight, bantering with the voyageurs as they sucked on their pipes and bragged about their adventures by the campfires.

More blood on his hands … more blood on his hands.

Then he heard the cry. A weak wail, nearly swallowed up by the rumble of the rapids. He raced to the edge of the outcropping and searched below, where timber and leaves and debris had gathered, forming a dam between the bank and a boulder a few meters away from the shore. He heard the cry again, and then he saw a bit of faded pink among the foam.

He scrambled down the outcropping, slipping on the slimy moss, shifting a spray of pebbles into the water, clawing the stone with his free hand as he bumped his way toward the water. A fallen log had lodged with one end against a boulder on the bank and the other against a boulder in the water, and among the shattered branches bobbed Genevieve. The current pounded her against the log.

“Genny!”

She opened her mouth to speak but coughed instead. Her hair lay all over her face. She slipped below the surface for a moment, but she struggled up again and clutched the trunk with both arms.

He splashed into the water. The log was likely to be dislodged at any moment. He clutched the trunk for support as he worked his way toward her. She watched him, her eyes wide with fear. Twigs and splinters dug into his bare side, propelled there like needles by the force of the rapids. The riverbed dropped suddenly and he struggled to regain his balance. The water rose to his chest, but Genevieve was only an arm's length away.

He held out his hand and she reached for it. Clasped it. Tiny frozen fingers in his hand. He yanked her toward him, but her skirts were an anchor. Heedlessly, he ripped the material from the netting of branches, leaving bits of cloth and thread hanging. Her skirts fell into the water and were swiftly sucked beneath, pulling her with them. Genevieve gasped and her grip slipped on the trunk, but he pulled her toward him until their bodies slapped together.

Her cheek was as cold as ice. Her body bucked with the force of a cough expelling river water. He closed his eyes and smelled the scent of her, rising from the warmth still trapped in her hair.

“Hold tight.”

He headed back toward the shore, each step careful. Something banged against the log, dislodging it from the shore. It shot past them as they climbed out of the water. He fell to his knees on the rock, dragging her up with him.

He held her while she coughed. She hacked until he knew her throat was sore and raw. He ran his hands over her body, warming her, searching for injury. Under all this boning and petticoats she was as skinny as a wet kitten. She'd lost her moccasins in the rapids and her right foot protruded, bare and unprotected, but nothing seemed broken. He felt her heart beating rapidly, and then he dragged her hips closer and rolled so he lay atop her to share his body heat, to make her warm.

She trembled, her lips tinged purple. Her skin was so pale that he could see the bluish veins beneath the surface. Her freckles stood out like flecks of cinnamon. A streak of mud stained her forehead and a dozen welts seared her skin. He knew he should just hold her, for she was weak and exhausted, hurt and dangerously cold, but those damned eyes, those damned bruised, frightened, grateful eyes.

Her lips were icy, but the inside of her mouth was not—it was warm and soft and welcoming, and he tasted the sweet, crystal purity of the mountain water on her tongue. Her heart pounded against him. He pressed a hand against her chest, against the sound, feeling the proof of her survival vibrate against his fingers. Beneath her shivering skin he felt the rush of air in and out of her lungs. Genevieve broke free to catch her breath. He tasted the river water running in rivulets over her temples, dripping from the soft lobe of her right ear, dampening the heat of her long neck, pooling in the hollow of her throat.

He broke away when he felt her fingers slide into his beard.

“That was so …” she whispered, “… incredible.”

He blinked, not sure he’d heard her right, convinced she must mean the kiss they’d just shared because she couldn’t possibly mean the foolish, heedless run down the rapids, because he’d nearly killed her in that, and he’d begun to think he was fated to kill every woman he committed to protect.

Then the corners of her lips quivered, and she was looking at him with gleaming eyes, and she started to laugh. He watched that laugh. He framed her face with his hands. A raw emotion roared inside him, primitive and undeniable, subsuming all others.

An emotion he dared not name.