Chapter Fifteen

Freezing snow bit into André's face. The air stung his lungs. He lifted his leg, wincing as his sore thighs tightened and quivered from the exertion. He took a giant step forward, planting his webbed snowshoe on the sinking snow. Leather straps dug into his shoulders as he leaned forward and dragged his laden toboggan one step further into the blizzard.

“God's wounds.” Tiny's bellowing voice was battered and dispersed by the wind. “This snow is as thick as bear grease. We should stop and camp until it blows over.”

André glanced at the giant who pulled a toboggan next to him. A white crust covered Tiny's deerskin coat. Ice clung to his mustache and beard, where his breath had frozen around his mouth.

“We're not stopping.” He took another aching step. “The fort is ahead.”

“By the balls of Saint—” The giant waved his arms in the air. “It's a blizzard. We may as well be walking in the clouds.”

“A ration of brandy says we'll find it within the hour.”

“Much good brandy will do me if I'm frozen until spring.” Tiny placed his meaty hands on his hips. “Make it two!”

“Two it is.”

He peered into the blinding snow. He and his men had been walking since dawn, when the blizzard had been nothing but a sprinkling of flakes. Now it raged and howled, and the snow fell from the sky as thickly as the wind lifted it from the ground. As they pulled their heavily laden bark sleds, trees loomed in their path. They were familiar trees in a familiar layout, and he knew that they were only paces from the stockade.

For two weeks, he and five canoemen had wandered through the lands west of Chequamegon Bay. They met up with Indians from the Cree tribe and traded their European goods for the wealth of beaver furs that now sagged upon the toboggans. But he gathered much more than fur. In the hot Indian lodgings, while he and the natives smoked tobacco in long red stone pipes, André listened to their stories of a brackish body of water west of Lake Superior, and a great river they called the “Messipi,”which led south and west to another potential sea. On some future trading trip, he vowed to follow the threads of those stories. But he had promised Genevieve he would be home for Christmas Day, and Christmas Day was tomorrow.

His back and shoulders ached. The snow lay soft and deep and powdery, and even with the webbed snowshoes laced tightly onto his moccasins, he nearly sank to his knees with each step. He leaned forward, fighting the wind, thinking of the warmth and comfort that awaited him at home.

Home.

He smiled behind the furs. Before Genny, he had never thought of his temporary abodes in the wilderness as homes. They were simply camping places, interruptions in a journey westward. Wherever he lay his head was his home, whether it be on spruce bows on a granite bank, in an Indian's wigwam, or nestled in a hole dug deep in the snow. But over the weeks that they had lived together in the small cabin in the stockade, he’d discovered that there was a pleasant difference between a home and a resting place. He also discovered that there were some distinct advantages to living with her within the privacy of four solid walls.

The thought charged him with new energy. He surged forward. One step. Two. The toboggan pushed the new snow forward as it rode on the ice crust beneath. He stopped to kick away the drift that had gathered to impede its progress. In the white haze beyond his toboggan, he saw the indeterminate shapes of the other three men forging their way through the blizzard.

Tiny stopped in his tracks. “By the blessed womb of the Virgin Mother!”

André looked ahead. The swirl of snow gave way to glimpses of Huron bark houses, the flicker of wavering fires gleaming through the uneven bark walls. The stockade could not be more than twenty paces ahead. As if to prove his point, a wavering voice called from the heavens.

“Qui vive?”

André cried out his name, mounds of snow tumbling off his shoulders as he straightened. He heard the squealing of the gate. He headed toward the sound. Out of the whiteness, the stockade door emerged, yawning open in welcome. He glanced at Tiny in silent triumph.

“Aye, you'll get your brandy,” Tiny grumbled. A gleam entered his eye. “But only if you can beat me to the gate.”

His laugh pierced the howling of the wind. In a minute, both of them were running—as quickly as they could through the snow with rackets on their feet and two hundred pounds of fur dragging behind them. They wove past the Huron houses and surged toward the open gate of the stockade. André reached the doorpost a moment before Tiny and shrugged the straps of the toboggan off his shoulders in victory.

“It was not an even race.” The icicles were quickly melting off Tiny's beard. “I had my strength sapped by that Cree woman and you've been a monk for two weeks.”

“Tell that to the Huron squaw waiting in your hut,” he warned, “and she'll cut your strength right off.”

A crowd of men burst out of the long building that served as their quarters and hurried across the snow. The sound of banging copper emerged from the gaping door, a sign that the cook was already preparing for tomorrow's Christmas feast. The men barraged André and the others with questions as they unloaded the furs. Wapishka handed André a pewter cup with brandy, which he drank in one gulp, the liquid burning the back of his throat and lighting a pleasant glow in his belly.

He peered toward the tiny cabin in the corner of the palisades. Golden light sifted through the oiled deerskin that stretched across the window. He wiped his beard and mustache against the frozen sleeve of his deerskin coat, then picked up his pack, pulled off his red cap, and strode home.

The succulent aroma of something roasting greeted him as he swung open the door. Genevieve leaned over the hearth, basting a hunk of meat. She whirled around as he plunked his pack down inside the door. The spoon clattered to the floor as she launched herself across the room.

“You're home!”

He bent his knees and lifted her into his arms. He closed his eyes and breathed in the fragrance of smoke and snow that emanated from her hair. “I promised you I'd be back for Christmas.”

“But there's a blizzard—”

“Thoughts of you kept me warm.” He held her tight, flush against his body, trying to feel her through the layers of his deerskin. “You missed me, Taouistaouisse?”

“Not a bit.” Genevieve pulled away to wipe melted snow off her face. “Wapishka and The Duke and the Roissier brothers kept me entertained in your absence.”

“Did they?” He squeezed her until she squealed. “I trust I won't have to emasculate them in the morning?”

Her eyes twinkled. “They lost four beaver pelts to me in dice. I'll teach you how to play, if you'd like.”

“There's only one game I'm interested in right now.” He kissed her parted lips. Her breath was hot, eager. Her hair felt like heated silk against his frozen hands.

She struggled away from him. “It’s like kissing a snowman.”

André glanced at the wet spots that stained her chest, where the encrusted snow on his shirt had melted between them. He traced a throbbing vein in her throat. “There's another part of me I'd rather you melt.”

“Your fingers are cold.”

“I know a very warm place I'd like to put them.”

He tugged on the laces of her deerskin dress, but she clutched his hands and pulled away. “You'll have to undress, my husband.” She gestured to the puddle growing at his feet. “You'll catch your death in all those wet clothes.”

He shrugged off the deerskin robe and hung it on a peg beside the door, then let the other fur wrappings follow. When he wore only his breechcloth and leggings, she tugged him to the bed, where he sank in the luxurious pile of furs that took up nearly half of the room. She fell to her knees in front of him and picked apart the frozen knots that held the teardrop–shaped webbings to his moccasins. When she finished, she tossed the icy rackets aside, pulled off his sodden moccasins, and placed them near the fire.

He watched her every move. The dress covered her from the neck to the knees, but he loved the way her hips swayed beneath the deerskin. Cinched with a belt decorated with dyed porcupine quills, the simple garb showed off the fullness of her unbound breasts and the narrowness of her waist. Leggings covered her legs to the knees, and he knew that above them she was naked.

The thought sent blood rushing south. He clutched her by the waist and drew her closer, burying his head in the bare, scented nook of her throat. He ran his hands over her body, from shoulder to hip, lifting her skirt so he could wrap his fingers around her thighs.

“Two weeks,” she murmured raggedly. “Two weeks.”

He lifted her, spreading her legs until she sat upon his lap. Her dress rode up her legs. The skin of her inner thighs was as soft as butter. André dragged her up until she was placed squarely against his aching cock. He kissed her, slanting his lips against hers, drawing her tongue deep into his mouth and then filling her mouth with his. Her nipples hardened beneath the deerskin.

“Take it off.”

She untied the lacings at her throat, loosened them, and then lifted the deerskin dress and the shift she wore beneath it over her head. Bathed in the glow of the fire, her breasts stood proud and heavy. He sat up to reach one nipple and made it taught with his tongue until it lay like a knot against his mouth. He slipped a hand between them and felt the heat of her cleft. His sex threatened to burst from his breechcloth. She’d cast some kind of shaman’s spell upon him, to make him want her and only her. It wasn't as if there were no other women available, for the Cree chief had pressed several wives upon him, all of them young and lovely. He had felt nothing for them, though their dark eyes had danced in promise. He wanted only Genevieve.

I love her.

The thought came without preamble, without doubt, without angst, and it wasn't the first time it had come since the day she fell into the rapids on the French River. Each time it entered his consciousness, he fought against it a little less.

No time to think on it, for she was making mewling noises as he stroked her, as he sucked on her breasts and felt her grow liquid against his fingers. She wiggled atop him, murmuring his name, until he could stand it no longer. He tore the breechcloth from between them and lay back in the pelts, lifting her by the waist and positioned her over his aching cock. Her inner muscles sheathed him and then she moved rhythmically, naturally, burying him deeper inside her hot body. André seized her hips as he arched his own, aching to reach still deeper, deeper, into her.

She cried out. He held her against him as her body pulsated in his embrace, and before he could think, before the last of her contractions pumped his cock, he surged into her, exploding into the warm, soft body of the woman he loved.

Genevieve stayed atop him, his member snug inside her, long after they finished their lovemaking. Damp spots stained the pelts where ice had melted and soaked the furs. Through the cracks in the hut, he could hear the howling of the blizzard, but inside all was warm. The dry heat of the fire filled the room, the wood crackling and rearranging itself on the floor of the hearth. As he lay, his heart pounding, he was aware of nothing but the form of the woman lying against his chest.

“Mmm.” She snuggled against him, her breasts heavy on his abdomen. “That feels good.”

André realized he had been tracing tiny circles on her back. He kissed the top of her head and traced larger ones.

Genevieve turned her face so the opposite cheek lay against his chest and the firelight cast shadows on her features. She gazed toward the hearth. “I made beaver tail for you, hoping you'd be back by tomorrow.”

He breathed in the mouth–watering aroma of the delicacy and his stomach growled in response.

She shifted in his embrace. “You're hungry—”

“No, don't move. Stay here a while. Tell me what happened while I was gone.”

She nestled against him again. “Father Marquette visited last week,” she murmured. “His eyes nearly fell out of his head when he saw me. He had just arrived and I was perched outside one of the Huron huts, weaving a snowshoe and trying to get my tongue around the Algonquin words Tiny's new wife was trying to teach me. When I welcomed him, he looked at me as if I were some kind of demon.”

André's lips twitched. He could imagine the Jesuit's expression when he saw a Frenchwoman with auburn hair dressed in Huron clothes in the middle of the wilderness, greeting him as well as any member of the French court.

“Julien had a devil of a time convincing him that I was truly married to you. When the Jesuit left, he called the fort a 'veritable brothel of iniquity.'” She swallowed a laugh. “Of course, that was right after the drunken Huron warriors left.”

He tensed beneath her. He had ordered David not to give any brandy to the natives. The natives couldn’t seem to stomach it the same way as the Frenchmen. How did the Hurons get brandy?

“Don't worry,” she said. “Everything is fine now. For a while everyone was worried, the way those Hurons were screaming and running around naked in the snow, pulling on their scalp locks and brandishing their hatchets.”

He stopped scratching her back. “Hatchets?”

She sighed. “Right after you left, a dozen Hurons came to trade, but they didn't want pots or beads, they wanted brandy.” Genevieve wiggled beneath him, urging him to continue scratching her back. “David refused. They camped outside for a few days. They challenged the men to an Indian game—your men called it La Crosse—and Julien and Anselme and some of the younger men took them up. The voyageurs won, which seemed to anger the Hurons, and it angered them more when they returned to camp and found Gaspard in the tent of one of their squaws.”

André groaned.

“Wapishka nearly killed him. So did the Indians. But after a lot of talk, David assuaged them by giving them brandy and gifts and shutting them out of the fort. That's when they spent the night yelling and running around.” She yawned. “The next morning they packed up and left, and that was it. No blood spilled.”

The thought of a crowd of Huron warriors dancing in a crazed haze around this wooden fort made his blood pump hard through his body. Genevieve was here, defenseless, and he was out roaming the wilderness, ignorant of her danger. What the hell was Gaspard thinking? Weren't there enough native women around from whom to choose a wife? Why did he have to sleep with another Indian's squaw? They were too far into the wilderness to start making enemies out of tribes with whom they were allies.

He suddenly remembered Rose–Marie, white–faced and determined and swollen with child, launching herself over the edge of the Iroquois canoe.

“André … I can't breathe.”

He loosened his grip. He stared up at the tangle of spruce boughs and poles and bark that formed the roof of the hut. He would never be free of this worry. It hounded him, even when he was happy.

“André?”

He rolled over until she lay beneath him. It was Christmas Eve. He was lying in a hut in the midst of a pile of furs, in front of a blazing fire, with a lusty, naked woman in his arms. He kissed her swiftly, greedily, like he couldn’t kiss her enough.

The future was a hazy thing, to be faced another day.

 

***

 

Genevieve's joy was like a great bubble in her chest, expanding and growing tighter each day until she thought she would burst.

It was Christmas Day. She woke up in the shelter of her own home. The fire wheezed in the primitive hearth, providing little warmth from the frigid air seeping in through the ill–fitting logs of the cabin, but she didn't mind. Nor did she mind the small puddle that lay on the floor beneath the skin–covered window. She had slept in draftier rooms, certainly in dirtier houses, and definitely in more dangerous places. Here, she lay snug beneath a half–dozen thick bear, fox, marten, and lynx furs, her nose pressed against her husband's broad chest.

He shifted, and she felt his lips on her temple. “Joyeux Noel.”

Genevieve rubbed her face between the plates of his chest, wrinkling her nose as the crisp hairs tickled it. Outside the warm cocoon of their home, she heard male voices—lusty cries of Joyeux Noel and calls for food and brandy—but Genevieve felt no urgency to rise and join the imminent festivities. Her last Christmas had been in the Salpêtrière, her only gift a day off from laundering and an extra piece of two–day–old bread. Now she lingered, her thigh draped between his, savoring this moment.

“Listen,” she said, her voice muffled against him.

“Barely dawn and they're already calling for brandy,” he murmured. “Father Marquette will harangue them for hours if they're bug–eyed drunk during Mass.”

“No, not the men. Listen.” As the voyageurs' voices faded, silence wrapped around the little house, broken only by the crack of an icicle snapping away from the eaves and sluicing into the snow. “Can you hear it?”

“Yes, Taouistaouisse.”

“No screaming peddlers. No clomping of horses and clattering of carriages. It’s like there’s no one around for thousands of miles.”

“Of course,” he said, as he poked his head above the furs. “It’d be nice if we had someone around to add a log to the fire.”

“I'm warm enough.”

“This hut has more drafts than a wigwam.” He glanced down at her, nestled firmly against him. “What will you give me if I stoke the fire?”

“Breakfast.”

He nodded to the pot hanging in the hearth. “It's already made.”

“Breakfast doesn't always come in a pot, my husband.”

He chuckled and pulled away. Through heavy lids, she watched the sleek, well–muscled body of the man she loved as he threw more kindling and a new log onto the fire. He squatted and poked at the flames. She reached out and traced the sinewy muscles of his upper arm. When the fire blazed high enough for her to feel the heat on her face, he tossed away the poker, and dove beneath the furs. His skin felt like ice and she scrambled to the other side of the bed, trying to get away from his chilled limbs. They rolled in the tangle of pelts, laughing. The touch of their limbs soon created a different sort of heat, and the next thing she knew he had his hands on her buttocks. He pulled up her hips so she arched up on all fours, so she felt the cold air kiss the dampness inside her cleft, and she twisted to ask what he was doing just as she saw him sink his shaft into her from behind.

Then with her hands gripping the furs and him stretching her impossibly open with every thrust, she felt that spiral of pleasure tighten between her legs, an aching need that he filled with every stroke, and then she just couldn’t think any longer.

Later, Genevieve kissed him on the throat and rose reluctantly from their bed. She searched for her deerskin dress and leggings amid the tangle of clothing on the floor. Once dressed, she stirred the sagamité in the pot she had hung over the fire the evening before, spooning out two bowls for their breakfast.

It had been lonely in the fort while he was gone. In anticipation of his return, she had stored up anecdotes like a squirrel stored nuts, and now as they ate, she told him about the mistakes she had made trying to ice fish, about the lessons in how to scrape and oil and treat the furs the men brought back from hunting trips, about her first shocked taste of smoked moose meat. She told him she had bartered nearly everything in her woven case—a handful of silver pins for another deerskin dress, two linens for a log mortar and wooden pestle to crush corn into cornmeal, her old corset strings for a deer jaw scraper—and André commented, with a twinkle in his eye, that it was about time she sent that woven case to the bottom of Lake Superior. When she was finished eating, he walked to the door and fiddled with the ties to his backpack. He pulled out a gray pelt and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“My Christmas present to you.” He gave her a quick kiss. “It's a caribou pelt. I bought it from the Cree.”

She felt like a queen in coronation robes—certainly ermine could not be as soft and warm as the fur now draped on her shoulders. All she had for him for Christmas was a pair of snowshoes she had painstakingly woven until the webbing was as tight as a harp's strings, but suddenly she felt her gift was inadequate.

Then she had an idea.

“I can't give you your present until later,” she said, wrapping herself deeper in the pelt. “Tonight. After the games. After the feast.”

They took their time dressing, and then they pushed open the door to their home. Feeling the crack of the crisp, cold air, Genevieve blinked, for the blanket of pristine new snow blinded her with its brightness. When her eyes adjusted to the light, she noticed that the stockade gate gaped open and all within the perimeter was silent.

“I hear them.” He tilted his head, and then gestured to the north. “They’ve already started the games. They're near the lake.”

They half walked, half ran through the gate of the stockade, and she led him like an excited puppy. Outside, every pine sagged under the weight of a new cloak of snow. Their leather–bound feet crunched through the virgin glitter as they headed toward the lake. The air was so crisp it bit her lungs as she drew in each breath, but it was as invigorating as a shocking cold bath in the summertime.

They met up with the men and the Indian women on a small slope. All the empty toboggans had been dragged out of the stockade, and now everyone took turns riding the bark sleds down the slope and over the solid surface of the lake. André took her hand and helped her climb up the ridge, then commandeered one of the sleighs. He sat on it and planted her, caribou robe and all, firmly between his thighs. With a push, they slid down the slope at a breathtaking speed, the frigid air whizzing through her hair as she laughed aloud at the thrill of it.

They spent the morning frolicking. She raced down the slope on the toboggan with him, then raced up again, jumping up and down in excitement and complaining when he dallied. When she became too breathless to speak, he picked her up and tossed her in a snowbank, and she retaliated by pelting him with hard–packed snowballs, a skill she was familiar with from her winters in Paris. But she soon found out he had much more experience. She gave up—willingly—when he had pinned her down flat on her back. Then they played with Indian snow snakes—long, thin wooden sticks—which were thrown on a cleared patch of ice on the lake to see how far they could slide, with an extra portion of brandy going to the winner.

By the time Father Marquette arrived, she was so exhausted she could barely stand, and her body steamed in the cold air. André picked her up, tossed her on a toboggan and, looping the straps over his shoulders, started tugging her home. Tiny, not to be outdone, directed his native wife to sit on his toboggan and began pulling it behind him. Soon others joined the race, and the laughter of the women mingled with the cries of the men as they ran forward like sled dogs, racing for the gate of the stockade.

They all piled into the men's quarters, toasty warm after the cold of the outside. They stripped off their frozen outer garments and left them hanging on the pegs that lined the wall. The men stood solemnly while the Jesuit said Mass. The mouth–watering aromas of the feast wafted around them, teasing them all into madness, and as soon as Father Marquette finished, they rushed to set up the tables and benches in the middle of the room. The squaws brought in wooden and bark trenchers of meat. There were juicy hunks of elk from an animal that had been caught and killed only days before and stewed with the last of the dried blueberries. There were flat silver–gray slivers of precious beaver tail and heaping plates of wild rice that André and the men had purchased from Ojibwa Indians during their travels. There was a tender, sweet meat that tasted like pork and turned out to be beaver stewed in its own skin. There was roasted porcupine, platters of aromatic sturgeon from the lake, the ever–present sagamité, and brandy—plenty of it—five days’ worth of rations for each man.

Tiny began to sing and the men joined in, banging their wooden and box–turtle shell cups on the tables in rhythm to the music. Some of the Indian women swayed to the melody and the men tried to teach them to dance with them like Frenchwomen. Genevieve laughed to see them mincing around the log cabin like aristocrats in cork–heeled shoes rather than woodsmen in deerskin and breechcloths. Their voices grew so loud and their antics so wild that the hanging snowshoes rattled against the log walls. As the celebration continued and the songs became more and more bawdy, she slipped away from André's side. She whispered in Wapishka's ear to keep her husband in the men's quarters for an hour or so—she had to complete his Christmas present before the night was ended. Then she slipped out the front door and scampered across the fort in the crisp blue twilight to their home.

 

***

 

An hour later, André concluded that all the arm wrestling matches and drunken toasts to the beauty and fertility of the Indian women had been done solely for the purpose of keeping him away from his missing wife. Brushing his men off, he left the room and headed across the packed snow toward his cabin. He swung open the door.

Startled, she whirled around and faced him.

His breath caught in his throat. She was dressed in a length of emerald green velvet, her breasts molded like round, ripe fruits above the edge of the wide neckline. The stiff bodice cut down to her small waist, and her skirts flared out in deep folds.

His body reacted so quickly he felt light–headed. He drank in the sight of her, all shimmering white skin, all curves. The spray of freckles across her nose showed stark against her skin. He noticing for the first time how fair she was, how tiny were her face and her features when she pulled her hair back like that.

Shyly, she pulled out a pair of snowshoes from beneath the furs on the bed. “Wapishka's wife taught me how to weave rackets.” She shrugged as she approached, and the tops of her breasts bobbled with each step. “I worked on them while you were away.”

His little aristocrat. Weaving rawhide thongs through a bentwood framework and presenting them to him like the finest silk embroidery.

He took the rackets from her and ran his fingers over the taut webbing. “Well done, Genny.”

Her lips parted. He bent down and drew her lush lower lip into his mouth, releasing it before the passion became too strong for him to control.

He whispered against her cheek, “Take off your clothes.”

“But I just put them—”

“Take them off.” As she tugged nervously at her bodice, he put the rackets aside then stopped her by engulfing her hands in his. “Not like that, little bird.” He felt the pounding of her heart beneath his hands. “I want to watch you take them off slowly. Lace by lace. Petticoat by petticoat. Tease me.”

Her lips curved in a smile. Genevieve backed away from him. He leaned against the door and watched. She lifted her skirts from the floor to show one slim leg encased in a white stocking. An emerald ribbon held it up at the thigh and she picked at the knot, drawing the satin between her fingers, showing a glimpse of naked flesh just above the edge. She let the ribbon flutter to the floor. She rolled the stocking down, over her knee, over the swell of her calf, and then off the tip of her pointed toe.

She tossed the stocking aside. He rubbed a hand against his own cock as she leaned over and repeated the process with the other leg. He wanted those bare limbs wrapped around his hips. He wanted to cross the two strides that separated them and throw her on the bed and make love to her—now—but he was fixed to the spot as he watched his aristocratic wife strip herself bare of the trappings of civilization, all with a seductive half–smile on her face and a wild light in her eyes.

Tonight, she was his pampered mistress, his highborn courtesan, and she played the part solely for him.

Her bodice was next. It seemed to take forever for her to remove the lacing from the holes hidden beneath a flap of green velvet on the front of the garment. Slowly, the bodice eased and the weight of her full breasts pushed the edges apart. She shrugged it off. Through the thin veiling of her shift, he saw her rosy areolae and watched them peak as she loosened her skirts. She wiggled her hips as she stepped out of the pool of velvet.

The fire blazed at her back, showing the blurred outline of her body through the shift. He shifted his stance to make room in his breechcloth for a cock now standing hard away from him. She crossed her arms, gathered the linen in her hands, and lifted the shift. His gaze followed the rising hem, lingering on the dark delta, the gentle curve of her stomach, the ripple of her ribs, finally, resting on her flushed face as she tossed the shift aside.

He took one step toward her.

“No.” She held out her hand. “Not yet.”

He yanked his deerskin shirt off his back while she pulled the pins from her hair. He untied the laces of his leggings as the pins tinkled as they hit the wooden floor. He yanked at his breechcloth and set his cock free as her long, copper curls fell from the neat roll to tumble over her shoulders and rest against her breasts.

“Joyeux Noel, my husband.”

He crossed the space that separated them and folded his hard arms around her naked body. He knew his beard razed her cheek and chin, but he couldn't help it. She was naked, and he wanted this soft aristocrat with the same urgency that he wanted the little savage she had become.

He nudged her back upon the pelts. The fur ruffled against his shins as he knelt on the bed. Instinctively, she opened her legs to him and he saw her rosy cleft, gleaming amid the auburn curls in the firelight. Lowering his head, he suckled on the nub of her pleasure. She flinched and then buried her hands in his hair.

“Please.”

He didn’t stop. He slipped his tongue inside her, felt her inner muscles clench, tasted her muskiness, and loved the smell of her. He fastened his lips around her nub while slipping two fingers inside her, pressing against her inner walls, stroking and rolling until she cried out, until her whole body convulsed.

He kept suckling until she grew limp against him, and then, while she was still swollen, throbbing, wet, he opened her up and watched her face as he sank his cock inside her, until the head was lost in her, and then the shaft, until they were pressed against each other, pelvis to pelvis, and he moved, watching their joined bodies with each stroke, watching her face, until her breath came fast again, until she pressed her head against the bed and made a sound that pushed him over the edge.

Joyeux Noel, my wife.

***

The next morning dawned clear and cold. Genevieve slipped out of bed and dressed quickly in her deerskins. She tossed another log on the fire and stirred the pot of sagamité. She smiled secretly to herself as she gathered the scattered clothing she had stripped off her body the evening before, then flushed as she remembered the long night of lovemaking just passed.

“Come back to bed.”

She glanced over her shoulder, recognizing that subtle rumble in his voice. His eyes had not fully opened, but behind their sleepy lids they glittered like stars.

She said, “I thought you'd sleep through the morning.”

“Come here.”

“Are you going to ravish me again?”

“Yes.” He sat up, crawled to the end of the bed, and riffled through his pack at the foot. “First I have another Christmas present for you.”

“But you already gave me the caribou robe.”

“Can’t a husband spoil his wife?”

He pulled a book from the pack and placed it in her lap. She ran her fingers over the tooled leather, admiring the designs in what appeared to be gold leaf. “Gargantua and Pantagruel, by François Rabelais.” She stared at him in surprise. “I know you didn't buy this from the Cree.”

“I brought it with me from Montreal.”

Genevieve lifted the tome and weighed it in one hand. “After all that complaining about the fripperies in my case, you actually carried a book all the way from Montreal?”

“At the time,” he said dryly, “I didn't expect to spend the winter in the company of a lusty woman who not only could warm my bed, but could speak French as well.” He nodded to the tome. “That was going to keep me entertained between trips into the interior. I've not gone completely savage, you know.”

She’d expected a pistol or a knife or some kind of weapon necessary in the wilderness. The last thing she expected from him was something as precious and expensive and civilized as a book. Though the leaves had not yet been cut, the pages smelled musty and old from dampness. Genevieve fingered the fine grain of the paper.

“This place can get lonely,” he explained. “I thought you might want to read it when I'm away.”

“I'd rather we read it together, a few pages a night.”

“We could do that.” He pulled her back against his bare chest. “It might keep my hands off you for a few hours.”

“Talk like that and I'll toss it into the fire.”

He pulled her down on the pelts. The book fell out of her hands and tumbled to the floor as his hand spread over her buttock.

They were interrupted by a pounding on the door.

He yelled, “What is it?”

“Ah, sir, I need to speak to you about something—”

“Listen, pork–eater, is the fort on fire?”

“No, sir, but—”

“Are the Sioux attacking?”

“No.”

“Then leave a married man alone in the morning.”

“Sir, we have guests.” Julien hesitated. “I think you'd better come out here.”

He cursed and rolled off the bed. He searched for his clothes and threw them on. Genevieve pushed her skirt below her knees and turned her attention to the sagamité, thinking that there were definite disadvantages to being married to the leader of a wilderness stockade.

He opened the door and faced a red–faced Julien, then closed the door behind him to keep the heat in the hut. She heard them talking just outside, then noticed a sudden silence. Curiosity got the best of her. She grabbed her caribou robe and draped it over her shoulders, then stepped out into the cold of the early morning.

André stood with his back to her, ramrod–straight. He and Julien stared across the width of the fort toward the gaping gates of the fortress. Framed in the wooden opening stood a small band of Indians. In the front, with long black hair falling over one shoulder, stood an Indian squaw.

Genevieve placed her hand on his arm. “Who is she, André?”

His bicep was as hard as a rock beneath her hand.

“She's my wife.”