Chapter Eighteen

André clutched a clay pot of goose liver pâté and hastened toward the inn. It had taken him a full hour to convince the tavern owner's wife to part with the delicacy, and it had cost him two beaver pelts in the process. The truth was, he would have paid a king's ransom, anything to coax a smile to Genny's face.

She tried so hard to hide her feelings from him, but he knew the meaning of those long silences during the hours she spent staring off at the river. Even her infrequent laughter held a quiver, and when she smiled her eyes brimmed with sadness. Over the weeks, he had discovered that there were only three ways to make her happy: tease her, feed her unusual cravings, or make love to her.

He’d found himself considering the dangers of bringing her back into the interior with him. He reasoned that childbirth was a natural process, that the native women could help her during the birth. For in all his time in the woods, he had only known a handful of squaws who had died in childbirth, while in the same period, he had known of a dozen Frenchwomen who had died of the same in the settlements under the care of midwives. The more he thought about it, the more possible it seemed.

Then he remembered how she had suffered on the voyage back to the settlements—the sickness, the gray cast to her face, the way she sank into exhaustion at the end of a portage—and he would remind himself that a daughter of Old France belonged in his father's house, seated behind the harp, strumming sweet music with white hands.

The decision was made.

He pushed through the doors of the Sly Fox Inn. Broken chair legs and brandy bottles still littered the floor of the common room, but he just kicked them aside and took the stairs two at a time. Someone called his name, but he ignored it. His wife and his child were hungry.

He was startled to find the door to their room ajar.

“Genevieve?”

The cut–off barrel in which they had bathed still stood in the middle of the room. The beaver whined and strained against his leash, chewed down to its last threads. The fire had died down to embers.

“Monsieur, I tried to find you—”

André whirled to face the innkeeper. “Where is she?”

“They took her away, monsieur.”

“Was she ill?”

“No, no, she was healthy, it’s not that. Monsieur Paget took her.” He rubbed the butt of his hands down his dirty apron. “He came just after you left and demanded to know which room she was in.”

He clutched a fist full of the innkeeper’s shirt. “Who the hell is Monsieur Paget?”

“The sub–delegate to the Intendant.” The innkeeper's voice emerged as a squeak. “I couldn’t countermand him. He had a soldier with him.”

His vision went dark. What business did some bureaucrat have with his wife? Why was a soldier here?

“He said he'd be waiting for you.” The innkeeper coughed as the neck of his shirt dug deep into his throat. “In the western fort.”

 

***

 

André stepped over the body of the soldier he had just knocked to the ground. He wedged a chair against the door as soldiers gathered, shouting, on the other side. Then he strode over to the only other portal, the door that led to Paget's inner offices. He kicked it open. His glare riveted on the man in blue satin who jerked up behind a rosewood desk.

André stopped a few feet from the desk. His chest heaved and a rib stabbed where one of the soldiers had struck him with the butt of his musket. He flexed his sore fists and felt blood drip down his temple. Glaring at the man in the shimmering satin, André debated whether to kill him outright or to make him suffer.

The bureaucrat drawled, “André Lefebvre, I assume?”

“Where is my wife?” He heard the clatter of a chair as it knocked free of the other door and then the sound of boots on the floor.

"Put your muskets down, men." Paget held up the flat of his palm as the soldiers rushed in. “I’ve been waiting for this man.”

“Where is my wife?”

“I assure you, she’s well taken care of.” Paget walked to a side table and calmly poured brandy into two tankards. “I was told you were once a soldier, Monsieur Lefebvre.” The glass bottle clinked against the side of the pewter cups. “A good soldier would determine whether he could enter at will before he attempted a full–scale siege.”

“My wife.”

“Yes … your wife.” Paget held out a tankard but André ignored it. The bureaucrat shrugged and placed it on his desk. “I suppose when it comes to matters of the heart, a man doesn't think much of strategy. I trust there aren't too many casualties?”

André took one step forward. He counted three muskets clicking into readiness behind him.

“If you don't bring me my wife,” he began, “there's going to be one more casualty.”

“I've always found you woods–runners to have tempers that explode more quickly than saltpeter.” He gestured again to the chair. “Dampen your powder, Monsieur. It will be easier if you sit and let me tell you about the whole affair.”

He took two steps and laid his fingertips on the top of the rosewood desk. He heard the soldiers shift restlessly behind him. “I’ve fought alongside the Huron and Ottawa. I fought in the Iroquois wars.” His jaw was so stiff he had to bite out the words. “Bring me my wife now, or I shall rip your heart through your throat before your soldiers get off a single shot.”

André heard a feminine gasp. He turned sharply. In the corner of the room sat a young woman in black clothing, clamping a hand over her mouth.

“Tell him, mademoiselle,” Paget said to the girl. “Tell him who you are.”

“I don't give a damn if she's the Queen of France.” André crumpled a lace cravat in his hand and dragged the delegate into the line of fire.

“Stop! No, please!” The girl’s voice pierced through the shouts of the soldiers. “Don't shoot, please! Monsieur, my name is Marie Duplessis.”

André glared at her. The woman shrank back and gripped the arm of her chair. He snapped, “That’s my wife’s name.”

“Your wife’s name is Genevieve Lalande.”

A memory returned, swift and vivid.

Don't call me Marie. There were a thousand Maries in the Salpêtrière.

Then what shall I call you?

Call me … Genevieve.

He looked at the woman with more attention. She and Genevieve were the same height, but their coloring was completely different. This woman wore fine white gloves and a well–tailored dress of black wool. The toes of her leather boots peeped out from beneath the hem of her skirts. Her hair was parted in the middle and hung in ringlets on either side of her face. Her skin looked as if it had never seen the kiss of the sun.

“If you would kindly release me,” Monsieur Paget said, his voice choked and dry, “I will explain everything.”

André threw the delegate across the desk. Coughing, Monsieur Paget struggled to find his footing as he readjusted the tightness of his cravat. Then he reached for the tankard he had offered to André and finished the contents in one gulp.

The woman began to sob. Paget gestured to one of his soldiers, who took her arm and led her out of the room.

“No.” André barked. “She stays.”

“Please, monsieur, for decency's sake,” the delegate murmured, “let the child leave.”

“He must know the truth,” the woman interrupted, between sobs. “Tell him everything. Promise me, monsieur. Tell him everything.”

Paget waited until her sobs could no longer be heard in the halls of the building. Then he pulled down the edges of his doublet, took a deep breath, and gestured to the opposite chair once again. “It's a rather complicated story, Monsieur Lefebvre—”

“You have five minutes.” He glanced at the gilded, imported timepiece clicking above the mantelpiece. “Starting now.”

“I assure you that it is not in my nature to arrest a woman, especially to arrest her while her husband is away. In light of—” he rubbed his reddened throat “—recent events, I believe I was wise to do so. I wanted to avoid a public scene, and there's no longer a doubt in my mind that you would have fought to the death.” The delegate gestured to the doorway. “That poor child is the real Marie Suzanne Duplessis, the woman you thought you married in Quebec this past fall. The woman in my custody—the woman you know as your wife—is named Genevieve Lalande.”

He waited in stony silence, his heart hardening.

“There seems to have been an incident in Paris, at the Salpêtrière, the charity house.” He rushed on. “Both Marie Duplessis and Genevieve Lalande lived there. Last year, when the king's girls were chosen, Marie Duplessis was one of them, Genevieve Lalande was not. When the time came for the girls to be transferred to the ships, Mademoiselle Lalande took Mademoiselle Duplessis's place among the women of good family—with brute force.” He waved to the empty doorway. “As you see, Mademoiselle Duplessis still hasn't recovered from it. She was kidnapped, tied up, forced to switch clothing—and then that common laundress took her place. She married a man of your stature by using Mademoiselle Duplessis's own good name.”

Call me Genevieve.

He stood, motionless, but his mind raced. He thought of all those months in the hut on Lake Superior, when she had told him stories of her mother's harp and the hills in which she had grown up. There’d been so much detail in those stories, they were embroidered far too fully to be lies.

Then he tried to imagine Genevieve kidnapping a young woman, tying her up, switching clothing, taking her place on the ship, wondering how that would work without accomplices, sensing so many gaps in the tale, not the least of which was the idea that Genevieve who protected a beaver from fur–traders could do any real harm to a living creature, least of all a helpless young woman like herself.

“I realize it must come as a shock to discover that your wife is not a woman of quality.” Paget looked down at his open hands. “It will shock you even more to know that Genevieve Lalande was one of the unfortunates of the institution. She was picked up on the streets of Paris from a section of the city in which few innocent women dwell. She was put in the section of the Salpêtrière reserved for—” he faltered, glanced up at André, and then forged ahead, “for women of easy virtue.”

Something snapped. “My wife is no whore.”

The delegate raised his hands in defense. “Of course, you would know better than I the nature of her character.”

He suddenly remembered the look on her face when he caught her with a goose in her hands, a goose she had just captured and killed. Everyone has secrets, André. He remembered her bartering with the Indian for a pair of moccasins, stowing away her old, muddy boots for future trading like a merchant's wife. He remembered her swearing like an angry voyageur in his cups. He remembered her insistence on having a home, her determination to survive the voyage into the interior at all costs. But most of all, he remembered the first night they really made love, under the velvet autumn sky in the land of the Huron.

His head swam. He sensed some truth in the delegate's story. The entire scheme smacked of Genevieve, for it was fantastic and risky, and she was not a woman to be afraid. Why hadn’t she told him the whole truth? Did she intend to spend the rest of her life masquerading as another woman? After all they’d shared this winter, the depth of their growing bond, why hadn’t she trust him with her secrets?

He wanted her here, right now, standing before him. He wanted to hold her and look into her eyes and ask her all the questions that raced in his head. There was more to this story than this petty official was telling him. There was a whole history he didn't know, and he wanted her to pour out her soul, to tell him everything she had been unable—or too afraid—to tell him before now.

Monsieur Paget stumbled onward. “… I suppose your wife insisted on going into the interior over the winter because she must have known we’d catch up to her sooner or later. The ship arrived only two weeks ago carrying Marie Duplessis and orders from the authorities in Paris. Unfortunately, it's obvious that your wife is well in the family way. No one could blame you, of course. You were alone with her in the wilderness for a very long time. Normally, that would make it very difficult to obtain an annulment, but considering the circumstances, I'm sure we can arrange something—”

“No annulment.”

He didn't give a damn what her real name was. He didn't give a damn how she had found her way to him. He didn't give a damn how many years she had spent on the streets of Paris. A woman such as Genevieve would fight to her last breath for one more moment of life, and that’s the kind of woman this new world needed—that’s the kind of woman he needed.

He loved her.

Nothing else mattered.

“I understand,” Monsieur Paget stuttered, “that you may be concerned about your child—”

“I want her freed.”

“Freed?” The bureaucrat opened and closed his mouth like a fish tossed onto the shore. “I'm afraid that is not possible.”

“Make it possible.”

“She took the place of a king's girl—a king’s girl. Your wife has put in question the reputation of every king's girl ever brought to these shores.” Monsieur Paget straightened in the chair. “She will be kept under guard until the case is heard by the courts. The Crown doesn't take well to being fooled.”

André’s nostrils flared. He knew how this system worked. He’d noticed in this room the tric–trac board on the side table, the walnut commode, and the Gobelin tapestry gracing the wall. This delegate hadn’t paid for these expensive trifles with a government salary. “In a warehouse not far from here,” he said, “I have stored a winter's worth of beaver pelts.”

The bureaucrat dropped his gaze and toyed with the empty pewter tankard. “I have heard that you were in partnership with Nicholas Perrot.”

“I wintered on the western end of Lake Superior, the same place where Perrot wintered the year before. You do remember the haul of furs he brought to Montreal?”

“The finest, silkiest, blackest beaver these settlements have ever seen.”

“Free her,” he said, “and my share of this year's haul is yours.”

The delegate stood up abruptly. The light from the tallow candles burning in the chandelier above gleamed off his silver buttons as he paced behind his desk. Beneath the edge of his long, curled periwig, his brow creased.

“If the power were in my hands,” he said, “I would release your wife now. But it has already been arranged that this situation will be handled by the Conseil Souverain in Quebec.”

His stomach tightened. The council was the highest authority in New France. “If you are powerless, then take me to someone who isn't.”

“I'm not powerless.” Paget's brow furrowed more deeply. “This is a delicate situation. Let me think.”

The delegate paced some more. André curled his hands into fists. He wondered if she was within the palisades of this fortress or if she had been transferred elsewhere. He wondered if she was being kept in a small, empty room without windows. He wondered if she was still craving the goose liver pâté he’d scoured the town to find. The thought of her imprisoned between walls made a red scrim haze his sight.

All his instincts urged him to fight. But his wife was under the king's guard, and even in his fury he couldn't fight through a battalion of armed men. He knew all too well that this sort of situation had to be fought with pretty words and handfuls of gold—or beaver pelts, which in this settlement was the same thing. Philippe—he needed to talk to Philippe. Philippe would know how to win this fight.

The bureaucrat mused, “You've been a fur trader for some time, haven't you, Monsieur Lefebvre?”

“A lifetime.”

“You were also a soldier.”

“I fought the Iroquois in '66, alongside the Carignan–Salières regiment.”

The delegate nodded. “I think there may be something we can do that will convince the Conseil Souverain to release your wife to you.”

“Speak.”

“The king is trying to settle this land,” he began. “He is funding a new settlement across the Saint Lawrence River. It's heavily forested, close to Iroquois land. We may be at peace now, but you never know when those demons are going to strike—”

“Get to the point.”

“If you agreed to accept a small land grant across the river, the council may agree to forgo all charges, free your wife, and consider this affair an unfortunate incident.”

His blood ran cold. He knew what the delegate was suggesting, and it made his throat tighten. He felt the long tentacles of the old world reaching across the sea to curl around his neck.

“All you would be required to do,” the bureaucrat continued, “is find settlers to clear it for a yearly fee of some capons and a copper or two. Of course, you'd also be required to live on it, and build a mill and some sort of defense—”

“Why would the king wish to waste my skills plowing the earth? I have other skills. I'll go west for the government. Like Talon sent La Salle west. I can explore farther than even the Jesuits.”

“Too many men have left the settlements. Our strength and our virility are drained westward every fall, and drunk into oblivion each spring. We need settlers to clear the land, not fur traders to scatter to the wind.”

“And if I refuse?”

“If you refuse, then I can’t see any way to prevent your wife from being shipped back to Paris to face punishment.”

A drop of hot tallow fell from the chandelier. It sizzled on the surface of the rosewood desk. André imagined himself, sickle in hand, watering the rocky Canadian soil with the sweat of his brow. Then he imagined Genevieve languished in some dark prison, dressed in rags, forced to work long hours for bread and potage.

“Give me back my wife,” he said, “and I’ll take the deal.”

 

***

 

Blue twilight seeped through the cracks of the shed. Genevieve sat upon the dirt floor, her head resting against the log wall. Around her swirled the stench of dried manure and rotting hay. Set back in a yard behind a larger stone house, the shed collected the day's heat and concentrated it within its walls. She sighed as another drop of sweat trickled between her breasts.

She had only been in this shed for a matter of hours. But since the morning, she felt like she’d aged a hundred years.

André knew everything by now. She imagined his face as that arrogant official in his neat satins told him the truth. André now knew he’d married an urchin scooped off the streets of Paris, a common laundress in the notorious Salpêtrière, an imposter in a new land, perhaps a prostitute. Then he would remember all the times she had shocked him—by killing the goose, by swearing, by acting like anything but an aristocrat. He would argue at first. He would fight against it. But eventually, he would realize that she had lied to him.

Pain speared through her. She’d tried to be honest. She had woven a history for herself, a mottled tapestry of her early life in Normandy with her mother and what she knew of the lives of the bijoux in the Salpêtrière. It was close enough to her youth that it had begun to feel like the truth. She’d figured, as time passed, she and André would speak less and less of the past and more and more of the future.

It was the future that mattered, the future they would have built together.

She wished he were here. She wished she could spill out the sordid details of her life and make him understand why she had kept her counsel. She’d waited in this hot room, straining her ears for the sound of his footfall, hoping beyond hope that he would seek her out and hear what she had to say. But the day had already passed and the only person who had visited her was a maid with dinner. Her hopes had begun to dwindle. No man could stomach being proven a fool. He would harden his heart. He would discard her like a pacton of ruined pelts.

She ran her fingers against the grain of her velvet skirts and clutched the swell of her abdomen. She dug her fingers into the cloth. He would not take her child away from her. No, he would not be so cruel.

Then she heard voices outside the shed. She recognized the guard’s voice, and a woman’s voice, probably the maid delivering her supper. Genevieve eased up off the floor just as the door opened. The maid entered bearing a tray with a hunk of bread and a bowl of soup. The servant placed the tray on a stump to one side of the door, closed the door behind her, and then pulled back the hood of her cape.

Genevieve stared at Marie Duplessis.

During the trip from the Sly Fox Inn to this house near the Hotel–Dieu, they hadn’t spoken a single word to one another. Marie had cried into her handkerchief, making Genevieve suspect that she was not a willing party to the betrayal. But there were no tears in Marie's eyes now, only splotchy red trails down her cheeks. Marie lifted a finger to her lips, and then turned to peer through a crack in the wall while she untied the string on her cape.

“We don't have much time.” Marie tossed the cape on the ground and then fumbled with the laces of her bodice. “The guard is standing away from the shed now, but he'll return soon and then he'll be able to hear us.”

“What in God's name are you doing?”

“Undress.” She gestured to Genevieve's clothes. “Come, you've done this before.”

“We certainly have, and that is what has gotten us in all this trouble.”

“They forced me to accuse you.” Marie peeled open her bodice with less modesty than the last time she’d undressed in front of Genevieve. “François abandoned me after a few nights. I was alone, with nowhere to go. When I came back to the Salpêtrière, they made me confess that I’d conspired with you. If I had known they would ship me here anyway, I would never have gone back to that place. I would have stayed on the streets of Paris forever.”

Marie stopped peering through the crack in the wall long enough for Genevieve meet her dry blue gaze. Genevieve saw that there was little left of the innocent girl she’d met amid the scaffolding of the half–built church. Genevieve wondered exactly what had happened between Marie and the Musketeer, and how long it had really taken to change that love–struck young girl into the stony, aching woman who stood before her.

“Marie, this won’t work.” Genevieve gestured to her swelling abdomen. “I'm nearly five months pregnant.”

“My cloak will cover you completely.” Marie slipped her skirts off her hips. “Even if the guard catches a glimpse of your face in the twilight, it won’t matter. I didn’t give him a good look at me. If you want to be with your husband, unlace your bodice.”

Her voice caught in her throat. “My husband doesn't want me.”

“Your husband battled his way through a fort full of soldiers for you.” Marie lifted her hands to her hips, covered only with a chemise. “He threatened to rip a man's heart out through his throat. I saw it myself. He was like some sort of crazed beast.”

Genevieve's blood throbbed in her veins.

“I knew this place would be full of savages.” Marie crossed the shed to untie Genevieve's laces. “But I’m not so sure it’s that easy to tell which men are savages and which men aren’t, either here or in Paris. I told Monsieur Paget to tell your husband the truth—the real truth—but I'm afraid he has spun new lies.”

Genevieve couldn’t speak—she could barely breathe—while in her mind she envisioned André fighting to get to her.

Marie continued, “You should know that they're telling everyone that you kidnapped me and stripped me and beat me so I couldn't cry out until you were gone on the ship to Quebec. They've painted you like some sort of crazy whore.” Marie tugged the last lace out of the eyelets and grabbed the bodice to fit around herself. “They'll do anything to avoid admitting that I, a Duplessis, ran off with a Musketeer. They don’t want to besmirch the virginal reputation of the king's girls. Moreover, they can't stand the thought that you and I concocted this entire scheme, and got away with it, under the nose of Mother Superior—under the nose of the king himself.”

“Wait, Marie. Wait.” She struggled amid the news, her own elation, and her rising doubts. “André fought his way in—but that was before he knew the truth. I've been here all afternoon and he hasn't visited me. He thinks he married you.”

“He didn't break down a door in order to get me back.” Marie waved her white hand in dismissal. “In any case, there's only one way for you to find out for sure. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain if you escape this place and go back to him.”

Hope and fear battled in Genevieve's breast. Did he love her enough to give her the benefit of the doubt? Or did he hate her for her lies? If he hated her, then there would be no more hope, none at all.

But she hadn’t come all the way across an ocean and halfway across a continent to give up on the man she loved.

“Aren’t you afraid, Marie?” Genevieve struggled with the ties at her waist. “When they discover what you’ve done, you’ll be punished—”

“I've already been punished for my ignorance and stupidity a thousand times over.” Marie shrugged. “In truth, you’ll be doing me a favor. If we're successful, they'll ship me back to Paris for sure. And I would rather spend a lifetime in the Salpêtrière than one more day in this savage place.”

***

Genevieve stilled in the shadows of the shop as two drunken men staggered by, singing La Belle Lisette and taking turns swigging from a bottle. It was nighttime in Montreal, and already the houses along Saint Paul Street trembled with the sounds of fighting and swearing and drinking. The houses that hadn’t converted into dram shops had long bolted their shutters and locked their doors against the madness.

She hid under the eaves of a shop across the street from the Sly Fox Inn. The escape from Monsieur Paget's house had been easy. Swathed in the cloak as if weeping, she had fled the shed while Marie, pretending to be her, filled the air with curses so shocking that Genevieve knew for sure that Marie had spent more than a little time in the alleys of Paris. Following Marie’s instructions, Genevieve strode around the house and out the open gate of the redoubt, which enclosed a cluster of five or six buildings. The flight through Montreal had taken a little longer, and once she was forced to take shelter in a chapel near the Hotel–Dieu to avoid being accosted. It was dangerous to tarry any longer.

Genevieve bolted out of the shadows. She crossed the street and burst into the common room of the inn, already filled with woods–runners drinking their fill. When she realized André wasn't present, she raced up the stairs before the men came out of the shock of being startled by a woman. Genevieve barreled through the dark hallway. She heard shouts and footsteps on the stairs behind her and she prayed André was here.

Gripping the handle of the door, she pushed it open and stumbled into the room. By the light of a half–dozen candles, she saw two men seated with several bottles of brandy lying on the floor between them.

Tiny jerked to his feet. “By the stones of Saint Peter.” With glazed eyes, Tiny looked at the bottle in his hand, then at her, and then at the beaver who rushed over to paw the hem of her dress. “What did that merchant put in this stuff?”

André’s head still sagged in his hands. “Tell him to leave the bottle and get out.”

“If that's a he,” Tiny slurred, “then I'm Saint Genevieve herself.” Tiny kicked the leg of André’s stool. “Look at her! You've been drinking this swill, too.”

A bolt of lightning couldn't have shook her more strongly than the sight of his face as he lifted it, brandy–ravished, tormented, his eyes bloodshot and black with shadows.

She searched for words, her tongue and her courage failing her. What could she say to the man she had deceived, the man she had pursued until he had fallen in love with her and she with him? A hundred different words rushed to her tongue but stalled there crowded out by everything she wanted to say.

“Little bird?”

His voice was hoarse. He rose to his feet, towering like a giant in the small room. The flickering candles threw strange shadows upon the walls. Even the beaver, sensing the tension, scuttled away from her.

“Oh, André.”

Suddenly, she was in his arms, her nose pressed up against the smoke–ripened deerskin of his shirt, his hand buried in her hair, his lips warm on her temple. He smelled of cheap brandy but she didn't care. He slid a hand beneath her cloak and wound it around her waist, pulling her against his body, the roundness of her belly the only thing keeping them apart.

Then, like water rushing through a broken beaver dam, the words tumbled out of her mouth, without sense, without order.

“I never meant to lie to you—”

“There’s time enough to sort it out.”

“I’m not the creature they’ve made me out to be.”

“I know that.”

“But I've stolen, André. I've poached in royal forests—”

“Stealing to eat is no crime.”

“—I've picked pockets, and cut purses, and lied to priests and nuns.”

“I don't care if you've committed murder.”

“My mother was a courtesan.”

“You have her passionate nature, then.”

“I'm a bastard.”

“Some people call me a bastard, too.”

“No, no, I’m a real bastard.”

“So am I, for not seeing right from the start that you are no wilting aristocrat. You’re the strongest woman I know, and you’ll soon to be the mother of my child. Nothing else matters.”

She heard a clanking of brandy bottles and realized that they weren’t alone. Tiny gathered the empties as he staggered past them.

“You won’t be needing these,” he said, holding up two half–full bottles. “Maybe if I finish 'em, they'll conjure up an image like that for me.”

Tiny closed the door behind him.

Through her tears, she gazed up at her husband. “Then you still want me?”

“Ah, Taouistaouisse.” He ran a hand over her forehead. “I fell in love with the woman who journeyed to Chequamegon Bay with me—whatever her name.”

“All day I waited for you to come to my cell.”

“They wouldn't let me.” His brows lowered in anger. “Even after everything I did to secure your freedom.”

She blinked. “What do you mean, secure my freedom?”

Something flickered in his eyes. “Paget didn’t gloat when he told you the terms of your release?”

“He didn't release me.” She leaned back, showing him her clothes, painfully tight across her belly. “I escaped.”

André glanced at the black dress and frowned. “Those are Marie Duplessis' clothes.”

“She and I switched places again.”

He shook his head, his eyes clouded with confusion.

“Marie and I were accomplices in Paris.” She flattened her hands against his chest and looked up at him, hoping he could see that every word she spoke was the truth. “She wanted to run off with the Musketeer she loved, and to do that, I agreed to take her place among the king's girls. We both got what we wanted.”

He nodded.

“Now Marie hopes that when they find out we switched places again, they’ll ship her back to Paris.” She went up on her toes and traced the blood–encrusted lump on his forehead, just above his temple. “She told me you battled through the fortress to get to Paget—and to me.”

“I would have killed the bastard if your fate hadn't been in his hands.”

“What terrible bargain did you strike to secure my freedom?”

His jaw shifted. “He said that if I became the country lord of a tract of land across the Saint Lawrence from Montreal, then he might be able to convince the authorities to release you.”

“You refused.” She waited for his reply, but he said nothing while his whiskey–colored gaze wandered over her face. “You have to refuse, André. You have a trading venture in the west.”

“It was the only way to free you.”

Her body shook with a powerful tremor. This was a sacrifice … a sacrifice he had never before been willing to make, a sacrifice he shouldn’t have to make. He would be paying for her freedom with his own.

She blurted, “We don’t have to take that offer.”

“Genny—”

“Listen.” She clutched his shirt. “When I’m discovered missing, there will be an investigation. They will look for us. So we have to run somewhere where they can’t easily find us.”

His gaze traveled over her face, searching, hoping, even as he shook his head.

“Philippe is your agent, yes?” Her thoughts raced. “Surely he can handle whatever complications arise. Surely he can … make some arrangement. Perhaps he can promise to keep the affair quiet. I’m sure the Intendant doesn’t want it announced to all of New France that a chit of a laundress fooled the king.” Hope rose as she considered the possibilities. “And while Philippe is negotiating terms, you and I can escape to Chequamegon Bay.”

He eased away from her to rest a hand on the swell of her abdomen. “You deserve a midwife, clean linens, and a soft mattress.”

“The natives can help me birth our child. They've done it in the wild, they’re surviving well enough.” She covered his hand with her own. “If we leave right now, before I grow any bigger, and if we're careful, we'll be back on Lake Superior long before autumn when this child is due to be born.”

Emotions rushed across his face. “Genny, all we'll have in the wilderness is a temporary hut, a tent of bark, an open fire, but if you stay here—”

“I don't want to live in your father's house.” She pressed close against him. “Let our roof be the open sky, let’s sleep by an open fire. My true home,” she said against his lips, “is wherever you roam.”