Page 23 of The Winter Husband

Page List

Font Size:

He jerked his chin toward the hearth. “Melt the water over the fire.”

“Oh.”

She looked away. By the angle of her neck, he realized she was ashamed of her ignorance. An ignorance that was no fault of hers.

“Well, don’t stop now,” she prodded. “What other tasks await me?”

Spoon in mid-air, he thought of what the native women did back at the fort at Sault Ste. Marie. When they weren’t preserving meat by drying it to make pemmican, or skinning rabbits or deer, or tanning or stretching the skins on frames, or weaving new snowshoes, or dying porcupine quills and sewing them on quivers or moccasins…well, there wasn’t much they didn’t do. A woman who’d never seen a moose couldn’t do any of those things, not without a heap of learning.

“I could mend clothes, if I had a needle and thread.” She cast a quick glance at his chest. “You’ve got a tear in that shirt.”

He ran a finger through an old split in the linen. He’d known it was there but didn’t care about what no one but himself could see. He hoped Philippe had remembered to pack a needle and thread among the packages still piled up on the porch.

“That’s all I can do, Captain Girard.” She fluttered a hand. “I’m useless to you otherwise.”

He looked past her, beyond the gloss of her dark hair, to focus on a random stone on the far wall. Thinking of what other ways she could be useful opened the floodgates to certain ideas, but it wasn’t right for him to imagine her undressed in his bed, a willing participant in mutual pleasure. But she was a woman, and he was a man, and, just like the cabin door, the hinges to those floodgates needed fixing.

He turned his empty spoon over and over in his hand, forcing his thoughts straight. Marie could have been a very different kind of woman. After all that had happened to her—all that heknewhad happened, at least, because this woman hid a world of secrets—he supposed she would have been justified to scream, weep, and complain about her fate. Right now she was contrary and tense, but controlled. She didn’t want to be here, but she was trying to figure out the rules. She acted like the kind of greenhorn soldier he would seek out for promotion, someone who could guard their own impulses, use fear as a whetting stone. The fact that shewantedto be of some use was promising. If they both stayed busy—if they kept out of each other’s way—then they might be able to live together without being together.

Then, as he’d hoped, an idea shot across his mind.

He asked, “Can you read?”

“Of course I can read.”

Spoken in a voice as tart as bearberries. She didn’t know being literate was a gift. Few of the hardy settlers in this colony could tell one letter from the next, even some of the well-born.

He, himself, had spent his whole childhood struggling. “A man who works all day outside is too tired to squint at letters. You can read to me at night.”

She glanced around the room. “Read what?”

“Books.”

She spread her empty hands, waiting for an explanation. Didn’t she know? He took note of a pile of pillows and folded blankets by the hearth as realization dawned. She and Cecile had slept in this room last night, ignoring the bedroom with its own fireplace behind the closed door.Hell.His wife couldn’t bear to sleep in his bed, even when he wasn’t in it.

It was going to take a lot more than one kindness to make this woman stop thinking he was a monster.

“There’s something you need to see.” He shoved his chair back. “Come with me.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Marie felt like she’d swallowed a hive of bees as her husband strode across the room toward the bedroom she’d avoided. His sun-streaked queue and its rawhide tails slid against his back as he glanced over his shoulder.

Beneath the table, she fussed with her trembling hands, trying to calm the upheaval both inside and out. Little sparks danced across her skin as she imagined him heaving her up in those tremendous arms, throwing her on his bed and…stop.By the saints, her sinful self was betraying her. Lucas’s rough good looks, along with her endless, wayward thoughts, had roused an uncomfortable awareness of his muscular beauty. To complicate matters, Lucas’s kindness at sending for Cecile had stirred up a whole lot of other feelings. Clearly, he wanted her to trust him. But there was nothing more dangerous than an unexpected kindness from a man.

She stood up on wobbly legs. Her body flushed prickly and cold as she headed across the room. Swallowing a lump the size of a plum, she passed by Lucas and his aura of cinnamon-scent. She entered his bedroom and put space between him and the heady incense.

Her steps faltered. The bed was piled high with more furs than she’d ever seen. She didn’t know the names of the creatures that bore such thick, lush pelts. But it wasn’t the extravagance of furs that made her pulse flutter. It was the great, wide, sweeping size of it. High like a king’s, set upon a platform. Big enough for a man like Lucas. Big enough for a bedmate.

“Marie.”

She startled and fixed her attention on the plaited rug under her feet.

“Look up,” he commanded.

She hazarded a glance at a cabinet fronted with leaded-glass doors, the kind of furniture that might have been plucked from the wax and leather-scented study of her old home. It struck her as oddly out-of-place. She couldn’t imagine why someone would pack up this delicate piece of furniture and transport it all the way into the wilderness. What a miracle the glass had survived the roll of the ocean, the bump of a cart over pitted tracks, and, no doubt, a ride in a canoe.

She peered at the contents inside, and her heart rose to her throat. “Are those…”