Page 24 of The Winter Husband
“Books,” he said. “Yes.”
She blinked a few times just to make sure she wasn’t imagining. Behind the glass doors, there weren’t just one or two tomes…there were dozens. In an instant, she was pulled back to a day when she and the other high-born girls of the orphanage toured the Louvre while the king was off in Versailles building his new palace. She’d stepped into a room so full of bookshelves, she’d died a little, overcome with the craving to touch them, open them, and run her fingers down the spines.
Her hand was suspended before her, the key in the lock within reach. If she tried to touch it, would it all disappear?
She whispered, “May I…?”
At his nod, she stepped closer and twisted the iron key. The glass door swung open to the scent of old leather and paper. Some of the books were shiny, as if the bindings had been oiled. Others were worn and frayed at the tops and bottoms. Her father had owned fourteen books. She had read them to him during the evenings as he’d slumped in a chair, hollow-eyed and sleepless during those last few years, pulling on the lip of his pipe. But this case held so many more, the spines embossed in gold.
She whispered, “Are all these yours?”
“They came with the cabin.” His voice rumbled in the room. “The previous owner found out it would cost a fortune to crate them and ship them back to France.”
“Why didn’t he sell them here in the settlements?”
“The Jesuits didn’t want them. Fur trappers wouldn’t buy them either. They travel by canoe, and books are ruined in water. As for the settlers…many can’t read.”
As wind whistled around the cabin, she trailed fingertips along the spines. Molière, Rabelais, Racine, Perrault. As she crouched to read the titles on a lower shelf, Lucas stepped away to peek behind the oilcloth covering the window.
“That’s a wolf-wind,” he said. “It means a storm is coming. I have to pull the canoe into the barn for safety and stow those packages on the porch.”
She couldn’t meet his eye. She didn’t want him to know how he’d gutted her with this new generosity. “I’ll…I’ll read to you later. When you come back from—”
“Another night,” he interrupted. “Tonight, I sleep in the barn.”
Her heart beat out the passing of the seconds. Why would he offer to sleep in the barn when he had this huge, comfortable bed? Was he testing her? She knew it would be kinder for her to insist he sleep here. She could always sleep on a pallet by the parlor fire in the other room. It would be petty to deny a man who’d shown her such consideration the comfort of his own home.
But the words…wouldn’t come.
Boards creaked under Lucas’s retreat. She tracked the progress of his heavy step into the parlor as he wrestled into his jerkin and swept the fur coat over all. The front door squealed open on the loose hinges and then bounced shut behind him, once, twice, until the latch finally stuck.
CHAPTER NINE
Marie jerked out of sleep to the feel of a book sliding off her lap. Startled, it took her a moment to remember where she was. After Lucas had left for the barn, she’d brought a book into the main room, intending to read by this hearth and deny herself, as she’d denied Lucas, the comfort of that bed. How long had she been dozing? She shivered as a biting wind sifted through the fibers of her shawl, a wind flooding in through the swinging front door.
Holy Mary!She bolted upright and uncurled her aching legs from the awkward position in which she’d slept. Skating across the room in stocking feet, she winced at the icy floor. Snow billowed through the open door. Fighting the suck of the wind for control, she pressed the door shut until the latch caught.
Inside, the fire dimmed, now bereft of the wind that had blown it into a roar. Outside, the storm howled. The rafters creaked, the stones moaned. Plunged into semi-darkness, she suddenly regretted reading ghost stories to the other girls in the gloom of their orphanage dormitory. Every flickering shadow in this rustic cabin took the shape of a goblin, a demon, a monster skulking.
She shook herself. She wasn’t a child anymore. She pushed away the imaginings and focused on how to keep the storm from shoving its way in again. She could brace a chair against the door…maybe it would be heavy enough. She took a single step toward that intention just as she heard the click of claws.
Her muscles seized. Backing up, she strained her ears. Snow fell muffled upon the roof. A board popped beneath her weight. Had she imagined that horrid series of bone-clacks upon wood? A pulse pounded in her ears, but not so loud that she didn’t hear the second jittery movement of clawed feet.
Clickety-click-click
Fragments of stories ripped through her mind. Settlers eaten by bears. Fur trappers stalked by mountain lions. Farmers found trampled in the fields. The backs of her knees gave, but she locked them tight. She couldn’t lose consciousness, not now. That would make her defenseless. She breathed in. Breathed out. Breathed in again. With the storm rattling the door at her back, she mentally cast about for something she could use as a shield, or as a weapon, and then remembered where Lucas had last leaned his long gun, only a few steps to her left.
She heard the sound again.
Clickety-click-click.
Choking down the horror, she slid sideways, her hair tangling in the hinges until she finally cleared the rattling door. She walked her hand farther along the wall until her palm hit a bore of cold metal. She gripped it, lifted it, and fumbled with the weight. How big was the creature? Could she stun it by hitting it with the wide end of the weapon? Her mind stumbled through ever more terrifying options as the storm blew hard enough to jolt the latch. The door flew open again.
She lunged away before it slammed against her. Embers in the hearth blazed. The edge of the linen tablecloth floated aloft, revealing a ghostly white face beneath. A high, arched back.
Hollow, demonic black eyes.
A scream ripped from her throat. The creature darted out. She lunged toward it and swung the gun blindly. She swung and swung and felt the jolt up her arms upon contact withsomething. She kept pushing, sweeping the unholy thing with maw and claws toward the gaping door, dragging a trail through the drifting snow. She flailed and tossed up snow until she struck something immovable.
