Page 65 of The Winter Husband
Etta clucked her tongue. “Oh, my darling girl.”
Opening her arms for an embrace, Etta left just enough room for the small, warm body tucked in the sling between them. Separating moments later, Etta used her thumbs to clear the tears from Marie’s cheeks with motherly efficiency.
Etta said, “Courage,ma petite.”
A laugh grazed Marie’s throat. “Perhaps I’ve used it all up.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
Marie mustered a smile. Nearly a week had passed since she’d spoken to Lucas, but Philippe kept her appraised of her husband’s growing strength…and continued commitment to send her away. Her ribs hurt from trying stifling sobs. What could she do about a man who confessed he loved her and in the very same breath insisted he would send her away? She’d been thinking about that long, and hard, which was how she found herself here in the lower town, pacing between the looming granite promontory and wide stretch of the Saint Lawrence River.
“I need your advice, Etta.” Marie squinted toward the riverbank. “Which one should I choose?”
Etta’s questioning gaze fell upon the birch-bark vessels pulled up in the mud.
“I thought I’d buy one of them.”Or steal one, if I must. “Then I could thwart Lucas from shipping me to France by paddling away and hiding from him until the river freezes again.”
“Marie, my darling—”
“But Lucas would just hunt me down, wouldn’t he? He’d track me to Cecile’s home in Trois-Rivières, if Ceci could even take me in—”
“Petite,” Etta interrupted in the firm but affectionate way she addressed misbehaving children. “You know why Lucas is saying such things.”
“He’s protecting me.”
“It’s more than that.” Etta took in the bustle of the lower town as if in search of answers. “Have you considered the idea that Lucas is terrified?”
Marie flicked a hand. “Lucas isn’t afraid of anything.”
“Men swagger tolookfearless, all the more when they’re deeply troubled.”
“I’ve seen him fight—”
“Fighting is easy. He’s been trained to fight. But fists and flintlocks can’t beat away strong feelings.”
“Etta, I know he loves me. He doesn’t hesitate to tell me so.” She threw up her hands. “Yet he still wants to send me away.”
“Because too many of his loved ones have died.” Etta tugged on the sling to keep the sun out of the baby’s eyes. “It’s not my place to talk of such things, Marie. But Lucas lost many soldiers—”
“I know. They’re buried on the land.”
Etta nodded and lightly bounced the bundle in her arms. “So he told you about the campaign into Mohawk territory.”
“You knew, too?”
“Philippe was part of it, too. Lucas stayed with us after he found his men. His wounds didn’t need linen and salve, but they were deep.”
“You never told me that.”
Etta shrugged. “You were with us only a few days before your marriage, Marie. And how am I to tell a bride such a thing? Besides, I’d hoped he’d learned how to live with the loss by now. I had three fewer children when Lucas came, broken in spirit, into my home.”
She remembered Lucas at the graveside of his men. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he still had dirt under his fingernails from digging the graves.
“Soldiers are closer than brothers, you know.” Etta’s black, winged brows came together. “When one of their friends dies, the soldiers who survive wrestle with terrible guilt.”
“I know.” Marie remembered her father and the drinking that led to his death. She remembered Lucas shouting and thrashing in his sleep. She remembered François, too, that wretched musketeer, and the thought gave her pause. Perhaps, at the root of François’s greediness for pleasure, women, and drink, lay a great, unspoken agony.
Maybe it was a miracle that all soldiers didn’t become monsters.
