Page 17 of The Autumn Wife
“I saw it running up and down that timber.”
Theo made his way up the bluff, she heard his squelching footsteps.
He said, “Want to hold it, Etienne?”
“Hold it?” Etienne shook his head. “Why did you bother saving it? I’ve been stabbed by those needles more than once.”
“This one’s quills are barely hardened,” Theo said. By the length of his shadow, Cecile guessed that he’d reached the top of the berm. “You want to hold it, Cecile?”
She sensed, rather than saw, Etienne stiffen at Theo’s casual use of her given name. Saints alive, didn’t Theo know any better than to talk to her that way within her son’s hearing? And why did Theo decide to swim back to shorehere, when she’d been avoiding him for the last few days? This felt like an ambush and left her no choice—in spite of her swimming senses—but to pivot and face him.
She intended to focus on the black ball of a creature he held in the crook of his elbow, but theman holding it couldn’t be ignored. He looked as comfortable standing before her in thin, soaking linen as he might look standing shirtless on the scaffolding of the building site. All the rough men of this settlement, maybe due to the dearth of women, were easy with their nudity. Yet the intimacy of seeing him in his body’s linen-plastered glory struck her in a thousand competing ways. Her ears rang and her throat went bone-dry.
Clutching the blanket in her arms to get hold of herself, she forced her attention back to his bicep and the wet blob of black, spiky fur, saying, “It’s just a baby porcupine.”
Theo nodded. “I suspect it isn’t more than a few days weaned.”
Porcupine meat had been her husband’s favorite meal, she remembered all too well. He would come back from hunting—during those terrible months when he was home—then toss a dead pair at her feet and demand she cook them for the evening’s supper. She couldn’t count how many times she’d been jabbed by the spines she’d had to pluck—and hurt in other ways when she didn’t cook it fast enough or to his liking. And here Theo was, cradling the wild, spiny thing.
She shifted her gaze from the pup to the man, keeping her eyes above his chin as best she could. “You risked your life in that current for a baby porcupine?”
“I’m a strong swimmer.” He grinned, his shirt finding new purchase clinging to a dark nipple, alert from the cold. “The little thing was falling off the timber.”
“It isn’t going to be grateful,” Etienne warned. “Look. It’s starting to raise its ruff.”
Theo bent at the knees and set the writhing thing on the grass. The pup rolled onto his taloned paws and shook himself, white-tipped quills alert. With its tiny front paws, it began wiping moisture off its snout.
Etienne. Orphans. And now he’d saved a porcupine. Saints alive, what was she supposed to think of this man?
“It looks fine.” Theo jerked his chin toward the resin-scented woods behind her, with its carpet of russet needles. “It’ll wander off to safety once we get out of its way.”
“Yes,” she said, coming to her senses and marshaling up what courage she could. “We should get back to where we belong, too. Monsieur Martin, would you mind carrying the canoe back to its berth?”
“Mother.” A black look passed over Etienne’s face. “I can carry the canoe—”
“I know you can. You’re strong enough. But I want…”Theo’s hands occupied, and you far away, when I ask him difficult questions.“I want you to fetch the basket and oars and take them back. I’ll carry this blanket.” She ran her wretchedly shaking hand overthe wool. “That way we won’t have to make several trips.”
Despite the practical answer, Etienne narrowed his black eyes as he looked from her to Theo and then back to what she supposed was her pale, pinched face.
“Go on ahead, now.” She lifted her skirts and edged around the young porcupine, still occupied with cleaning its bristles. “I have business with Monsieur Martin,tsítsho.”
Etienne’s expression flickered. Since his childhood, they’d used that Mohawk word for fox as a signal that all was well. They had another word to indicate danger, but she’d rarely used it. If she had been in danger from his father in those days, the last thing she wanted was little Etienne to stick around to witness it.
Casting a last, sullen look at Theo, Etienne walked down the bluff, grabbed their food basket, and shouldered the oars. Theo followed a few steps behind to fetch the vessel itself, saying something jocular to her son as he passed. A query that Etienne ignored, stewing.
She should scold Etienne for rudeness, but suspicion of big, strong men was tough to shake forbothof them. Instead, she watched Theo haul the canoe up and over his head as if the vessel were constructed of feathers. His bare thighs flexed as he climbed the steep slope, his hands on the gunwales, arms bulging. The soaked linen shirt still clung to theparts of him she had no business noticing—though shedidnotice his high, flexing buttocks as he marched by her. She followed, heart halfway up her throat, body tingling in unnerving ways, and her mind smoking from the burning effort to make sense of a confounding situation.
As she lagged behind, he said, “You’ve been avoiding me, Cecile. Me and the children. They’ve been asking why you haven’t come for lessons.”
Flinching, she tightened her grip on her skirts and raised the hem above her boots. “Mother Superior is due back any day now.” A lame excuse—the Reverend Mother had warned Cecile that her stay in Quebec would likely be extended—but how quickly came the lie! “I haven’t finished the accounts, so I couldn’t spare the time to go out to the stable.”
“The kids miss you.”
Guilt shot a dart through her. She would make it up to them, whenever she figured out how dangerous this man was.
“Cecile.” He slowed his pace so she would reach his side, shifting the weight of the vessel hanging above him. “Don’t let me—and whatever you think of me—prevent you from teaching those kids.”
“Frankly,” she said, hurling herself into the breach, “I don’t know what to think of you.”
