Louisiana History Collection - Part 1 (9 page)

“I don’t understand you!” That was better, she thought as she felt the rise of anger and heard it strengthen her protest.

His chest lifted in a deep breath. “You will touch me.”

“I can’t!”

“You can. You will, if you and your fellow countrymen want to reach Natchitoches.”

She went still. This was not a whim, but some carefully thought-out substitute for what he had originally planned. All the time she had been sleeping, he had been lying there thinking of some way to bend her to his will. If it had been only her own safety at stake, she would have defied him, but she could not take such a risk for the others. It was true that they were not in as great a danger now, on this side of the river; still, there were many leagues of dense forest between here and the post on the Red River, forests that could be traversed only by those who knew the way, those who could follow the cunningly blazed Indian trails. To pit her strength against him would be foolish, as she had already discovered, and even if she should prevail there was nowhere for her to go, no one to whom she could appeal for succor. Pascal and even St. Amant had already made it plain that they expected her to placate the half-breed regardless of the cost. Anger and defiance would not serve her then. She would need something more.

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “You know that I can’t — that I—”

“I know, yes. But how else are you going to learn to trust if you are never near a man, never intimate with one?”

“Trust?” she inquired with cold scorn. “Trust a man who uses blackmail to gain his ends, one who issues the most cruel threats against helpless people? You must think me a fool.”

He turned his head. “You prefer to remain a terrified rabbit, cringing when a man comes near you?”

“I am not a rabbit! As for men, I make sure none ever come near.”

“Then you are missing the supreme pleasure of life, its most vivid joy.”

“The physical use of a woman by a man?” she asked in bitter irony. “I’ve never found it so.”

“The love of a woman and a man together, a sharing, one of the other. It’s a different thing, something I would wager you have never had.”

For a fleeting instant she was aware of the stir of curiosity. Ruthlessly she subdued it. “And you in your vast experience know it well?”

He did not answer. Instead, he pried open her tight, chilled fingers and, controlling her shrinking, spread them over his chest, holding them there when she would have snatched them away.

Tremors shook her in waves and she closed her eyes, turning her face into the firmness of his shoulder. His hand was warm and strong over hers, the grasp gentle, though inescapable. Slowly her trembling subsided. Her hand warmed against the radiating heat of his body. Beneath her sensitive palm she felt a peculiar throb and realized that it was the beat of his heart. The sensation vibrated along her nerves, a hard jarring that warned her that he was not so undisturbed as he wanted to appear. The knowledge brought an unwilling fascination. Through her mind flitted the words he had spoken earlier.
It isn’t just me, is it?

Was it possible that he had been hurt, in his pride at least, by her rejection of him, first at the soirée and later in the woods? It did not fit the picture she held of his hard indifference and yet he was undeniably affected by her. Could it be, was it possible, that the cause of his disturbance was the simple touch of her hand?

No. She could countenance neither supposition. It must be that the desire he felt for her was stronger than she had any idea that emotion could be for a man. Perhaps he was right, then, perhaps all men were not the same. Maybe she was wrong to judge all men by the vicious demands visited upon her by Vincent Laffont.

Even as she made rational sense of Reynaud’s purpose, the sensitive tips of her fingers found the faint ridges of the lines of tattoos that marked his chest. They made a concentric pattern, those lines, like links in a chain design set in rows, one above the other. They had been made by the pricking of some sharp-pointed instrument, like a bone needle, with soot or some dark plant dye rubbed into the injuries and left to heal. Meant not for decoration, but as a proof of manhood, they should have been hideous to her. Somehow they were not. Instead, she wished that it was daylight so that she might see them at this close range. At least he did not have them on his face as many warriors did, particularly across the forehead and bridge of the nose. That much of the appearance of a savage he had forgone.

There was another thing. Unlike Vincent, whose body hair had been as thick as an animal’s pelt, or most other men she had seen in their shirtsleeves who seemed to have thick tufts sprouting at their necks, Reynaud’s chest was bare. She had noticed the phenomenon among the Indians before and particularly on the half-breed that night at the commandant’s house. There was no coarse growth to prevent her from pressing her hand fully against his chest, none to obscure the sculptured molding of the muscles that swathed his rib cage or to disguise their smooth play under his copper-bronze skin.

Once more lightning flared with the roll of thunder close upon it. In its bright light Elise saw something she had overlooked until now. Reynaud, lying so still under her hand, was without a particle of clothing. She jerked away from him as if he had been suddenly transformed to a glowing coal.

He caught her wrist. “What is it?”

“You’re naked!”

“What difference does it make?”

“It does, it just does!”

“You have my word,” he said, the words rough.

“You — you won’t touch me, you promise?” She could not prevent the question or the catch in her voice as hers were spoken.

“It is a vow, one most sacred, sworn on any saint you please, on the veil of the virgin, the true cross, by the beard of Louis XV, most Christian majesty, by the shadows of the walls of Combourg chateau and my father’s tomb—”

“All right,” she said to stop the flow of the oath, “I believe you.”

“Then place your hand upon me now, of your own will.”

It was a demand, but one that also carried a hint of supplication. He released her. She lay unmoving for a long moment, then, with a slow, jerking motion, as if the flesh and tendons she controlled were not her own, she did as he asked.

She placed her spread fingers on his diaphragm, sliding them upward and recognizing, with a familiarity that was oddly shocking, the pound of his heart, the ridges of his muscles, the tracing of his tattoo lines. He did not move and gave no sign of triumph. His breathing was steady, an even rise and fall, and his hands were at his sides. In the glow of lightning that now came with more regularity, she kept her lashes lowered. She did not want to know if he watched her. She was unwilling to risk seeing his nakedness, though it seemed that the flat expanse of his belly with the turgid length of his manhood upon it and the long, well-formed length of his legs were imprinted upon her memory.

After a time, it seemed that lying there pressing against his chest was not enough. She bit the underside of her lip, then she whispered finally, “What shall I do now?”

There was richness and depth to his voice as he replied, “Whatever pleases you,” then added as she lifted her hand to move away, “except that.”

Her palm brushed across a pap as she settled it upon him again. The flat nipple contracted much like her own and she paused in surprise, returning to probe it delicately with a finger. It hardened still further. Interested in spite of herself, she trailed her hand across to the other. She flicked that one with a fingernail, smiling a little in bemusement as it tightened at once. She circled it then, widening the motion by degrees.

So firm and well hardened were the muscled planes beneath the paps, she found, that a channel was created where his breastbone lay. She followed it like a path to the hollow of his throat, dipping her fingers into that shallow well and sliding upward along the ridge of his Adam’s apple to the firm jut of his chin and the cleft that cut into it.

She stopped there, rubbing her knuckles back and forth over the unstubbled smoothness of his face. The Indians did not shave, or so she had been told, but rather pulled the hair out one by one, an operation much less frequent than the daily scraping of whiskers. It appeared to be true.

She thought of the mouth of the man beside her: free from the burning scrape of unshaven beard, the lines of it firm, the surface of his lips smooth, their shape well molded. They were so close to her fingertip. What would it be like to …

She shied away from the thought, quickly running the pads of her fingers back down his throat and along his breastbone to the surface of his diaphragm. It was exceedingly hard, even rigid. He seemed to be breathing with shallow movements of the bellows of his lungs. She spread her hand wide, checking that minute rise and fall. How strange that slight motion was, when she had half expected from his stillness to find the deep and regular respiration that precedes sleep.

Like his chest, his diaphragm was wrapped with broad bands of muscle. His navel was a deep indention in the ridges that continued even on his abdomen. Beneath the small sink was a narrow line of downlike hair, and as she trailed down it with one questing fingertip she had a sudden vision of that first time she had seen him: his thighs and calves gleaming in candlelight, free of the hair covering of the Caucasian race, with the smooth athletic grace of some ancient carved statue.

With sudden violence, Reynaud clamped his fingers upon her hand, halting her downward exploration. Before she could move, before she could cry out at his hand grip, he surged up, letting her go even as he left her. There was a rush of wind as he ripped open the end flap of the shelter and glided outside.

It had begun to rain, a slow pattering of drops that must have been falling unnoticed for some minutes. Elise lay listening to it, an incredulous frown gathering between her eyes. He had left her and she was not glad.

The bed furs were warm where he had lain. A chill touched her skin and she shivered. She sat up, staring into the darkness, listening, but she could not tell what Reynaud was doing or where he had gone.

With abrupt decision, she got to her knees and crawled to the end of the shelter. She tugged aside the flap to look out. The night was black and the wind whipped the wetness of rain into her face. Then came the crackle and flash of lightning, ripping across the sky in a jagged tear. It silhouetted the trees in its white glare and was reflected in the spattering rain that sheeted the ground. And it gilded in silver splendor the naked form of the man who stood just outside.

It was Reynaud, with his arms at his sides, his palms turned outward, and his head thrown back. His eyes were closed and his features blank, shut-in, as he lifted his face to the cold autumn rain.

4

E
LISE KEPT HER gaze on her feet as she walked. Plodding along behind the squat form of Pascal was fast becoming so ordinary, such a habit, that it did not require her attention. There was an abstracted frown between her brown eyes, and now and then she glanced up to stare past the merchant at the broad back of the half-breed who led them all.

She could not understand Reynaud. The thing he had demanded of her in exchange for her own life and those of the other refugees from Fort Rosalie was barbaric. And yet his behavior, his consideration the night before, was, she had reason to believe, rare even among civilized men. Which was he, then, savage or gentleman?

There was a purpose behind his leniency, this she did not doubt. It was likely that he expected her to be so affected by the proximity of his masculine form that she would succumb to her own curiosity to know how it would feel to have him make love to her. His talk of the joys of such, his taunt about her lack of knowledge of it, pointed toward that end.

He was going to be badly disappointed, of course; still, how many men would have the patience to wait? Most seemed to think that a woman’s protests, the barriers she erected, were only there to be swept aside. They took pleasure in thrusting straight toward their goal, caring little for the pain they caused. Some even enjoyed it. Certainly she had expected nothing more from Reynaud. In some peculiar way, his forbearance was more disturbing than if he had forced himself upon her.

Was that strictly true? She herself had been shocked by the violence of her physical reaction, her total rejection of the nearness of a man. Even now she was embarrassed by her lack of control, by the fact that he had seen her a prey to overwrought sensibilities. She did not know what she would have done if he had exerted himself to take her. She refused to think about it.