Free Pamela Morsi by The Love Charm Page B

Laron, but her passion was
spent.
    They held their position for as long as they
could. Eventually the strength of his legs gave way to the waves of
relaxation that settled upon him and he eased her feet to the
ground.
    "Your drawers, Madame," he said, finding them
on the ground and shaking them out before he handed them over. His
teasing tone was typical. Acadian women wore no such garment and
Laron had declared them to be a needless, silly affectation of
clothing.
    "Drawers are the fashion now everywhere," she
had assured him. "Only the most poor of peasant women would go
around with their buttocks unsheathed."
    Laron had laughed at that. "With all of the
skirts you women wear, I hardly think that you are very close to
nakedness."
    He had not convinced her to give them up.
Instead he teased her relentlessly about wearing them.
    "So when did the smoking start?" he asked.
"And why on earth is Karl so unwilling to go to bed?"
    Helga hesitated momentarily. "The smoking
began on Wednesday, I think," she answered. "He came home from
fishing and was green as duckweed. The smell of supper had him
puking off the back porch."
    Laron chuckled and shook his head. "I
remember that first time myself," he said.
    "I didn't see the tobacco until Friday," she
continued. "We had a bit of a row. Or at least he did. I refused
to discuss the subject and he lit up very defiantly, as if he were
trying to force me to lose my temper."
    "You and Karl argued?" Laron seemed
surprised.
    "He just . . . well, there are things ... we
do not always agree."
    His expression slowly changed from confused
to amused as he gazed down at her discomfiture.
    "We do not always agree," he quoted her. "So
you have made your home a democracy these days, Madame? The
influence of consorting with the Acadian men, no doubt. And I have
always thought of you as a very autocratic German empress."
    Helga was grateful for his humor. "I still
say what goes on under my own roof and you had best not forget it,"
she told him.
    He grinned. "You may have total dominion of
the roof, Madame, if I may have an equal say under the
bedclothes."
    She smiled back at him as they reached the
porch. "Nothing will go on under those bedclothes tonight,
monsieur," she told him. "As long as my son lays in the chair by
the hearth, you and I will lie as chaste as nuns."
    "As nuns?"
    They stepped in through the back door. Young
Karl was where they had left him, still sprawled uncomfortably in
a chair that was never meant for sleeping.
    "Maybe I could carry him upstairs," Laron
whispered.
    Helga looked up at him. "And if he wakes are
you ready to sit until dawn continuing your history lesson?"
    Laron made a disagreeable face. Helga stifled
a giggle.
    Stalling, she silently straightened the items
stowed on the kitchen shelves as Laron divested himself and hung
his garments on the hook beside the bed. There was virtually no
light within the cabin and she couldn't see the man across the room
from her, but she didn't need to see him. She knew the width of his
back, the length of his thigh, and the breadth of his shoulders
with more familiarity than she knew her own life. He was her man
and she loved him. She had never meant for that to happen but it
had.
    The creak of the ropes sounded as he crawled
into the bed. She moved toward the sound. He had scooted to the far
side and held the blanket open welcomingly. She leaned forward and
kissed him on the forehead.
    "I must look in on the little ones," she
whispered. "Go on to sleep."
    He didn't argue as she made her way across
the room and up the ladder to the loft. In the dim light seeping
through the shuttered window she checked on her son. He slept
peacefully on his mat, his sweet blond curls tousled around his
head. She squatted down beside him and gently removed the thumb
that was tucked so securely in his mouth.
    Quietly she made her way to the larger
sleeping mat. Elsa, too, was lost in dreamland.
    Helga began removing her own clothes and
hanging them beside