Free Heaven in His Arms by Lisa Ann Verge Page B

such spirit. "Philippe and Marietta will see to it that you behave like my wife."
    "So while you're roaming in the woods, I must sit in a stranger's house for nine months, waiting for you to return so you can toss me off like an old wig?"
    "Come summer, you'll have a choice of men, unlike the other girls who have to decide on a husband within fifteen days."
    "I came clear across the world to start a new life in this colony. I didn't do it so I could be abandoned by my husband within days and divorced within months." She uncrossed her arms and wagged a finder at him. "You married me, Monsieur Lefebvre. You're going to treat me like a wife."
    "Am I?" He let his gaze roam insolently over her lovely body. "You don't even know what that means, cherie."
    "It means," she said, ignoring his look, "that you put me in your house and not leave me with utter strangers."
    "I don't have a home here."
    "None?"
    "I've nothing but an abandoned old hut on a piece of land I inherited from my father, land that has long returned to forest."
    "You're supposed to be a rich man," she countered, brows as sweeping as sparrow's wings tugging together. "You must have a house bigger than Marietta's. ..."
    "I don't, not a habitable one, which is why you're staying with her."
    "Oh, but I'm not staying with her." She glanced around the room and saw his small bag packed in the corner. "Wherever you are going, I am going."
    Amid the swirling currents of anger, Andre felt an urge to laugh. She was a stubborn creature, a willful woman-child, and the thought of her sleeping on the hard ground under the open sky or perched upon all the merchandise stuffed into a birch bark canoe was too ludicrous for him to ignore. "You have no idea where I'm going. You belong with Marietta, in civilization or what passes for it here, not in the forests."
    "I've been in forests before."
    He had an image of her strolling calmly through the well-tended woods of some country estate, with exotic peacocks calmly pecking in the courtyards. "Not forests like these. These are full of savages."
    "So are the settlements, I've noticed." She shuffled through his scattered clothing, peering at him through narrowed eyes. "You have to spend the winter in those forests. Where are you going to live?"
    A fur trader named Nicholas Perrot had built some crude buildings in Chequamegon Bay when he was last there, but Andre doubted this woman would consider them worthy of the name "home."
    "You do have a home," she said, clapping her hands twice. "I'll stay there with you."
    "This isn't a pleasure voyage," he argued, kicking aside a pair of his breeches and planting his hands on his hips. "Until we get to that place, we'll be sleeping on the ground with nothing above our heads but an overturned canoe. We'll be eating cornmeal mush and boiled peas for most of the trip. We'll be crossing rapids like you've never seen in Paris, and we'll be walking hundreds of miles to get around them. There's danger from bears, from wolves, from savages who for one reason or another no longer like the French and would do almost anything to have such a pretty scalp as yours."
    She rolled her eyes. "I outgrew such gruesome tales when I was given my first corset."
    "You're still delirious." He clutched her upper arm. "You're going back to Marietta's, and you're going back now." "Am I?"
    The fire flared in those eyes—unusual eyes, a pure jade flame. She dug her heels into the floor. She was more child than woman if she thought she could impose her will on him. Andre tightened his grip on her upper arm. She tried to wrench away but failed. He thought it was a pity that she was his wife; he would have enjoyed kissing the fight out of her.
    He headed toward the door, dragging her with him. "This will be easier if you don't make a scene on the way out."
    "I have no intention of making this easy for you." She yanked on his arm as he pulled her out into the hallway. "I'm not going to let you just abandon me, your own wife, in a