Page 2 of The Autumn Wife (King’s Girls #3)

Cecile looked up at the man who’d just saved Etienne’s life.

Smeared with stone-dust and pebbled with shards, the towering laborer brought to mind the sheer, carved rock face of Quebec City.

The forearm she’d barely brushed had felt solid with knotted muscle.

His palms bore calluses. His tattered breeches molded to swelling thighs.

Deep-set eyes beamed, embers of fury still burning bright inside them, and now that intensity bathed her in an unsettling way.

Had she bumped into this man on the streets of the nearby settlement of Montreal, she’d have choked down a scream and raced as far away from him as possible. But no matter how dangerous he appeared, he had just saved a life more important than her own. The least she could do was tend his wounds.

“Come,” she repeated, shrinking away from the size and heat of him. “They’ll have linens and ointments at the convent.”

She swiveled around on a heel, slung an arm over Etienne’s shoulders, and propelled her boy along a grass-flattened path toward the main convent building.

The disconcerting man followed with a frustrated, dragging tread.

The mason was the one who’d nearly started a fight, but the man behind her had seemed keen enough to join in the violence.

Dear heavens, did every man in this rough settlement walk about with a belly of dry tinder, so easily lit? At least Etienne was safe now. Pulling the boy closer to her side, she scolded herself to be grateful to Etienne’s savior, no matter how frightful and intimidating he looked.

To calm herself, she took another hard look at the convent grounds.

She hoped this collection of rough buildings would become the sanctuary that she and Etienne so desperately needed.

It seemed isolated enough, though the settlement of Montreal proper was only a short walk west. The wide, grassy clearing was hemmed by forest on either side.

The lawn unfurled from the banks of the Saint Lawrence River all the way up to the dirt road that ran parallel to the river at the top of a gentle slope.

The construction site for the chapel lay beside that road.

A small distance behind stood the main convent building they were approaching, sturdily built of logs, but no majestic thing.

She’d been told it served as both living quarters for the nuns and a school for local girls.

She could only surmise that two additional outbuildings on the opposite side of the field were used for storage or perhaps lodging for the laborers.

Cecile couldn’t help comparing this congregation to the Salpêtrière Orphanage in Paris, with its domed chapel, stone courtyard, and four floors of cloistered lodgings, where she’d been raised.

Rough and small, this convent, but certainly the kindly Reverend Mother could arrange for a seat in a monastery school for Etienne, and, for a widow like herself, protection from the world.

As well as the law.

She approached a bench set against the convent wall and gestured to it. “Here we are. Have a seat, both of you.”

Etienne shrugged out of her grip and threw himself onto the bench. The laborer sat with more dignity. Cecile hadn’t so forgotten her upbringing that she would ignore the proprieties, so she summoned the courage to look the rugged stranger in the face—but not any higher than his bristled chin.

“Sir.” Breath gathered in her chest. “I have been negligent in thanking you for saving this disobedient boy from terrible harm.”

“He would have stepped away in time.” The man shrugged, his rumbling voice rising from that tremendous chest as if from an abyss. “Boys move quickly at that age.”

“When they’re paying attention, perhaps.

” She glanced at a slouching Etienne, partly to remove the muscle-bound man from her sight, and partly to pin the boy with her displeasure.

“This young man was too intent on assaulting people with questions to realize a boulder was soon to fall on his head. Do you have nothing to say to the man who saved your life, Etienne?”

Etienne frowned. A hank of dark hair fell over his brow to shield his eyes—yes, he knew he was wrong—but then, just as quickly, he straightened on his seat with a swagger. “Sir.” Etienne bowed toward his bench mate, adding with a voice full of drama, “I owe you my life.”

She opened her mouth to scold him for flippancy—a new quality since he’d recently turned fourteen, and not a good one—but before she could, the man grunted, “Nonsense.”

Nonsense? Saving a life was certainly not nonsense—she would have thrown herself under that stone. She gave the stranger a side look to see if his expression matched his humble tone, but now he was squinting toward the wooded horizon.

“The boy is safe,” he said with another shrug of those intimidating shoulders. “No need for thanks.”

“You’ve earned my gratitude whether you think it’s necessary or not.” She glared at Etienne, who was now grinning, oblivious to the fact that she’d nearly died herself, watching his bloody demise unfold before her eyes. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Madame Tremblay.”

The man’s head swiveled toward her—clearly surprised at the word Madame, she suspected, because it marked her as married.

Not that this man had shown even a glimmer of crude interest. So far, he’d been gentlemanly, polite.

But in a settlement where there were hundreds of frontiersmen for every one Frenchwoman, she opted to be forever wary.

“Theo,” the stranger said with a slight bow of his head. “Theo Martin.”

“Monsieur Martin, it’s our great fortune to have met you.

” Since the proprieties had been seen to, she switched to a safer, motherly tone of voice.

“The sisters live in this building, so no men are allowed inside, but I must fetch linens and water. I’ll return in a moment to tend to your wounds.

Don’t you dare move, Etienne, not an inch. ”

Passing by the seated Theo Martin, she breathed in the scent of stone dust and pine sap rising from him before darting through the door into the safety of the convent. Inside the dim vestibule—alone at last—she collapsed against the door and slid down to a crouch.

Squeezing her arms around her midriff, gripped by nausea, she succumbed to all the banked feelings.

Reliving the sight of Etienne almost dying made sweat burst upon her brow and her body tremble.

She flung her arms around her knees and drew them in so she wouldn’t shatter into a thousand pieces.

Up came all the old fears, too, the nightmare terrors, the seared-in memory of belt-snaps that made her flinch even now.

Sister Anne suddenly swept into the vestibule. “Ah, Madame Tremblay, you’re back. By the saints! Are you sick?”

“No, no.” Cecile released her grip on her knees, forced her back straight, and shoved herself upright on numb, shaking legs. “I…I just stepped outside for a moment. I…I witnessed an accident at the building site.”

“Another?” The sister clattered the rosary beads in her hand. “That would be six times this week. What happened?”

“A stone fell from on high.” She shouldn’t mention Etienne—lest he be blamed—and also because that might affect her plans. “A man swept in to save the…the boy beneath.”

“Heaven’s gates. Thank God for that brave man. How bad are the injuries?”

“Just scratches, I think.” Breathing deeply, she willed herself to focus on what needed to be done. “Would you have some clean linens, Sister Anne? Fresh water? Perhaps some ointment?”

“Yes, yes, we’ve stocked up on such things since the building began.” With a flurry, the sister slipped back into the main schoolroom, saying over her shoulder, “Much obliged, Madame Tremblay, for seeing to the wounded. I dare not send one of our young novices to those wolves.”

By the time the nun returned with a bowl, salve, and linens, Cecile had deep-breathed herself to a hard-earned, somewhat steady calm. She stepped outside to the sight of Etienne shooting question after question at Theo Martin.

“I apologize, sir.” She passed by the laborer and sank onto the bench on the far side of Etienne. “Etienne has many good qualities, but he can be impertinent in his curiosity.”

Etienne’s jaw took on a defiant cast. “Mr. Martin was telling me about the different kinds of stone. He’s a mason.”

Inwardly, she started. That had to be a lie.

Masonry was a rare skill in these settlements—anyone who had even an hour of experience would find himself much in demand.

If this Theo Martin was a mason, he’d be working as one in Montreal or Quebec and wearing better clothes.

Like breeches that weren’t strained to bursting around those massive thighs.

“I used to be a mason,” the man corrected in a low, reluctant tone. “But that was a long time ago.”

None of this was her business, so she wet a linen and said, “Lift your arm, Etienne.”

“But once you’re a mason,” Etienne ventured, exposing the scratches that she set to swabbing, “aren’t you a stonemason for life?”

The man paused. Cecile didn’t have to look his way to sense his discomfort.

Etienne, oblivious of the thickening atmosphere, forged ahead, turning to speak to her. “Monsieur Martin was apprenticed at my age. Maybe I can be apprenticed as a mason, too? Then I could work here, at the chapel building site. What do you think?”

She ducked her head, seeking bloody rips in the back of Etienne’s dust-smeared shirt as her heart squeezed.

Since she and Etienne had been evicted from their home in Trois-Rivières, Etienne had come up with a dozen ways he could hire himself out.

He stated that he was old enough to work and could support them both with his wages.

She hated the truth in his words, as well as the idea of Etienne doing hard labor.

Despite the thin mustache growing over that mole above his mouth, he would always be a boy in her eyes.

A brilliant boy who deserved the education that had formerly—unfairly—been denied to him.

“Don’t fuss with the bindings.” She ignored Etienne’s question as she finished wrapping his forearm. “I’ll check it later.”

Etienne sat up straight. “When we get back to Captain Girard’s house?”

She frowned at his hopeful gleefulness. Etienne didn’t like her plan to come here and ask favors of Mother Superior.

He had begged to stay at the Girards’ seigneurie with its endless woods and the captain he worshipped.

But that place had been a temporary refuge—they wouldn’t be safe there indefinitely.

Sighing, she stood up and set the bowl of water against her hip. “I still have to talk to Mother Superior, Etienne. You know this is for the best.”

Stepping around him, she approached the so-called mason, sprawled with his eyes closed against the wall of the schoolhouse.

Swallowing down nerves, she told herself this stranger couldn’t hurt her, not out in the open like this.

But, truly, when would her bones stop rattling at the very hint of a threat?

This man was a fearsome sight, with blood caked on his temple and jaw, dampened by beads of sweat.

The folds of his shirt molded against his rippling abdomen, and his strong legs went on forever.

Despite his assertion of being a mason, he was likely a simple laborer.

Though not many laborers had board-straight shoulders like this.

Most were bowed and broken by tough work, like felling trees or hauling stumps out of the ground.

And his teeth were strong, white, and well cared for—which she noticed as he suddenly smiled.

“The blood there,” she blurted, gesturing to his shirt as if it were the blood she’d been staring at. “Is it all from your head wound? I don’t see any wounds anywhere else.”

“Don’t know.”

His eyes slitted against the sun. He pushed himself up straighter within her shadow, probing the wound on his temple with dirty fingers.

“Stop.” She slapped his hand away. Her palm stung. So did her audacity. “You’ll—you’ll only make it worse.”

In her shadow, his eyes lost their squint. Green eyes, she noticed. Or gray. A color like the edge of thick glass.

Get hold of yourself. Water sloshed out of the bowl at her hip as she startled. Don’t be a coward.

“Keep your head down, sir.” She planted the bowl of water on the bench and pushed his thick, dark hair off his brow less gently than she ought to. The smell of crushed pine needles and something metallic rose up from his body. “Stay still while I clean this.”

Despite her orders, he leaned back a fraction to catch Etienne’s eye. “Bossy, isn’t she?”

Etienne barked a laugh. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Not bossy enough.” Her voice went shrewish, and she didn’t care. “Perhaps, if I were firmer in my discipline, I wouldn’t be here tending to both of your wounds.”

Etienne made a sound in the back of his throat. “I said I was sorry. I shouldn’t have gone over there.”

“I hope, the next time,” she said, dipping a linen in the water, “you will consider how sorry I would be if something were to happen to you, Etienne.”

The man flinched under her touch. She pulled her hand away from where she was swiping, but he didn’t appear to be in pain—just annoyed.

“Etienne,” he said, in a low voice. “Listen to her. She’s right. It’s clear your sister loves you.”

“Sister?” Etienne hooted. “I have no sister. She’s my mother.”