Page 29 of The Autumn Wife (King’s Girls #3)

The sky was as blue as a marsh violet.

After Etienne left the cabin to hunt in the north pasture for small game, Cecile strode east into the woods, hoping to find some early-ripening berries or mushrooms. With a basket in the crook of her elbow and a flintlock slung across her back, she’d followed the banks of a tributary of the Saint Maurice River that spilled into the island-strewn headlands of the greater Saint Lawrence.

The canopy of pine boughs cast a cool shade against a blazing sun that melted pine resin into a perfume that clouded the air.

Under her feet, the ground sank spongy after a week of rain, which she hoped would encourage the sprouting of orange-capped spruce boletes or—Etienne’s favorites—chanterelles.

She would add them to the rabbit stew simmering over embers back in the cabin.

When the day’s work was done, she and Etienne would eat together, just the two of them.

Afterward, he would read aloud the stories of Gargantua and Pantagruel from the book Marie had lent her when they’d visited the Girards a few weeks ago.

Hearing a branch snap, she dropped her basket to the ground.

Slinging the flintlock into her hands, she swung toward the noise.

Bears and mountain lions and wolves roamed these woods, but what she glimpsed was a thousand times more dangerous.

A man, loping along the riverbank, his face covered to the eyes with a ratty, unkempt beard.

Recognition shot through her like a hot lead plug.

“Put that down, woman.” Her husband’s teeth flashed as he stopped, planting the butt of his own rifle on the carpet of pine needles. “Your man is home.”

His voice funneled ice down her spine. Just at the sight of him, she felt the rippled scars on her hip tighten.

Her right shoulder ached in remembrance of an old dislocation.

Pain throbbed in the divot at her temple, where he’d struck her with a pewter tankard.

The terrors seized her, silencing her tongue even as her mind screamed.

She knew, if she didn’t lower the flintlock quickly, his fury would flare.

She’d deceived herself, thinking him gone long enough that his absence might be forever.

“Stop gaping at me, woman.” Dropping his weapon by the riverbank, he took a swaggering step toward her. “A wife should strip off her clothes when her husband returns from trapping.”

The stench of alcohol preceded him, as if it coated his ropy forearms and sank into the stains of his fringed deerskin shirt.

Bile washed up her throat. She blinked once, hoping this was just a nightmare.

He’d been gone nearly eighteen months. She had determined—if he ever returned—never again to placate him, or speak softly, or do what he bade in order to survive.

Never again.

The flintlock lay heavy in her grip, but she steadied her aim.

He laughed. “Still think you’re too good for the likes of me, woman?” He jerked his chin to the woods beyond. “Go ahead. Run. You know I like a good chase.”

Her finger sought the trigger and she realized with a dip of her stomach that she hadn’t yet primed the flashpan with black powder.

Quick—she had to be quick.

Seizing the powder horn at her waist, she uncorked it with her teeth. By the time she tipped the mouth over the flashpan, Eduard had closed the distance between them, seized the barrel of the flintlock, tore it out of her hands, and threw a clenched fist that hit her square in the jaw.

Light exploded behind her eyes. She twisted as she fell, the ground jarring her hands and wrists. Her mouth filled with dirt. Dry pine needles pierced her arms. She spit out blood and watched it soak into mud.

A bark of a laugh exploded above her. “There’s the position a wife should be in when her husband comes home after a long journey.”

Ice shot through her, her skin chilled as if with a rime of frost. She dug her elbows into the dirt and struggled to scuttle away, but Eduard yanked her still by the ankles, before throwing wide her legs.

Stinking of bear grease, he pinned her down, grunting and cackling as he tossed up her skirts. Air bathed her backside, which he slapped. Fighting him would be futile, and screaming useless. A husband could do what he wished with his wife—no outsider would intervene.

She wouldn’t dare make any noise anyway, for the person most likely to hear her scream would be Etienne. She’d bite through her own lip before summoning him to witness another degradation.

She curled her fingers into the dirt, bracing herself for what was to come.

She heard him fumbling with his leather belt.

She told herself, I’m not really here. She mentally put herself in the window seat at the Salpêtrière Orphanage, reading Virgil by the light of the sun pouring through mullioned windows.

A blood-curdling shout cut through the wilderness, an echo to the unbroken scream in her head. She inhaled so sharply she sucked in a spray of dirt before coughing and spitting it out. Before the warrior cry ended, she heard a tremendous crack.

Eduard grunted, and then a great weight pinned her legs. She yanked her limbs from under his weight, shoving her skirts down as she twisted to see what had happened.

Her fiend of a husband lay across the ground, clutching the bloody back of his head. Over him stood Etienne, wielding a flintlock by the bore, the butt of the weapon dripping blood.

Oh, my poor boy.

He’d learned that war cry from the Montagnais chief who had camped nearby, a fatherly presence for Etienne that she’d welcomed in her husband’s absence.

Her son had never launched that cry with such feeling.

Now he stood heaving, the growing man in him come to the fore for the first time in her eyes.

“Why did you come back?” Etienne shouted over his prone father in a voice that didn’t crack. “No one wants you here.”

Eduard rolled over, clutching the back of his head. “You strike your own father, boy?”

“You’re no father to me.” Etienne raised the butt of the gun, threatening. “I’m not your son.”

She whispered Etienne’s name.

He looked at her, eyes wide, his fingers flexing over the flintlock. “I won’t let him hurt you anymore, Mother. I’m going to kill him this time.”

“No.” She struggled to a sitting position. “Don’t do it. Don’t become like him.”

How many times had she stepped between young Etienne and his father’s cruelty?

She’d always feared that growing up in a house of hate would twist her son’s spirit, harden his heart.

Now, witnessing Etienne’s untamed fury made her ache to the bone.

Yes, maybe Eduard deserved to die. But if Etienne were to kill his father, the boy’s soul would harden in ways she couldn’t heal.

Etienne grunted as Eduard launched a savage kick. Her boy buckled to his knees.

Ignoring a sharp pain in her wrist, she pushed herself up and lunged at Eduard. He shoved her away with enough force to send her sprawling. Scrabbling up against dizziness, she saw the two figures, alike except in height and coloring, facing each other in a crouch.

“The cub’s got claws.” A sneer curled Eduard’s lips as he raised his dirty fists. “Let’s see if he knows how to use them.”

No, no, don’t let him bait you.

But Etienne lunged. Father and son toppled to the ground. Man and boy rolled, grappling, fists flying, toward the riverbank.

Panicked, she looked around for any weapon—a rock, a sturdy stick—and caught sight of her own flintlock on the ground where Eduard had flung it.

She swept it up, noting it was already loaded but still not primed. She seized her powder horn and tapped the mouth against the flintlock pan until black powder spilled. No time to wipe it clean—Etienne grunted, and his mouth leaked blood.

She hefted her weapon, cocked it, and set the butt against the hollow of her shoulder.

“Hell, you’re nothing but a button buck, boy.” Eduard, sitting astride the boy, delivered a vicious blow and then shoved his face close to Etienne’s. “When you pull a gun on a man, you’d better squeeze the trigger.”

The weight of the situation fell upon her like a slung fisherman’s net.

She aimed for Eduard’s greasy head, but it was inches away from Etienne’s own.

She could aim for the gut, but even if she hit him there, Eduard wouldn’t go down fast. He’d have time to seize his own weapon and kill them both before she could clumsily reload.

No, the pellets in her flintlock had to pierce his head or his heart.

She aimed as if under the judgment of angels.

The birds stopped singing. Wind paused in the trees. The gun weighed a thousand pounds.

She tried to take a step closer to the target, but her feet went leaden. She watched as her husband stretched to retrieve his own discarded flintlock.

Etienne took advantage of the shift in Eduard’s weight to scrabble back on his elbows. He threw out a hand to seize his own weapon, lying close. A loaded weapon.

She didn’t doubt that Etienne, while screaming a war-whoop, had primed his flintlock at a full-tilt run as he’d been taught, her wonderful boy born of this wilderness.

All at once, her husband shot to his feet. Both man and boy raised their weapons.

In the span of a second, she realized this was no longer rough-housing, if it ever had been.

Eduard would not shoot wide—and neither would Etienne.

Her sight sharpened, finger tightening on the trigger with new urgency.

She would not permit Etienne to kill his own father.

Better to bear the blood guilt herself, even if she were to be hanged for it.

The flintlock boomed, shoved her back, and sent birds scattering from the trees.