Page 37 of The Autumn Wife (King’s Girls #3)
As the meal went on, sunlight poured bright streaks across the grassy field in front of Marie’s stone cabin.
The air took on a chill, the talk became softer, the sunlight more mellow, and the looks Theo cast down the long table brimmed with the kind of hungry expectation she’d thought she would see directed only at more fortunate women—and never experience herself.
More guests, welcomed by Marie, came out of the woods.
Out of their rough-woven bags emerged musical instruments, some homemade, others gleaming with lacquer that could only have been brought from overseas.
Soon, they filled the clearing with music, melodies of another world, another time, a beautiful idyllic place.
She listened, her heart buoyed by the harmony within and without.
“Ceci.”
She turned to find Theo half bowed beside her, holding out his hand, whispering, “Dance with me.”
They whirled in circles toward an open space by the musicians. They spun about in rhythm to the ancient melodies, the dappled light fluttering over them.
The future vibrated between them, blasting away all the horrors of the past, melting away the last of the old terrors.
They might have danced for a moment, or an hour, she didn’t keep track. At one point, the musicians paused, and, with a man whispering one, two, three, they played a new song, with wild vigor, a reel that gathered the whole company, whooping and clapping and spinning.
The first stars winked over the trees when Cecile finally stopped to catch her breath. Theo drew her away, teasing intent bright in his eyes. They’d made it halfway to the barn when Marie stepped in front of them.
“Not yet.” She seized Cecile’s arm and pulled her away. “You go on ahead to the barn, Theo. Cecile needs a moment with her friends.”
Theo released her with exaggerated reluctance—and also a gleam of humor.
After all, they had forever.
“I promise,” Marie whispered as she dragged Cecile toward the main cabin, “I won’t detain you for long—and you’ll thank me, after.”
Inside the cabin, Marie led her to the bedroom where Genny, sprawled cross-legged on Marie’s bed, jumped to her feet. Marie shut the door.
Cecile realized all at once that the three of them were alone together for the very first time ever.
Cecile looked at each of them, eyes narrowing. “What mischief is this?”
“No mischief.” Marie grinned. “It’s our job to make you presentable for your wedding night.”
“Oh.” Cecile drew in her shoulders as a wave of wanting rushed over her, tingling everything between her scalp and toes. “I thought all I had to do was take off my clothes.”
Marie laughed. “Genny will help you with that.”
“I can’t do that.” Genny waved up and down the satin brocade dress Cecile wore. “It’s been ages since I’ve dressed in anything but deerskin. I’ll be useless with all those hooks and eyes and ties and grommets and ribbons—”
“Brush her hair out, then.” Marie seized a horsehair brush from the bedside table and held it out to the redhead. “I’ll get these clothes off her.”
“Honestly.” Cecile raised her arms, giving in to her friends with a smile. “I’m quite sure Theo knows how to undress me.”
“He’ll tear this pretty dress.” Genny came up behind her and tugged out the pins in the roll Marie had so carefully set. “Marie and I have seen how that man looks at you. That satin wouldn’t make it out of the barn intact.”
Cecile’s imagination bounded ahead of her. She had to bite her lower lip not to make a squealing noise.
“Better to wear that instead.” Marie jerked her head toward the bed where a cloudy swath of translucent fabric pooled on the furs “Theo is welcome to tear that to his heart’s content.”
The women laughed, and Cecile couldn’t help but laugh along with them.
“I apologize for not arranging better wedding-night accommodations,” Marie said while making quick work of Cecile’s bodice laces. “The barn is the best I could do on such short—”
“The barn,” Cecile said, unable to hold back a smile, “is perfect.”
“I thought it might be, you naughty girl. I’ve decorated it a bit, though it wasn’t easy to make it look romantic.”
“Marie, look,” Genny said, poking her head around to pinch Cecile’s cheek. “She’s blushing.”
Marie grinned. “Excellent.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever blushed in front of André.” Genny returned to tugging the brush through Cecile’s unbound hair. “If I was pink-cheeked, it was always because we’d just had a good romp.”
Cecile blurted, “Genny!”
“Come now, you’re a bride, not an innocent.” Marie tossed Cecile’s bodice toward a chair, leaving her in her shift and skirts. “None of us is a young girl anymore. My first night as a wife was certainly not my first night with Lucas. Oh, how I remember that first night—”
“For me, it was daytime.” Genny waggled her brows. “In the middle of the woods.”
Hilarity gripped Cecile. Her friends laughed along, and for one, shimmering moment, Cecile felt like a girl again, back at the Salpêtrière Orphanage, bouncing on a hay mattress, bare-legged and giddy, sharing secrets with Marie in the dim light of their dormitory, conspiring mischief in whispers with Genny.
To think the three of them hadn’t known how strange—and how beautiful—their futures would be.
Cecile grasped Marie’s forearm for balance as she stepped out of the skirts. “I’m so grateful for everything you both did today. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You’ve already thanked me.” Marie’s eyes danced. “For agreeing to take up Lucas’s offer and stay for the winter.”
“That’s your gift to me,” Cecile said. “How could we say no?”
“Good.” Marie’s gaze flashed toward Genny. “Genny is staying, too, at least until spring.”
“What?” Cecile gaped at the redhead. “But shouldn’t you and André go back west?”
“Once the ice closes in, we’ll be safe here.
Plus, there’s a complication.” Genny wrinkled her nose.
“I’ve been having a powerful yearning for gooseberry jam, and, well…
” Genny slid her hand over her belly “I’ve already eaten through two jars of Marie’s best. This baby will be born in early spring. ”
Squeals, and jumping, and then Marie scolding Genny for jumping, and then Genny laughing with her mouth open and swinging Marie around. They paused only to yank off Cecile’s old shift and wrestle the gossamer one over her head, giggling all the while.
Cecile wondered how she’d come to deserve all this happiness.
“A winter together.” Cecile clasped both women’s hands. “All three of us. That’s the best wedding gift ever.”
Footsteps came from the parlor, and after a light knock, the door swung open. Marietta poked her head around the edge, eyes widening at Cecile. “Oh, my. You look breathtaking.”
“I look naked,” Cecile corrected, glancing down to see that the firelight shone through the fabric.
Marie snorted. “Theo will be thanking us for that.”
“He’s waiting for you.” Etta slipped in to close the door behind her. “Impatiently, according to my husband.”
Cecile tugged at the delicate fabric. “I can’t walk outside like this.”
“Borrow my cloak.” Etta pulled the tie at her throat, gathered the blue wool, and handed it to her. “If you leave right now, while everyone is dancing a reel, no one will notice you crossing to the barn.”
Cecile swung the cloak around her shoulders and pulled the warm edges close. Marie tugged the hood over her head. Genny brushed some lint off the fabric. Their eyes had gone suspiciously wet.
“I think”—Cecile’s face hurt from smiling—“I’m ready now.”
Etta pulled the bedroom door open. Blowing kisses to her friends, Cecile swept through and pulled open the outside door to a blast of cool air and music. She ran across the porch in the darkness. Golden light winked through the cracks in the caulking of the barn.
She used that light as a compass as she raced, hurling herself toward Theo, and a bright and loving future.
THE END
Thank you so much for joining Cecile and Theo on their journey to love! I hope THE AUTUMN WIFE gifted you hours of joyful distraction. Interested in another King's Girls romance? Check out Philippe and Marietta's story in A Husband By Christmas, excerpt ahead!
CHAPTER ONE
The Settlement of Quebec, 1663
Such a swarm of handsome, eligible men.
Marietta, made dizzy by all the muscular activity around her, was grateful she sat, not stood, in the bluish shade cast by a snow-laden fir tree.
The thick woolen blanket she sat upon couldn’t quite stave off the chill from the frozen ground, though.
With her gloved hands busy in her lap, she crafted long, resin-fragrant garlands as decorations for Christmas while keeping a sharp eye on the bachelors.
She’d tasked them to clip short sprigs of fir, and they’d been happy to accommodate her wishes and those of her three female companions.
Amid all too many grins and winks and banter, the gentlemen had thrown themselves into the task with more gusto than necessary, flirting madly as they tossed the fragrant, ice-speckled ends in a growing pile.
“Gentlemen,” she said, raising her voice as if she were addressing unruly children, “I believe you’ve cut enough fir sprigs for us. Now would you be so kind as to fetch us some cuttings of that feathery white pine over there, the one with the long, softer needles?”
Casting glances toward the other tree, a good distance away, the men didn’t look keen to comply, but Marietta didn’t allow her smile to waver.
As much as she enjoyed their lively company—and so did her friends, judging by the way the younger girls sitting around her giggled and flushed a pink attributable to much more than the Quebec chill—she herself could use a respite from the whirlwind activity and ceaseless flattery of the men.
Ever since September, when she and these girls—as well as nearly a dozen other women not currently present—had arrived by ship to these shores, they had all been the singular object of unwavering attention from the settlement men.
Very few Frenchwomen lived in this small, rough place, and so hordes of bachelors frequently came to gawk…
and to court. She and the other unmarried women were the very first batch of what the government was calling King’s Daughters, though they preferred to call themselves King’s Girls, sent to this wilderness for the express purpose of marriage.
Nearly a dozen of her fellow King’s Girls had married already. Only the four of them here remained.
Marietta had decided long ago, that in terms of weddings, hers would be the last.
“Come now, sirs.” She stroked the prickly bough on her lap, and then gestured to the half-finished bough on the lap of the woman beside her.
All of them had been working steadily since they’d marched through the snowy field to the edge of these impenetrable woods, but there was still much to do.
“The cold is beginning to bite, and these Christmas boughs must be ready by tomorrow at midnight.”
“Very well.” The man who conceded was the eldest among the bunch, and thus the wisest, Marietta supposed. “Come on, men,” he urged. “The last to reach that pine will be the last to return as well.”
And then the men were off, racing one another, which birthed a fresh surge of giggles from the girls.
Marietta frowned at the men’s retreating backs, and then at the gigglers around her.
She hadn’t planned for such high spirits today.
It had been Marietta’s own idea to usher the remaining girls out of Madame Bourdon’s stiflingly hot kitchen this morning, for it was crowded with cooks, and Madame Bourdon, her gentle host, seemed at her wit’s end getting ready for the Christmas festivities.
But Marietta hadn’t anticipated the crowd of suitors hovering outside the house.
She’d assumed the biting December cold would prevent them from gathering, but the men of Quebec were hardened to the freezing weather.
And so what was supposed to be a quick trip to the nearby woods to collect some greenery had transformed into a courtship party, complete with brawny men wielding knives with dangerous inattention, risking their own fingers as they cut sprigs, much more intent on flirting and flattery than finesse.
Such a strange situation she’d put herself in when, back in Paris, she’d thrown in her lot with the King’s Girls.
Fumbling in her borrowed fishermen’s gloves, Marietta wound some twine tight around a bundle of stems, casting occasional glances toward the far pine.
The manly crowd turned out to be the usual motley group of bachelors, whittled down over the last few months as the unmarried men of Quebec and the maidens from France paired off.
She recognized a few government clerks, who, lacking knives, acted as porters, risking the sap that would ruin their coats and vests for a chance to take part in the merry event, even in so menial a way as carrying sprigs.
She’d come to know one of the older men, who owned a warehouse in the lower town, where he made a good living storing trade goods and furs in anticipation of the spring ships.
She was also familiar with a few tradesmen, a cooper, and a flushed-faced tavern keeper.
There was only one man among this group whose acquaintance she hadn’t yet made.
A silent, rough-looking woodsman in fringed deerskin breeches, who stood out to her only because she knew most of his footloose kind had disappeared into the wilderness long before the onset of winter.
She looked away from him. She’d been in this settlement for only a few months, but it was long enough to learn that woods runners were a dangerously unreliable breed of man.
She would keep that bachelor away from the girls…and herself…
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