Marc had no reply because, as he had confessed to James Durfee, only his being shot had forestalled his having to make the decision to obey or ignore those orders. He did not know, then or now, what he would have done if Sergeant Ogletree had raised the torch and prepared to burn down that cabin.
“Hear me out on this, Marc. Please. You are still a long way from recovery from your injuries and subsequent illness. Decisions made immediately after a battle or the trauma of a wound are rarely sound ones. I am ordering you to take at least another month’s leave before returning to active duty. Get yourself married. Invite me to the wedding. Discuss your future with Beth and with an old hand like Major Jenkin, who will be back here in a week. Then come and see me, and we’ll have this talk again.”
“You are very kind, sir.”
“And should you then choose to leave, I can arrange for you to be invalided out at half pay.”
“No, sir. That’s generous of you-considering the bit of a limp I have-but I would feel right about it only if I were simply to resign my commission. I have recently come into some money, so I don’t really need a pension.”
“Having money doesn’t mean you have to give it away,” the colonel said with a wry smile.
“But I feel I must do the honourable thing.”
“Why does that not surprise me?” The colonel rose and shook Marc’s hand.
At the door he smiled and said, “And try to stay out of alleys, Lieutenant.”
The sun was just going down as Marc approached the western outskirts of the city. A garish vermilion light was washing across the wind-sculpted drifts that rolled pleasingly down to the lakeshore. Marc had the sensation of gliding weightless in a benign dream: for a few blissful moments he was without thought of any kind.
Then the cutter hit a rut, and Marc had to pull the horse sharply to the left to avoid tipping over. It was this sudden movement that allowed him to spot the rumpled outline of something in the snow beside the path, nearly obscured by a pair of drifts hemming it in. Marc stopped the cutter, got out, and walked back a few yards.
At first he thought it might be a dead deer, trapped in the snow and starving. A brief afternoon flurry had obscured the edges of whatever it was, leaving only the brown oblong of an animal’s belly-or was it a cloth coat? He hurried up to it and began brushing the loose snow away. Animal or human, it was not moving. He ran his ungloved fingers across the exposed surface. It was cloth. Someone had crawled under a large woollen overcoat, or been left there. With a single thrust Marc pulled the coat up and tossed it aside. Below, encased in snow except where the coat had provided cover, lay a tiny human figure in homespun trousers, macintosh, and tuque, curled or clenched in the fetal position.
Gently, Marc rolled the body face up. It was a young woman. Her eyes were closed, and the skin on her cheeks cold. Marc placed two fingers to her throat. Nothing. He tried another spot and found a faint pulse. She was alive, barely.
To her credit the Widow Standish, as curious as any cat, asked no questions when Marc carried the half-frozen body of a young woman into her parlour and begged her to do whatever she could for her while he went in search of a doctor. However, by the time Dr. Angus Withers arrived an hour later, there was nothing for him to diagnose or treat. A series of increasingly warm baths had revived the patient and restored a healthy heartbeat. She had even taken a few tablespoons of chicken broth before falling into a recuperative sleep on the sofa near the fireplace in the parlour. Miraculously, the only frostbite was on each of her exposed cheeks and the tip of her nose. A pair of mukluks, fur mittens, and the tuque had protected the other extremities. Maisie had already administered the appropriate ointment.
“I don’t think she could have been in that snowbank for more than three or four hours,” the doctor opined at the door. “But contrary to popular opinion, snow can be a kind of insulation. They tell me the Esquimaux live comfortably in snow-houses.”
Marc thanked Angus and went into the living-room. There was something familiar about the woman, and he wanted to be present when she woke up. “I’ll keep watch, Mrs. Standish. You and Maisie have had enough nursing for one day.”
“Very well, sir,” the widow replied, not quite sure if she ought to leave a man as handsome as Marc alone in a room with a female creature of unknown pedigree. But her reverence for the tunic won out. “Maisie and me’ll just be next door.”
“She’ll need to be moved to one of your guest-rooms, ma’am. I’ll pay for her board.”
“You’re the only guest we got at the moment. There’s plenty of space.”
“Thank you. By the way, did she say anything to you while you were helping bring her back?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Mind you, her voice was pretty weak, but she did talk.”
“And?”
“We didn’t catch a word of it. It was pure gibberish!”
Marc had dozed off. Supper had come and gone, and still the stranger slept, breathing deeply, her youthful body very much concerned to restore itself whatever the rest of her might wish. Mrs. Standish and Maisie had gone to bed. When Marc awoke from his pleasant cat-nap, the clock in the corner said 9:35. The fire had died down, but its embers still radiated a glowing heat. Three candle-lamps provided ample illumination. Marc pulled his chair up beside the sofa and examined the countenance of the sleeper.
She had thick black hair that, when fluffed out, would cascade in waves about her diminutive, heart-shaped face and caress her shoulders. Her facial features were similarly tiny, but beautifully proportioned. Even with the paleness that must have been the consequence of her brush with death, her complexion was dark. Her eyes, when they chose to reveal themselves, would be dark as well.
What on earth had she been doing out there at the edge of town? Had he passed her unknowingly on his way out to the fort? From her clothing, now tucked safely away, it was clear she was not impoverished. Two shillings had been discovered in her coat pocket. She was well fed and healthy looking: a young female in her prime. Yet she had not accidentally tumbled into those drifts. Her coat had been deliberately removed-by her or someone else-and she had curled herself up under it. To rest? Or to die?
Without warning the eyelids fluttered up, and a pair of black eyes peeped out-surprised, puzzled, wary-but very much alive. Marc stared. The eyes he was scrutinizing, and beginning to recognize, likewise began to focus in on the face before them.
“Isabelle LaCroix, n’est-ce pas?” he asked, hoping that his English-accented continental French would be understood.
Fear and astonishment contended in the look she gave him. “How do you know my name?” she asked in her own joual.
“Now we know each other’s name. It’s time, don’t you think?”
She hardly dared to take her gaze off him, but did manage to glance about once or twice. “How did I get in this place?”
“I found you in a snowbank.”
Tears overwhelmed her for several minutes. Marc offered her his handkerchief, which she refused with a curt nod. “What right had you to save me from what I wished to do?”
“I had no idea who you were when I put you into my sleigh and brought you here to my landlady’s house. It was Mrs. Standish and Maisie who brought you back to the living, not me.”
She looked down at Maisie’s flowered bathrobe. “I have no need to live.”
“I thought it was God’s prerogative to decide that sort of thing.”
She peered up through her tear-filled eyes and said, coldly, “There is no God.”
“I’ll make us some tea,” Marc said, starting to get up.