I lay sleepless as the voyageurs exhausted the rum and collapsed, and then there was a crunch of gravel by my makeshift garret and I saw a boot. Sir Cecil bent down to look at me under the rim of the boat.
‘Lord Somerset.’ I was afraid he was going to warn me off.
‘Mr Gage.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We’re a small group, and I heard of your disappointment. My cousin is moody, like all women. She breaks hearts like crockery and thinks little of it. Don’t be too sensitive.’
‘We’re going shooting tomorrow, while the party rests.’
‘You’ll find her a crack shot. And tameable, if you meet her halfway.’
‘Then you’re not opposed to our friendship?’
‘I’m not opposed to our partnership.’
The gravel crunched as he walked away and I realised he’d included himself in any union. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered why Cecil Somerset cared at all about his cousin’s romance with a wastrel like me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
While the voyageurs slept off their shrub, Aurora prodded me awake at dawn. She was dressed in boots, breeches, and a sky-blue, short-tailed hunting coat. Her luxuriant hair had been tied back and her hands were sheathed in doeskin gloves. ‘Let’s try this rifle of yours!’ she said, brisk as a chipmunk.
I groaned to myself, having not had enough sleep, but sprang up like a toy on a spring, my groggy instinct to impress her. Perhaps the chipmunk’s brain was mine.
Far from being the prim and helpless female she posed when whim took her, Aurora soon had me trailing and panting as she led the way up a granite ridge, Lake Superior a blue ocean below. Her slim legs were spry as a deer, and she had a good eye for the best path and signs of game. I didn’t mind following, having plenty of time to get a good eyeful, but it was clear that Lady Somerset’s comfort in the wilderness was not entirely due to parasols and trunks of clothes. Every time I tried to woo her with some witty or soulful remark she silenced me with a hand and stern look, pointing as if dinner were certain to appear. And sure enough, we did manage to sneak up on a yearling buck. She took my longrifle and felled it at seventy-five yards with a single shot through the neck, sighting and squeezing like a marksman and displaying no difficulty holding the heavy weapon steady or absorbing its kick.
‘Splendid shot!’
‘Your gun shoots slightly high and to the left.’
She gutted the deer with her own ivory-handled knife, giving me pause at her efficiency in slitting around the testicles. Then she sliced off its head and heaved up the haunch to place it on my shoulders. ‘This is too heavy for me.’ Back down the mountain she led.
My regal, delicate woman had been replaced overnight with a regular Boone, independent and laconic, and I realised that despite the delectability of her slim form, I didn’t much care for this new guise. It’s odd how one falls under a spell, and odder still when one begins to wake from it. I finally realised how little I understood her, or our relationship. I had not seduced but instead been seduced, and not by an English lady but by some kind of huntress – as dangerous, possibly, as Magnus had warned. I remembered his tales of Loki, the Norse trickster god, who could assume many shapes and eventually triggered Ragnarok, the end of the world.
But then we did stop at a stream to rest and cool our feet. Hers, when I offered to massage them – a tactic that seems to work with all manner of women – were indeed more callused than I expected, or remembered. Nor did she swoon at my touch.
‘I’m beginning to suspect that you’re more at home in the wilderness than I imagined.’
‘Really?’ Her eyes were half-lidded as she leant back, regarding me. ‘I’ve learnt some things in travels with my cousin. And Cecil and my father taught me to shoot in England. It’s ever so satisfying to kill things, don’t you think?’
‘Your skill at shooting makes us even greater soul mates than I’d guessed,’ I tried. ‘We have the camaraderie not just of the bed but of the target.’
‘We’re simply having some sport, Mr Gage.’
‘There are sports other than shooting we could still teach each other, I’m sure.’ I do have a dogged persistence.
‘Like why a French spy and a Norwegian revolutionary want to go into fur country?’
‘I’m no spy.’
‘You keep secrets like one. You come from Bonaparte, Astor, and Jefferson.’
‘I’m simply scouting Louisiana, as I told you. For elephants.’
‘No. Bloodhammer is after more. It’s obvious that the pair of you have a wicked secret, and I’m beginning to suspect even you don’t fully know what it is. You follow anyone with a strong will, and he’s playing you.’ She drew her feet back and put on her boots. ‘We could help if you’d let us, but it seems you enjoy blind conspiracy. No matter. Everything will come out at Grand Portage.’
I was annoyed by her scorn. ‘So let’s enjoy our companionship now.’
She sprang up. ‘I gave you a sample, but I form relationships only with men I trust.’ And taking my rifle in her own fist, she started down again.
I wearily stood, shouldering the meat and suddenly not liking the way she held my rifle so tightly and not me. I thought she had the politeness to wait on an outcrop, but instead she was paying me no attention, instead looking intently down at the bay below.
‘They’ve come,’ she said.
A canoe was making for shore, its wake a widening V of silver. Indians were the paddlers, but the central figure wore the red coat of a British soldier. Voyageurs waded out to pull it to shore and the occupants leapt out and disappeared into the trees.
‘Who’s come?’
‘Cecil’s guide.’
It took us an hour to work down the ridge towards the plume of smoke that marked camp, and when we were a few hundred yards from our destination we came across the small pond that changed everything. It was a low wetland at the base of the hill fringed by reeds and surrounded by trees, quiet and wind-protected, and the day had warmed enough that bathing would be pleasant. We heard a splash, and realised someone was in the water.
There was feminine laughter.
Two women were swimming, their hair fanned behind them like a beaver’s tail. I realised they must have come from the visiting canoe. Aurora, stiffening, was as curious as I was. We stood hidden in the trees, watching them stroke. All Indians I’ve seen are good swimmers, and these were no exception. One of the women finally waded up out of the water to stand in the shallows, droplets sparkling on her bronze skin, and I audibly drew in my breath despite myself.
Aurora looked at me with wry amusement.
The Indian woman was young and very pretty, her breasts smaller than those of Lady Somerset but no less attractive for that, and her legs and buttocks smooth and supple. The water was to her knees, and somehow she sensed us and turned, seeming no more ashamed of her nakedness than a fawn, but curious, alert, her nipples brown in the sun and the patch between her thighs wet and gleaming. She was lighter-skinned than I expected an Indian woman to be, and her hair was not the normal jet black but instead a dark copper. The nymph looked across to where we were standing, even though I was certain we were well screened, and peered, wary but curious.
‘Why is she not darker?’
‘It’s not unknown,’ Aurora said. ‘Maybe she’s a half-breed, or a white captive. Come.’ When she moved the Indian woman suddenly sprang and ducked amid the reeds, instantly hiding like a wild thing.