Shadowbrook by Beverly Swerling Page A

the Miami and the Mascoutin and the Huron are concerned, it’s their land. As for this bit here, Ohio Country’s as good a term as any. Which are you, by the way, French or English?”
    “By birth I am both, monsieur. My father was English and my mother French. But my heart is not divided. It is entirely French.”
    The amount of pride in her voice made him smile.
    “You are laughing at me!”
    “Never.”
    She didn’t look convinced. “I am entirely serious, monsieur. You cannot—”
    “Hale. Or Quent, if you prefer. Not ‘monsieur.’ ”
    “Very well, Monsieur Hale then.” Nicole tried to make for the shore, but stumbled after the first step and again fell to her knees.
    This time Quent took pity on her and picked her up. “This streambed is treacherous, and you’re not properly shod to navigate it. Besides, if you’re going to bathe in the stream like an Indian, you should take all your clothes off to do it.”
    “Bathing in open water is unhealthy,” she protested. “Everyone knows it.” And when he’d dropped her on the grassy bank, “What is properly shod?”
    “These.” Quent held up his leg. His wet moccasin, ankle high and fastened with supple leather thongs, had molded itself to his foot. “They’re what the Indians wear. Much better than boots in the forest. Boots”—he nodded toward hers, black leather and tightly laced to a few inches above her ankle—“have hard soles that slip and slide. The Indians make moccasin leather so it stays soft—it protects your flesh, but lets you move as if you were barefoot. You can feel the earth.”
    “Barefoot,” Nicole said softly, “is a good thing. It’s what I want to be.”
    Quent had no chance to ask why. Cormac had kindled a small fire. “Come over and get dry. This and the sun will do the job in no time.”
    Quent’s legs and his moccasins dried quickly, as did Nicole’s skirts. But her hard leather boots remained damp, and the top half of her was soaked through. Her nipples showed against the snug bodice of her dress. Both men tried to avoid staring at them.
    “What’s it to be?” Cormac turned to Quent. “What direction are you taking when we leave here?”
    “My uncle Caleb, you’re sure he said my father would die soon?”
    “Ahaw.”
Yes. “He said it was dropsy. A few more months. Maybe less. I heard him myself.”
    Quent hesitated. He sensed no hostile force in the immediate vicinity, and even if there were, Cormac Shea would be a match for it. Corm was as good a woodsman as was ever born, and in a fight he had no equal, except maybe Quent himself. Corm and the girl didn’t need him. But his mother had asked him to come. And Shadowbrook. God yes, that was the real truth of it. Shadowbrook calling him home. “I’m heading north with you,
nekané.”
    “My spirit is pleased,” Cormac said softly in Potawatomi.

Chapter Four
    SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1754
QUÉBEC, NEW FRANCE
    IN NEW FRANCE, the Delegate of the Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor lived hard by the river in Québec’s Lower Town, in a two-room stone hut that was little more than a hovel. The larger of his rooms was square, with one tiny window and a ceiling of rough beams darkened by countless fires, furnished with a single battered table and two straight chairs; it served Père Antoine for every purpose except sleep and worship. The other room he called his cell. It had a few straw-covered planks that did for a bed, and enough floor space so he could kneel and pray or take the discipline. It was wide enough so he could stretch out his arms in the cross prayer and not be able to touch either wall. To say Holy Mass or recite the Office in the presence of the Holy Sacrament he had to go into the street, walk a short distance, and enter the public side of the tiny chapel of the Poor Clare nuns.
    However dreary his house might be, the surroundings did not diminish the force of the priest’s personality. Hunched over, using the light of the only candle