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Sanctuary for a Lady
Naomi Rawlings
RESCUED BY THE ENEMY The injured young woman Michel Belanger finds in the woods is certainly an aristocrat. And in the midst of France’s bloody revolution, sheltering nobility merits a trip to the guillotine. Yet despite the risk, Michel knows he must bring the wounded girl to his cottage to heal. Attacked by soldiers and left for dead, Isabelle de La Rouchefoucauld has lost everything.A duke’s daughter cannot hope for mercy in France, so escaping to England is her best chance of survival. The only thing more dangerous than staying would be falling in love with this gruff yet tender man of the land. Even if she sees, for the first time, how truly noble a heart can be…


Rescued by the enemy
The injured young woman Michel Belanger finds in the woods is certainly an aristocrat. And in the midst of France’s bloody revolution, sheltering nobility merits a trip to the guillotine. Yet despite the risk, Michel knows he must bring the wounded girl to his cottage to heal.
Attacked by soldiers and left for dead, Isabelle de La Rouchecauld has lost everything. A duke’s daughter cannot hope for mercy in France, so escaping to England is her best chance of survival. The only thing more dangerous than staying would be falling in love with this gruff yet tender man of the land. Even if she sees, for the first time, how truly noble a heart can be....
“Stay.”
“What?” Isabelle asked, half-dazed by Michel’s touch.
“In Abbeville. Stay with me.” He took her hand and tangled their fingers together.
“Oh, Michel.” He didn’t understand the danger she brought him. He couldn’t, or he’d never have asked her to stay. “I can’t stay.”
“You can stay tomorrow. Promise me that. We’ll take things one day at a time.”
“I wasn’t going to leave tomorrow.”
“Then it will be an easy promise to make.”
It should be easy. It meant she gave up nothing. So why did she have such trouble forming the word? She closed her eyes again.
Warm lips touched her forehead, then her temple. “Yes,” he whispered, his breath tingling her ear.
“Yes.”
“For a week. Stay another week.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. She wanted this life so much, this man so much. “Yes.”
If only she could hold on to him forever.
NAOMI RAWLINGS
A mother of two young boys, Naomi Rawlings spends her days picking up, cleaning, playing and, of course, writing. Her husband pastors a small church in Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, where her family shares its ten wooded acres with black bears, wolves, coyotes, deer and bald eagles. Naomi and her family live only three miles from Lake Superior, and while the scenery is beautiful, the area averages 200 inches of snow per winter. Naomi writes bold, dramatic stories containing passionate words and powerful journeys. Sanctuary for a Lady is her debut novel, and if you enjoyed the novel, she would love to hear from you. You can write Naomi at P.O. Box 134, Ontonagon, MI 49953, or contact her via her website and blog at www.naomirawlings.com.

Sanctuary for a Lady
Naomi Rawlings


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.
—Colossians 3:13
Dedication:
To my husband, for believing in me and supporting me. May I show you the same type of support, encouragement and love you show me.
Acknowledgments:
I would like to thank my editor, Elizabeth Mazer, for yanking my manuscript out of the slush pile and seeing some potential. I also thank my agent, Natasha Kern, for believing in me as a new writer, taking time to teach me more about writing and publishing and not giving up on me despite all the mistakes I make. And finally I thank my critique partners, Melissa, Sally, Glenn and Anne, for trudging through this story with me.
Numerous others have helped with this novel, through giving advice, answering questions and reading portions of this story.
Thank you all for your time and efforts.
“The time has come which has been foretold, when the people would ask for bread and be given corpses.”
—Madame Roland, French aristocrat
Contents
Chapter One (#u29571cec-9776-5910-ab54-5175bda133d5)
Chapter Two (#ud5c340ea-7370-5fed-bd33-7d0735aa44c7)
Chapter Three (#uff3b72df-7a0d-5fa2-a1a6-203907d20e51)
Chapter Four (#u58ba675a-401f-55bc-9522-2c8262c4d492)
Chapter Five (#u6e91732b-8249-5ad0-9603-39c380b0ec7e)
Chapter Six (#u0373a899-b633-5d1f-bdc9-e1c32c3f1694)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Germinal, Year II (March 1794), Picardy, France
Silence surrounded her, an eerie music more haunting than that of any chamber players. It soaked into her pores and chilled her blood.
Isabelle surveyed the shadowed trees of northern France, so different from the wide fields she’d grown up with in Burgundy. The woods lay still, most animals caught in winter’s slumber. Her breathing and the crunch of her shoes against the road formed the only human sounds amid acres of forest and earth and animals—or the only human sounds of which she knew.
She clutched her cloak and glanced behind her. Did someone follow?
Her feet stumbled over the hard dirt road, her body trembled with cold, her gloved fingers stiffened until they nearly lost their grip on her valise and her vision blurred. Fatigue washed through her like waves lapping higher and higher on a shore. The long periods of dark through which she had traveled stretched into one another until the ninth night seemed no different from the first but for the growing blisters on her feet and cramps in her arms. One more day.
She was close, so terribly close. If she could just survive tonight, she’d nearly reach her destination.
A whisper. A crackle. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. Something’s out there.
A rustle in the bushes ahead.
Isabelle reached to her waist, clasped the handle of her dagger and unsheathed it.
Was it an animal? A person? Please, no, not a person.
The bushes rustled again.
Her hands slicked with sweat. Low to the ground, two reflective eyes appeared in the brush.
A wolf? She held its gaze, her heart pounding a savage cadence for each second the creature glared back. Fear licked its way into her chest. She sped her pace and clasped the dagger so tightly her fingers would surely leave imprints on the leather handle.
Her hand began to shake. She’d kill him if he rushed her. She must. But where to stab him?
As suddenly as the eyes appeared, they vanished.
Dropping her valise, she clutched her throat with her free hand and forced herself to take a breath.
She wiped her damp forehead, then groped for her elegant cross pendant and slipped it from beneath her dress. The silver glinted in the moonlight, but the shadows turned the emerald at its center a sullen black. Like her, the pendant survived, the only remaining fragment of her life before the Révolution.
In her mind, she could still see the light from the stained-glass windows that had slanted down on her six years past, when her father presented the cross for her sixteenth birthday. Even now she could feel his thick fingers as they fumbled to fasten the clasp at the back of her neck.
But was He still there? The God of the cross she wore?
“Holy Father? Give me strength?” More a question than a plea, nevertheless she uttered the words into the night. There had been a time, before the Révolution started five years ago, when her words would have been strong and sure. Now they floated into the gloom, a glimmer of hope swallowed in an abyss of doubt.
Through the wind’s filter, a distant noise teased her hearing.
A trickle of voices? She turned her head. The faint sound whirled and dissipated. She scanned the road toward the west and then the east.
Silence. Only the primitive night surrounded her.
Then a group of men burst from the woods, the four or five soldiers sprinting toward her.
Father, no! Don’t let them catch me. Not when I’m so close.
“Look, there’s a girl,” a voice rang out.
A hot explosion of fear seized the base of her spine and spiraled upward. Enacting a plan she’d rehearsed thousands of times in her head, she gripped her bag and ran into the woods opposite the men.
“Stop, in the name of the Republic.”
She sped toward the darkest places within the shadowed forest, seeking a large fir tree, a thick clump of saplings, anywhere that might shelter her for a moment. Perchance her pursuers would lose sight of her or trip over a log.
She didn’t want to die. Not here. Not at the hands of those who’d already killed her family. She could die the moment she reached her destination. A carriage could run over her or an illness take her. She’d accept death by another means, but not at the hands of the armée.
Her bag caught on a branch. Leave it, her mind screamed, but she couldn’t let these beasts find, tear through and claim her belongings. They had no right to her bag, no right to her.
“Stop, you vixen, or we’ll make you pay.”
“Come here. We want to tittle-tattle, that’s all.”
The shouts rang closer. Her pursuers’ panting grew louder than her quick inhales. The men stumbled over rocks and saplings she evaded. They trampled the dead leaves across which she flitted. But still they gained.
She tripped on a rock, twisting her ankle. She cringed and bit back a cry as pain seared up her leg and her shoe gouged into a blister. Still, she pressed forward.
“Quit running, wench! We won’t hurt you.”
She veered to the right, following the thickest trees. Surely she could duck into some spot and let the beasts run past her. But the ground here was flat and barren beneath the trees. Not even a fallen log to hide her.
“Get her, fool.”
“Where’d she go? I can’t see her.”
“By the tree.”
Heavy footfalls from behind sounded as though they would trample her. Or was that her heart thumping its erratic rhythm? Hot breath teased her neck and ear. No. They couldn’t be so close. It must be the wind swirling her hair.
“Faster. If she escapes, I’ll send you all to the guillotine.”
Isabelle burst into an unexpected clearing. Moonlight illumined her movements as she raced toward the nearest trees.
“We have you now!”
Something pulled her bag. She turned to wrench it free, but one of the men gripped the handle. He sprawled on the ground, as though he had lunged for her, only to catch the bag instead.
“Come here, sweetheart,” he growled. His forearm, the size of a young tree trunk, rippled as he clenched the leather.
Let it go. They’ll find the money and be happy.
Defiance surged like a flood inside her. She’d not surrender so easily. She yanked the handle. The lock sprang, her bag yawned open and her clothes spewed upward, raining down like her shattered life.
“You get her?” a man called out.
Isabelle glimpsed the silhouettes of others running toward her. Releasing her bag, she screamed, though it sounded like little more than a gasp for want of air, and stumbled forward toward safety. If she made it to the stand of firs ahead, she could lose the men in the thick branches. Seven more steps. Then five, then four.
An arm, strong as an iron band, clamped across her waist and pulled her back against a hard chest. She screamed and fought and kicked. Her captor tightened his hold, pinning her arms against her breast so forcefully her necklace dug into her flesh.
“Let me go!” Waves of hair spilled across her face. She scratched and twisted, but the more she fought, the firmer her captor’s hold grew.
“That’s right, girl. Fight until you’re spent. We can wait.” A second man towered before her. He jerked his chin, his leadership of the band evident in the simple movement, and the five men formed a circle around her. The soldats all wore bloodred liberty caps and those horrid tricolor cockades.
The leader stepped closer and yanked a handful of her hair, forcing her head back and her teeth to grit against the pain.
“What do you think?” Her captor spoke from behind her. “Is she an aristocrat?”
Aristocrat. The word burned fear into her gut.
“Does it matter?” Someone sneered. “We got her. Only one thing to do with her now.”
The soldiers hooted in laughter, and gooseflesh rose on her arms.
The leader seized her wrist, ran his finger over her hand and grunted. “No calluses, but not smooth, either.”
Isabelle shrank away, but her back met the solid wall of her captor’s chest, leaving her no choice but to stare at the leader. The man possessed arms and hands so burly he could snap her in half. A thin scar twisted around his right eyebrow and bunched into an angry fist, and his powerful chest, clothed in an ill-fitting blue National Guard coat, rose and fell with each heavy breath.
The other soldiers crouched on the ground, searching her clothes and tattered bag.
Isabelle blinked back tears and lifted her chin. She’d been so close. One more day to the Channel. “Please, let me go. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Nothing wrong? Now, that depends on whether you’re an aristocrat. Where are you from?” Even in the gloom, malice shimmered in the leader’s eyes.
“Arras.” It wasn’t a lie. She and Marie had lived there since her family’s massacre five years earlier. “I’m a seamstress.”
“A seamstress?” The leader’s eyes ran slowly down her body, lingering so long her cheeks grew warm. “And what would a seamstress be doing alone? At night? So close to the shoreline?”
“I’m visiting my aunt. In Saint-Valery-sur-Somme.”
The leader laughed, a chilling timbre that sent fear into her heart. “Sure you are. Everyone travels in the dead of night when visiting an aunt.”
Isabelle licked her lips. “She suffered apoplexy, and we just received word. She needs someone to care for her. I’m traveling as quickly as possible, even at night.” She’d rehearsed the story a hundred times, even told it a time or two during the course of her journey. So why did her voice quaver?
“Hah. A likely story.” The leader’s gaze darkened. “She’s an aristocrat, men. Has to be.”
Isabelle dropped her gaze and clutched at the hard arm around her chest. “Non, please!” They had to believe her. It wasn’t a lie, not all of it. She was a seamstress. She was from Arras.
The leader smirked and took a strand of her hair between his fingers. Isabelle stiffened, bile churning in her stomach as he toyed with a curl.
“Pretty as you are, you’re not worth the trouble of dragging to a trial.” The leader separated her hair into little sections between his thumb and middle finger and stroked it. “We’ll take care of you here.”
The breath clogged in her throat. So they wouldn’t cart her to the nearest guillotine or to Paris. They’d kill her in the middle of the woods with only the trees as spectators. Better than the alternative. But if she could get free somehow and make it to the shrubs, she could still hide in the tall grass. All she needed was a distraction. Something to make her captor lose his hold. But what…?
The arm around her middle loosened. Her captor’s hand slid up, and he brushed his thumb along the base of her rib cage. “We got time to have this one before we kill her. She’d be worth it.”
The air left her lungs in one hard whoosh. Please, Father, don’t let them rape me. After five years of prayers falling on deaf ears, if there was any prayer God deemed fit to answer, surely this would be it. She didn’t move or even breathe as she focused her eyes on the man in front of her.
If You’ve any shred of mercy, Father, spare me. Her hands, still held against her chest, sought the familiar outline of the cross beneath her dress.
The leader’s eyes darkened, yet the fury embodied there shot past her and speared the man who held her. “You’ve a wife at home, Christophé.”
She tried to suck in a relieved breath, but her captor’s arm cut so tight she couldn’t inhale.
A low growl escaped from the throat behind her. “You never let us—”
“I said no!”
The arm around her vibrated with tension, though the man remained silent. But the leader’s attention slipped back to her.
“Who are you, wench? Truly?” The massive soldat pinned his eyes to hers, as though he already knew the truth.
“I told you.”
“Don’t feed me another lie about Arras.” He dug the heel of his boot into the ground. “Quel est votre nom?”
He wanted to know her name? Her eyes fought the malevolent black of his gaze. Isabelle Cerise de La Rouchecauld, second daughter of the late Duc de La Rouchecauld, Louis-Alexandre. And after my sister was captured last week, all the province of Artois is searching for me.
The words burned inside her, though why after years of hiding she should desire to confess her identity to a band of soldats, she didn’t know. Her jaw trembled as she opened her mouth to recite the familiar story. “Isabelle Chenior. The daughter of a cobbler traveling to Saint-Valery to see her aunt.”
Her chest grew tight. What if he forced the true answer from her? The man carried enough power, he could make her talk. And if he learned of her heritage, he’d take her to Paris, where she’d be executed before the raucous mob. With her ancestry dating back to the tenth century, the crowd would be wild for her blood.
As the mob must have been for her sister’s. A sob welled in Isabelle’s chest, but she shoved it down. She’d not think of Marie now, nor of her role in her sister’s death.
The leader snorted. “Isabelle Chenoir, daughter of a cobbler? You lie again, but your name matters not. You all end up at the guillotine.”
Yes, let him think her name didn’t matter.
One of the soldiers trotted over. “Found the money.”
The leader held out his hand for the pouch of coins and bundle of assignats she’d hidden in the secret pocket of her valise. Her stomach clenched. Five years of her seamstress’s wages, and the man palmed it as though she’d earned it in an hour.
Even as he took the money, the leader’s gaze never left hers. A silent battle raged between them. Isabelle refused to drop her eyes. He was waiting for that very thing, it seemed. Her final surrender. If only her stare could fend him off forever.
He released the hair he’d been fingering and touched her cheek. She resisted an instinctive flinch as his cold skin pressed against her face. “You know what gave your identity away? That stare. A seamstress wouldn’t look at me as though she were a queen.”
He backed away. “Kill her, boys.”
With the first blow to her kidneys, she couldn’t stifle her scream.
* * *
Michel Belanger surveyed the land before him as the early sun painted the bare fields golden. He drew in a deep breath, smelled the earth and cold and animals.
His eyes traveled over the small, tree-lined fields as they did every morning.
Thirty-six acres. The land had been his for four years, seven months and thirteen days.
And he loathed it.
He’d promised to care for the farm when his father died, but the obligation choked him, forever chaining him to northern France.
His neighbors were fools for thinking a declaration from the National Assembly freed them. True, the August Decrees four and a half years ago liberated land from the seigneurs and Church. But before, a man could leave a farm and seek work elsewhere. Now peasants like him owned their land. And the ownership only tied them to the monotonous work. Shackled their children and grandchildren to the unforgiving earth.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. It was a verse he’d rather not have memorized.
Michel’s eyes roved the fields yet to be planted and rested on the stone and half-timbered cottage that sat at the field’s edge. He knew every bump and crag of the chipping wattle and daub, the manner in which sunlight slanted through the windows, the way shadows played in the corners of the two rooms. He came into the world in that house, and despite his dreams, he’d leave the world in that same structure.
But a promise was a promise, and he would work the land until it drained the life from his blood, as had happened to Père. The Belangers hadn’t worked for three generations only to have the eldest son turn his back on the land. He would work hard. He would tame the land and add to it. And one day, he would pass it to his son. And mayhap that son would love the land as his late father had, as his brother still did, despite Jean Paul’s decision to leave home.
But the day for heirs and inheritance lay distant, the only flicker of hope against a broad, dark horizon.
Until then, he would work.
Fishing pole in hand, Michel turned his back and followed the deer path through the woods to the pond he’d fished for the past twenty-one of his twenty-seven years. He and Mère hadn’t much meat to grace their table. That should’ve changed with the Révolution, and had—for a time. Then last summer the beshrewed Convention in Paris said bread in the cities cost too much, so they imposed price controls on grain.
His grain.
Now a sack of wheat brought hardly enough to care for his mother. Let alone cover the cost of his seed.
Michel scratched the back of his neck. Five years, and the Révolution that promised liberty, equality and fraternity had given him nothing.
The four-kilometer path was as familiar to him as the texture of field dirt in his hand, his feet so used to the twigs and stones that the feel of the earth alone underfoot could have guided him. Tilting his face toward the sky, he let the budding light warm his skin. Another month and the sounds of birds and frogs would serenade him while squirrels chased one another up beech trees.
A stick cracked beneath his boot, and the noise sent a startled woodcock flying from the brush with its distinct whirr. He smiled, his eyes following the flight of the brown bird into the sky. Then he glimpsed something foreign in the familiar sea of earth and tree trunks and logs. A scrap of blue fabric. He veered from his path, took a step closer.
Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. Three meters past a ripped valise and the discarded dress that first caught his eye, a body lay facedown on the forest floor.
Chapter Two
A mass of wild black hair covered the back of the girl who lay before Michel. Her dress was torn and stained with mud and filth, one sleeve shredded and bloody with a thorny branch still entangled in the crude linen.
The flurry of footprints surrounding her told the story of her struggle. And struggle she had, against what looked to be a gang of four or five men.
Michel scanned the familiar trees, his fingers aching for the worn wood of his musket. Were her murderers still here? No movement caught his eye. No palpable tension raised the hairs on his neck. Most likely her attackers had dragged her from the road, brought her to the clearing to rob and rape, then killed her, abandoning the body immediately after.
He hoped her death had been swift. No one deserved such a painful and humiliating end.
He picked his way through the scattered clothes and neared the girl. Was there family to notify of her death? A father searching for his beloved daughter?
He crouched to touch her hand, and swallowed back a sudden surge of bile at the sight of her left forearm twisted at an impossible angle.
Whoever would treat an innocent girl such deserved death.
Laying his fishing pole in the dirt, he ran his fingers over her hand. Cold, but not icy, not stiff. Could she be alive? Using both hands, he gently rolled her onto her back.
And stilled.
A fairy-tale princess. She must be. Dark curls of hair fanned beneath her head and rippled like waves on a pond. Her creamy skin looked as though it had never seen a day under the sun. A curtain of dark eyelashes fell against her high cheekbones. But no deep red hue stained her lips. Instead, a deathlike white clung to their shapely form.
Still, her features seemed too perfect, too delicate, to be from his world. As if, like Sleeping Beauty or another tale from his school days, a kiss could breathe life back into her.
Michel smoothed a strand of hair away from her cheek. If only the world would be so simple that a kiss could save a woman’s life.
Instead of pressing his lips to hers, he covered her nose and mouth with his hand. A faint exhale of air tickled his skin.
Alive!
He touched her forehead and cheek, then ran his hands down her torso and legs as he searched for injuries. When he touched the left side of her rib cage, she inhaled sharply and groaned.
Michel sat back. The girl would require care: a place to rest, a doctor, medicine. He could bring her home, but he couldn’t provide her with much. Would it be enough?
Leaning forward, he bent his ear to her chest in search of a heartbeat. His ear bumped something hard beneath her dress. Frowning, he placed his fingers over the spot, and finding a chain, he fished the necklace out from beneath her fichu and chemise.
A heavy cross emerged from her neckline and fell into his palm. Silver vines curled around a gold cross and at its center sat a large square emerald. It was beautiful, a relic from times past, not like the jewelry sold every day in the market. And it was authentic. If the weight didn’t give its genuineness away, the mesmerizing gleam in the center stone did.
He dropped the cross irreverently.
The woman was no beggar. No traveler.
Perhaps she was a member of the bourgeoisie. The wife of a Parisian accountant or lawyer. That would explain the expensive adornment.
Michel stood. Then she wouldn’t be traveling alone, dressed in coarse wool and linen. She’d have a finer dress. Non. She could only be one thing: an aristocrat disguised as a peasant and seeking escape. She’d made a good attempt by getting within twenty kilometers of the shoreline. Most aristocrats had already fled the country or met the guillotine, but she apparently survived—until now.
He gritted his teeth. To think he’d felt sorry for the wench. It mattered not whence she came or how hard her journey. Her class had grown rich off his sweat and deprivation. Perhaps the fools in Paris set the price of his grain, but they hadn’t stolen from him the way the aristocrats had. They took half his crop in taxes and then taxed the money his crops brought in. They played games while he worked, frolicked while he plowed both his fields and their land. Then they banned him from hunting and fishing the woods for food while they did so for sport and left animal carcasses to rot in the sun.
Michel stepped back. He wouldn’t help her. He couldn’t.
He surveyed the trees for movement yet again. Was she a trap? Had roaming soldiers attacked her rather than thieves? Did they watch to see if anyone helped?
He took another step away. Judging by her skin’s temperature, she would die soon, and being unconscious, she would feel no pain. There would be no cruelty leaving her where she lay. He grabbed his fishing pole and turned toward the pond.
I was naked, and ye clothed me.
Michel halted as Father Albert’s words from a Sunday long past scalded his mind.
But the girl wasn’t naked. And he couldn’t help her, not even if he wanted to—which he didn’t. He’d be guillotined if he took her in and got caught.
He strode toward the pond. Besides, Father Albert had been talking about clothing the orphans in Paris, not the rich who had dressed in silks at his expense.
I was hungry, and you gave me meat.
Oui, and he wouldn’t have any sustenance for himself if he didn’t get to the pond and catch something. He quickened his pace.
I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.
Michel sighed and cursed himself for memorizing so much scripture. “She’s not asking for water,” he mumbled.
I was sick, and you visited me.
This counted as a visit, didn’t it? He’d bent down, touched her, contemplated helping her. And turned his back the second he realized she was an aristocrat.
Michel straightened his shoulders. He wouldn’t feel guilty. She’d have done the same to him under the Ancien Régime.
If you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me.
He stopped walking. “She’s not the least of these, Father. She’s the greatest. She’s lived her entire life off the backs of me and my kin.”
In prison, and you visited me.
“And prison’s exactly where she deserves to be.” He turned to take a final look at the girl. “Waiting for the guillotine.”
I was a stranger, and ye took me in.
He huffed a breath. He threw down his fishing pole and stormed back to the girl. Assuming he took her in, what would he do with her? Nurse her? She’d probably die regardless.
But what if she lived?
He couldn’t nurse her and hope she’d die. Cross-purposes, to be sure. He ran a hand through his hair and paced beside the body.
He wouldn’t be able to eat tonight if he left her. Or look at a church. Or wave at Father Albert in the market. Or pray tomorrow when he went fishing.
Sighing, he set his fishing pole down, bent and hefted the burden into his arms.
She weighed no more than a bale of hay, but he felt as though he carried his own cross to Golgotha.
* * *
Light, voices, shadows, whispers swirled around her, eluded her, like a dream she chased but couldn’t catch.
Grass, matted and thick, tickled her fingers, back and legs. Tall strands of it waved in the wind while dandelions turned their golden heads toward the sunlight. Overhead, two birds chased each other.
Isabelle looked up from the field she lay in and raised herself onto her elbows.
The Château de La Rouchecauld towered before her, its triangle of red brick walls kissing the brilliant sky as it had for seven centuries. No garish chars from a fire marred the windows. No broken furniture littered the ground. No grass and flowers lay trampled by the mob. No gate demolished by angry peasants.
She was home.
Someone touched her forehead. Mother?
“Oh, Ma Mère! It’s been so terrible. You should have seen…”
The hand pressed harder. Too large. Too rough. Not Mother.
Father, then.
“Mon Père, how did you escape the mob? I thought they…” The hand left her forehead. Cold! A frigid cloth replaced the warm touch.
She reached up to move the rag. Pain whipped through her hand and down her arm. She groaned and shifted her limb.
“Well, well,” said a deep voice. “She lives.” The cloth left her forehead.
Isabelle cracked one eye, but the blistering brightness of the room forced it shut again.
“Wake up, woman. I’ve a farm to run.”
Temples throbbing, she turned her head toward the impatient voice. “Who are you?” Her vocal cords, gritty from disuse, ground against each other.
“The man whose hospitality you’ve enjoyed while lying delirious with fever for these two weeks.”
Two weeks? She opened her eyes again, slowly fluttering her eyelids until the burning sensation stopped. The only light in the room spilled from two open slits in the bare wattle-and-daub wall. A man, dreadfully familiar, hulked over her.
His broad chest strained against the two buttons at the top of his undyed linen shirt. While the material gathered at the neck, shoulders and wrists would accompany much breadth of movement, it ill hid his wide shoulders and thick forearms. Light brown hair in desperate need of a trim fell against his forehead and curled around his neck. His chest tapered down into a lithe waist, with his lower body encased in brown woolen trousers. In one hand, he held a worn, uncocked hat by its brim.
It’s him. The soldier. The leader of the band that attacked me. The shoulders, the height, the massive arms were all painfully familiar.
She screamed, shrinking into the bed and clutching the quilt. Her bandaged arm shook with pain, but she cared not.
Why had he brought her here? Surely he wouldn’t make her endure another beating. She shut her eyes and heard the jeers, saw the men standing over her, felt their blunt boots connect with her lower back, her rib cage, her abdomen.
She should be dead. Oh, why wasn’t she dead? He was making sport of her.
“Calm yourself. I’ll not hurt you.”
At the sound of his indifferent voice, her breath caught. That certainly wasn’t familiar—his voice had been full of loathing in the woods. She opened her eyes and gulped, pulling the quilt up with her good hand until she could barely peek over it. The stranger shifted his weight and paced the small confines of the room.
“I don’t believe you.” She stared at him, measuring his movements, comparing him to the man who haunted her memory.
He tunneled a hand through his hair and set his wide-brimmed hat on his head. “It would better serve you to believe the man who brought you home, kept you warm and fed you.”
This man walked differently than the soldier, and his hair…was lighter, shorter. His stature smaller. She let out a relieved sigh. Oui, this man resembled the soldier from the woods, but was not the same person.
Hard lines and planes formed a face weathered by the elements, but not altogether uncomely. His straight nose and strong jaw made him appear rugged rather than harsh. The leader of the soldiers had a hardened look that this stranger did not possess.
“Had you no part in the attack?”
Annoyance flashed, but no malice. “I don’t rape women and beat them nearly to death, if that’s what you ask.”
“They didn’t rape me.” The words rushed out before she could check them. The man turned to face her fully. No scar curled around his eyebrow. Oui, he was innocent.
And he had nursed her for two weeks. ’Twas a long time to care for a stranger, although he couldn’t know she was of the House of La Rouchecauld.
She bit the side of her lip. He’d shown her kindness, and she blamed him for attacking her. Furthermore, she brought the threat of soldiers, arrest and the guillotine to his door. She’d naught have helped him were the situation reversed. “I’m sorry to accuse you falsely.”
His crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “You’re forgiven.”
His simple words washed over her, offering comfort and security. “Merci.”
Though he watched her intently, her eyes drifted shut. Oh, to go back to that place she found while sleeping, where she was home, her family still lived, food filled the table and death didn’t stalk her. But she wasn’t in Burgundy, where a mob killed her parents and little brother outside the gates of their home. She and Marie escaped only because they took a different route to England, parting ways with her parents at Versailles and heading north via their aunt’s estate near Arras. News of their parents’ deaths had taken months to reach them.
Then Marie died anyway.
Her fault. Isabelle clutched her throat. All her fault.
“Are you having another spell?”
She opened her eyes.
The man stood close now.
“Just leave me be.” The words fell quickly from her lips. He didn’t understand who she was, that his kindness would sentence him to death if soldiers discovered her. She snugged the quilt tighter around her and rolled away from him. Pain seared her ribs, and her breath caught. But she didn’t roll to her back or shift to ease the discomfort. Instead, she stared at the bare, uneven texture of the daub wall. Her family was gone now, even her sister. When she was running, she hadn’t time to think about Marie or the way she’d betrayed her sister.
But now she had time. Too much time. Why had she been the one to live and Marie the one to die? A tear slid down her cheek. Marie should still be alive, not her.
The peasant’s feet crunched against the floor, telling her he lingered in the room, likely watching her. She inhaled deeply as her eyes drifted shut. She hadn’t strength left to face him.
* * *
Michel stared at the beautiful woman lying in his brother’s bed and rubbed his hand over his chin. She hadn’t awakened long enough to get some broth or water in her. And now she lay still, drawn into a little ball as though defending herself against something he couldn’t see. He took a step closer, ran his eyes over her.
The quilt rose and fell ever so slightly along her side.
At least she breathed. At least she hadn’t curled up and died on him.
What’s your name? Where are you headed? Is someone expecting you? Questions warred inside him, but she wasn’t awake to ask.
He walked to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. Her silver-and-emerald pendant lay atop her neatly folded clothes. He reached in and held the precious metal against his palm until the necklace heated with his touch.
If only the thieves had found and taken the pendant. If only he didn’t know about her heritage.
The woman sighed, and the hair on the back of his neck prickled. He dropped the necklace and waited for the words that were sure to come. Mumblings and shouts about someone named Marie and soldiers, a mob and parents.
And then the tears of delirium.
He turned toward the girl, but she didn’t move. Only sighed again. Mayhap the dreams were done haunting her now that she’d awoken for a bit. God, please keep the dreams from her. She may be an aristocrat, but she’d suffered through enough dreams during the past weeks to last the remainder of her life.
Leaving the girl, he went into the main chamber and found it empty. Mère must still be in the yard. He ladled some broth from the soup simmering over the fire and poured some water before going back to the girl and setting the tray on the bedside table.
The sturdy bed frame didn’t so much as creak as he sat beside her. She groaned but didn’t wake when he rolled her toward him and propped her head and shoulders against his arm.
Her body felt slight in his embrace, as though her bones would shatter if he squeezed too tight. Her eyelids rested peacefully, and she breathed deep and evenly, not with the erratic, shallow breaths that plagued her when he first brought her home.
Unable to resist, he wiped a tendril of silky black hair from her brow, then jerked backwards.
What was he doing holding her, smoothing away her hair? He laid the girl back on her pillow and raked a hand over his hair. He had managed to bring her back from death, and nurse her to health. But that was no reason to grow soft over the girl. It mattered not whether she was beautiful or helpless. She deserved a taste of the misery her kind had caused him and his family.
Didn’t she?
Oui, of course she did. Her ilk had been taxing and oppressing people like him for centuries.
The girl writhed on her bed. “Marie! Non, don’t take her. Take me instead. It’s my fault. My fault.”
The familiar words washed over him, then dissipated into silence. How many times had she cried something similar over the past weeks?
He stood and tightened his jaw. Whatever she dreamed, whatever she remembered, he had to get her well and on her way before anyone found her. But he couldn’t send her forth before she healed.
Not after how he found her in his woods. Not when God told him to take her.
But his obligation to restore her health didn’t explain his urge to run his fingers down the slender column of her bruised neck. To smooth away the fading green-and-black splotch on her cheek.
He stalked from the room, leaving her broth and water on the bedside table.
Better to let Mère feed her. He’d get himself into trouble if he stayed any longer.
Chapter Three
Isabelle’s life spun before her in traces and glimpses, impressions and feelings. Faster and faster the scenes swirled. She tried to latch on to the pleasant memories from before the Révolution arrived—to catch that last view of Christmas with her family, to relive the day Père gave her the pendant, to remember the walks she and Mère once took in the dandelion field.
Instead, she stood in the shade on a warm summer day, lush with the scent of wildflowers and earth. Sunlight filtered through the rustling oak leaves and bathed the world in its warmth.
“This is for the best, Isabelle.” Marie didn’t look up as she plunged the shovel into the earth beneath the tree. “If someone discovers us, the money will be hidden far from the cottage, and we can still escape to England.”
Isabelle bit her lip. England. Reaching that land seemed little more than a wish. Even as Tante Cordele awaited them in London, they lived in the broken, leaking groundskeeper’s cottage on their aunt’s ruined estate.
“Here, let me dig.” Isabelle reached for the shovel, clasping a palm over Marie’s dry, lye-scarred hands. “I wish you’d found different work.”
Marie shrugged off Isabelle’s hold. “I haven’t your hand for needlework. Besides, my job as a washerwoman is only for a time. Once we reach Tante Cordele, I’ll soak my hands in scented water for a month. They’ll be soft as new.”
Marie was right. They needed money. Now. After they’d earned enough for two passages to England, they could stop their backbreaking work.
Marie rested the shovel against the tree and reached for the box Isabelle held, but Isabelle clutched it to her chest. The simple wooden square held no resemblance to the elaborate ivory jewelry box she’d left at Versailles, but inside rested the few earnings they’d scraped together and the coins she had hidden on her person before they’d been stranded.
Laying their treasure in the cold ground seemed almost cruel, but she knelt and placed the box in its new home.
Marie crouched on the opposite side of the hole and grasped Isabelle’s hand. “Swear that if I am caught, you will take this money and flee.”
She jerked her hand away and shook her head. The idea didn’t bear thinking of. “Non. You won’t be caught. We will get to England together. We must. I won’t let the Révolution take you from me.”
“Anything could happen to me, to us. We’ve no guarantee of reaching England.”
“We’ve been hiding for nearly a year, and no one has discovered us. ’Tis guarantee enough.”
“We’ve no certainty of earning money for a second ship fare, no promise that we can evade the soldiers and mobs forever. If I am caught, I will be killed.”
Isabelle’s breath caught. They’d not spoken of this before—one of them dying. Her chest felt as though she were being held underwater, and no matter how hard she fought to draw breath, the substance that invaded her airways grew thick and deadly.
“Izzy, look at me.”
She brought her shaky gaze back to Marie’s.
“If I’m caught, you take the money and map, and you go. Without looking back, without thinking of me. You flee to England. One of us will survive. We must. Whatever happens, we won’t let the mobs destroy the last La Rouchecauld.”
She longed to tell Marie not to be daft, yearned to promise they’d both see England’s shores. But Marie’s eyes, dark and serious, kept her from speaking such things. “And if I am captured, you do the same.”
And there, beneath the shade of the oak, they sliced their thumbs and pressed them together in that ancient ritual of binding a promise.
“Can you hear me, girl? Are you awake?”
The deep voice filtered through Isabelle’s haze of dreams, reaching, clutching, tugging, until it pulled her up, into the bare room lit with day. She blinked at the farmer who towered over her.
Isabelle licked her lips, dry and parched as sunbaked dirt. “What…what do you want?” She barely recognized the rusted sound of her voice.
“To see if you would awaken.” Concern shimmered from his eyes—green eyes, the color of dandelion stems. “You’ve slept another three days. And when you started thrashing…”
Her eyes drifted closed. The farmer should have let her sleep. At least Marie still lived in her dreams.
Isabelle jerked her eyes back open. Marie. England. The promise. She had to get up. Had to find her way to the shore. She could die once she reached England, so long as she kept her oath to Marie. So long as the La Rouchecauld name didn’t die in the clutches of the Révolution.
The man bent low over her, the smells of earth and sun and animals radiating from him. “Can I do something to ease your pain?”
Isabelle propped herself up. Pain seared her ribs, but she nudged her pillow against the headboard until she reclined in a semisitting position. “You have been most kind to me, citoyen. Please, tell me where I am?”
“About a kilometer east of Abbeville.” The man measured his words, speaking slowly.
Abbeville. The name settled into her memory. Oui, the town she’d been approaching the night of her attack. She was just east of it—so close to the sea. “How far, then, to Saint-Valery?”
He shifted closer and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do you ask?”
She swallowed. Was heading to a city on the sea too obvious? Did he know that, once there, she would board a ship? Since the British and French warred over the sea, she couldn’t go straight to London, but she could sail there via Sweden or Denmark, the only two neutral countries on the continent. “I’ve an aunt waiting to receive me.”
It wasn’t a lie, not really. Tante Cordele still awaited her in London.
His gaze held hers. “An aunt. In Saint-Valery-sur-Somme. Convenient.”
Her chest tightened. “You don’t believe me?” He knew everything. He must. Otherwise, he wouldn’t look at her thus.
“Why should I believe a stranger?”
“Because I… Why…it’s…” Her throat burned. Certainly, it had more to do with being thirsty than telling an untruth. But what else had she to say? He’d saved her life. He deserved the truth, if only the truth wouldn’t get her killed—and him as well. Surely she was protecting him by concealing the truth.
She forced a smile. “I beg you, sir. Simply give me the distance to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme.”
“Twenty kilometers.”
Hope surged through her. Only a day’s walk from Abbeville to the Channel. By this time tomorrow, she would be at the port. She gripped the quilt and looked at the man before her. “I am most grateful for your kindness, but I must away.”
“Aye, you must away. But you’ll not leave afore you’ve healed.”
Isabelle frowned. True, her head throbbed and her ribs pulsed with pain, but still… “I’m well enough to walk to Saint-Valery, thank you.”
“You’ve not tried standing, yet you can walk to Saint-Valery?”
“Of course.” She flung the bedcovers back with her bandaged hand. Pain sparked in her fingers and flashed up her arm. Jerking back, she gasped and stared at her wrapped forearm. She trailed her other hand up the wood of the splint that ran along her injured arm beneath the cloth. Surely something was amiss for her injury to smart like this after two weeks’ recovery. “This…it’s not healing properly. You must call the physician back. Who tended it?”
His eyes narrowed. “I’m rather handy with setting bones.”
“You jest. You could no more set my arm than stitch the queen’s drapes.”
He leaned close, placing his hands against the bed frame on either side of her so she couldn’t move. His eyes bored into her, hard and controlled. “I remind you the queen’s been executed.”
Isabelle closed her eyes. The queen’s drapes? What was she saying? The blood in her head thrummed against her temples, but a headache didn’t excuse her carelessness. She’d kept her appearance as a peasant for five years, but if she didn’t mind her tongue, she’d give herself away before she left this wretched bed.
“Repeat after me.” The farmer’s breath warmed her cheek. “Thank you.”
She opened her eyes and swallowed. “Your pardon?”
“Thank you for setting my arm.” He held her there, locked between his arms as he studied her. “Put voice to it, woman.”
“If you’ll give me some space, citoyen. I can hardly think.”
He straightened and crossed his arms, but she felt just as smothered as she had when he loomed only inches away.
“I’m waiting.”
“I…” She looked at her throbbing arm. She should tell him thank-you. Physician or not, he had saved her, thereby putting himself in more danger than he understood. And at least she didn’t have to answer a physician’s prying questions about where she’d come from and why she’d been traveling alone. Oui, she owed the man before her much more than a thank-you. So why wouldn’t the words come? She should be thankful to be alive, to have a second opportunity to reach England and fulfill her promise to Marie.
“Is the word so hard? I’m sure a crooked bone is much worse than dying in the woods.” His eyes flashed, a green fire that looked nothing like dandelion stems. “Or do you expect me to apologize for saving your arm?”
Warmth rushed to her cheeks. “Non, I’ve no need of an apology. I just…well, I…” She cradled her throbbing arm against her chest and searched for words.
“Still going to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, are you?”
“I can walk fine with a broken arm.”
He backed to the wall, shifted his weight against it and crossed one foot over the other. “Be gone with you, then. Hurry on, I’ve animals to attend.”
Now? He expected her to rise from the bed this instant? She swallowed. He must, for the man watched her as though she were a court jester or some other form of entertainment. Very well.
She flung the covers off with her good arm and scooted to the edge of the bed. Pain clenched her ribs. Biting her lip, she ignored it and stretched one leg to the floor.
She would walk out of his house. She simply had to get off the bed first.
She angled her torso up until she could see her foot. The pounding in her head increased. The room tilted, straightened, then spun. She gasped and fell backward onto the quilt.
The farmer came close and crouched in front of the bed, the aggravation in his eyes giving way to worry. “Don’t strain yourself.” His voice seemed kind but reluctant. “You’ll make things worse. I’m…sorry. I shouldn’t goad you. You need to rest. You were near death when I brought you here, and you’ll only reinjure yourself by attempting to walk.”
She shook her head, tears burning the backs of her eyes. “Non, you don’t understand. I have to leave now, or I might never get to…” England. Had she almost said it? He would know everything then. “Saint-Valery-sur-Somme.”
He stood and fisted his hands at his side, the corded muscles along his forearms hard as though they were etched in marble.
This time, she moved one leg, then the other, over the side of the tick. She slowly sat upright. Cradling her set arm against her chest, she let out a breath and leaned forward.
Nothing spun.
She shifted her weight from the bed to her feet and paused. Her head pounded, her arm throbbed, her ribs screamed and her muscles ached. Lifting herself off the bed, she straightened her torso, and smiled smugly.
The farmer’s face remained placid, his body still.
She stepped forward. The room shifted, then stilled. She tried another step, and another. She’d keep walking. Right past him. Through the open door, out of the house and down the road until she reached Saint-Valery.
Her next step brought her almost to the door. Shadows speckled the edges of her vision. She moved forward, wobbled, then a knee gave out. Blackness seeped into her view, and she cringed. Her chest and arm would explode with pain when she hit the packed dirt floor.
Except she didn’t hit the floor. A solid arm braced her back, and another stretched beneath her knees. The man lifted her, cramming her against a chest as hard as the brick walls of the Château de La Rouchecauld.
“Of all the mule-headed things…” he muttered.
Her sight clearing, she looked up into frustrated, swirling eyes.
“Do you think I’ve spent more than a fortnight nursing you so you can undo your healing in an hour’s time?” He deposited her on the tick, and threw the quilt over her. “Now sleep. The sooner you get your strength, the sooner you can away.” He turned and stalked toward the exit.
“Wait. Please, don’t leave me here.”
She couldn’t be sure if he didn’t hear her, or simply chose to ignore her. Either way, he slammed the door behind him, leaving her alone in a strange room, with a strange bed inside a cottage full of strange noises. Loneliness filled the space the man vacated, an oppressive weight that settled across her chest. Her body ached, and her mind moved sluggishly. She needed a moment’s rest. Then she’d up and begin her journey anew.
Sliding deeper into the bed, she stifled a yawn and looked about her prison. No tapestries or paintings graced the dingy walls, and no mirror hung near the chest of drawers. A pitcher and basin of delicate pink sat atop the polished dresser, their beauty out of place against the bare cottage walls.
The bed frames, too, were masterful. Three ticks—two double and one single—rested on elaborately carved frames. But how could a peasant afford such grand furniture? Such an exquisite pitcher and basin?
Closing her eyes, she sank down, trying to get comfortable on the lumpy straw tick, but her nightdress made her throat itch. Strange, for the fabric of her chemise had never irritated her before. She reached up to scratch her neck, her fingers skimming the material. It felt stiffer than usual. Opening her eyes, she examined the foreign gown. Her heart began to pound against her chest.
She’d not brought this on her journey. Where were her clothes?
She must have her raiment. Not that she missed the miserably rough garments, but she needed her chemise. Her attackers had stolen the funds in her valise, but they hadn’t found the forged citizenship papers and money inside the hidden pocket of her chemise—at least not while she’d been conscious. She’d kept her papers and the exact amount of money needed for fare to England on her person.
Had the farmer discovered them?
She tried to calm her breathing even as a tear trickled down her cheek. Swallowing, she reached up to finger the cross about her neck, but that, too, was gone. Like everything else in her life. She curled into a ball and clutched her hand over her neck—where the cross once hung, where the guillotine had sliced her sister. She pressed her eyes tight against the burning tears until sleep overtook her.
But instead of finding respite in her dreams, the dark face of the soldier who ordered her death in the woods loomed before her.
Chapter Four
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! Thank you.” Michel practiced the words. First rolling them over his tongue, then speaking briskly, then whispering.
Petty, mayhap, to get his hackles up over two small words, but how hard could it be for the girl to voice them?
He thrust his pitchfork into some sour straw and tossed another clump of muck into the pile of dirty swine bedding. He’d cleaned this stall every Monday since he could remember, but today the pregnant sow eyed him distrustfully, like he would accost her rather than care for her home.
“Come on, now. Up with you.” He tapped the pig with his boot. She snorted, then closed her eyes.
Two stubborn females. Just his luck. “I’ve no mind to put up with you today. Out with you.” He poked her with the handle end of his fork. The swine squealed and rolled over.
Michel sighed and rubbed his temple. First the girl, then the sow, what would come next? Maybe the roof on the stable would collapse, or the dam on the lower field would break. A perfect ending to his day.
Images of the girl flooded his mind anew. The tears that glistened in her eyes, the raise of her chin and set of her shoulders when she told him she had to leave, the pain that lanced her features when she strained her arm. The look of triumph on her face when she left the bed.
She was determined, if nothing else. But only a featherbrained child would expect to walk after lying incoherent for over a fortnight.
Michel raked his hand through his hair, knocking his hat into the straw.
Hopefully she’d settle in a bit, because she’d be in that bed awhile before she could visit her aunt.
In Saint-Valery-sur-Somme.
His grip on the pitchfork tightened. He wasn’t a half-wit. She was headed to England, sure as the sun would set. Not that it was any concern of his.
With nothing left to clean but where the sow lay, he shoved the fork into the straw beside the beast’s belly. Squalling and grunting, she rolled to her feet, baring her teeth and stomping the straw as though she would charge.
He growled in frustration. How much could a man endure of a day? Not intending to get bitten, he pushed his pitchfork into the ground near the gate and trudged away from the stable. He should finish mucking the stalls and fix the plow wheel. The stable roof needed patching as well as the roof over the bedchamber. He must get to town and buy that ox. And he had to check the sandbags on the lower field before the rains came and flooded the tiresome parcel of land.
He huffed a breath. The responsibilities of the farm pressed down upon him as they did every spring since his father died and his brother, Jean Paul, left. At any given moment, he had two weeks of work to finish and days to do it.
Yet he stormed past all the places needing his attention and opened the door to his workshop, the small familiar building the same as he had left it yesterday. The scent of lumber, instantly calming, wrapped around him. He inhaled deeply and moved to the center of his workspace, his eyes seeing nothing but the chest of drawers he’d spent the past six months making.
He wiped his hand on a rag and trailed his finger up the side of the piece. The elaborate sculpting on the posts contrasted with the straight lines and gentle curves of the wood, and the design of acorns and oak leaves he’d carved twisted and curled daintily against the deep hue of the walnut. This chest of drawers would match the design on his mother’s bed. A bedroom set, of sorts. He need only sculpt along the top edge of the dresser. Another week and it would be finished.
Sooner, if that impatient girl drove him to the shop every day.
He reached for his chisel, squeezed the familiar wooden handle, then rolled his shoulders. Too tense. He let the chisel fall to his workbench. He’d gouge through the middle of an acorn if he carved now.
Two strips of walnut lay on the floor beyond the dresser, a reminder of the wood he’d used to set the girl’s arm. A walnut splint. Who had that?
She’d uttered nary a comment about how smooth he’d sanded the wood so no sliver would pierce her porcelain skin.
Maybe he should have left her arm broken.
Guilt swamped him at the thought. He raised his eyes to heaven. “Oui, Father, mayhap she doesn’t deserve a broken arm. But she could still say thank-you.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. He needed to create, to saw, to build. Something—anything. Drying wood rested at the back of his shop, an odd assortment of anything he could collect. He blew out a breath. He’d have to start a new piece. But what?
He didn’t need another bed frame. Or another dresser.
Mayhap a table and chairs? He didn’t need those, either, but perhaps Leopold would sell a dining set in his store.
Michel picked up a single piece of richly burled maple and ran it through his hands as he studied his wood selection. He didn’t have enough walnut to work with. He could buy more, if only the farm didn’t need an ox. So the table would be oak. He walked to the back, hefted a long plank and brought it to his workbench.
Frustration melted with each push and tug of saw against wood. The tension slipped from his shoulders and neck as he planed the wood with long, smooth motions that shaved the legs into equal widths. Fragrant, curly strips of oak floated down and covered the floor as he toiled. He inhaled the aroma, heard the faint crunch of the shavings underfoot, felt the rough wood beneath his palm.
This was all a man needed to be happy.
Betwixt the rasps of his block planer, footsteps echoed on the stone walkway. Mère. With the girl and the sow, he’d forgotten his mother. Surely she hadn’t been turning over the garden all this time. He stopped the calming movements and dropped his planer with a thunk onto the workbench before heading to the door. He deserved a day in the stocks for forgetting his own mother.
“In here, Ma Mère.”
“There you are, Michel.”
She wandered over to him, carting a burlap sack behind her.
A lump of fear rose in his throat. “You went to town? You can’t up and head to Abbeville. I’ve told you, there are dangerous men about.”
She hauled her sack to the workbench. “I thought you’d be in the stable.”
So had he. But that didn’t change that she’d left despite his warnings.
He grasped her wrist. “Ma Mère, look at me. You cannot go off by yourself. Not into town, not into the woods, not anywhere until we know who hurt the girl.”
Eyes vacant and dull as two glass marbles stared back at him. She was having another bad day, which at least explained her wandering off.
“It’s Monday. I go to town on Monday. You muck the stalls. Did you get the stalls mucked? It’s Monday.”
Unable to stop himself, he pulled her to his chest and held her head over his heart, which beat at twice its normal pace. “I’ve some stalls yet to clean.”
She wiggled under his hold. “Have you looked at the bottom field?” Her voice muffled against his chest. “The wheat’s not flooded?”
He released her, looked at the woman who’d raised him and tucked a stray tuft of graying hair back into her bun. “It’s still Germinal.”
Her brow wrinkled in more confusion, and he ran a hand through his hair. What had the revolutionary government been thinking to give France a new calendar with ten days in a week and different names for the months and years? He could barely remember the new names or keep track of the day. Was it any wonder his mother got mixed up?
“April, Ma Mère. It’s the beginning of April. We’ve not planted yet, and we’ve not had much rain.”
“Oh.”
“It’s all right. Everyone gets befuddled at times.”
She glanced around the shop, her eyes resting on the freshly cut lumber in front of them. “More wood for the chest of drawers?”
How could she forget the month but remember what piece he worked on? “This is for a table.”
“You’re starting a new piece?”
“That’s what happens when I finish one.”
“You’ve a buyer for the finished one?”
He looked at the dresser. Not even close. “Mayhap.”
Hope, like wildflowers blooming in a field, sprang into her eyes. “And this table, you’ll be able to sell that, too?”
“Aye.” Right after the bottom field stopped flooding and the animals started mucking their own stalls.
“Dear me, I almost forgot.” Mère hefted her burlap sack onto the half-planed oak and began unloading her treasures. “Look what the Good Lord supplied us with.”
“That wood’s half-finished. Could you…”
He clamped his jaw. A kettle with a burned-out bottom, a scrap of lavender ribbon and a torn shoe with what looked like a mouse’s nest inside had already thudded onto his lumber.
“Oh, and look at this.” Her eyes shimmered as she produced a scraggly mourning bonnet from the bottomless abyss.
“It’s got holes.” Like most things she brought back from the village.
“I’ll make a hat for the girl.”
With all she forgot, how did she remember the girl? “You haven’t any thread left to mend the bonnet.”
“Look what else.” She pulled ragged brown trousers from her sack. “Madame Goitier wanted to throw these away. Throw them away! What with Joseph being the last of her brood. Said they didn’t fit him anymore. I’ll use the thread from these. You don’t think she’ll mind that the thread doesn’t match the bonnet, do you? Black and brown are close enough shades.”
Michel swung his eyes to his mother’s, waiting until she quieted and returned his look. “She’s awake.”
“What?” Mère patted the side of her head before her hand dove back into the sack.
“The girl. She’s awake.”
Mère stilled, the broken wooden yoyo in her hand pausing midair, then crashing to the table and scattering into more pieces. “Oh. Can’t say I expected her to wake.”
Bien sûr que non. Of course not. The girl’s fever had broken, her bruises faded, her delirium left and her arm half-healed. Why would Mère expect her to awake? “She’s astir, all right.” And madder than a caged cockerel.
“What’s her name?”
Her name? Michel swallowed. People probably called her something besides girl. “Didn’t ask.”
Mère bit her cracked lip. “How’s she feeling?”
“Poorly. Can’t stand.”
“Did she eat much?”
He tunneled a hand through his hair. She’d not eaten anything but spoonfuls of broth for more than two weeks. And he hadn’t even asked if she was hungry.
Or thirsty. “I should see how she’s faring. Come meet her?”
Mère stepped backward, her treasures forgotten and a shine of fear in her eyes. “I don’t know, Michel. She’s a stranger.”
“She’d like to see the bonnet you’re planning.” If the girl didn’t use the bonnet’s ties to strangle him for stranding her in the bedchamber despite her protests.
He took his mother’s shoulders and stooped to look her fully in the face. “Ma Mère, if anyone asks about her, say she’s Corinne’s cousin visiting from Paris. You can’t say I found her in the woods. Not to anyone. It’s important.”
Life or death important.
He’d repeated those words every day since bringing the girl home, but as always, Mother’s glazed eyes just blinked back at him.
Please, Father, let no one ask.
“Come.” He returned his mother’s discoveries to the sack and reached for her hand. “She’ll want to meet you.”
Hopefully. God forgive him for lying if the girl didn’t.
He grabbed his hat off the peg by the door and led her outside. A thundercloud approached from the west. A quick afternoon storm, more than likely, but the spring rains would come soon. He’d best examine the sandbags in the lower field tomorrow.
He tugged Mère along. “The girl’ll be happy to…”
The gate to the swine’s pen stood wide open. “Wait here.”
He left her standing in the yard and trudged toward the empty pen. The lily-livered sow! Getting the mean beast back would take the better part of his afternoon. Nothing seemed amiss with the gate while he mucked the stall. The beast must have been angrier than he thought and barreled through the barrier.
But the gate looked pristine with no visible damage to the door, latch or fence post. Michel rubbed his hand over his jaw. His pitchfork rested beside the post. Surely he hadn’t left the gate open. He wasn’t that daft.
But he’d been awfully distracted with the girl…
He pressed his eyes shut. He’d no memory of closing it. The girl and sow had troubled him, and he must have stormed to his workshop without latching the gate. He eyed the cloven prints that led toward the bottom field and stream, almost as though the sow made a beeline for his neighbor Bertrand’s property.
Thunder rumbled closer. He glanced at the gathering darkness, then back at the hog’s tracks. If Gerard Bertrand found her, he’d butcher her and the litter without thought, then lie to the magistrate about taking the sow.
Michel walked back to his mother. “Better get on inside. Rain’s coming, and the sow got loose. You remember, the one carrying the litter?”
She nodded even though her eyes showed no comprehension.
“You just go in and work on your mending. The girl should be sleeping. Leave her for now, and I’ll introduce you when I return.”
A bolt of lightning, a clap of thunder, and the sky loosed a torrent of fat raindrops. He smashed his hat farther down onto his head and watched Mère scurry inside. Then he turned to face the elements alone.
* * *
Thunk.
Isabelle’s eyes flickered open at the muted sound of the outer door closing, followed by soft voices from the other room. The candle still burned on the bedside stand, and the book the farmer’s mère had given her, The Tales of Mother Goose, rested facedown on her stomach. The woman had been kind to her, offering broth and water, giving her a book to read. But Isabelle must have drifted off soon after the woman left. Darkness had fully descended now, shrouding the room in its shadows. How long had she slept?
She shifted slightly, and a flash of movement caught her eye. The man entered, barefoot and soaked. Rainwater dripped from his sleeves and trouser hems onto the floor, making a muddy mess as he headed toward the dresser.
He placed his candle atop the dresser, its light illuminating the side of his chiseled face. She’d not heeded how attractive he was earlier, likely because she’d been too concerned about getting to Saint-Valery and then too angry with the man for insisting she lay abed. But now she couldn’t deny his comeliness. Muscles played across his back as he hunched down and rummaged through the third dresser drawer. His chest was so thick it would take three of her to fill it, and his arms so powerful they looked as though they could accomplish any task given them.
He must be so strong from working in the fields. She’d never seen her father’s torso this closely—he’d always worn layers upon layers of fabric, and none of them soaked to the skin, like the farmer’s—but Père’s forearms hadn’t been nearly so muscular nor his hands as beefy. And none of the courtiers at Versailles nor her former suitors had carried themselves the way this farmer did, with his strong shoulders and solid chest. She’d felt the strength of his arms and torso when he caught her from falling earlier.
Oui, he must be a hard worker, indeed.
He turned his head her direction, and she swiftly shut her eyes. He needn’t know she was awake—or ogling him. She was too tired to defend her actions or rationalize her thoughts. She’d no desire to engage in another argument, and she’d little reason to rouse and attempt her journey until she determined a way to earn back the money she lost.
Warmth spread over her body. He stared at her, and she felt it from the tip of her toes up through the roots of her hair. Her eyelids involuntarily fluttered, as though they longed to open and let her eyes meet his dandelion-green gaze, but she forced them shut.
The moment passed, the heat leaving her body and replaced by a cold loneliness. Fabric rustled in the farmer’s direction.
She opened her eyes. He stood sideways in the candlelight with fresh clothes piled atop the dresser. He undid the two buttons at his collar, then reached down and pulled the bottom of his shirt up.
She slammed her eyelids shut and turned her head away. She’d no business seeing this man bare of chest, especially not when she needed to focus on getting to England.
Chapter Five
The miserable wall. All it did was sprout holes.
Despite the chill in the air the following morn, a bead of sweat trickled between Michel’s shoulder blades. He hefted another sandbag from the wagon onto his shoulder and trudged to the weak spot in the makeshift dam.
Miserable wall. Miserable field. Miserable sow. Miserable life.
Twenty meters from where he walked, a stream glittered in the sunlight, and two large ash trees on the bank cast shadows over the water. It probably looked picturesque—to someone who didn’t know any better.
Nature’s deception at its best. One good rain and that creek would flood its borders—and his field. The ground rose on the other side of the stream, forming a gentle hill and Gerard Bertrand’s property. But Bertrand didn’t need to dam up his fields.
Nature did that for him.
If ever a field should revert back to forest and wetlands, this cursed lower parcel was it. After a few hours of rain from the day before, the ground transformed into a heap of mud that needed draining, not planting. And the creek had yet to flood, as it did every spring.
And every second summer.
And every third fall.
He set the sack into position on the wall and headed back to the horse and wagon for another. The farmwork, day in and day out, would rob a man of his strength. Take and suck and slurp until nothing was left. Then in the end, after the land stripped away a man’s muscle and mind and endurance, it took his heart.
It had stolen his father’s. In this very field. One moment the man had been plowing while Michel built up the dam, and the next moment Père fell to the ground behind the plow, his hands clutching his heart, his face a deathly gray. Michel had rushed to his side, just in time to promise Père he would take care of his mother and the farm.
His throat burned with the memory. How much of Père’s death was his fault? He’d been the one to leave the family and go off to Paris with dreams of making furniture. After a year of being denied an apprenticeship by every prominent furniture-maker in Paris, he’d returned home, his savings depleted, his dreams crushed, to find his father nearly dead from taking on the extra work.
He wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. Pursuing his dream cost Père’s life. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
The wood might call to him and make him long to be in the shop, letting his hands run over silken lumber, carving that last strip on the dresser, joining the tabletop.
But God had given him this land. And like Père, he would take care of it until it killed him.
He should have been the second-born son. God and Père both would have been better off giving the land to his brother. Farming flowed through Jean Paul’s blood the way woodworking did through his. Jean Paul could get a field to sprout just by looking at it, or so it seemed. The man never scowled when planting time rolled around and wore a grin on his face throughout the long, toilsome days of harvest.
Michel looked out over the fields. Where was his brother? Jean Paul should have returned by now. Mère and the rest of the town thought Jean Paul had been living in Paris these past six years, making furniture for the wealthy. But it wasn’t true. The master craftsmen furniture-makers wouldn’t let anyone new into their ranks. So when someone asked about his brother, Michel smiled and said Jean Paul was doing well. He wasn’t lying so much as he didn’t have anything different to tell people. In his letters, Jean Paul appeared to be doing well.
Grunting, Michel lifted another sandbag off his shoulders and swung it into place. It burst, spraying loose sand and dirt over his wall.
He kicked the barrier. The force reverberated up his leg, and sand spurted from another sack. Just what he deserved for giving in to his anger, but he didn’t much care. He’d a right to get worked up over the field, didn’t he? All it did was drain the life from him.
He snatched the ripped bag and trudged back to the wagon. The mud sucked at his boots, making each step a deliberate battle.
The earth smelled of moist dirt after yesterday’s rain. A scent he appreciated—when he hadn’t spent three hours traipsing around in search of a pig during the downpour, only to return without her. He glared across the stream to his neighbor’s land. The greedy man must have found the beast.
At least the girl had been asleep when he returned last night, so he hadn’t needed to deal with her.
At the thump of approaching horse hoofs, he turned toward the rise at the edge of the field. Two horses crested the little hill. The mayor undeniably sat atop the first steed, for no one in town carried as wide a girth as Mayor Victor Narcise. On a mule about half the size of Narcise’s horse sat Father Albert. A burning sensation of guilt crept across Michel’s chest at the sight of the wiry, sunken former priest. Ordinarily, he’d welcome a visit from the mayor, one of Père’s closest friends, and the father, his former schoolteacher. But the girl changed things.
Not just things, everything.
The mayor, sitting atop his magnificent mount and wheezing heavily from the exertion of reining in the beast, reached Michel several paces ahead of Father Albert. “Your mère said that your père was down here.”
They talked with Mère? Michel stilled, the hair on the back of his neck rising. What if she’d mentioned the girl?
“But since your père’s dead, I assumed she meant you’d be the one working the field.”
No talk of the girl. Michel blew out a shaky breath.
The mayor smoothed a gloved hand over the thinning gray hair that stuck out from beneath his hat. “I thought your mère knew—”
“She does. Some days.” Michel shifted his weight. He need not discuss Mère’s condition with the mayor. Half the town already thought she belonged in a lunatic hospital. “When she woke this morn, she remembered Mon Père was dead.”
Narcise hitched a thumb in the waistband of his breeches and watched him. Beside Narcise, Father Albert nodded, his eyes brimming with compassion. The same compassion he would no doubt have for the girl, despite her sharp tongue. Michel glanced nervously in the direction of the house. He worried not what Father Albert would do if the girl were discovered, but Narcise’s reaction would be a different matter.
Michel rubbed the back of his neck. Surely Father Albert had helped aristocrats escape France. Though the good father had lost everything—his church, his rectory, his income—when the Convention declared an end to Christianity last fall, he still went about the countryside helping widows and orphans, much like he’d always done. Oui, with Father Albert, Michel need not question whether he’d helped aristocrats, but how many.
Father Albert clutched his bony hands atop his lap. “’Tis a good thing you’re doing by looking after your mother, Michel. The Lord shall reward you.”
Michel couldn’t meet the father’s eyes. He’d probably canceled any reward for helping Mère after how he’d treated the girl. Father Albert should have been the one to find her. He wouldn’t forget to offer food or water, nor demand she say thank-you.
“Sometimes the Lord gives special opportunities to serve Him,” Father Albert continued. “Do not consider it a burden, son, but a chance to show God’s love.”
The blood left Michel’s face and pooled in his toes. Mère. Father Albert was talking about Mère. He couldn’t know about the girl.
“Well, Michel.” Narcise shifted, the saddle creaking under his weight. “We wanted to let you know Joseph Le Bon’s said to be coming this way.”
Michel wiped his brow with the back of his hand. The représentative en mission from the Convention. Great. He’d attended federalists meetings for more than a year now, and rather than sell his grain at the low price Paris demanded, he’d hid last year’s wheat in a lean-to in the woods. Now he could be guillotined for both—not to mention harboring an aristocrat. “When?”
“Don’t know.” Narcise puffed his chest. “Citoyen Le Bon’s supposedly had a few gangs of soldiers roaming this part of Picardy for a couple weeks, collecting accusations and ferreting out federalists and royalists.”
Was that what happened to the girl? Had soldiers, rather than a gang of robbers, found her? He should’ve asked. “Not to mention the grain hoarders.”
“Half the village didn’t sell their grain last year,” Father Albert said mildly, but then, it wasn’t Father Albert’s life in question. “No one could afford to with the price controls.”
Michel took a step closer, his eyes steady on Narcise’s. “The federalist meetings. Are the others…have they… Do we have an understanding?”
“No one who attended can afford to talk. That’s why we’re making these rounds. And I’ve not heard accusations from outsiders.”
“Doesn’t mean accusers won’t come once Le Bon rolls his guillotine into town.”
“Burn your wheat, Michel,” Narcise directed.
“Burn it! I’d’ve been better off selling it last fall.”
“Is one harvest worth your life? I can’t protect you if they search your property and find grain.”
“You can’t protect me, anyway,” Michel muttered.
“I aim to keep things under control. I won’t stand for foolish accusations. I’m still mayor here, and we’ll not have any Terror in these parts.”
“Le Bon’s from the Convention. You go blathering about how you have authority as mayor, and yours’ll be the first head to roll.”
“I won’t watch my friends die for something they haven’t done.”
“That’s the problem, Narcise. As far as the radicals are concerned, everyone in Abbeville’s done something.” Michel blew out a breath, wiped his sweaty hands on his thighs and resigned himself to what was coming. “I’m here if you need a hand.”
“We just wanted to warn you, son.” Father Albert raised his brow, concern etched across his face. “We can’t stop the Terror from coming.”
Michel slid his eyes shut and pictured Isabelle lying in the woods. “Something tells me the Terror’s already come.”
* * *
“Look at this one,” Jeanette exclaimed. Yet another child’s shirt—or what Isabelle thought was a child’s shirt—hung proudly between Jeanette’s hands. The garment sported three prominent patches, none of which matched either one another or the color of the shirt.
Isabelle settled back into the pillows of the bed and twisted a lock of hair. The smile plastered on her face turned genuine under the older woman’s enthusiasm. “You mended that one, too?”
Jeanette had been showing off the clothes she mended for the children’s orphanage since she walked inside a quarter hour ago.
“Fixed the shirt all up, I did. Those orphans need good shirts.” Jeanette raised her chin and puffed out her chest despite her short, frail body.
How different Jeanette appeared from her own mother’s tall, regal build.
Jeanette absently patted the side of her hair, which was done up in a sloppy knot of sorts. A few strands of graying brown came loose, as though she’d napped and not set her hair to rights.
Mère never had a hair out of place but her maid rushed to fix it. Mère never sewed an old garment but embroidered only the most delicate of handkerchiefs. And yet, the lines around Jeanette’s and Mère’s faces when they smiled at her, the concern in their eyes when they suspected something wrong, the gentle touch of their hands against her brow when they checked for fever, couldn’t be more similar.
“Michel and Father Albert love my donations. Figure it’s the best way for me to give back to the Good Lord. Why, He’s given me so much, I can’t help but return His goodness.”
Given Jeanette so much. Isabelle couldn’t help the longing for her mother, or the despair that flickered to life in her belly. From talking to Jeanette, Isabelle knew Michel owned enough land to make a decent living. They had a separate stable for their animals and thus no need to share their living quarters with the smelly beasts as so many farmers did. And they owned beautiful furniture, though she wondered how they obtained it.
A decade ago, she never would have called this small cottage and the surrounding farmland a blessing from God. Now these simple peasants possessed more than she did. She should have been grateful all those years ago, for the château and servants, the opulent food and dress, and her family. She lived in luxury while Michel and Jeanette and others like them struggled to get by. And now Jeanette’s Good Lord had reversed the situation. He’d stripped away all she held dear and still wouldn’t answer her prayers. She’d prayed the night she’d been attacked, and the soldiers still caught her and beat her and left her for dead.
But they hadn’t killed her.
Could that have been an answer to her prayer?
Bien sûr que non. What kind of a God let His child suffer all manner of humiliation and deprivation and torture before finally sparing her life? Michel’s finding her had been luck more than God. She could surely get to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme without more help from heaven.
“And my Michel’s so kind,” Jeanette prattled on, still chattering about her sewing for the orphans. “He won’t even let me mend his clothes. After they wear through, he says he’d rather I cut them up to make clothing for orphans.”
Isabelle couldn’t help but arch her brow and smile. No sane person could desire to go out in public wearing garments “mended” in such manner. “How charitable.”
“One of his shirts will make two or three for the orphans, he’s so large.”
Yes. He was large, indeed. She shoved the image of his powerful body from the night before out of her head before it could take root.
Jeanette fiddled with the shirt she held. “Fixing up clothes for the orphans started as a little hobby, it did, while my Charles was still alive. Now that he’s gone, it’s all I…” Jeanette’s shoulders shuddered. “That is…it makes me feel useful, I suppose.”
Isabelle’s heart caught. Surely this gentle creature didn’t doubt she was helpful. “Oh, Jeanette, you are most invaluable. I’m sure your work is important to the children, and I know how much your benevolence has meant to me.” Uncomfortable, she looked down and fidgeted with the handkerchief she’d been embroidering. “The orphans, you know, they’ve nothing at all. At least I have your kindness, and…”
What had she besides Jeanette’s kindness? Certainly not Michel’s favor. Or her passage money to England.
Moisture welled in her eyes. Certainly not her parents and brother. Certainly not the God whom she had spent her childhood worshiping, the God who allowed her family to be killed by a mob of peasants. And certainly not Marie, whom she had killed. Isabelle closed her eyes against the onslaught of guilt, but she couldn’t stop her hand from trembling or a tear from cresting.
At least she was alive. Why had God thought to spare her life, but not Marie’s? Not her family’s?
Jeanette moved to sit on the bedside, took Isabelle’s hand and patted it. “There, there. We’ll take care of you, we will. You needn’t cry.”
The chamber door opened, snapping Isabelle out of her memories. Before she finished wiping away her tears, Michel entered. When she was crying, of all times. He stood by the door, his green eyes seeming to absorb everything about her and his mother. Isabelle tugged her hand away from Jeanette’s soothing pats, cleared the moisture in her eyes with two blinks and raised her chin.
The room that had moments ago been comforting filled with an undeniably masculine presence. Michel’s muscles bunched beneath his shirt as he removed his wide-brimmed hat and wiped his forehead.
“Ma Mère, I need to speak with the girl. Alone.”
The girl. Did he not care to learn her name? She’d learned his through Jeanette last night. And what could he need to speak with her about in private? Her throat felt dry yet again; she reached for her water cup and found it empty.
Jeanette laid a hand on Isabelle’s shoulder and turned to Michel as she rose. “Be kind to the poor dear, Michel. Oh, and that crate can be sent to the orphans. I finished the last shirt this morn.”
He took his mother’s hand and led her to the doorway with gentle, caring motions. The thump of the door closing echoed in the room. He stepped toward the dresser, opened the top drawer, retrieved something and approached her.
Pretending he hadn’t stopped beside her, she stared at the beams in the roof, then jolted when his rough hand enveloped hers.
“This is yours. I should have thought to give it back yesterday.” He wedged a small pouch of coins into her palm.
Isabelle gaped at the money before meeting his eyes. “I…”
“This, too, belongs to you.”
She recognized it the moment the cool weight pressed against the center of her hand. “My pendant…I thought…the others, that is, I thought they…”
“You were wearing it when I found you, but it was bothersome while Ma Mère tended your wounds.”
Her head fell back against the pillow and she clutched the pendant and money to her chest. England. Marie. She could go. One of the La Rouchecaulds would escape this dreadful Révolution.
If she ever got out of this infernal bed.
Michel cleared his throat. “I have your citizenship papers, as well. They’re in the dresser when you need them.”
A single tear slid down her cheek. Horrors! She brushed it away with her bandaged hand, ignoring the pain her movement caused.
He sat down beside her on the bed. “Isabelle.” He whispered her name.
The word sounded beautiful on his tongue, and the intimacy of it had another tear cresting. She furiously swiped at it. She’d rather swallow a toad than cry in his presence.
His hand clasped over the fisted one resting on her chest. A bolt of heat raced up her arm. Did he feel it?
His thumb stroked her knuckles. “Don’t cry. Forgive me for not giving them back sooner. I didn’t intend to keep anything. But you vexed me so yesterday that I forgot and stormed off.”
Tears still brimming, she met his eyes, so warm compared to their coolness yesterday. She couldn’t help sinking into the comfort they offered, letting the heat from his touch travel straight to her heart. “I thank you.”
A smile twisted the corners of his mouth and crinkled the edges of his eyes. He shifted closer, surveying her features. “Ah, the very words I wished to hear yesterday. Come now…”
He shifted, bringing their lips within centimeters of each other. The breath rushed out of her. He would kiss her in another moment, and she should turn away from it, slap him. But his eyes held her, trapping her in their green depths.
She knew not how long they sat, an instant away from kissing, both afraid to make the contact, both afraid to break it. He lifted his hand and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and his fingertip grazed the tender spot behind her earlobe.
She lurched back. The bond that held them shattered.
Michel sprang from the bed, shifted his weight awkwardly and looked about the room. “I, uh…”
She kept her face down, staring at the pattern on the old quilt. Why must she be so childish and lurch away? He’d meant nothing by the touch. He was just…what?
Her heart felt ready to hammer through her chest, and heat flooded her cheeks. Surely she did not desire his kiss.
He cleared his throat. “I, um, came to speak with you about your attackers. Was it a gang of thieves, or soldiers? And what do they know of you?”
Isabelle stiffened, her hand tightening around her money and pendant. Had he been kind to her only because he wanted information? She couldn’t tell him, not anything. If he knew her father had been a duc, he might yet turn her over to the soldiers. And if he allowed her to stay, he’d knowingly put himself and his mother in greater danger. Non. Information about her family would only put more people at risk. “You need know nothing of me.”
“Joseph Le Bon, the représentative en mission from the Convention, will be coming to Abbeville shortly. Now, whence come you?”
The représentative en mission? An icy finger of fear wrapped around the base of her spine and worked upward. Though the main guillotine for executions resided in Paris, représentatives en mission brought other guillotines with them and their soldiers when they traveled, carrying their own little Terror to other sections of the country. She and Marie had barely maintained their disguise when the Terror came to Arras last fall, but to have it come to Abbeville? Now? “Surely you jest.”
“I do not. And ’tis reasonable that I know who’s sleeping under my roof and eating my food. So I’ll ask again. Whence come you?”
She swallowed. The soldiers in the woods hadn’t believed her story, but perchance the farmer would. The tale had fooled people for five years. “From Arras, my father was a cobbler, but when my aunt in Saint-Valery suffered apoplexy, I—”
He gripped her wrist with frightening force, angling himself over her until she’d no choice but to look him in the eye. “You lie. And so easily at that. If your hair were not so obviously black and your eyes brown, you’d state they were red, both of them. Tell me, does it upset your constitution to lie so freely? I thought mademoiselles were especially sensitive to such falsehoods.”
She pressed her eyes shut, unable to meet his prying gaze. Non. She hadn’t always lied. She’d been nearly sick the first time she was untruthful about her heritage. But the seamstress, Madame Laurent, would have sent her to the guillotine had she gone to the shop claiming she was the daughter of the Duc de La Rouchecauld.
Had lying become so natural over the past five years she now thought nothing of it?
“I’m risking my neck and my mother’s by having you here. I’ll not hear any more falsehoods. I’d rather you refuse to answer than tell me an untruth.”
Isabelle opened her eyes and bit the side of her lip. She still couldn’t tell him who her father was, not even with the représentative en mission en route. Perchance Michel was willing to help some unnamed aristocratic girl, but in the eyes of most Frenchmen, helping the daughter of the Duc de La Rouchecauld would test even God’s mercies. She blew out a shaky breath. “I promise to speak honestly, but I’ll not give you my name nor tell you whence I come. Then if I am discovered, you can deny any knowledge of my heritage.”
“We both know that will make little difference.”
The truth of Michel’s words sliced her. They would all be killed if anyone learned her identity.
Chapter Six
“…They appeared of a sudden, coming out of the forest. I didn’t stop to look or count. I simply fled. I knew not whether they were thieves or soldiers, but when they started calling me, telling me stop in the authority of France, I knew who they were and what they would do to me.”
Michel scrubbed a hand over his face as Isabelle’s words swirled around him. He should have never asked to hear it. Her face shone deathly pale, but her words sounded hard, objective. Like a soldier who recounted someone else’s experience, rather than her own. ’Twould be better if she cried, raged, anything to get out what must be burning inside her.
“I should have been more prepared for a chase. I see that now. The handful of other times I happened upon someone in the road, I’d time enough to hide in the forest. But the soldiers, they emerged from the trees, not the road. What could I do but run? The shadows weren’t enough to conceal me. And I had my valise. I should have dropped it, left it for them. But…I couldn’t.”
Her voice hitched, followed by a tremble of the lips and the slightest sheen of anguish in her eyes. “I’d already lost so much.”
Her determination nearly broke him. How terrible to be forced from your home, constrained to travel at night with wild animals and thieves abounding, impelled to carry all possessions in a valise.
Michel hunched his shoulders and turned away from her. He wouldn’t feel sorry for her. He couldn’t.
Fire and damnation. Her kin had starved him, taxed his land, house, harvest and made him pay for use of the mill. Seigneurs refused him rights to hunt and fish. Now he sat beside a seigneur’s daughter, and he was supposed to pity her?
Michel stiffened, only half listening as she continued.
“Despite my advanced start, I could feel them gaining. Then my valise caught. I turned to jerk it free, but a soldier had hold of it. When I pulled, the bag ripped, but I continued forward. There was a copse of pine ahead, and if I could get there, I thought to lose myself in their dense branches. But I never…that is to say, I didn’t…”
She cleared her throat.
How had the woman courage to continue her story?
“One wore an old National Guard coat, and they all had on those hideous tricolor cockades. They wanted to know my name, where I was from and so forth. I told them the same story I told you, but they didn’t believe me, either. And when the leader demanded the truth, I refused. They were going to kill me regardless. Why give them the pleasure of knowing whom they’d taken?”
He’d not look at the girl. He couldn’t or he’d lose every drop of the hatred he harbored for the aristocracy. Tunneling a hand through his hair, he paced, but the room was hardly large enough. Four steps across from the chest of drawers to Mère’s bed and back again.
He wished he’d never found her. Then there’d be no dilemma, no danger to him and his mother by harboring her. No choice between whether to further aid her escape or kick her out once she regained her strength.
He’d not sneak into the woods again to fish for the rest of his days if he could send her on her way. Rid himself of the burden she’d become.
“The leader, a large man not unlike yourself, had at least enough decency to refuse the others the opportunity to violate me. I suppose I wasn’t worth dragging to the nearest guillotine, so they’d kill me there, in the woods. Then I felt a blow to my lower back and…”
He stopped pacing. Isabelle worked her jaw to and fro. Why didn’t she let her pain out? She should be in tears after reliving such an ordeal. Her hands trembled in what was surely a bitter fight for control, but her eyes stayed flat.
“…I can’t recall anything more.”
He raised his eyes to the thatched roof. Through the deaths of his father and Corinne, he’d clung to the fact that God didn’t make mistakes. Every morning when he rose to milk the cow and feed the animals, every midday when he planted or weeded or harvested rather than build furniture, he reminded himself God’s ways were best.
But the arrival of this…this… He knew not what to call her. He could hardly term her “wench” or “vixen” when she faced the memories of her attack with such strength. He could hardly call her “girl” when she had lived through such pain.
The arrival of this mademoiselle had him questioning God’s ways. Why would God want him to find her? To care for her? In God’s great plan of things, this situation was most illogical. Someone else should have discovered her. Father Albert or…
And therein lay the problem. She’d been lying in his woods. So God must have given this responsibility to him, must intend for him to aid the girl.
But why? Michel’s temples pounded. He needed the feel of wood beneath his hands, the relaxing motion of the saw or planer to clear his thoughts, roll away the stress.
“Michel?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, then reluctantly looked at the girl. No—the woman. Her lips moved. They were red, the color of apples in September, not the dull pink they’d been when he found her. And her hair, by heavens, he should have hidden Mère’s brush. It had been comely enough when dirty and matted in the woods, but brushed and falling freely over her shoulders and the pillows, it looked like a cascade of dark silk. He rubbed his forefinger over the pad of his thumb. Surely her hair wouldn’t feel so soft.

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