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The Soldier's Secrets
Naomi Rawlings
Divided LoyaltiesBrigitte Dubois will do anything to keep her family safe. When she is blackmailed by her father-in-law, his quest for revenge leaves her no choice. To protect her children, she must spy on the man who may have killed her husband. But Jean Paul Belanger is nothing like she expected. The dark, imposing farmer offers food to all who need it, and insists on helping Brigitte and her children.Everything Jean Paul did was in the name of liberty. Even so, he can never forgive himself for his actions during France's revolution. Now a proud auburn-haired woman has come to his home seeking work and has found her way into his reclusive heart. But when she uncovers the truth, his past could drive them apart….


Divided Loyalties
Brigitte Dubois will do anything to keep her family safe. When she is blackmailed by her father-in-law, his quest for revenge leaves her no choice. To protect her children, she must spy on the man who may have killed her husband. But Jean Paul Belanger is nothing like she expected. The dark, imposing farmer offers food to all who need it, and insists on helping Brigitte and her children.
Everything Jean Paul did was in the name of liberty. Even so, he can never forgive himself for his actions during France’s revolution. Now a proud auburn-haired woman has come to his home seeking work and has found her way into his reclusive heart. But when she uncovers the truth, his past could drive them apart.…
She needed to convince him to hire her, and she needed to do so now. So she walked inside.
The most obvious place to start cleaning was the table, but since Citizen Belanger was there, she started with the bench beside the door.
“What are you doing?”
Brigitte jumped at the stern sound of his voice but straightened her shoulders. “It appears you do need a housekeeper. Look at the dust I wiped from this bench.”
She turned to face him, then gulped. He clenched and unclenched his jaw as he stared down at her. Perhaps she’d been a little too hasty in coming inside.
But no. She couldn’t let him frighten her. She had to protect her children first, and that meant gleaning information from the irate man before her. “You stand rather straight, Citizen Belanger. Tell me—have you ever been in the army?”
“My past is hardly your concern.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. Did he see the way her hands trembled? Did her face look as cold as it felt?
And why could he not answer this one question?
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 two hundred inches of snow per winter. Naomi writes bold, dramatic stories containing passionate words and powerful journeys. 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 (http://www.naomirawlings.com).
The Soldier’s Secrets
Naomi Rawlings


www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.
—Proverbs 11:3
Pure religion and undefiled before God
and the Father is this,
To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, [and] to keep himself unspotted from the world.
—James 1:27
To my parents, Marvin and Carolyn Montpetit.
Thank you for your love, guidance, and wisdom.
And thank you for the sacrifices you made to raise me in a manner that honored God.
Acknowledgements
No book could ever make its way from my head to the story in front of you without help from some amazing people.
First and foremost, I’d like to thank my husband, Brian. What would I do without someone to cook dinner, watch the kids, and love and encourage me through each and every book I write? Second, I’d like to thank my critique partner, Melissa Jagears. The longer I work with you, the more I come to value your support for my stories as well as for everyday life. My writing would suffer greatly without your brilliant mind, and my heart would suffer greatly without your friendship. Thank you for all the hours of critiquing you poured into this story.
I’d also want to thank my agent, Natasha Kern, for teaching me about writing and supporting me both professionally and personally. Your love for writers and good stories shines through all the hours you pour into Natasha Kern Literary Agency. I deeply value your guidance and advice, as well as your friendship. Thank you to my editor, Elizabeth Mazer, for your helpful suggestions and enthusiasm about my stories—and especially for your love of all things French.
Special thanks to Scott and Andrea Corpolongo Smith, owners of Ontonagon, Michigan’s Wintergreen Farms. Andrea read over the farming portions of my novel to make sure I had all the nettlesome details about blights, pests, and vegetables correct. For more information about Wintergreen Farms, community supported agriculture, organic vegetables, and yummy recipes, visit their fabulous blog, wintergreen-farm.blogspot.com.
Beyond these people, numerous others have given me support in one way or another—Sally Chambers, Glenn Haggerty, Roseanna White, and Laurie Alice Eakes, to name a few. Thank you all for your time and effort and helping me to write the best books I possibly can.
Contents
Prologue (#u061a63f8-21cc-57a3-ab9b-886c2addd00e)
Chapter One (#u4787e3f0-28cc-5d0f-928a-82aba401a68e)
Chapter Two (#u1b194b9f-f95a-5f74-99bc-fd048b578db6)
Chapter Three (#u4cdc9637-e194-5857-8dee-7f88e5252c15)
Chapter Four (#u46926096-6087-5c67-8776-9b2d6005b61d)
Chapter Five (#uf6c13bc1-5fc4-5f43-8e35-1dcc522f26ea)
Chapter Six (#u9b9d5c94-9b9e-593a-a78b-6e39d35dd175)
Chapter Seven (#u5453c0b0-f880-5682-a3f7-7a869c07569f)
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)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Calais, France, June 1795
Brigitte Dubois wrapped her arms about herself and trudged down the deserted street, darkness swallowing her every step. Night air toyed with the strands of hair hanging from beneath her mobcap, while mist from the sea nipped relentlessly at her ankles and a chill slithered up her spine.
It mattered not that it was summer, warm enough to sleep without a fire in the hearth, warm enough to draw beads of perspiration on her forehead, warm enough to attend her rendezvous with a shawl rather than a cloak. The cold came from inside, deep and frigid, a fear so terrifying she could hardly stay ahead of it. So her feet stumbled forward, over the cracked and chipping cobblestones, past the rows of houses shuttered tight against the darkness.
One night. One meeting. Then she could go home, gather her children and leave this wretched city.
Or so she hoped.
The breeze from the Channel swirled around her, ripe with the salty tang of sea and fish, while the clack of her wooden shoes against the street created the only sound in the deserted city besides the rhythmic lap of waves against the shore. The warehouse loomed before her at the end of the road, dark and menacing and ominously larger with each step she took toward its rusty iron doors.
Another shudder raced through her. Would this place become her tomb on this muggy summer night?
No, she’d not think such things. She had a house to return to, children to feed and a babe to tend. Alphonse wasn’t going to kill her, not tonight. Her children were too important.
Which was why she had to get them away.
She slowed as she neared the warehouse, raising her hand to knock upon the small side door. But just as her knuckles would have met the cold iron, it swung inward.
“You’re here.” A guard hulked in the doorway, his voice loud against the empty street and tall stone houses.
“As I was told to be.” She straightened her back, but not because she wanted to. No. Her shoulders ached to slump and her feet longed to slink into the shadows hovering beside the building, to creep back to her children and her house and the safety those four square walls offered.
But safety was a mere illusion. No one was ever truly safe from Alphonse Dubois.
“Come in.” The planes and edges of the guard’s face glinted hard in the dim light radiating from inside. He was huge, taller than her by nearly half a mètre and powerful enough to fell her with the club hanging at his side. Her eyes drifted down to the massive hand gripping the door, and she took a step back.
“That’s the wrong direction, wench. And Alphonse doesn’t like to wait.” The guard’s knuckles bulged around his club.
“Of course.” She spoke easily, as though her body wasn’t trembling. As though her lungs didn’t refuse to draw breath at the idea of stepping over the threshold.
“I said move.” The man yanked her inside.
The door slammed behind her, its bang resonating through the packed warehouse. Gone was the grimy smell of coal smoke and familiar taste of the sea that permeated the streets of Calais. Aromas sweet like chocolate, tangy like salt and smooth like tobacco wrapped themselves around her.
Crates towered high, leaving only a narrow pathway through which to walk. Labels marked the sides of each and every box: silk from Lyons, and lace from Alençon and Arras, Dieppe and Le Puy. Tea from India, cocoa and cigars from the Caribbean. Sea salt from the Île de Ré, and more barrels of brandy than one could imagine. All sat stacked one atop the other in endless columns.
The contents of the single warehouse were worth a fortune in any land. But with France and England at war, Alphonse would reap even greater sums for his illegal French goods once his men smuggled them onto the English market. The trade materials like tea and chocolate and cigars would arrive on British shores under cover of darkness and away from the greedy eyes of the king’s excise agents, bringing yet more profit to the smuggler.
And Alphonse had warehouses like this scattered through half of northern France.
“This way.” A hot hand clamped around the back of her neck and shoved her forward, weaving her in an interminable maze toward the center of the warehouse.
When the crates finally stopped, she stood in a small open area in the middle of the warehouse.
With Alphonse Dubois looking on, seated dead in the center of his smuggling empire.
Heir to a seigneury by birth, he wielded more power now than an inheritance ever would have given him. All of Calais knew his story, though she knew it better than most. He was a firstborn son who hadn’t been content to accept the lands handed down for centuries, nor had he wanted to make do with his family’s dwindling coffers. So rather than sitting in his chateau and watching as it crumbled about him while he ran through his precious few ancestral funds, he’d gone off and gotten himself rich.
Illegally.
Now Alphonse had as much money as England’s king himself—and just as much power in a town such as Calais.
“Brigitte.” The thin blade of his voice sliced through the air. “How pleasant to see you.”
As though he’d given her a choice, as though earlier this afternoon he hadn’t sent two of his henchmen to her house and summoned her while her children watched.
He studied her through eyes yellow with age, that putrid amber and the pale pink tint to his lips the only colors in a face otherwise gray as stone. “Sit.”
It had come to this then, time for him to issue orders and her to defy him. Did he see the way her hands trembled? The fear that threatened to burst from her chest in a sob?
“I prefer to stand, mer—”
The guard shoved her forward, and she nearly toppled into the table. “A defiant one, she is. You can see it in her eyes.” He planted both hands on her shoulders, forcing her down until she crumpled into the chair.
Alphonse’s pink-tinged lips curved into a cruel smile. “You’re dismissed, Gerard.”
The guard moved back against the crates to stand beside another man, equally as muscular and thick of chest, and carrying another large club.
Alphonse took a sip of steaming liquid from a mug beside his hand, then reached for a sweet biscuit sitting on the table. He wore gray as always, the color matching his silver-tinted hair and aging skin. The monotonous color palate created an image more akin to a corpse then a living, breathing man.
“I hear you plan to leave Calais.”
He’d found out.
She clutched her shawl against the base of her throat.
“Foolish woman.” His eyes hardened into two frigid stones. “Did you think I’d let you steal my grandchildren away in the night?”
She hadn’t a choice. He’d suck her children into the smuggling business if she didn’t leave. Julien and Laurent were safe in the navy for now, but what of Danielle and Serge at home? How young did boys start running messages for Alphonse? Seven? Eight? Could Alphonse take Serge even now? And as for Danielle...
Brigitte swallowed, the type of work available to a girl in this industry too unbearable to imagine.
“No one leaves my employ without permission,” he snapped.
“I’m not in your employ and never have been.”
Something calculating and methodical moved behind his eyes. “No, you’re family.”
She cringed at the word. “My husband’s dead. That eliminates any connection between you and I.”
“It would, had I not five grandchildren whom you keep from me.”
“With Henri dead, the children belong to me, and I’ll not allow you to employ them in your wretched schemes. I’m not my husband.”
“No, you most certainly are not.” Alphonse ran his eyes slowly down her, his gazing lingering until revulsion flooded her body. “You claim you want to leave Calais, and let’s say, just for the moment, that you have the money and means to do so. What do you intend to do? Where do you intend to go?”
To Reims. To my family.
She’d never be free of him if she said such things. He’d track her down and find her, taking her two oldest sons when they came home from the navy. Or he’d tell her she’d need to house his men and store his goods when one of his minions was in the area.
“Did you know, Brigitte, I have a rather marvelous memory?” He watched her through those hard, death-colored eyes. “It helps when one runs a business such as this.”
A business? He spoke as though his smuggling success was some legitimate form of trade.
“For example, I seem to recall when you and my son first met. You were living in Reims, were you not? Acting as a governess?”
“I...” He couldn’t remember where she came from and who her family was. Wouldn’t use them as threats.
“I remember well, but every so often my mind fails me.” He snapped his fingers, and one of the guards stepped forward, a sheaf of papers in hand. “I’ve learned to take excellent notes, you understand.” He took the papers from the guard and flipped through them. “Ah, yes, everything is here. You’re the niece of a seigneur, and your elder sister married a seigneur’s third son. Your father has passed on, but your mother apparently maintains good health and resides in your childhood home. I wonder how your mother and sister have fared, what with the Révolution and all.”
She gripped the edge of the table, her nails digging into the aged wood. “How dare you.”
“When my informants tell me you plan to leave Calais, that you hide away money and slowly pack your things, I ask myself, where might my dear daughter-in-law go? And why might she go there? And then it comes to me, where you hailed from, who your people are. Then just as I feel a spark of compassion and think that perhaps it’s time for you to return to Reims, I remember my sweet grandchildren. Grandchildren who are useful to me.”
“I won’t let you touch them.”
“I’d always intended for Henri to run my enterprise after I passed on.” He continued on as though her words meant nothing. “’Twas a natural decision, you see, with him being my only son. But now that he’s dead, one of your boys shall have to take over.”
The breath whooshed out of her, and the air surrounding her grew thick and heavy. He couldn’t get to the older boys. They were safe in the navy.
Weren’t they?
“So which shall it be? Julien or Laurent? Julien would be advantageous in that—”
“What do you want?” She spit the words between them.
He winged an eyebrow up.
“That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?” She toyed with the ends of the shawl lying in her lap. “To ask something in exchange for letting me move to Reims?”
He laughed, a soft, cruel sound. “Very astute, Brigitte. You always have been, you know. ’Twas why I was so in favor of Henri’s marrying you from the first.”
“I’d not have married him had I known he was a smuggler.”
That cruel smile curved his lips yet again. “Which was why you made him such a perfect wife. You faithfully stayed home and bore his seed, not luring him away from his duties with words of love and flattery. Oui, you were perfect. Too dutiful to leave, yet too angry with his work to distract him.”
“You’re evil.”
“It serves me well, does it not?” He took a sip of tea. “But let’s begin negotiations. I have a certain task in mind, one that would perfectly suit a widow with three children to tend. You fulfill your assignment, and I let you and the children return to Reims. I’ll even give you money to buy a house there. A nice little cottage near your sister, perhaps?”
She drew in a long, slow breath. Only one job, and then she and the children would be free. The proposition seemed almost too good to be believable. But then, he hadn’t yet said what he wanted in exchange. “If I do your bidding, Julien and Laurent return to me in Reims when they reach port. They don’t come to you.”
“Of course.”
“And I won’t kill for you.”
Alphonse’s smile turned from cruel to dangerous. “Don’t worry, ma chère. I seek only a spy. And justice. For the man who killed your husband.”
Justice from a man like Alphonse? The very thought made her shiver. But what other choice had she?
Chapter One
Near Abbeville, France, July 1795
The children. She was doing this for the children.
Brigitte Dubois surveyed the countryside. The brilliant blue sky where two birds twittered and flirted with each other, the lush green forest to her right filled with a host of insect sounds, and the rolling fields stretching beyond the farmstead ahead and into the golden horizon.
Serene. Peaceful. A pleasant change from the grimy streets of Calais.
She must have the wrong house.
She’d never before given much thought to the soldier who had dragged her husband away in the night to execute him for his crimes. Had never wondered where he lived, what he did, if he had a family. But farming?
She forced her feet up the curving lane, climbing the little knoll to the cottage. A man stood near the stable, stuffing vegetables into an old wagon.
Her husband’s alleged killer?
Surely killers didn’t farm the pristine countryside or load vegetable wagons on sunny afternoons. They skulked about in the dead of night, meting out death and destruction.
“Bonjour, Citizen.” She neared the stable where the vegetables waited, stacked neatly in crates and sacks.
The man’s forearms bulged as he hefted another crate, his shirt straining against wide shoulders and a torso thick as a tree trunk. He would tower over Alphonse’s guards, and he was so thick of chest her hands wouldn’t touch if she wrapped her arms around him.
Powerful enough to drag a man like Henri from his bed. Strong enough to beat her dead if he learned what she was about.
“If you’re wishing to buy food, I sell it at the market, not here.” The man didn’t stop his work but reached for another sack.
“I’m not in want of food, but a post.” Not that she wanted to work for a possible murderer, but truly, Alphonse had left her little choice.
He turned to her and paused, his hands gripping a crate filled with turnips. Harshness radiated from his being, with eyes so dark and ominous they were nearly black, and hair the color of the sky at midnight. His chin jutted hard and strong beneath a chiseled face, and an angry scar curled and bunched around his right eyebrow.
She wet her suddenly parched lips.
“I haven’t a job to offer you. I only employ tenant farmers, and I’ve three men waiting for plots next year already.” He slid the crate onto the wagon bed, then turned and hefted another. “Have you tried in town? The butcher might be hiring, and we can always use another laundress or seamstress.”
Brigitte glanced down at her lye-scarred hands, unlikely to recover after sixteen months of taking in laundry and mending. Besides, Abbeville was a small town, not like the bustling port of Calais. The people here probably had a favorite widow they took their mending to. “What about working as laundress here? You said you have tenants.”
“Aye, and several of them have wives. There’re women aplenty for doing women’s work and older men to laze about. It’s young men we’ve naught of.”
Yes, she knew. Perhaps the war with the Netherlands had been settled, but France still warred with the Austrians in the east, the Italians in the south, and the English on the sea. Which meant the country sorely lacked young men...
Or rather, young, upstanding men. Her husband and the rest of Alphonse’s smugglers had evaded enlistment.
As had the man before her.
That bore looking into. Why would a strong, healthy man be farming rather than serving his country?
Perhaps he’d gotten leave for some reason, or had already joined the army only to be injured and sent home.
But that still didn’t explain how he had all his tenant positions filled and a waiting list of three farmers for next year.
And wondering these things would do little good unless she procured employment here and could seek answers. She forced her eyes back to the big brute of a man still loading the wagon. “What of you? Have you a wife to do your laundry and housework and cooking? I can bake bread and apple pies, cherry tarts and—”
“Non.” The harsh word resonated through the air between them. “I’ve no wife, and no need of one.”
Heat flooded her cheeks and she took a step back, even though the wagon already sat between them. “I wasn’t asking for your hand, I was offering to hire my labor out.”
She’d already tried to dig into his secrets from afar. She’d moved to Abbeville half a week ago, but talking to the townsfolk had gotten her nowhere. She had a meeting with Alphonse’s man in three days’ time, and nothing to report but the information Alphonse had already given her: officially, after Jean Paul Belanger’s wife had died seven years ago, he’d gone to Paris and spent six years away from Abbeville, supposedly making furniture.
Furniture. In the middle of a revolution.
Did no one else think that odd?
Alphonse did. And Alphonse also thought Citizen Belanger the lead soldier that had found Henri and broken up a smuggling endeavor over a year ago, while going by a different surname. Now she was here to find proof and present it to Alphonse’s man.
“Where did you say you were from?” The large man shoved another sack of grain onto the wagon and turned, his eyes studying her.
“Calais.”
He frowned. “The port on the sea?”
“Oui. Have you been there? You can see England and its white cliffs from the shore. It’s a beautiful city.” Or it was if you lived in the proud stone houses set back from the sea and not in a shack near the harbor.
The man’s eyes grew darker—which shouldn’t have been possible, as they had started out the color of midnight.
He knew what she was about, he had to. She took an instinctive step back. If he flew at her—
“I’ve been there once, and it doesn’t bear remembering.”
Her breath puffed from her lips in shaky little bursts. It was as she’d told Alphonse, she’d be no good at this information gathering. If she couldn’t look the man in the eye and ask him a simple question without giving herself away, how would she uncover his secrets?
If he had any secrets.
If he wasn’t the wrong man entirely.
On the eve of Henri’s capture, the sliver of moonlight trickling through the window had been so dim she could hardly make out her husband’s form on the pallet beside her. But she’d felt his presence, the heat from his body, the tickle of his breath on her cheek. He was home, for once, not off on some smuggling errand for Alphonse, paying some strange woman for a place in her bed, or drinking himself through the wee hours until dawn. He’d eaten dinner with her and the children, kissed them and crawled into bed beside her as though they were a normal family.
Then the soldiers came. They didn’t knock, just burst through the solid wooden door and shouted for Henri Dubois. One man yanked him from their bed. A big man, so broad of back and thick of chest his body eclipsed any light from the window.
Strange that she should recall that of all things, the way the soldier’s body had been so large it obstructed the shadow of her husband’s form being dragged to the door.
“Are you unwell?” Citizen Belanger watched her, his forehead wrinkling into deep furrows.
She shook her head, her throat too dry to speak.
“Citizen?” The farmer approached, stepping around the wagon and striding forward with a powerful gait.
“Non, I’m fine.” She didn’t want the hulking man beside her, innocent or not.
But he came, anyway, closer and closer until she stood in his shadow, those wide shoulders blocking the sun just as the soldier’s body had blocked the light from the moon.
She pressed her eyes shut and ducked her head. What if this man had taken her husband? Would he drag her away to the guillotine, as well?
Her breaths grew quick and short, and the air squeezed from her lungs.
But nothing happened. She waited one moment, then two, before peeking an eyelid open. He stood beside her now, towering and strong, able to do anything he wished with those powerful hands and arms.
But concern cloaked his face rather than malice. “Are you ill? Need you sustenance?”
Sustenance? She wanted nothing from him—besides information, that was. She opened her mouth to proclaim herself well, except he stood so close she could only stare at his big, burly body.
“Here. Sit.” He took her by the shoulder.
She lurched back, but his hands held her firm, leading her toward the house. Surely he didn’t mean to take her inside, where ’twould be far more difficult for her to get away.
“Non.” She planted her feet into the dirt. “I—I wish to stay in the sun.”
He scowled, a look that had likely struck fear in many a heart. “Are you certain? Mayhap the sun’s making you over warm. The house is cooler.”
Her current state had nothing to do with the heat, but rather the opposite. Fear gripped her stomach and chest, an iciness that radiated from within and refused to release its hold. She’d felt it twice before. First when those soldiers had barged into their house and taken Henri away, and then the night Alphonse had given her this task.
Now she was in Abbeville, staring at the man she might well need to destroy and letting fear cripple her once again.
* * *
She’s like Corinne. It was the only thing Jean Paul could think as he stared at the thin woman in his hold. She was tall yet slender, as his late wife had been, and had a quietly determined way about her. Unfortunately she also looked ready to faint.
He needed to get some food in her. He’d not have another woman starve in his hands, at least not when he had the means to prevent it.
“I should sit,” she spoke quietly then slid from his grip, wilting against the stone and mud of the cottage wall before he could stop her.
“Are you unwell?” he asked again. A daft question, to be sure, with the way her face shone pale as stone.
She shook her head, a barely perceptible movement. “I simply...need a moment.”
She needed more than a moment. Judging by the dark smudges beneath her eyes and hollowness in her face she needed a night of rest and a fortnight of sumptuous feasts.
“Come inside and lie down.” He hunkered down and reached for her, wrapping one arm around her back and slipping another beneath her legs.
“Non!” The bloodcurdling scream rang across the fields, so loud his tenants likely heard it. “Remove your hands at once.”
Stubborn woman. “If you’d simply let me...”
His voice trailed off as he met her eyes. They should have been clouded with pain, or mayhap in a temporary daze from nearly swooning. But fear raced through those deep brown orbs.
She was terrified.
Of him.
Why? He shifted back, giving her space enough to run if she so desired. The woman’s chest heaved and her eyes turned wild, the stark anguish of fright and horror etched across her features.
“Let me get you a bit of water and bread.” He rose and moved into the quiet sanctuary of his home. The cool air inside the dank daub walls wrapped around him, the familiar scents of rising bread and cold soup tugging him farther inside. But the surroundings didn’t banish the woman’s look of terror from his mind, nor the sound of her scream.
How many times had he heard screams like that? A woman’s panic-filled cry, a child’s voice saturated with fear?
And how many times had he been the cause?
Chapter Two
Jean Paul’s hands shook, as they sometimes did when his memories from the Terror returned. He gritted his teeth and filled a mug with water, then grabbed the remaining loaf of bread and half a round of cheese, wrapping both in a bit of cloth.
The woman sitting outside his door couldn’t know of his past, how he’d once evoked terror, how he’d turned his back on those in need for the glorious cause of the Révolution.
How their screams still haunted his dreams.
But she was wise to look at him with fear, as though she sensed the hideous things he’d done.
The walls of the house closed in on him, the air suddenly heavy and sour. He stalked toward the door. The woman had the right of it, much better to be in the sun than trapped inside a dark house.
He half expected her to have dragged herself into the woods. But she sat in the position he’d left her, with her back against the wall and her head slumped over her knees. Reddish-brown hair peeked from beneath her mobcap to dangle beside a gaunt cheek.
Too gaunt, too pale, too sickly. An image rose of a time long past. His wife lying on her pallet in the cottage they’d shared, her fingers and face naught but bones, her skin stark and pale, her body crumpled into a little ball as she struggled to suck air into her wheezing lungs.
He dropped to his knees and pressed the wooden mug to the stranger’s lips.
“Drink,” he commanded, perhaps a bit too forcefully. He attempted a half smile so as not to frighten her again, except the upward tilt to his lips felt rather stiff and foreign.
She took a gulp then slanted her gaze toward him, her eyes soft and dark rather than filled with fear. Mayhap his smile had worked?
“I’m better. Truly. I only needed a bit of rest.”
Mayhap lack of food and water coupled with too much sun had caused her distress. He’d heard of people going mad after a day working the fields. Or then again, she might be with child. Swooning went along with bearing young, did it not?
She’d said she needed work. Her husband could be a soldier who’d left her with child and gone to the front. Or worse yet, her husband might have been killed in battle.
He opened his mouth to ask, but the woman braced her hands on the ground to push herself up. “Merci, Citizen, but I must away.”
He shoved the water back in front of her face. “Drink more. I’ve brought you bread and cheese, as well. I’ll not have you nearly swoon one moment and then be up and about the next.”
She took the mug from his hands and swallowed. The wooden cup no sooner left her lips than he placed the bread before her. She nibbled at a crumb or two then wrinkled her nose, a ridiculous expression considering how ill she’d looked just minutes before.
But with the thick, dense state of the bread, he could hardly blame her. It tasted little better than mud, he knew. He’d been making and eating the loaves since his mother’s death last fall, and no matter what he tried, the heavy dough refused to rise.
The woman handed the bread back to him then rose unsteadily to her feet. “I’m fine, truly, and I’ve other business to attend now that I’ve an answer regarding a post here.”
He stood with her. So they were back to discussing a post. Could the woman cook? Mayhap offering her work wouldn’t be so terrible...
But no. He wasn’t ready to have a woman about his house, not with the way Corinne’s memories still rose up to grip his thoughts. “Try looking about town for work, and if you find naught there, then head to Saint-Valery. ’tis not more than a day’s walk, and there’s always work at the harbor.”
Her chin tilted stubbornly into the air. “I thank you for your time, Citizen.”
He held out a bundle of bread and cheese. “Here, I trust it keeps you until you find a post.”
Her eyes softened. “You’re too generous.”
The woman didn’t know the half of it. “Take it.”
“Merci.” She tucked the bundle beneath her arm. “I think I should have enjoyed a post here.”
And with that she walked off. Head high, shoulders back, posture perfect, even if her gait was rather wobbly.
* * *
Brigitte settled the food in the overlarge pocket of her apron and hurried down the road. The children. She had to get to the children. They’d been alone in the woods for far too long while she’d sat in the shade like a child, drinking water and eating bread.
Of all the ways to prove herself a capable housekeeper to Citizen Belanger. She’d gone half-mad, nearly fainting and then screaming at a man who’d tried to help her.
Tried to help. How long since a man or woman had shown her kindness the way Jean Paul Belanger just had?
And here she was forced to spy on him. She swallowed the unease creeping up her throat and rushed forward, not slowing until the lane curved and the woods started, its towering trees and rambling brambles shielding her from the farmstead. At the first break in the brush, she veered into the forest.
“Danielle, Serge.”
Only the song of insects and birds answered her.
“Serge,” she called louder. “Danielle.”
Somewhere ahead, a babe mewled. She stepped over a decaying log then skirted a pit of mud.
“Here we are.” Serge sat on the forest floor beneath a tree, holding eight-month-old Victor in his lap. The babe’s eyes landed on her, and he let out a piercing wail. Brigitte reached for her youngest son and settled onto the ground, then brought him forward to feed.
“Are you unwell, Maman?” Serge’s vibrant brown eyes, humming with energy and life, searched hers.
Unwell? Was it possible to be anything but unwell with the orders Alphonse had given her and her failure to gain a post at the farm? How was she going to tend her children and feed her babe while working a job in town and spying on Citizen Belanger two kilomètres away?
If only Alphonse had given her money to live on while she carried out her assignment. But he’d been all too clear on that point: she’d receive funds only after she provided information.
Where were they going to live in the meantime?
“Maman?” Serge rose up on his knees and pressed his forehead to hers. “Why are you crying?”
She reached up and touched her cheek. Sure enough, moisture trailed down her skin. “Maman had a hard day, is all. Nothing you need worry about.”
Her six-year-old son sank back to the ground, a frown tugging his little lips downward, but he stayed quiet. She wiped the last of the tears from her face and leaned her head back against the tree trunk while Victor nursed.
The leaves swayed peacefully above as the soft songs of crickets, birds and toads twined around her. She sucked in a breath of moist air ripe with the scent of foliage. If only she could stay here with her children, shrouded by the forest and never worrying about money or Alphonse, or how to feed her sons and...
Daughter.
She jerked upright so quickly the babe howled. “Where’s Danielle?”
Serge shrugged. “She went off to find some supper. Said she won’t eat no more pulse.”
A sinking sensation started in her chest and fell through to her stomach. “How long ago did she leave? I told her to watch you.”
Serge shrugged again.
That girl. One would think an only daughter raised with four brothers would be a help to her mother, but not Danielle Dubois. Oh, no.
“Danielle,” Brigitte called into the trees.
Nothing but the birds and frogs again.
“I’ll find her!” Serge jumped to his feet, a patch of reddish brown hair flopping over his eyes.
“Non.” She gripped his hand and pulled him down beside her. “Once Victor has finished eating we’ll look together.”
Serge scowled at his little brother. “Do we have to wait? Victor eats slow.”
She smoothed her hand over the babe’s head, the featherlike hairs separating between her fingers. “He doesn’t take so very long, and he needs to eat. You were the same as a babe.”
Serge poked out his bottom lip. “I suppose we can wait a bit before we look.”
“What will you be looking for?” a young female voice asked from behind them.
Brigitte craned her head around and released a breath. “Danielle.”
Her daughter of three and ten stood not a mètre from them, moving silently over the fallen leaves and underbrush. Her black hair tumbled freely about her shoulders and mud-streaked face, and thorns had tangled in the shoulder of her dress—one of only two she owned—to shred fabric about her upper arm.
“Danielle, come forward this instant.” Brigitte stood and shifted Victor to her shoulder. “What were you thinking leaving your brothers alone in the woods?”
“I was looking for food.” Danielle swiped a strand of hair away from her face. “But the rabbit got away.”
“And a rabbit justifies you leaving your brothers?” She raised an eyebrow, hoping against hope that some semblance of guilt might flit through her daughter’s head.
Danielle merely rolled her eyes.
“Aw, Danielle.” Serge sprang to his feet. “You said you were going to catch one this time. I don’t wanna eat no more pulse.”
“I can try again.”
“Non. Non. Non. There will be no more hunting expeditions, especially on land that belongs to another. And no one has to eat pulse tonight because I’ve bread and cheese.” Brigitte reached into the pocket of her apron, fumbled to unwrap the food and broke the cheese into several sections.
“Is it from the land owner?” Danielle snatched a hunk of cheese and bit into it. “Did you get the post?”
“Non.” And she had no one to blame but herself. What man would hire a woman who nearly fainted on his doorstep?
“So what are we going to do?” Serge stuffed his entire piece of cheese into his little mouth and chewed.
“I’ll go back and request the post again.”
Her cheese gone, Danielle reached for a piece of bread. “But if he already told you no—”
“I need to convince him, is all. He’ll change his mind.” He had to, because if she couldn’t get a job with Citizen Belanger, then she had little means to fulfill Alphonse’s task.
Danielle bit into her bread, barely chewing before she spat it out. “This tastes terrible.”
Did the girl never stop? “Just a moment ago you were complaining about pulse.”
“I wanted to replace the pulse with rabbit, not bread that tastes like dung.”
“Hush now. It was a gift, and you ought be grateful, no matter how it tastes.”
“Can I have another piece of cheese?” Serge asked.
Brigitte glanced at the little orange chunk of food remaining, then broke it in half and gave the pieces to her children. The taste of bread she’d had at Citizen Belanger’s and some pulse later this evening would suffice for herself. She hefted Victor higher onto her shoulder, then took up their single valise. “Come, children. We’d best be off.”
“Where are we going?” Serge gulped down the remainder of his bread, evidently not caring that the loaf was dense as a rock.
“Oui. You said we were done staying at the inn.” Danielle scrambled to pick up the remaining food.
Indeed they were done with the inn. Remaining there another night would take the last of their money. “We’ll sleep in the forest tonight, and I’ll go back to Citizen Belanger in the morn.”
“Why do you have to work for him?” Danielle stuffed the leftover bread in her pocket. “Isn’t there another job you can find?”
If only the child knew. “Non. There’s no other job.”
At least not one that would accomplish her purposes.
She lifted a tree branch out of her way and started back toward the road. Danielle didn’t follow but stood rooted to the ground, her forehead drawn together.
Brigitte raised her eyes to the sky. Hopefully her daughter wouldn’t figure out the true reason they were in Abbeville. Who could guess what trouble Danielle might attempt if she thought Citizen Belanger to be her father’s killer? Goodness, the impulsive girl might sneak into the man’s house at night and take a knife to his throat.
“Well, we don’t need to sleep outside,” Danielle declared. “I found a house.”
Brigitte stilled. “A house?”
Danielle lifted a shoulder. “More like a shack, really.”
“We can’t stay in somebody else’s house.”
“It doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s abandoned.”
“Someone still must own it.”
“Not if the owner was killed in the Terror,” Danielle shot back flippantly, as though the Terror was nothing more than a minor skirmish rather than ten blood-soaked months of the Révolution.
As though her own father hadn’t been killed during those horror-filled days. To be sure, smuggling was a crime that would have left Henri imprisoned were he caught under any other government—but only the Terror dragged men out of their beds for justice via the guillotine.
Brigitte blew out a hard breath to push away the bitter memories.
’Twas unthinkable to live somewhere without paying. But then a house, even a dilapidated one, would offer shelter and protection. And if Danielle had found it, it must be nearby. Perchance all they needed was one night’s stay. Hopefully with a little persistence on her part—plus a conversation where she managed not to faint—Citizen Belanger would hire her and offer shelter on his farm.
Not that she wanted to work for a suspected murderer.
But then, what other choice had she? “Show me the house, Danielle.”
Chapter Three
Jean Paul yawned as he surveyed his beans, the green plants leafy and tall as they wove their way up the trellis. Though it was only the beginning of July, within another week or two his first batch of the tender pods would be ready to harvest.
He paused to pluck a weed, then went on to his tomatoes, squash, carrots and potatoes. The leaf lettuce and kale needed to be cut yet again, radishes waited to be picked and the summer squash would be ready about the same time as the beans and cucumbers. More food than he’d ever be able to consume, and just in the vegetable garden. His fields stretched beyond, filled with a mixture of wheat, turnips, barely and clover that he rotated yearly.
He drew in a breath of fresh morning air and looked out over his work. His land. His fields. Today he needed to weed the lower field and check the—
“Bonjour?” A voice called from up near the house.
He glanced at the sun, barely risen above the trees in the east, and hastened through the rows of radishes and tomatoes. Was there an emergency in town? A task for which the mayor needed him? Someone must have good reason for calling before the sun had been up an hour.
“Bonjour?” The voice echoed again, its light, feminine cadence accompanied by a pounding sound.
Who could it be? He frowned as he trudged around the side of the house.
And there she was, standing beside his cottage door as though she’d appeared from the mist. She wore the same threadbare dress and apron as yesterday, and her hair was once again tucked sloppily under her mobcap with stray auburn tresses hanging down to frame her cheeks. Her skin was paler than milk from a cow, and the features of her thin face sunken with weariness.
And yet she seemed beautiful somehow, in the delicate way only a woman could be beautiful when tired and hungry. He took a step forward, the urge to aid her twining through him. He’d hustle her inside where he could give her food and let her sleep. Offer her—
His movement must have given himself away because she turned to face him, then bit her lip.
“Citizen, forgive me. I thought you were...” Her eyes slid back to the door.
“Inside, hiding from you?”
Her cheeks pinked, a truly lovely shade, and a much better color than the deathly white that had stolen over her when last they’d spoken.
“Non, Citizen. I don’t have a need to hide from women—or men. Farmers start their days early.” He surveyed her again, her thin, willowy body and slender shoulders, the hollowness in her cheeks and her bonelike fingers. “As do you.”
Her cheeks turned from soft pink to bright red, and she dipped her gaze to the ground. “I came to see about the post again. Perhaps you’ve changed your mind and are willing to hire me?”
“You need food, not a post.”
“Non. I—”
“Wait here. I’ve soup you can take.” He headed toward the well along the side of the yard and reeled the bucket up, his leftover food from yesterday’s evening meal cool and fresh thanks to the water.
Footsteps padded on the earth behind him. “I didn’t come for food. I came for a post.”
He hefted the bucket out of the well and headed for the house. “And I told you yesterday, I’ve no need of a maid.”
“The deplorable taste of your bread convinced me otherwise.”
The side of his mouth twitched into that foreign feeling of a smile. The woman might be slight of body, but it took a speck of courage to tell him his food tasted horrid while he prepared yet another meal for her. “’Tis true, I’ve no knack for making bread. Though on days when I head to town, as I did yesterday, I purchase some.”
He opened the door to his cottage, and rather than try to force her inside as he had yesterday, he left the door open and set the soup on the table. He ladled the thickened liquid from his bucket into a second pail, then reached for the loaf of bread from the baker’s, tore it in half and wrapped it. The meal should suffice her for today, mayhap even tomorrow if she rationed it.
“I don’t need your charity.” She stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her slender chest.
He moved to her and held out the food. “You look as though you’ve not eaten for a month.”
“I don’t claim to eat well, but that’s a situation I can remedy myself. If you hire me.”
Having a woman in his home would be like salt on memories that were far too raw. Corinne’s smile when he made her laugh, the shine of her hair in the lamplight, the taste of her lips beneath his and feel of her face in his hands. How many days had they toiled together, working side by side in the fields? How many nights had they spent in each others’ arms in the little house at the back of his property? How many times had he come through the door, tired and dirty, to find a fresh meal and smiling wife awaiting his return...
“Citizen?” The woman in the doorway cleared her throat.
“Non. I can’t hire you.” He dipped his head toward the food he still held. “Now take this and make haste.”
Her vulnerable gaze trapped him. She was so much like Corinne. Oh, her hair might be tinted with red and russet rather than blond, and her eyes might be a soft brown rather than blue. But she held herself the same—with strength and dignity.
Nothing good would come of having her about this house. Besides, if he did offer work, he hadn’t any place to put the woman except for the cottage at the back of the property. The one he’d shared with Corinne.
He’d not darkened the door of that building since his wife’s death, and he had no intentions to start now. The structure could sit and rot until it fell down for all he cared. Mayhap it already had fallen down. He didn’t know, and he didn’t plan to check.
“What about for bread?” the woman asked.
“What mean you, ‘for bread’?”
“You could hire me to make your bread.” She swallowed, her throat working too hard for such a simple action. “And I’ll bring you a fresh loaf every morn.”
He ran his eyes slowly down her. “How do I know you’re not a worse baker than I?”
Her chin came up a defiant notch. “I assure you, Citizen, a slug could mix together some mud, bake it and create a more tasteful loaf than that which you shared yesterday.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Tell me, did you compare your previous employer to a slug? It might explain why you’re in need of a post.”
Her face flushed, as though she hadn’t fully realized what she’d been saying until he drew attention to her words. “Pardon me, but I’d best be on my way.”
She turned, leaving the food in his hands.
“Wait.”
She stopped just outside the door, the sun’s tinted rays bouncing off the back of her mobcap and turning her skin a silky gold.
He thrust the food forward. “You’re forgetting something.”
“I told you I don’t take charity.” She kept her back to him. “I work for my food.”
She wasn’t like the other widows he offered food to, the ones with little mouths to feed and run-down cottages to keep. The ones that would burst into tears if he dared ask compensation for the goods he offered.
“Do you live near enough to bring me bread every morn? I’ll not hire you if it means you must walk to and from town.”
“I live quite close, merci.”
His mind ran through the houses between his farm and Abbeville. Where could she possibly shelter? He’d not seen her until yesterday, so she couldn’t live too near. But if she was at his door before the sun had fully risen, she couldn’t live that far, either. ’Twas almost as though she’d been dropped off by the afternoon sun yesterday and planned to stay for the rest of her life.
But if her rigid posture was any indication—and the rather noticeable fact that she still showed him her back rather than her front—she wasn’t going to volunteer where she stayed.
“Let’s strike a bargain, shall we? You can bring me bread on the morrow, but only if you take my food today.”
She turned slowly, her forehead drawn into a series of subtle furrows. “Have you flour, or am I to purchase some in town?”
“I farm wheat, remember?”
She licked her lips, dry and cracked yet somehow compelling. “I’ll need oil and yeast, as well.”
“Let me package some for you.” He turned back toward the shelves that held his foodstuffs, trying to stop that unfamiliar smile from peeking out the corner of his mouth.
He failed.
* * *
Nothing. Thirty hours until her meeting with Alphonse’s man, and still she had no information to offer.
Brigitte moved her tired feet along the overgrown path through the woods, her fingers clenched around the food from Citizen Belanger. She’d not expected to bake bread in exchange for food but at least her children would eat this day and she had reason to return to his house on the morrow.
And tomorrow she would ask again for a job. Hopefully the stubborn man would hire her.
A vision crept up from the corners of her mind, an aged memory of Mademoiselle Elise from years long past. The governess’s eyes had been stern as she stared down at Brigitte, retching over a bush. I told you one biscuit, but you ate most of the platter. Serves you right to be sick half the night. Be sure your sin will find you out.
And then their strict old governess had walked off, leaving her to retch alone.
The same urge to retch twined through her again as it had years ago. What was she doing lying to a stranger like Citizen Belanger—a stranger who fed her, no less? Would her sin find her out? Would Citizen Belanger discover the truth?
“Father, no! Please keep us safe.” The frantic prayer burst from her lips before she could stop it.
She risked far more than a stomachache if she were caught this time.
The small hut Danielle had led them to last night emerged from the shadow of the woods. It looked as though it hadn’t been used for a decade. Weeds grew up beside the door, and an empty darkness radiated from the cracks around the shutters. But it was sturdy, with heavy timbers pitched tightly together and a thick thatch roof promising warmth come winter.
Not that she planned to be here for winter. Alphonse would want her mission completed long before then.
The door to the little shack burst open. “Did you get the post, Maman?”
“Non. But I took a different job.” Brigitte dipped her chin toward the bundle of ingredients she carried. “We’ve bread to bake for Citizen Belanger.”
Danielle rolled her eyes. “How dull.”
“’Tis work, daughter. We mustn’t be particular.”
“I don’t understand. If this landowner is looking for a housekeeper, why won’t he hire you?”
She slanted her eyes away from her daughter’s gaze. Sometimes the girl was a touch too bright. “He’s not looking for a housekeeper, exactly.”
“But when we left the inn in Abbeville, you said—”
“Please trust me, Danielle.” She pressed her free hand to her temple, already beginning to throb. “Perhaps I can’t explain everything at the moment, but I have reasons for my actions.”
Danielle scowled, black hair falling about her face in a riot of tangles.
“Good reasons,” she added. Reasons that would grant them their freedom from Alphonse. But how to explain such things to a mere child?
“Then why are you doing all of this? Why are we using the name Moreau instead of Dubois? I don’t like having a pretend name.”
Brigitte’s cheeks went cold, every last drop of heat leaving her face to pool in her toes. “I told you before we left Calais, we’re using my family name now because I can’t risk people here knowing our relationship to Alphonse.”
Danielle propped her hands on her hips, a gesture far too mature for a girl of only three and ten. “You’ve never been ashamed of our name before.”
“Oui, when we lived in Calais and everyone knew us. But not now.” If Citizen Belanger truly was the solider responsible for her husband’s death, her surname could give everything away. “We’ll call ourselves Moreau in Reims, too, so accustom yourself to it.” She nodded toward the door. “Now let’s inside and see what progress you made on your studies.”
Danielle flipped some hair over her shoulder and huffed. “I hate English.”
Nothing unusual about that. Perchance she was pushing the studies a mite hard given their current living situation, but the girl found trouble too easily when she hadn’t something to occupy her mind. Besides, English had been a most useful language living in Calais, and if the war fell in favor of the English, it might become even more necessary. “Did you finish your arithmetic and grammar?”
“I still have those, too,” Danielle grumbled.
Brigitte pressed her hand to her temple again, the pounding growing ever harder, then moved into the little house.
“How do I tell the difference between a b and a d again?” Serge sat at the table, scrunching his nose as he stared at the letters copied onto his slate.
She ignored the thick layer of dust caking everything from the wobbly table to the shelves to the pallet in the corner where Victor slept, and instead set the food on the table and peered over Serge’s shoulder. “A b has a ball on the back of the stick, remember? And the d has the ball on the front.... Yes, like that. But I told Danielle to finish her studies before you started. What are you doing with the slate?”
Serge’s piece of chalk clattered to the table while his eyes latched on to the soup and bread. “Did you bring food?”
She sighed. There went any chance of reviewing the alphabet or figuring out why Serge had the slate. “Oui. Citizen Belanger sent us some of his soup and bread from last night.”
Serge was already off his chair and scrambling toward the shelves that held naught but two bowls, a motley collection of eating utensils and three plates—all seemingly left behind by the house’s last inhabitants. “I’m hungry.”
“Patience, son. I must heat it first.” She crossed the small room to the aging pot on the hearth.
“I don’t mind it cold.” Serge set the bowls on the table.
“Me, neither,” Danielle piped up.
She ran her eyes over her children’s slender forms. Serge, with his too-short trousers and too-thin hips. And Danielle, with her gaunt face, bony shoulders and dress that would fit a girl who weighed half again as much as Danielle. Was she doing such a poor job of providing for her children that they clambered after cold, day-old soup?
Evidently.
She dished the hearty broth and vegetables out, and Danielle sank down onto the dirt floor with her bowl while Serge climbed back onto the single chair and gulped his food.
“Slow down, child. It won’t run off on you.”
But he finished his bowl in less than a dozen bites and pushed it toward her. “Can I have more?”
The bucket had seemed like so much food but it now stood half empty without enough sustenance to see herself and the children through the evening meal. Though she could hardly blame Citizen Belanger for shortage when the man assumed he fed one person rather than four.
“Oui. Serge, you can have a second helping, but we’ll be eating pulse later tonight.”
The boy nodded eagerly, and Danielle’s dish appeared on the table beside his.
“May I have more, too?”
Her own stomach twisted with hunger, but she nodded at Danielle and divided her portion into two extra servings. Then she tore a piece of bread off the half loaf and chewed. At least the bread from the baker tasted palatable.
One mission for Alphonse, that’s all she needed to complete. Then she wouldn’t have to depend on the charity of a farmer for her children’s food. She could purchase her own cottage much like this one and surround herself with friends and loved ones rather than hide in the woods.
If only she could manage to finish her mission without being discovered.
* * *
Jean Paul hunched over the table in his cottage, quill gripped tightly between his fingers as he thought back over the previous weeks while he prepared his monthly report. No strangers had passed through town—well, besides the woman baking him bread. But she was hardly worth reporting. Frail, thin women with lips the color of autumn apples and skin pale as the moon weren’t a threat to the government.
And here he was, thinking of the woman again when he had business to tend. All day she had flitted through his mind, whether he be working the fields or meeting with Pierre or stocking food in the stable. Mayhap he should send her away for good on the morrow so he’d not be so distracted.
Either that, or he could hire her.
Something hard fisted around his chest. No. It mattered not how grateful he’d be for a meal he didn’t cook for himself or how much dust collected inside his cottage walls.
He let out a low growl. He had a report to write, and here he was, completely distracted by that fool woman yet again.
He bent his head over the paper and forced his thoughts away from soft brown eyes and onto more important matters, like whether any suspiciously large wagons of smuggled English wool had made their way inland from the coast over the past month.
But he came up with nothing. Nor had he heard of any large shipments of French brandy, lace or the like headed toward the coast.
The tallow candle flickered shadows across the walls and table as he scratched his message onto the foolscap. The words seemed unimportant. Insignificant. But a certain representative in the National Convention named Joseph Fouché wrote him back every month, always thanking him for the information. Twice now, the local gendarmes had found army deserters due to his reports. And once a rather large shipment of brandy was discovered on the coast, only minutes away from being loaded onto a vessel bound for England.
The spies were a little harder to track. He wasn’t certain he’d ever found one but he reported anyone with the slightest accent or less-than-fluent French.
A knock sounded on his door, soft and unhurried. He rose and glanced out the window. Darkness had long fallen, and only one type of person would knock so softly this far into the night. He took an extra blanket from the chest in the bedchamber, then made his way to the door.
He’d never met the man standing outside, would probably forget his unmemorable face if ever they chanced to meet again. But then, spies weren’t supposed to be remembered.
The man silently held out a piece of paper. “Citizen Belanger?”
He barely glanced at the missive, the signature at the bottom standing out like a flame. He had a similar letter tucked away in his bedroom, all of Fouché’s men did.
“Come. I’ve a bed for you in the stable, but I need you gone before the sun rises.”
He asked not of the man’s business as he led him to the pallet tucked into the stall beside his mare’s. He had no desire to know the secret workings of his government, but if providing shelter for a night would aid his country’s cause, then he’d house a hundred men. Because France was now a republic, a place where all people were citizens of equal value, where power and wealth were based upon one’s actions rather than right of birth.
To keep the French First Republic alive, the Convention fought not only revolution from within, but enemies from without. He might not be able to dart off into battle with the farm and an old wound in his shoulder, but he could supply food to the gendarmerie post for a fair price, ship some of his extra to the soldiers, watch his hometown for any sign of upset, and give rest and sustenance to government agents when so needed.
As terrible as the actions in his past had been, his country’s cause was just. He refused to shed more innocent blood in the name of liberty, but he’d found a way to keep serving France without the pain and horror.
Because France needed a government of the people rather than the tyranny of a king. And he would do whatever necessary to keep the Republic alive.
Including pushing all thoughts of his lovely bread baker to the side and getting back to work on his report.
Chapter Four
Morning sun slanted down over the fields, turning the earth a dark gold as Brigitte emerged from the woods. She drew in a breath and inhaled the soft scents of soil and dew and foliage, so different from the hard, tangy scent of the sea that saturated Calais.
The thatched roof of Citizen Belanger’s house arose before her, a mere speck amid the rows of crops sprouting from the earth. Tomorrow she’d find a different way through the woods, one that led to the road so she approached the house from the drive rather than the fields. Citizen Belanger was already asking questions about where she lived. The man didn’t need to know about their stay in the little cottage in the woods.
She yawned and moved her lagging feet along the edge of the field, wiping a strand of hair from her face. She shouldn’t be so tired, not when she’d woken a mere hour ago. Yet weariness clung to her, growing worse with each passing day. She sighed and pressed her eyelids open wider.
Perchance she’d have time for a nap before she met Alphonse’s man tonight. If she baked Citizen Belanger’s bread in a timely manner, and the children behaved, and she didn’t have to scrounge for food....
She was fooling herself. The nap wouldn’t happen; they never did.
She gave the house a wide berth as she circled around, careful lest Citizen Belanger was already working in his garden or the stable. But alas, the house sat quiet and peaceful, like a cottage in a painting with the sun’s warm fingers wrapped around it while fields dipped and swelled into the distance.
She raised her hand to the door, but it swung open before she knocked.
“Citizen Belanger.” She jerked backward, stumbling over an uneven patch of dirt.
He reached out and gripped her arm with his big, solid hand. “Are you unwell?”
Heat flooded her face. On their first meeting, she’d nearly fainted, yesterday she’d accused him of making worse bread than a slug and today she’d almost fallen. The man must think her a dunce.
But he didn’t look at her as though she were a dunce. No. His eyes were soft and dark, but more the color of the earth after a hard rain than midnight. And his hand still rested on her arm, warm and strong and...comforting?
How long since a man had touched her out of concern rather than force? Another wave of heat exploded onto her cheeks, and she ducked her head.
But he kept his grip on her, this gaze roving slowly over her as though looking for...
What? She peeked up at him. His face was a hard mixture of prominent bones and taut skin, firm planes and severe angles with that inexplicable scar twisting around his eyebrow. And he was far too big. His hair brushed the top of the doorjamb and his shoulders spanned wide enough to eclipse any view she might have of inside.
Yet his eyes were still soft, as was his touch. He couldn’t be all ominous terror, not when he provided her food and work. Not when he asked after her health.
He released her arm and took the bread from her hands. “You look ill.”
She swallowed. ’Twasn’t a very romantic thing to say after surveying her so closely—not that she wanted romance from the man she needed to spy on.
“I’m grateful for your concern, but I’m fine.” Except for the dull thudding at the back of her head, the subtle aching in her joints and the weariness that beset her. But those were hardly severe enough to hinder her from her duties.
“Are you with child?”
“Pardon?” The word burst from her lips on a gust of air. How dare he inquire after such a thing?
But he seemed not the least embarrassed by his question. Instead, he raised a dark eyebrow at her. “Are you?”
“Non. Not that it’s any of your concern.”
His dark eyes travelled her body once more, from the top of her mobcap down her overlarge dress, pausing a moment at her stomach before drawing his gaze down to her ill-fitting shoes. Why he should have the need to examine her yet again, when all he’d done was stare at her since she’d arrived, she hardly knew.
Whatever he saw must have convinced him she spoke the truth, because his eyes moved back up to her face. “Did you eat the soup and bread I sent yesterday?”
“Oui.” And that wasn’t a lie. He needn’t know the food was gone already, or how little of it she’d consumed herself. “Have you thought more about hiring me as a maid?”
“The bread will suffice.” He reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out two coins. “Here are two livres for your labor.”
She took a step back. She needed money, yes, but not so much. Bread sold for perhaps one livre in town, maybe less, as most of that price was tied into the cost of wheat—something Citizen Belanger had much of. “Sixteen sous should suffice, since you provided the flour.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Look at you, woman. You’re nigh on starved, plus you’ve bruises beneath your eyes and tired lines at the edges of your mouth. I might not know who you are or from whence you came, but I can see you need two livres, not sixteen sous. Take the coins, or don’t bother returning with more bread on the morrow.”
The impossible man. Was he really going to make her argue about getting paid less? “One livre, four sous, but not two livres.”
His face remained hard. “’Tis not up for bargain.”
She stared at the two livres nestled in his palm, their value of twenty sous a piece easily worth twice the loaf of bread she’d brought him. But if she didn’t accept, where did that leave her tomorrow? Or the day after that? The two livres would allow her to purchase more pulse in town with several sous left over. Perhaps she could even buy fabric for Serge’s trousers and Danielle’s dress. “Fine, then. But tomorrow I take one livre and four sous.”
“Only if you don’t wish to return the next day. Wait here.”
She opened her mouth to ask what he was about, but he disappeared into the house before she could speak, the insufferable oaf.
She tapped her foot on the ground, peering through the doorway to catch glimpses of him rummaging by the table. But she wasn’t going in to see what he was doing, no. He probably expected that. He’d suck her into his house and then...then...then...
She blew a breath upward, the gust fluttering the wisps of hair hanging near her face. She didn’t know what the man would do if she went inside. Didn’t know much of anything about him. Things weren’t going according to plan. She had to meet Alphonse’s man this evening, and at this precise moment, she was further away from getting the job she needed to spy on Citizen Belanger than she’d been when first they’d met.
The time for being polite was past. She needed to convince him to hire her, and she needed to do so now.
She walked inside. The most obvious place to start cleaning was the table, but since Citizen Belanger hulked there throwing food into another bundle, she started with the bench beside the door. She took up the folds of her apron and wiped the smooth wood. Her worn apron was hardly white to begin with, but after cleaning the bench, dark streaks of dust stained the fabric.
“What are you doing?”
She jumped at the stern sound of his voice but straightened her shoulders. “It appears you do need a housekeeper. Look at the dust I wiped from this bench.”
She turned and held out her apron, then gulped. Citizen Belanger’s jaw clenched and unclenched as he stared down at her, while muscles corded in tight ropes along his neck and arms. He looked ready to stride over and strangle her.
She took a step backward. Perhaps she’d been a little too hasty in coming inside.
But no. She couldn’t let him frighten her. She had to protect her children first, and that meant gleaning information from the irate man before her—however unpleasant that prospect might be. “You stand rather straight, Citizen Belanger. Tell me. Have you ever been in the army?”
His hands tightened into fists around the bundle of food he held, and he stalked toward her.
She took another step back only to bump into the bench behind her.
“My past is hardly your concern.”
Oh, no. He was supposed to see her work and decide to hire her, not get angry. He was supposed to answer her questions, not corner her against the wall. She licked her lips. “I was simply making conversation. You know I’m from Calais. Why can I not know whether you’ve been in the army? You’ve the bearing of a well-trained soldier.”
“I have nothing of the sort. And I might know you’re from Calais, but I hardly know why you’re here, or where you’re staying, or why you’re suddenly so concerned with whether I was a soldier.”
She sucked in a painfully sharp breath. Did he see the way her hands trembled? Did her face look as cold as it felt?
And why could he not answer this one question? He turned every situation around until she was the one under interrogation. About where she lived. How much she’d eaten. Whether she was sick. If she carried a child.
“Why are you so concerned with my past?” His eyes narrowed, as though they could bore through her flesh and clothes and see straight into her heart.
She pushed down the urge to curl like a babe against the wall and raised her chin. “I told you. I was making conversation.”
“If you’ve such a penchant for conversation, you provide it. Where are you staying?”
She stared back at him. She couldn’t tell this stranger, this possible murderer, where she and the children hid, no.
“I see you like being interrogated as little as I do.” He thrust the bundle of food toward her stomach with such force she had little choice but to take it. “Here’s more flour, yeast and oil.”
She opened and closed her mouth before finally finding some words. “I’ve plenty yet left over from yesterday.”
He frowned, which did nothing to soften his already austere face. “You should be nearly out of flour. I’ve been making bread for nigh on a year now. I know how much is needed.”
“Oui, but you gave me two days’ worth.”
“Non. I gave you one day’s...” His voice trailed off, and the furrows across his brow deepened along with his frown. “Made you no bread for yourself?”
“’Twas your ingredients I used. I’m no thief to take them for myself.” Or she wasn’t yet. She only prayed her task for Alphonse wouldn’t turn her into one.
“Mayhap I gave you that amount so you could take a portion,” he growled.
“Well, you neglected to inform me.”
“I assumed it understood. You’re thin as a corpse and pale as fresh snow.”
“And you’re large as a mountain and meaner than a bull, but I don’t think such traits make you a thief.”
She clamped her teeth into her tongue the instant the words flew out. Why, oh, why, must she blurt such things when she argued with him? First the comment about a slug and now this. She’d never had such trouble when she argued with Henri—though that might have been due to the fact she’d never really argued with her husband, just obeyed.
Yet no emotion flitted across Citizen Belanger’s face as the words settled between them, not even a registering of the insult. If anything, his demeanor grew harder, more like stone and less like flesh and blood. “Sustenance is nothing about which to jest. People die from lack thereof. Have you any soup remaining from yesterday?”
“I’m not starving.” And she wasn’t. She managed to eat every day, even if it was less than the little Serge consumed. “If you would simply hire me as your maid, you’d see the ridiculousness of your concerns.”
“I asked if you have any soup left. Answer me, woman.”
She pressed her lips firmly together. Let him take that as her answer.
“Wait here.” He tromped back to the shelves beside the table, mad at her for some inexplicable reason. She was taking his food and eating it, was she not? Why should he grow angry?
When he returned, he clutched a bundle of salt fish. “Take this. And I’ve raspberries in the stable. Follow me.”
He shoved past her and strode outside.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Everything kept growing worse rather than better. Here he was plying her with food when she needed a chance to search his property.
She headed to the stable to find a wagon already laden with produce waiting just inside the doors. “As I’ve told you before, I don’t need your charity. I need a post.”
“And as I’ve told you before, I’ve no post for you.” He walked around the wagon and plucked a crate of raspberries from the back.
“And then you hired me to make bread, which only proves you could use my labor but are too stubborn to admit thus.”
A shadow crossed his face, dark and brooding, transforming him from the oversize person that had given her food into the dangerous menace that had stared at her inside when she’d asked whether he’d been in the military. The man before her now could hurt her without a flicker of emotion crossing his granite face.
The man before her now might well have killed Henri.
He came forward and held out a small crate of raspberries. “Things aren’t as simple as they appear. Now be off with you. I’ve a trip to make to town and fields to tend thereafter. I’ll expect my bread the same time tomorrow. And make two loaves for yourself this day.”
He turned and went farther into the stable, leading an aging gray horse out of its stall and guiding the beast toward the front of the wagon.
Brigitte tightened her grip on the food and watched him, his face still hard and void of expression as he hooked the horse to the cart.
He was likely going to town to sell his vegetables, and he’d be gone at least two hours, if not half the day. She’d already tried asking about his past and cleaning his house. So if she couldn’t ask questions and she couldn’t snoop under the guise of being his housekeeper, that left sneaking.
Could she do such a thing? Break into another person’s house while the owner was gone?
The moisture leached from her mouth. But if she wanted evidence of Citizen Belanger’s past before she met with Alphonse’s man, then she’d have one chance to get it. Later this morning, after he left for town.
* * *
Jean Paul watched her stomp from the stable, back straight and head high. Women, they were naught but a sore trial, and this one more so than most. How many times must he refuse her before she understood he wouldn’t hire her?
A dozen? Two dozen? A hundred?
He scowled, and Sylvie—a mare too old for the army to bother confiscating—snorted back at him.
The confounding woman would likely keep asking for as long as she brought him bread. What made her so set on working for him? Had she heard stories of the others he’d helped?
But the others lived elsewhere and didn’t come to his house each day. He saw some once a week and others once a month, a few only when rent was due on the property he let. He didn’t have to open his home to them.
His heart gave a solid, painful beat inside his chest. The woman with the bread would get the same answer each time she asked about a post.
He couldn’t have someone else about the place when he harbored such terrible secrets from his past. When he still longed for his wife.
And he doubted he’d ever be ready to open his home, or his heart, to another.
Chapter Five
She was a miscreant. A traitor. An utter and complete hypocrite.
Showing up on Citizen Belanger’s doorstep to ask for a job two days ago had seemed like a sound plan. So how had she ended up here, sneaking through his front door, about to become a criminal?
And all so she could do Alphonse’s bidding. She’d hated Henri’s illegal activities, but once she stepped inside Jean Paul’s house, how was she any different than Henri?
Because she was trying to save her family? That answer felt hollow. A wisp of truth cloaked in a lie. She was breaking into a person’s house because she feared her father-in-law, and that fear was pushing her into the dark world she’d despised for so long. Wasn’t there some verse in the Bible about such things? Not the one about her sin finding her out that her governess had been so fond of, but another. One that the priest used to quote at mass. Something about...about...about...
Reaping what you sowed. Yes, that was it. From Galatians chapter 6. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”
She grimaced at the door in front of her. Well, she certainly wouldn’t reap life everlasting by sneaking about. But she needed information.
She tucked her perpetually errant strand of hair back up under her mobcap and gave a final look about the yard.
Empty. Not so much as a bird overhead to watch her.
Though the wagon was gone from the stable, she knocked and waited one moment, then another, to be certain no one tarried within.
Everything lay still and quiet.
She slowly lifted the latch and let herself inside, heading straight toward the shelves lining the far wall. But she stopped when her gaze fell to his table. It was beautiful, a masterpiece fit only for a king or some royal relative. She’d been too far away to notice the details earlier that morn, but cornucopias had been carefully carved along the edge of the table, the generous cones overflowing with grapes and squash and apples. The fruit spilled down the side of the table, etched onto the legs with what must have been painfully accurate carving skills.
When Citizen Belanger had left Abbeville before the Révolution, he’d supposedly gone to Paris to make furniture. Perhaps there was a grain of truth in the tale, after all. Citizen Belanger must have made the table and matching chairs himself, for a farmer could hardly afford to purchase something so exquisite.
She trailed a finger over a cornucopia carved on the top of a chair, then forced her gaze away from the furniture and toward the shelves beside the hearth. She had an entire house to search and hadn’t time to tarry, regardless of how beautiful the furniture.
* * *
“You’re late.”
Jean Paul barely glanced at the gendarme as he pulled his wagon to a stop in front of the gendarmerie post. He hopped down and scanned the yard for Captain Monfort, but the gendarme glowering from beneath his black bicorn hat was the only one out of doors.
“I’ve been waiting for over a quarter hour.”
“My previous stop took longer than I planned.” As had the talk with his mysterious bread maker that morn. He hefted a crate of lettuce and carried it toward the entrance to the kitchen. “My apologies.”
Gravel crunched behind him, then came the gendarme’s morose voice. “A contract to supply the gendarmerie with food is hardly a trivial matter. I daresay if you continue to be late, we’ll have to look elsewhere for our food.”
Jean Paul rolled his eyes. Who was this whelp of a soldier? If the man wanted to be intimidating, he needed to stand straighter and give a hard gaze rather than shift away from one. But either way, his dourness had naught to do with Jean Paul’s late arrival. The man had helped unload deliveries for the past three weeks and had been ill tempered each time.
Jean Paul nudged open the door to the empty kitchen and set his crate down with a thud before heading back to the wagon. “I’ll try to be more punctual next week.”
He set the flour and remaining crates of vegetables by the side of the road and hopped back atop his wagon. If the gendarme was going to be so friendly, he could carry the rest of the food back to the kitchen himself.
“Where are you going?” the other man barked.
Jean Paul took up Sylvie’s reigns as the gendarme hastened toward him. “Away. You have your food. Two sacks of flour, four crates of produce. ’Tis settled.”
And he had little tolerance for ill-mannered men in uniform.
“’Tis hardly settled. You’ve more turnips left, and raspberries.” The gendarme stalked to the back of the wagon and reached in for the final crate of berries.
Jean Paul jumped down, clamping his hand about the other man’s arm. “You’ve raspberries aplenty. What remains is for Widow Arnaud.”
“You hardly gave us enough raspberries to keep the gendarmerie two days, let alone a week,” the other man sputtered, his cheeks dark with red.
“’Twill have to suffice. My contract is for four crates of produce. I decide what that produce entails.”
“The widow won’t know they were coming, and thus won’t miss them.”
Jean Paul crossed his arms over his chest and glared. “The widow has three boys and a daughter who delight in berries. Furthermore, she’s a widow because her husband died in the Batavian campaign. I should think a soldier like yourself would be respectful of such sacrifice.”
“Are you implying I’ve a lack of respect?” The gendarme moved his hand to the hilt of his sword.
Jean Paul drew in a small breath. He must tread carefully. ’Twas a reason he sold food to the gendarmerie. Doing so kept him in their good graces, and they therefore asked no questions about his staying in Abbeville—though with his shoulder injury mostly recovered, he could manage as a soldier in one of the military campaigns. They also didn’t question why he’d suddenly returned to Abbeville a year ago, nor did they wonder where he’d gotten the money to purchase the land surrounding his farm.
They simply bought his food.
True, his contacts in Paris could quash any resistance the gendarmerie post gave him, but he’d rather not go that route. Too many townsfolk would raise their brows if Paris got involved.
Yet he wasn’t about to let widows starve while the waists of the gendarmes expanded, either. One person, one gift, one act of generosity when Corinne was ill, and she might be alive today. “The raspberries go to the Widow Arnaud, and if that’s a problem, I can start taking my raspberries to market instead of here. I’ll get a better price than you give me.”
The gendarme curled his lips until his teeth showed, but his mouth held nothing of a smile. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“’Tis my food until you put money in my hand. I can sell it wherever I wish.”
“We might visit your farm in the night and raid your food stores.”
“Try it, and see how long Abbeville retains a gendarmerie post.”
A murderous look flitted across the soldier’s face.
“Does your captain know the threats you make?” Jean Paul growled.
The man just glared.
“Perhaps you should make yourself scarce next week when I deliver the foodstuffs, or I might find an urge to speak with your superior.”
“Jean Paul!” a voice bellowed. “I didn’t know you were here.”
He recognized the speaker before he turned.
Mayor Narcise waddled down the steps of the post, a smile wreathing his flabby face. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, my boy.”
“Bonjour, Jean Paul.” Captain Monfort followed the mayor down the steps, his eyes surveying the near-empty wagon. “Our chef was saying to me earlier this week how much he appreciates your deliveries. Did he tell you such?”
“The kitchen was empty when I arrived.”
“Ah, I forgot he ran to the market. I trust Gilles here helped you unload?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Jean Paul slanted a glance at the gendarme, who was steadily backing away from the group with two of the crates.
The captain gave a curt nod and straightened the lapels on his coat. “Good. You’re dismissed, Gilles.”
The scrap of a soldier headed toward the kitchen at a brisk clip.
“Well, then.” The mayor gave Jean Paul a hearty slap on the back. “My sister’s been wanting you over to sup. Nagging me about it for nigh on a week now, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you.”
Supper again. Jean Paul stuck a finger into the collar of his shirt and tugged. He’d been to four meals in town during the past year, each painfully awkward. Everyone sat around the table staring at him, praising him for the day he stumbled upon Citizen Benoit and her daughter being set upon by three army deserters. He’d done nothing special, only what any man of character would have when he chased off two of the scoundrels and dragged the other one before the magistrate.
He hadn’t realized Citizen Benoit was the mayor’s sister.
Or that he would be hailed as a hero for his deed.
“Well, what say you to supper on the morrow?” The mayor slapped him on the back again, then gave Captain Monfort a wink. “We’ll even invite the captain here.”
Jean Paul shook off the mayor’s flaccid arm. “’Tis a busy week with the first vegetables coming on.”
“Make time, boy. You’ve tasted the food my sister serves. The finest in all of Picardy.”
“Oui. ’Tis so,” Captain Monfort agreed.
Jean Paul glanced between the two men, Captain Monfort with his pristine uniform and the glimmer of respect twinkling in his eyes, and the mayor with his protruding stomach and hopeful expression.
He swallowed hard. He was the last person to deserve such respect and reverence. But then, the mayor and captain didn’t understand the innocent blood that lay on his hands from the six years he’d spent away from Abbeville. He’d thought he’d been serving his country, but countless other men served France without ever spilling blood the way he had.
“I accept.” His throat tightened on the words, but he forced them out. He could manage one more night of hero worship.
If only he didn’t feel like a fraud.
* * *
Nothing. There was nothing here. Brigitte peeked under the bed one last time, just to be certain. What had she missed? No hidden journal of Citizen Belanger’s military days sat stuffed beneath his pillow. No tattered and stained National Guard coat was secreted away in his chest of drawers. And no mysterious trunk lay under this bed, nor under any of the three others inside the chamber.
Oh, the beds themselves were beautiful, just as breathtaking as the table and chairs had been. One had leaves and acorns carved on it while another had the same cornucopias as the dining set. But after an hour spent scouring every centimeter of the two-room house, she still had no information about where he’d been in April of 1794, when Henri was killed.
What was she going to tell Alphonse’s man? That Citizen Belanger had beautiful furniture? She bit her lip and stared at the empty space under the bed, willing a trunk or secret crate to suddenly appear. Then all she need do was look inside and find proof of Citizen Belanger’s...
Innocence? Guilt? What did she hope to find?
Citizen Belanger was big, like the man who had stolen Henri from their bed. And by his own admission, he’d been to Calais before. Yet Alphonse had said Citizen Belanger disappeared to Paris at the beginning of the Révolution, and she’d found nothing indicative of Paris in his house. Nothing indicative he’d been gone any length of time at all.
Perhaps he was innocent. The man had given her family three meals now and paid her two livres for a loaf of bread. Murderers didn’t care for the poor or search for excuses to give away money.
Did they?
She sighed and wiped a strand of hair from her face. She’d best go search the stable before she left. Perchance he’d something hidden away there.
“Ho, Sylvie.” A masculine voice resonated through the house, followed by the telltale creak of a wagon.
She stilled, blood rushing in her ears and her palms suddenly damp. Citizen Belanger couldn’t be back so quickly. She’d barely been here an hour.
Or had it been two?
She glanced out the bedroom window, its shutters thrown open to let in the warm summer air. The sun was high against the blue tapestry of sky, much higher than it should be had she only been working an hour.
The outer door to the house squeaked open and then thudded shut. She looked frantically about the room, then dove beneath the bed.
Chapter Six
Jean Paul scratched the back of his neck as he surveyed the main chamber of his house. Strange. He could have sworn he’d put Sylvie’s blanket in the stable yesterday’s eve, but the stable held no sign of it. The only other place it might be was inside the house. Yet no blanket lay in a haphazard pile on the table or hastily thrown over the rocking chair.
What had happened to it? A blanket didn’t simply up and disappear.
Or did it?
Mayhap he was losing his mind. There’d been a missing chicken yesterday, an absent mug this morn at breakfast and now his mare’s...
He looked around his cottage one more time. ’Twas more than a misplaced blanket or cup gone afoot. The entire house seemed wrong. The Bible lay at an odd angle on the mantle, the bench by the table was absent of dust, and the quilt on the rocker was folded a bit too neatly.
His heart quickened in his chest. Someone had been here. In his house. In his things.
He stood still, forcing his heart to slow and his blood to cease racing. Forcing the return of his old, familiar calm that had stayed him through all manner of horrors and deeds during the Terror.
He looked around a third time, assessing every centimeter of his house. Who had been here, and why?
Someone who knew of his past? Someone searching for him? Someone who wanted vengeance?
It couldn’t be. He’d moved back home over a year ago, and no one had since found him. Why would a person come looking now?
Or perhaps someone had learned of his letters to the Convention every month, of the men he sometimes sheltered in his stable. A hiding royalist that had escaped the terror, or a spy for the English that had sniffed him out. Then again, the man he’d harbored last night could well have been a spy selling information to the English while only pretending to work for the French.
No, no, no. It couldn’t be. His imagination was running amuck with strange and alarming possibilities while he missed the likeliest culprits: thieves. Or maybe a pair of deserters who had happened upon an empty house.
But while many things were slightly disturbed, nothing of worth was missing. A thief would have taken...
What? He kept little of value in the house, had learned long ago to hide the things he cherished. His gaze landed on the mantle above the hearth. His knife. That was gone.
He moved stealthily toward the bedchamber, footsteps soft, ears open for the slightest of sounds.
If an attacker had tarried, he’d likely be hidden in the bedchamber and would strike the moment Jean Paul opened the door. He glanced again at the empty spot where his knife usually rested, and his gut twisted. He reached for the kitchen knife hanging on a hook against the wall and held it at the ready.
He drew in a breath, then flung the bedchamber door open. It flew backward to bang against the wall.
Empty. The room held no one. But a person had been there. The dusty dirt floor bore fresh marks by all three of the unused beds, and the drawers of his dresser all fit perfectly into place. When was the last time he’d bothered to close the drawers properly?
A person had been here, and not some army deserter or thief looking for easy loot. A person had searched his house, and there could only be one reason for such actions:
Someone knew of his past.
* * *
Brigitte curled herself tighter against the wall and stared at the booted feet visible from beneath the bed. Did he know someone had been in his house, or was he merely retrieving something from the bedchamber?
She swallowed past a throat tight with fear. What if he sensed something amiss?
Would he hurt her if he found her? Take her to the magistrate for snooping about?
No, no. Surely not. This man had been kind to her, given her food and work, asked after her health. He wouldn’t hurt her.
Unless the kindness was all a farce, some odd sort of disguise for his past deeds. If he was indeed the man who had killed Henri and he found her hiding here, perhaps he would kill her, too. Kill her and bury her on the farm, where no one would ever discover—
The dusty boots turned suddenly and strode out of the chamber. A moment later the outside door banged shut.
Brigitte clasped a hand over her heart and willed its frantic pace to slow, willed the roaring in her ears to stop and the dampness to leave her hands and forehead. She was safe.
Well, mostly safe. She still had to climb out the bedchamber window and escape through the garden without being noticed. And then she needed to meet Alphonse’s man tonight and explain why she had no new evidence regarding Jean Paul Belanger.
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the cool dirt floor. ’Twould be astonishing if her heart survived this assignment.
* * *
Brigitte turned her back against the setting sun and moved her leaden feet along the clover field, skirting the trees that lined the edge. Had she really argued with Citizen Belanger over the price of her bread and snuck into his house earlier that day? The events seemed so distant, they might have occurred a week ago.
Her weariness was growing worse. Her joints ached as she trudged through the green countryside. Sweat slicked her hands and beaded on her forehead, and her head pounded with each step she took.
Surely she felt ill because of the meeting and what lay ahead at the rendezvous location, not because she was getting sick. She couldn’t get sick right now.
“Bonjour, Citizen,” a voice called from the field.
She stilled, her pulse thudding sluggishly against her throat. Had Alphonse’s man already found her? No one was supposed to know she was here besides the person she needed to meet—whomever that was.
“Bonjour?” she answered tentatively.
A man emerged from the midst of the cows grazing in the field, his clothing smeared with mud and hands crusted with dirt.
Or rather, his hand was crusted with dirt. He only had one. His other arm stopped somewhere beneath his elbow, leaving the remainder of his sleeve to hang free.
“Oh.” She took a step back. This couldn’t be the man Alphonse had sent.
“I’ve yet to meet you, Citizen.” The man dipped his head at her, his young face tanned beneath the uncocked hat he wore. “I’m Pierre Dufort, one of Jean Paul Belanger’s tenants.”
Well, that certainly explained his presence in the field. Her eyes slid to the gaping hole at the end of his shirtsleeve. How did a farmer work with only one hand?
“I lost it in the Batavian campaign.”
She jerked her eyes up to meet his and found herself staring once again into that terribly young face, a face not much older than Julien’s or Laurent’s.
’Twas almost worse than looking at the amputated arm.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stared. My name is Brigitte Moreau and I’m—” She licked her lips. How to describe why she was here near Abbeville, let alone cutting through a field? “Living in the area for a bit. I trust Citizen Belanger won’t mind my travelling through his land?”
“Jean Paul’s hardly the type to bother with a person crossing his field now and then.”
She only hoped he was right, but then, he hadn’t been cowering under a bed in fear of Jean Paul Belanger eight hours earlier.
“And no need to apologize about staring. ’Tis hardly a secret.” He raised his arm, drawing attention to the incomplete limb. “I lost my hand. Everyone can see as much.”
But he was so young to face the rest of his days maimed. Had he a mother who sent him off to fight? A wife? Did he blame whoever had sent him into the army for the injury he’d suffered? She swallowed hard, then glanced away.
“Adieu, then. I must be...”
“I have two sons...”
The both spoke at the same time then fell silent.
“You were saying?” The subtle lines around Pierre’s eyes creased with curiosity.
“In the navy.” She cleared her throat. “I have two sons in the navy.” She wasn’t sure why she told him, save that he might understand something she couldn’t. Might be able to name the aching sorrow that filled her chest every night as she lay down to sleep and longed for her oldest children. And if he couldn’t name it, he’d assuredly felt it before. One would have to after losing an arm on the battlefield.
“Good seamen, are they? That’s noble of you, now, sending your boys off to serve their country.”
But it didn’t feel very noble, not at moments like this when she simply wanted them home. “I hope...” Her eyes drifted down to his empty sleeve again. “That is, I want...”
“Don’t worry yourself.” Pierre smiled softly. “Your boys’ll fare fine. Battle at sea’s a mite different then battle on land. I’ve nary met a sailor who lost his arm.”
Yes. Battle at sea certainly was different, because if either Laurent’s or Julien’s frigate was captured, her boys wouldn’t face the mere loss of a hand—they would be killed, thrown into a gaol or impressed onto a British warship. Was she mad for thinking the loss of an arm seemed the better consequence? What kind of mother sent her children into the navy at all?
The kind who wanted to help her country fight against its tyrannical neighbor.
The kind who wanted to keep them away from Alphonse Dubois.
“They’re only fifteen.”
Pierre put his hand on her shoulder, a gentle touch like one Laurent or Julien might use to comfort her were they here in Abbeville. “Citizen Moreau, Brigitte, why don’t you come home and sup with me and my wife tonight? Looks like you need a little cheer to lift your spirits.”
She looked up into Pierre’s face, kindness and hospitality emanating from a young man who had every reason to be angry at life.
“That’s a kind offer, but I must make haste. I’ve three younger children back at the house.” And she was already late for her rendezvous.
“Some other time, then. I’ve got a wee babe I like to show off, and my wife will be pleased to meet another woman. She and Citizen Fortier are the only two women on Jean Paul’s land, you know.”
No. She didn’t know and hadn’t given much thought to who Citizen Belanger’s tenants were, whether they were married or widowed, whether they had all their hands or feet or ears. Though Jean Paul had told her there were women around to work as laundresses, and most farmers had wives and children to help bear the work.
“Au revoir, for I hope we meet again, Citizen Moreau.” He gave her a little wave.
“Au revoir.” She turned and took two steps away, then looked back. Pierre made his way along the edge of the field, his gaping sleeve hanging comfortably at his side.
“Did Citizen Belanger hire you after he learned of your arm?” The question exploded from her lips.
Pierre turned, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Oui. And I’d not have found work save for him. My father is the butcher, you see. There’s little one can do around a butcher shop when missing a hand. But I’m not the only one he saved from such dire straits. Citizen Courtemanche limps, and Citizen Fortier lost her farm after her husband’s death. Then there’s Citizen...”
She held up a hand to stem his words. “I understand.”
And she did. Pierre could likely go on for a quarter hour listing Citizen Belanger’s tenants and why each of them needed an extra bit of help. It certainly explained how he had three men waiting to become tenants in a country where all able-bodied men were off at war.
What murderer hired one-armed men, cripples and widows?
What murderer helped needy people with food?
She turned back toward the path that ran along the edge of the field. Maybe now she had evidence enough to give Alphonse’s man.
Chapter Seven
Jean Paul bent over the green-and-amber-tinted field and fingered the stalks of wheat. No orange or yellow stripes on the leaves, no powdery mildew coating the plant, no holes where aphids, worms or flies had chewed through the leaves. It was completely, utterly healthy.
Or it should be. But the stalks were only half the size of those in the field behind it. And the hulls growing on each plant considerably fewer than the number on the stalks in the neighboring field.
He shouldn’t have planted wheat here again, not after he’d grown it last year. He’d known as much when he’d tilled the soil and plowed this spring. The field was due for barley, then turnips and clover. His father had started using that crop rotation a decade back, and it had served the little farm well. The soil seemed attached to growing plants in that order, though he could hardly explain why.
But France needed wheat, and squeezing an extra year of grain out of this field had seemed like a good idea. But now it looked as though the plot of land would yield only half as much as his two other wheat fields.
He raised his eyes to the heavens. Was it too much to ask for two straight seasons of wheat?
Mayhap if he spread manure on the field this wheat might begin to thrive. That certainly worked for his vegetable patch, and this parcel was nearly the same size. On the morrow, he’d scrounge up some manure from his tenants who kept animals. ’Twas worth the attempt, though he probably should have tried the manure before now if he expected to see much difference come harvest.
And as for this field, next year it would get barley. Then turnips. Then clover. At least until he could figure out why his crops insisted on growing only in that order. Maybe if he understood why, he’d then be able to coax two straight years of wheat from the ground.
He straightened and surveyed his land beneath the setting sun. Farming might be frustrating at times, when his crops refused to grow or developed blights, when weather harmed them or pests descended. But nothing else on earth could replace the joy of seeing a field planted in spring and harvested in fall. Of taking a parcel of dark soil and cultivating life from it. Of watching the day and night, sun and rain, move in an endless cycle that drew his crops from the ground.
He’d been daft for ever turning his back on the land and going to Paris.
Something bright flashed along the edge of the field, followed by a sudden flurry of movement. The unease from earlier that afternoon flooded back. First his house, now his field. Something was definitely amiss.
Crouching low, he moved stealthily toward the disturbance. Had the silvery flash been the sun glinting off a knife? His own blade he’d kept above the hearth? He reached down to grip the hilt of his garden knife. ’Twas too rusted and dull to do much damage, but he was taller and broader of chest than most. If he surprised his enemy, he might well win the match.

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