Bennett Sisters Mysteries Box Set 2

by Lise McClendon

  “Until yesterday,” he said.

  “Wait here. I will fetch you something.”

  She began to rise and he caught her hand again. “Don’t leave me.”

  “You must have food. I know where you are. I will leave my goats here to protect you.”

  Odette brought back a hunk of cheese, two apples, and a bucket of water. No one on the farm looked at her twice. She walked slowly through the yard, then broke into a run when she neared the woods. She raised the pail to Ghislain's lips and let him drink. After he had eaten the apples and the cheese and quenched his thirst, she sat back and looked him over.

  He was wearing both his fine leather boots, and the same clothes he’d worn the first time she’d seen him at the Count’s château, the green jacket and the white starched shirt now filthy with road grime. His dark trousers were torn and dirty. No wound was visible.

  He closed his eyes again, leaning his head against the tree trunk. She let him doze. When he opened his eyes again they looked brighter, the brilliant blue she remembered.

  “What are you doing here, Ghislain?” she asked quietly. “What happened?”

  “They came for the Count. You know he is a friend of Robespierre?” She nodded. “An angry mob arrived, ready to burn the rest of the château. They accused him of harboring royalists and being a traitor to the Republic. I know, it makes no sense but in these times, nothing makes sense.”

  “Did they take the Count away? Did they take him to the guillotine?”

  Ghislain shook his head. “He talked them out of it. At least for now. All the nobles will suffer, that is a certainty. He will lose his land to the people, and who am I to say he shouldn’t? But he was good to me. He helped me as much as he could, to mend and be well.”

  “The Count told you to leave?”

  “He was a friend. He helped me but now I was a liability. Was the mob there for me? I don’t know. Then the Army came. He fed them supper. It was too much. I had to go. Being his friend was not going to help me in the end.”

  “They say he has fled to Toulouse.” She glanced at his leg. “How are you mending?”

  “It was bad for awhile, Mademoiselle Odette. When you came to see me last a contamination set in. Fevers, chills, the wound was poisoned. The people there, the Count’s people, they worked hard and pulled me through. It is better but not healed.”

  “There is a story going round that you lost your foot.”

  He grinned then and Odette felt her heart lift. “Feel them.” He wiggled toes in both boots. “Go ahead.” She squeezed the toes of each of his boots.

  “I am so happy for you.” They stared at each other. In that silent moment in conversation she knew she wouldn’t go back to her attic room at the Daguerre farm, tonight or any other night.

  Odette took her goats back at the usual time and ate her soup in silence with the maids. Everyone was quiet tonight, no more gossip and chatter. Someone said that the wheat prices were good but only because there was so little wheat. The domestic help knew nothing of grain prices so that ended the conversation. When Margot got up to leave Odette followed her outside.

  “Helping with the evening milking, are ya? Can’t get enough of the teats?” Margot said, striding toward the milking shed.

  “Wait,” Odette said, taking her arm, stopping her. She dragged Margot into the barn. “I found him.”

  Margot held up her hands. “I have no idea what you’re speaking of. Do not tell me, Odette.”

  “I just want someone to know. You will know, if no one else. I leave tonight.”

  “Again.” Margot put her fingers in her ears. “I have no idea who took the horse.”

  Odette blinked, glancing behind her at the stalls. A small black horse had his head out over the gate, nickering at them. She jerked her head toward him. “Yes?”

  Margot bit her lip. “I must go.” She hugged Odette. “Blessings and godspeed.”

  The moon had not yet risen when Odette led the black horse out of the back of the barn, through the sheds and the orchard, and into the woods. The dark was dense under the trees and smelled of pine and mushrooms. She picked up windfall apples, stuffing them in the feed sack she’d purloined. How long could one live on apples? They may have to find out.

  Ghislain was standing when she returned, holding onto the tree. He had heard the horse coming and was ready for a fight. When he saw Odette he groaned and fell into her, holding her tight. She stiffened, unaccustomed to so much hugging. Then Ghislain let her go, mumbling apologies, embarrassed. He tugged his forelock. She pulled him back to her. It wasn’t her first kiss but it was the first one that meant something. The first with a promise.

  “Can you mount the horse? She is small and they say very gentle.”

  Odette led the horse to a fallen log and with help Ghislain stepped onto it then swung up on the horse. There was no saddle, only a bridle and a blanket, but he declared it fine.

  “She’s a good one, Mademoiselle Odette,” he said, stroking her neck. “She will carry us far. What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know. What would you call her?”

  He reached down and cupped Odette’s face in his hand. “Chanceux? Because today I am the luckiest man.”

  Epilogue

  The winter months were not kind to France that year, nor to revolutionaries on the run. The pair trudged north, going inland, with the horse, Chanceux, making their way across the Loire at Amboise before traveling northwest again. They stayed in barns, in each others arms, in homes of the charitable, in abandoned churches and derelict cottages. The countryside was fairly calm because they avoided Paris and the Vendée but the cold and ice hampered their travels and they often went hungry. The Republican Army was sometimes spotted, as were rioters and gangs from various factions. They learned how to hide from them all.

  Ghislain’s leg continued to improve and by the end of the year he was walking again, letting Odette ride when she felt tired or faint from hunger.

  Green grass and daffodils graced the land when they arrived at last in Brittany. Odette sometimes wondered about her parents, whether they were still in this area, or safe wherever they were. She wondered if she would find them again but tried to look to the future. She was alive, and so was Ghislain.

  They stumbled into his family’s farm on a warm day in March, worn down and hard from the road. Many months in the mud had done little for their looks or their attire, but they couldn’t think about how their appearance would be received. They had made it. They were home.

  Ghislain paused, leading the horse, in the lane lined with cherry trees.

  Odette shielded her eyes from the sun. The farmhouse had been stone and timbered. But it lay open to the weather now, its blackened walls tilting in. She slid off the horse and stood next to Ghislain.

  “It is burned,” he said.

  “Come.” She took his hand and pulled him forward. They found the barn also in ashes. Only one small shed was untouched, a store for apples. They opened it and fell back from the smell of fermented fruit.

  They explored the ruins of the house. Little was left. At least they found no human remains. As they poked in the ashes the sound of chickens came through the stone walls.

  Four chickens flapped their wings as if to celebrate their arrival. Their coop had burned to the ground but somehow they had survived. In the days to come three more chickens would emerge from the woods, coming home to roost.

  The villagers told Ghislain that royalists had burned the farm in the autumn. That his parents, well-known supporters of the new Republic, had been gone for months by then, possibly to England where they had friends. They urged Ghislain and Odette to go there, to flee as well. But Ghislain wouldn’t hear of it. He told them all he would rebuild.

  The Republican Army marched through early in the month of Floréal— April— when the orchards begin to bloom. The cherry trees were heavy with pink buds. They found Ghislain with three neighbors, placing new beams on the house. Odette looked up from the gard
en where she was hoeing beans and peas. Four officers stopped their horses and one called to ‘Monsieur LeClair.’ He pulled papers from his jacket.

  Ghislain told them loudly, a bit angrily, that he was Ghislain LeClair, late of the Republican Army. Injured in the Vendée, captured, left for dead. They disagreed and handed over his death certificate, along with a small allotment to his mother for her loss. Ghislain argued more, told them he lived. That he was injured but he lived. He pounded his chest.

  They smiled with pity and left.

  With the small sum Ghislain bought Odette fabric for a new dress and they were married by the mayor. The house was enclosed and habitable, glazing in place, by the time autumn came again.

  In time for the child, a girl born in Vendémiaire, the month of the harvest, a child who would know no kings. An emperor or two, several republics, but at least, no kings.

  She was called Fortunée. Her parents held her tiny body and felt the extraordinary good fortune, the luck, that brought them at last here, together.

  After much searching, Odette found her brother Jérome years later, injured during the fighting and living in a tenement in Paris. She brought him back to Brittany and nursed him back to health. They never found their parents. Ghislain’s mother returned from England to help raise her grandchildren. His father died abroad.

  The Count de Beaulieu married the young daughter of the Count of Toulouse and remained at his father-in-law’s château for several years into his marriage. He and Suzette had two children then the young Count’s temper flared again and he was challenged to a duel. He was mortally wounded and died shortly afterward. His estate in the Périgord was abandoned after being ransacked by paysans and later torn up for use in building other structures.

  While Odette could not vote (French women were finally given the right to vote in 1945, over 150 years after the first French Revolution proclaimed ‘égalité’) she organized an apple cooperative and wrote passionate petitions to the government on behalf of laborers to ensure their rights were protected. She helped found a public school that educated girls for the first time, and served as a teacher. She urged her brother Jérome to run for mayor despite his fragile health. He spent many years running the village with a fair and even hand. Odette happily did most of the work, in her own way helping women and their families of France.

  Odette and Ghislain raised five children on their farm and orchards. Ghislain bred beautiful horses which he refused to sell to the Army.

  Odette did not keep goats again.

  A Little about France

  The French Revolution began in 1789. The First Republic, as it came to be called, was formed in 1792 and lurched through the 1790s in fits and starts, plagued by infighting, economic troubles, prison massacres, revolts, and foreign wars, until an impetuous young soldier named Napoleon Bonaparte plotted a coup to become First Consul in 1799. Five years later he crowned himself Emperor and the First Republic came to an end. There would be four more French Republics. The current one, the Fifth, was formed in 1958 after the Algerian crisis.

  The conflict in the Vendée, a region south of the Loire River near the Atlantic coast of France, began in 1793 and raged on and off for years. Hundreds of thousands of royalists and republicans were killed in the uprising.

  The estates of many nobles in France were broken up but many remained intact, conserving, to a lesser degree, the old hierarchical system. Taxes on land increased and the feudal system was replaced by rents. Many sons and daughters of nobles emigrated during this period, seeing their futures dimmed. Over 40,000 people, including about a thousand nobles, were sent to the guillotine during the Terror.

  The real Count de Beaulieu lived in the Netherlands and was a supporter of Napoleon. He was also a character in a movie version of The Scarlet Pimpernel set during the French Revolution.

  Most of the events in this story took place in 1793 and 1794, although the sequence has been altered somewhat for the sake of the story. Refer to this timeline of the French Revolution for more accuracy, and to an excellent reference book, Liberty or Death: The French Revolution, by Peter McPhee.

  About the authors

  Merle Bennett is the fictional author of this gothic romance. Read about Merle’s adventures in the Bennett Sisters Mysteries.

  Lise McClendon is the author of numerous novels of crime and suspense. Her bestselling Bennett Sisters Mysteries is now in its ninth installment. When not writing about foreign lands and delicious food and dastardly criminals, Lise lives in Montana with her husband. She enjoys fly fishing, hiking, picking raspberries in the summer, and cross-country skiing in the winter. She has served on the national boards of directors of Mystery Writers of America and the International Association of Crime Writers/North America, as well as the faculty of the Jackson Hole Writers Conference. She loves to hear from readers.

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  to get a free copy of the Bennett Sisters French Cookbook, a collection of 25 classic French recipes inspired by the series

  For more information

  www.lisemcclendon.com

  Also in this series

  Blackbird Fly

  The Girl in the Empty Dress

  Give Him the Ooh-la-la

  Things We Said Today

  The Frenchman

  Blame it on Paris

  The Bennett Sisters French Cookbook

  A Bolt from the Blue

  Go for it!

  Get the Box Set of the first 4 books

  Also by Lise McClendon

  Writing as Grier Lake

  The Jackson Hole Mysteries

  The Bluejay Shaman

  Painted Truth

  Nordic Nights

  Blue Wolf

  Box Set with two bonus short stories

  The Kansas City Mysteries

  One O’clock Jump

  Sweet and Lowdown

  Box Set with a bonus short story

  I hope you’ve enjoyed The Frenchman.

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  Acknowledgments

  A special thanks to Helen Mulroney for checking my French like the pro she is. If I called a lawyer an avocado, it’s on her though.