A Refuge Assured

by Jocelyn Green

  “Clever ruse. But if the boy is still alive, all in vain. Ah. Look.” With a hard shove, he released her to point to three figures in the summer house. Two adults and a child. “All in vain, I see.” He pulled a pistol from his waistband. “And I thought you were more than a maid. You’ve proven yourself a miserable failure. It all ends now.”

  Her mouth went dry.

  Corbin cocked his pistol. “Step into the clearing. Call to him. He will come to you, yes? Then step aside.”

  She looked at the gun, imagined the bullet that would tear through Henri’s throat. Her hand went to her own.

  “You have one chance to help make this right. Or I’ll end your life right after I end his.”

  Something pulled at her gut as she forced her feet to move. It is the right thing to do, she told herself. The boy must be killed for the sake of the revolution. I will save my country and not notice the cost.

  She stepped from the thicket and into the clearing, where rain poured over her in waves. She felt at sea in a world gone mad. A tide of conviction welled within her, and she waited for it to recede. Charlotte Corday had killed a man in his bath. Women were not just scullery maids and cooks; they were arbiters of justice. Corday killed Marat because he called for thousands of heads to roll. What harm has Henri brought to anyone?

  The ebb and flow of her conscience was a thorn to her enlightened mind. She beat it back with reason.

  “Henri!” she called in a wobbling voice. She tried again. “Henri! Are you well?” That was better.

  The silhouettes of three people stood. When lightning illuminated the sky, all three left the summer house. Did they suspect? Did they wonder where she’d been?

  “I was helping at the shanties!” she cried out. “I came as soon as I heard the fire had been here, too! I was so worried!” The lies were getting harder to grind out. She licked the water from her lips. “Henri, come here, let me touch you for myself.” Let me draw you into my trap. Let me separate you from those you love so this man behind me can put a bullet between your eyes.

  Henri came toward her, his thin limbs swinging, his white nightshirt ghostlike as it drew near, begrimed though it was.

  Paulette bent down, arms outstretched. She heard Corbin move into place behind her.

  “We tried to get you,” Henri said. “We tried to save you from the fire, but you weren’t there. We were worried.”

  He stopped right in front of her, and she caught him to herself. Made herself remember that she would never hold her own child this way. Told herself this boy belonged to no one. He was an orphan. As she had been.

  Blast Henri. Blast her aching, unreasonable heart. Years of pent-up tears gathered and burned until they all seemed to spill over at once, mingling with the rain on her cheeks.

  Thunder cracked violently overhead, and the boy cringed. She released him. He’d always been afraid of loud noises. He’d always been afraid of so much. He was right to be. He should have been afraid of her.

  Don’t do this.

  “Paulette,” Henri whispered in her ear, his body stiff with fear, “there is a man behind you with a gun.”

  “Step away,” Corbin growled. Liam and Vivienne were getting closer.

  Paulette kissed the top of Henri’s head, though his hair held a paste of ash and rain. She whispered in his ear, “Run.”

  Then she shoved him toward Liam and wheeled on Corbin Fraser, knocking the pistol from his hand.

  Cursing, he pummeled her jaw with his fist. Ignoring the pain, she dropped to her hands and knees in the mud, searching frantically for the gun. She found it, but before she could discharge it into the woods, Corbin tore it from her grasp. She tackled him in the dark, bowling him over onto his back. Vivienne screamed.

  “Run!” Paulette cried, and felt knuckles fill her mouth. She bit down as hard as she could while scratching and clawing like a catamount at whatever she could reach. Her hand came around his, and she felt the gun beneath it. She tried to wrest it from him, prying at his fingers while kicking him in the groin.

  Paulette’s head jerked back as Corbin yanked her hair. A kick to her kidney sent her sprawling in the mud. A shot fired. The taste of sulfur filled her nose and mouth. Henri? She meant to call but had no voice.

  More footsteps pounded the earth. Men were shouting, grunting, fighting. Had Finn O’Brien returned with Armand? She heard voices but could not recognize the words. They were patterns of sound, that was all. Rain streamed over her body, and the water seemed to rise around her. Still, she could not move. Lightning stabbed the sky, and she saw that the puddle she lay in was red. She closed her eyes and thought of Jean-Paul Marat, who died in a bath stained with his own blood.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Thunder rattled the barn walls as Vivienne held Henri close, praying with all her might—for the second time that night—that God would be their refuge. They had stayed rooted in the mud outside when Liam came to blows with the attacker. As he had knocked the pistol from the man’s hand, Jethro had come from behind, kicking the weapon away and striking the Jacobin at the knees so he stumbled. While the men fought in the dark, she had finally moved, scooping the weapon from sodden ground and pulling Henri with her to the barn.

  Minutes later, the door burst open, and rain sprayed in around Liam, who was bare chested and bleeding from his lip as he carried a young woman in his arms. Behind him, Armand held a lantern, banishing darkness into the corners.

  “Paulette!” Vivienne covered her mouth with her hand as she approached. Vaguely, she was aware of Armand gathering Henri and steering him away from the gruesome sight.

  “Shot in the stomach.” Liam laid her gently on bales of hay stacked waist-high. His shirt was tied about her middle, already dark with blood. “By the same Jacobin who strangled you in Philadelphia. Name of Corbin Fraser. Finn and Jethro took him to Talon, where he’ll stay in custody along with Ernest and Derek.”

  “What?” Vienne’s thoughts turned laboriously, unable to gain any traction. She grasped her friend’s cold, wet hand, rubbing away the mud and grass between her fingers, then plucked a piece of hay from her hair. Paulette wouldn’t like to be so dirty.

  Liam cut his voice low. “Fraser confessed they were working together. He and Paulette.”

  Vivienne dropped the maid’s hand as if it burned her.

  “Vienne.” Liam came to her side, cupping her shoulders in his broad hands. “Their aim was the boy’s life, in the chance that he might be king. The revolution—”

  “Stop,” she hissed. “Do not speak to me of revolution, here. This is a refuge.” Her voice shook. “We are safe. It is why we came.” She choked on the words, trapping a sob in her throat. “Not Paulette. Not her.” She covered her face with her hands, felt Liam pull her against his chest.

  Something fluttered against her nightdress. Paulette’s fingers. She was trying to speak. “Here.” She fished into her pocket and struggled to pull something free, pinched between her thumb and forefinger. The gold signet ring of Louis XVI.

  Vivienne gasped as she took the ring. Comprehension sliced through her. “Oh, Paulette. What has become of you?”

  A crying wind blasted through the slats in the walls, and Red’s bridle creaked as it swayed on its hook. The smells of leather and straw and wood clashed with the iron scent of blood.

  “I couldn’t do it,” she whispered, tears tracing her cheeks. “But I brought the danger to your doorstep. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry? For deception, betrayal, attempted murder? Vienne knew Paulette was a troubled soul from what little she’d shared of her life, but she had no idea how far the young woman had allowed her pain to carry her.

  “I tried not to believe in God. I tried to think I had no need of Him, but I—” Paulette licked her lips and labored to breathe. “I still don’t want a king, but I do think there is a God. A God who is not pleased with murder or the planning of it. Do you think—could He forgive even me? Even now?”

  Vienne looped the signet ring over her
thumb and gripped Paulette’s hand. She seemed so frail, so vulnerable. “Yes. He can.” In time, He would help Vienne forgive her, too.

  Paulette closed her eyes, and the lines on her brow relaxed. She squeezed Vienne’s hand, and then dropped it.

  Noise scraped Vienne’s ears. The storm gnashed against the barn, nearly rocking it, and Red snorted and stamped in his stall. Thunder crashed, and yet somehow, she could still hear the bewildered beating of her heart.

  The door groaned, more rain rode in on a thrashing wind, and Father Gilbert’s voice turned Vienne’s head. “I came as soon as I heard.” Quickly observing that only Paulette was injured, he rushed to her, removing his sodden hat. Water streamed from his clothing and soaked into the hay at his feet. “Not too late, am I?”

  Vivienne backed away, teeth rattling. Her hands and limbs would not stop shaking. Liam held her close while Father Gilbert knelt beside Paulette to speak, listen, and pray until the maid breathed her last.

  The next day, after Vivienne had bathed and dressed in a borrowed gown from Evelyne, she sat in Louis-Charles’s room on the second floor of the Grand Maison. Henri, uninterested in play, curled next to her on the sofa. No one had told him that the fire and bullet had been meant for him, but she sensed he knew.

  “The bad men are locked away now, yes?” he asked for the eleventh time.

  “Yes. The king’s chief of secret police has them in his keeping. Monsieur Talon knows what to do.”

  A soft knock on the doorframe turned her head. “Talon would like to see you now,” Evelyne said. “I’ll stay with Henri.”

  “Merci.”

  Downstairs in Talon’s windowless office, tapers flickered, perfuming the already warm air. Vivienne stood before him between Armand and Liam, as she had the first week of her arrival.

  Monsieur Talon tented his fingers. “I have questioned all three men in my custody. The sum of the matter is this. The Jacobins, who believed Henri could be Louis-Charles, infiltrated Asylum in order to kill him. Your maid, Paulette Dubois, exploited a feud between Mr. Delaney and the Schultze brothers over some whiskey tax. According to their side of the story, she planned for them to use whiskey to start the fires we suffered through last night. First in the slave shanties, to occupy the colonists. Then Mr. Delaney’s fields and house.” He turned his appraising eye on Armand. “Monsieur de Champlain. You were the one paying for Mademoiselle Dubois’s service, were you not?”

  He paled. “I was. I did. But I had no idea, none whatever, of her designs on—”

  “And you and Mr. Delaney have quarreled over that particular plot of land. Your arrangement was that he could live on the land and draw income from the crops. Which are now destroyed, along with the house. This has all but ruined the property he hoped to regain, while your fortune remains quite intact. Correct again?”

  “Why, I—I—I reject your insinuation, sir,” Armand sputtered.

  “I stated the facts, monsieur. Only the facts. You cannot deny that you stand to benefit from Mr. Delaney’s recent misfortune, for he might now give up on the land and start over somewhere else. And now I invite you to make your case. Were you or were you not in any way involved in these dreadful events?”

  Vienne watched the sweat bead on Armand’s brow as he ran a finger between his cravat and neck. He swallowed. “I was not in any way involved in the cause of these events, but I did aid in the capture of the offenders. Would I have done that, if I’d been an accomplice in these crimes? Would I not have set them free for fear of them divulging my role—a role which does not exist, mind you.”

  Talon stood and looked down his nose at Armand. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you have used your considerable means to buy their silence. After all, two American laborers and two self-professed Jacobins—one of whom is already dead—I can’t imagine that their fates would trouble you even a little. They could be your tools.”

  “They are not.” Armand dabbed a handkerchief to his face. “I promise you. Are you forgetting that Vivienne Rivard lives—lived—in that house with Henri? I would never harm her, nor would I harm the boy in her keeping.”

  “Or maybe you set all of this up in order for her to trust you. Because you wanted to get rid of the boy without the messiness of getting your own hands dirty. The perfect arrangement for another secret Jacobin, if I do say so myself.”

  “I tell you the truth, I would never harm either of them or see any harm come to them! On my honor.” Armand’s voice grew in volume and pitch.

  Vienne could no longer stay silent. “If I may, Monsieur Talon,” she interjected, “Monsieur de Champlain is innocent of these crimes. He would not hurt me, I vow.”

  “Oh? How can you be so sure?”

  She drew a deep breath and looked at Armand. “Forgive me, Vienne.” How many times had he said it since she met him? Too many to count. Finally, she realized, she did. “Because he is my father.”

  A small cry escaped Armand. “Ah! Vivienne!” His face crumpled, and he hid his trembling mouth behind his handkerchief while tears flowed freely from his eyes.

  Something inside her broke at the sight. She squeezed his shoulder, and he covered her hand with his own. Liam caught her eye and sent her a tender smile.

  Sniffing back her own tears, she released Armand and brought the signet ring from her pocket. She held it out to Talon. “This should be in your care.”

  He took it from her and examined it, furrows etching deep across his brow. Lines carved from the corners of his lips to his jawline. “Where did you get this?”

  “Henri’s mother had it in her possession. She was lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette.”

  “I heard she had smuggled it out to some trusted person before she, too, went to the guillotine. But a lady-in-waiting? I would not have guessed it.”

  “But then, who would have guessed an imposter child would be in the prison in the dauphin’s place?”

  The wrinkles in Talon’s face grew fainter. “Indeed. Thank you for this. I will keep it for Louis-Charles. What do you require in return for its safe delivery into my hands?”

  She glanced at Armand, then at Liam, before returning Talon’s stare. “The land, monsieur, of course. I require the land returned to Mr. Delaney’s ownership, and Armand compensated however he chooses, either with a different plot and property, or with the money he would get from the sale.”

  Armand turned to Liam. “Do you still want that land, such as it is?”

  “That I do.” His eyes misted. “’Tis still good land beneath its scars.”

  “Then take it.” Armand pushed back his shoulders and lifted his chin. “I’ll work with Talon here to make sure the paperwork is drawn up. And Mr. Delaney—I’m not much hand at felling trees, but if I can be of any other use to you as you rebuild that house, by all means, I’m at your service.” He offered a gallant bow.

  “Anything else?” Talon asked.

  “There is one thing more,” Vivienne replied. “I want to adopt Henri. Officially. Legally. I don’t know where to begin, since his parents are both deceased, but I don’t want him to ever wonder whose he is.” She knew how that felt and didn’t want that for Henri. Beside her, Armand colored.

  “I’ll see to it. It may take some weeks, but you can trust I’ll see the matter through.”

  “Thank you.” Vivienne curtsied. The men bowed their thanks, and all of them left the office.

  In the music room, Armand shook Liam’s hand, and Vienne allowed her father to kiss her cheek. The way the older man smiled at her, she knew he saw her and not just Sybille. He was smiling through fresh tears when he left the room, leaving her alone with Liam.

  Her heart rate quickened as he gazed at her, full of wonder. “You could have asked for anything, unto half the kingdom. And you asked for my land. For me. Thank you.”

  “It’s your land, Liam, no one else’s. No one could love it as well as you.”

  He nodded slowly. “’Tis rare I find a thing to love with my whole heart. But when I do, I never stop.” H
e took her hands. “I promised you a conversation when I returned. You once said you never wanted to leave. Picture in your mind for a moment that the house isn’t a smoldering ruin. It’s been rebuilt, with the help of Finn, Jethro, and Armand, if I can find something for him to do. Imagine it the way it was when you loved it, but with an extra room on the second floor. For a nursery, perhaps. And flower boxes on all the windows, and Lombardy poplars lining the drive. An orchard full of apple trees, for pies and sauces and jellies. What would you say if I asked you to stay?”

  She cocked an eyebrow, though her pulse throbbed at the picture he painted. “As the maid and cook?”

  “Nay. The land is just dirt without you there living on it with me. A house can’t be a home without you in it. Vienne, I love you. I’ve loved you longer than I’m sure was proper. And now I’m asking you—let me serve you the rest of my life. Not out of duty, but for love. Let me be a husband to you and a father to Henri. And to any other babies you want to give me.”

  Heat flashed over her at the thought, and longing filled her. “I’d love nothing more than to be your wife.”

  His lips curving, he cupped her cheek with one hand, the other coming around her waist. Reflecting his smile, she rose up on her toes and linked her hands behind his neck. He swayed, his lips against hers, stealing her breath away. Melting into his embrace, she savored his touch, his smell, his love. He was an Irish-American who’d fought for his revolution, and she a Frenchwoman who’d fled another. And yet this, at last, was where she belonged. Her refuge was in the Lord, and her heart firmly in Liam’s hands.

  “Mademoiselle?” Henri’s voice floated to her.

  Liam released her, and she beckoned to Henri, while Evelyne smiled from the doorway.

  “Henri,” Vienne began. “I will never replace your mother. But what would you say about becoming part of a new family? With me and Mr. Delaney, from now on?”