“She lived near Aunt Louisa, remember?” Johan glared at Nicholas.
“French—probably a Catholic and not a Huguenot at all,” he muttered.
Suzanne stiffened.
Maria shot him a stern look. “Nicholas! Don’t be rude. Why would she be here if she were not a Huguenot?”
Her stomach clenched.
“Perhaps she didn’t realize Papa would never tolerate a Catholic under his roof.”
Only a few more weeks’ shelter before the group leaves. These good people wouldn’t put her out, would they? Suzanne dropped the pewter utensil to the blue stoneware plate and brought her napkin to her lips.
Nicholas pointed his knife at Johan. “Suzanne needs a female friend.”
Yes, she needed a friend in the village. Someone who could help her get a message out without these people knowing the letter was going to Versailles.
“Someone her age?”
Johan stopped chewing and set his fork down. “Greta is older—ready for marriage. Right, Nick?” He winked at him.
Nicholas’s face flushed. “Too bad she has to wait.” Jaw clenched, he bent his head back over his food.
Suzanne exhaled in relief. A large hand crept over hers.
“Are you all right?” Johan whispered.
His touch felt like a warm cloak had been arranged around her shoulders.
But she had to resist the emotions he stirred in her. She’d get to town, somehow, and get a message out.
~*~
Johan hoisted the full bag over his shoulder. These rabbits would make a fine stew. Mama would be so happy that he had caught so many, especially with another mouth to feed. But he didn’t want Suzanne to see what he’d caught in his traps, didn’t want to go through yet another explanation.
Somehow, she didn’t seem to understand that they owned their woods. Insisted that they couldn’t. She couldn’t grasp that the copse of trees by the river was their portion of family-owned lands, passed down for generations. He sensed her presence even before Suzanne spoke, the hair on the back of his neck prickling.
Her voice was soft. “I need a favor.”
Wiping his hands, he took a deep breath. He avoided looking at her. Mama’s cooking and the country air seemed to agree with her. The former angles on her body were now womanly curves.
“What is it?”
“I, uh…for heaven’s sake, Johan, why won’t you look me in the eye anymore?” She lodged one fist against a newly rounded hip.
His gaze settled there, sensing the flush in his cheeks. Her amber eyes were wet. He hated the sinking feeling he got in the pit of his stomach whenever he saw her distressed. Cupping her face with his hands, he wiped the wetness under her eyes away with his thumbs.
“What is it? Leibling, what can I do?”
“I need to go to town.” Her words carried away with the breeze.
He clutched his hat to his head. “Tomorrow I go to market. Come with me then. What’s so important?”
“There’s something I must do.” Suzanne adjusted the scarf around her neck, covering the skin exposed by the dip in the neckline. Soft ivory skin.
He took a deep breath before escorting her back to the house. Her words stayed with him through the milking, the plowing, and at night as he helped Suzanne clean up from dinner.
“What do you so desperately want from town?” He knew what he wanted. The blacksmith had promised to let him watch and learn a new technique. He wanted to master this skill and go to the village himself.
“I…need a friend.” Her words saddened him.
“You have friends here.” That came out wrong. He sounded jealous.
She ran her tongue over her lips, a movement that unsettled him. “Your brother mentioned Greta—I wish to meet her.”
“Ja. I’ll take you there. And Mama knows?”
She barely nodded, but he decided to take that as an affirmation. He couldn’t help feeling that he should be concerned. So he prayed. For the remainder of the day he struggled with the notion of exactly why Suzanne needed a friendship with Greta, the merchant’s daughter. And as he settled into bed, across from Nick, he wondered what Greta saw in his brother other than his handsome face. Was that all a woman wanted in a mate? He’d grown up knowing Nick was the handsome brother, not he. But with Suzanne, he felt as though he was more appealing. And something inside him changed.
His eyes seemed to have just closed when the rooster crowed. Must have slept uneasily again. Beneath him, the bed seemed larger, softer than usual. He spread his legs wide but couldn’t feel the edge of the mattress. It can’t be. But it was. He was in his grandparents’ bedroom.
Suzanne’s chamber. Opening his eyes, he spotted her, curled into a ball in the chair, a blanket wrapped around her. He must depart before Mama caught him, but he couldn’t leave Suzanne in the chair. She’d get a crick in her neck.
Slipping from the bed, he lifted her. Inhaling her sweet fragrance, he placed her yielding body under the covers on the bed as her golden-brown eyes opened.
“Johan…”
He exited as fast as he could, afraid of his wandering thoughts. Ja, he wanted a wife, one that smelled like flowers and felt so good in his arms. But not yet.
10
With Suzanne’s soft body pressed against his in the small cart, thoughts of talking with her about his plans flew from Johan’s mind. He tugged at his collar. “A little hot today, ja?”
“I think it’s cool. Damp, too.” She pulled Grandmother’s shawl up higher around her smooth neck. “But you look flushed.”
When her hand settled on his forehead, he leaned back in the seat, and then breathed in her floral scent. “I’m fine.” He enfolded her hand, keeping his reins in the other hand. It felt good, wrapping her small fingers in his own.
Under her cap, Suzanne’s cheeks turned pink.
He’d been wrong to do that. He released her hand. “I’m sorry about last night—coming to your room again.” He removed his hat, his scalp burning.
Silent, Suzanne stared at the floorboards before they hit a small bump and she grasped the seat. “No harm done. Your parents warned me. I shouldn’t let you into the room, but…”
Why did he always have to be different? Sleepwalking, his difficulty learning to read. He sat up straighter. He waited for her to begin her usual chatter, but today she was silent.
The sun warmed the earth as they rode onward. Soon they passed the markers for the village.
They hit a rut and she bounced, but he threw an arm around her shoulders and held her in the seat. Was she the one? The answer to his prayers? How could someone who mangled the easiest of household tasks make a home for him? He couldn’t help chuckling, remembering how her roast was so overcooked it could have been brought into town and given to the shoemaker for leather.
“What are you laughing at? Do I look funny?”
“No, you look fine.” She looked pretty in his grandmother’s green dress. “Was thinking about something I forgot to bring for Greta.”
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
He whistled. “I don’t think she would have wanted it anyway.” Johan maneuvered the horse close to the hitching post, planning to tie it up.
Suzanne grasped his forearm. “Please, I’ll go by myself. Don’t worry.” She gave him a tight smile as he held the horse in check for her to get down from the cart. “Merci!” She picked up her skirts and almost ran.
Why was she in such a hurry?
He slackened the reins and clucked his tongue for the large horse to move on. Before long, he was at the watermill. Johan removed the baskets of new wheat from his cart, running his hands over the varying textures—so different, yet all part of one plant. He toted them into his cousin’s mill.
Cousin Phillip turned, his eyes red and his face puffy.
Dropping the containers to the floor, Johan grasped his older cousin’s shoulders.
Phillip pushed him away, and then began patting the many pockets in his vest, as if trying
to locate a handkerchief.
Johan handed his own cloth to Phillip. “What’s wrong?”
“I got terrible news about Aunt Louisa. She’s gone, Johan, we got word this morning.”
“Gone? Aunt Louisa is dead? How?” His words echoed inside the stone building, along with the dripping of water.
His cousin’s worker, the young man at the grindstone, glanced up.
Johan was about to say that he’d just seen her, but since he wasn’t supposed to have been in France, he clamped his mouth shut. The large room chilled him with its clinging moisture.
“Don’t yell. Your voice is like a cannon booming. Come outside and we’ll talk.”
“Ja.” He kept his voice quieter. Inside his gut, his breakfast strudel seemed to be churning round like grain inside the mill.
“She was found in her cottage.”
“When?”
He could barely hear over the grindstone’s rumble.
The miller wiped his hands against his apron and motioned to his laborer to continue.
Back out through the entryway, his nose full of the scent of grain, Johan exhaled.
“Stabbed.” Phillip placed his hand over his heart. “With a rapier.” His cousin cleared his throat.
Two women carried sacks of rye grain inside.
“Come here, Johan.” They trod down the grassy bank to the water and sat on two large boulders. “It happened near the time you arrived with the French girl.”
“Her name is Suzanne.” Could the murderer have been after her? His vest suddenly grew tighter. “Was it robbers?” Ridiculous, since Aunt Louisa owned nothing valuable.
Phillip shifted uneasily. “Cousin Noel said the blade belongs to an aristocrat—the cut was made by something extremely sharp but light.”
A nobleman. With reason to find Suzanne. Who would want her that badly that he would take a life of an innocent elderly woman?
He swallowed. “Did Noel find her, did he see anything else?”
“No, the groundskeeper from the estate checked on her. Found her body.”
Johan had to find out if Uncle Vincent knew—and if he was safe. And he had to talk with Suzanne. Needed to know why such a thing would happen.
“Your parents want to send Nicholas to the colonies.” Phillip narrowed his eyes and gave Johan a hard, cold look, his voice suggesting suspicion. “Why not send that girl with him? What do you really know about her, anyway?”
Johan closed his eyes tightly to block out Phillip’s face and held his fists down at his sides. Patience, Lord, please help me not to beat him to a bloody pulp. He flexed his fingers and opened his eyes to see Phillip backing away from him, his hands held up, palms facing Johan.
“I’ll be back to get our flour later. With Suzanne. Good day, cousin.”
~*~
The bell above the door jingled as Suzanne entered the shoemaker’s shop.
The young woman inside wiped her hands on her apron.
With a smile so welcoming, Suzanne immediately wanted to trust her. Magnificent auburn braids encircled her head. Could this be Nicholas’s paramour?
“Guten tag.” Her deep voice held suppressed laughter.
An older woman, silver hair plaited and wrapped around her head, stood behind her.
Suzanne licked her lips. The scent of new leather reminded her of Guy. Of his many pairs of polished boots ready for use in the army. “Are you Nicholas’s intended?”
Greta’s already rosy face took on a pinkish glow around her eyes. “I…uh…” She pulled off her white apron and turned toward the woman seated on a tall stool behind the counter. “Mama, might I take a little walk?”
Her mother looked up from her work. “Nicholas tells everyone but us that he will marry Greta.”
Suzanne chuckled. “Oui, madame.”
When Greta’s mother glanced in her direction and frowned, Suzanne regretted that she hadn’t used the woman’s own language. Too late.
The young woman nodded toward the door. “Come. I’ll show you where Nicholas and I meet when he comes into town.”
“I see.” But she didn’t. Had Nicholas even bothered courting this girl?
They exited the shop and Suzanne and Greta walked side-by-side toward the village center.
“Tongues are wagging. They say he’ll marry you, not me.” Greta laughed. “Of course, he’s never said one word to me about being his wife. Talks a lot about how he doesn’t know how he and Johan could both keep families on their farm.” Stopping at the corner, Greta handed a small coin to a girl holding a bucket of tulips and pulled out two flowers, one red and the other yellow, from the assortment.
“Danke.” The child grinned up shyly at Greta. Her hazel eyes widened when she surveyed Suzanne’s face.
They continued on and Suzanne leaned in toward Greta. “I love another…” She covered her mouth. The words slipped out before she’d considered. How many times had she told Jeanne that she loved Etienne? Greta reminded her of Jeanne. A crawling sensation ascended her neck. She hadn’t referred to Etienne just now. She meant Johan. “Nicholas said he plans to marry you soon.”
Auburn eyebrows worked together for a moment.
A group of girls walked by, their disapproval of Suzanne evident on their faces.
Greta took a deep breath, her eyebrows raised as though she was deciding whether to share her opinion. “I don’t understand Nicholas.”
Suzanne patted her shoulder. “It’s all right. If you don’t feel the same way you should tell him.”
“But I do!” Greta wrung her hands. “I don’t put up with any of his nonsense and he respects me.”
Unusual basis for a marriage. “Do you love him?”
“Of course. Always—since our schoolroom days. He was so smart. So sweet and shy.”
Sweet? Shy? Greta’s flawed opinion startled her but she’d not express that. Suzanne needed to depart the Palatinate and be on her way. “I won’t be here too long with his family. And…I need help.”
Greta linked her arm through Suzanne’s and they strolled toward a statue of a mounted cavalryman in the village’s central plaza. A fountain flowed in the circle beyond it, surrounded by flowers and greenery. Greta stopped. “What kind of help?”
“Can you get a letter out for me?”
A man on the corner, selling sausages on thick crusty buns, offered Suzanne one, and she declined. She was too nervous to eat.
“Perhaps. Where to?”
Suzanne retrieved the missive from her bag. Could she trust this girl? Nicholas said Greta’s parents sent packets into France regularly. What would one more letter matter? “To Versailles.” She stared boldly into the other girl’s green eyes, so reminiscent of Jeanne’s. She always thought Guy would marry her best friend. Now it would probably never be. A weight of sadness settled upon her.
Greta’s pretty lips parted. “Versailles?” She bowed her head. “I won’t ask you why. It would do me no good and could do harm.” Greta was both kind and discerning. No wonder Nicholas cared for her. “I’ll put it in with the other packets my parents send out.”
“Merci, Greta. It’s very important to me.”
A stout man carrying a stack of leather squares smiled at Greta but averted his eyes from Suzanne.
The pit in her stomach opened up. She was French. The man probably thought of the despised French army. She turned to look at the tanner’s back as he continued on. Leather. Boots. Guy. She peered back at the statue of the Palatinate general on horseback. Rochambeau. He would be her next line of attack in her search for her brother.
~*~
“Suzanne?” Now was the perfect time for him to ask while they traveled back. She couldn’t escape him.
Seated as far away from him as possible, she stared off into the distance, a line worked between her eyebrows. “What is it?”
He wanted to tell her about Louisa. Would wait. “Tell me about yourself.” Dear God, was she from the French nobility?
Her long eyelashes fluttered. “Wh
at do you want to know?”
“Who are you really?” She wasn’t a Huguenot peasant.
She clutched the front of the bench. A rut bounced her toward him and she grabbed his arm. “Oh!”
“I want to know everything.” He wanted to know what it felt like to kiss those pink lips. To tell her he’d protect her. But an aristocrat wouldn’t want that. Not from him.
“What did the priest tell you about me?” By the twitch in her cheek, and the way she pursed her lips together, he knew he needed to choose his words carefully.
He sighed. “Father Vincent is my mother’s uncle.”
She began to work a knot into her apron. He’d have to get firm with her, no matter how good she smelled with those flowers in her hair. No matter how he wished to pull her even closer to him. “Tell me everything.”
Sitting up higher, her posture rigid, she gazed beyond the golden wheat fields.
Toward France?
“I am Suzanne Richelieu, my parents were Huguenots. Both are dead. I don’t know where my brother is, and I’m supposed to go on to Amsterdam and sail from there to the American colonies.”
Heat flared up his neck and he clenched the reins. “Nein.” He knew his voice was hard, but he needed to know if she was from one of those ancient French noble families. Too good to even love the likes of him. Love. He’d allowed himself to think the word.
“Oui, I already told you.”
“Don’t mock me.” He hadn’t meant to raise his voice so loud or to cause those bright spots of color to appear on her cheeks. The muscle in her cheek tensed—an indicator that she was about to become silent. He wouldn’t allow it. A family member had died and maybe from something she hid.
“Who would kill my Aunt Louisa because of you?”
Her face blanched. Suzanne squeezed his arm hard. “No! She cannot be dead.”
“It’s true. She was murdered.”
“Mon Dieu, no.” She clung to his arm, a look of horror on her face, and then buried her head against his shoulder, moisture soaking through the cloth.
He let her stay there, even when he sensed her pulling something from her pocket, a string of round hard objects that clicked against his thigh. He spied the blood-red beads, garnets, linked by chain, as she clasped them into her hand and pushed them back into the pocket she wore over her skirt.
Saving The Marquise's Granddaughter Page 10
