Sanctuary for a Lady

by Naomi Rawlings

  “Hurry, quick! Go for the doctor. He’s been shot!”

  The clerk stared back at her, his eyes blank. “You want a doctor? You better have money. Doctor won’t treat anyone without payment first.”

  Money? Since Jean Paul had stolen her extra funds, she hardly had enough to get to England. Her hands raced through the pockets of his coat and trousers. Nothing. Whoever shot him must have robbed him, as well.

  She swallowed thickly. At least Jean Paul had already lost consciousness and wouldn’t feel more pain.

  She couldn’t give up England. For Michel, maybe. But not for Jean Paul. How could she?

  The clerk cleared his throat. “So do you want a doctor or not?” He crossed his arms, his foot tapping against the mud. “Me? I’d leave him lay.”

  Isabelle bit her lip. She’d tried to help. Wasn’t that enough?

  But a man shouldn’t die for something as trivial as lack of money. Not even Jean Paul.

  Tears sprang to her eyes and streaked down her face, mixing with the rain in an endless stream she’d no desire to stop. Father, no. You can’t ask this of me. It’s too much. He hates me.

  Couldn’t someone else appear? Someone with money who could see to Jean Paul while she hid?

  But no wealthy gentleman appeared in the alley or fell from heaven or arose from the sea.

  Rain streamed in sheets around them, welting the ground, mixing with the blood gurgling from Jean Paul’s chest and splattering the hem of her trousers with mud. The wind grew eerily still, as though heaven itself held its breath and waited for her decision. England or Jean Paul?

  She put her hand to Jean Paul’s forehead. The strong nose and prominent chin similar to Michel’s. Oh, why couldn’t she look into Jean Paul’s face without seeing traces of Michel? Without thinking of Jeanette and how she’d already lost her husband? Isabelle clutched her hands to her chest. Perchance she could ignore God, brush off His urgings and proddings. But how could she turn her back on Michel’s brother when Michel had risked his very life to save her and then sheltered her?

  She glanced up and nodded toward the clerk. “Go.” The word felt like sawdust in her mouth.

  The clerk didn’t move.

  “Run!” she screamed. “And if you don’t hurry, his death be on your hands!”

  The man hastened away. Isabelle took Jean Paul’s wrist. But where to find his pulse? She felt nothing but the slick rain on his skin. She stared at Jean Paul’s blood-soaked jacket, then scrambled toward her valise, unlatched it and grabbed the skirt on top. Stop the bleeding. Wasn’t that the first thing she should do? She wadded up the garment and pressed it to his chest.

  * * *

  “Sorry, citoyen, but I’ve not seen anyone by that description.” The innkeeper spoke above the clamor of a room stuffed with patrons eating and drinking.

  “Are you certain?” Standing near the entrance to the kitchen, Michel hunched his shoulders under his rain-slicked cloak and rubbed his tired eyes.

  The innkeeper, a portly man with a bushy beard, scratched the top of his balding head. “Well, there was a woman with wavy black hair who rented a room, but she’s married. Came in with her husband who’d been shot earlier today. Poor man’s body was covered in blood. Doubt he’ll live to see the morrow, but if you’d like to speak to the wife, I can ask her to come down.”

  “Non, ’tis not the woman I seek.” His chest felt hollow inside. His search for Isabelle was turning out futile. He probably shouldn’t be checking the inns. They were the first place soldiers would search, and thus the last place she would hide. But with the rain still pounding and the wind still screaming outside, he didn’t know where else to look.

  “You seem in need of a good meal and a warm bed, yourself.” The man turned back toward the kitchen. “Marcel, fix me up a bowl of stew and biscuits.”

  The thought of food churned his stomach. The owners at the first three inns he’d visited offered him similar fare. But how could he eat when Jean Paul might already have Isabelle in his clutches? “There’s no need. I must away, posthaste. But tell me this, have you seen soldats about?”

  “Oui. They barged in here a few hours ago, looked around and left.” The man’s eyes darkened. “Why? They looking for you?”

  “Non.”

  Carrying a wooden bowl, a plump woman with auburn hair twisted back into a bun emerged from the kitchen, probably the Marcel to whom the innkeeper had just spoken. She waddled to the other man and shoved the bowl toward Michel. “This for you?”

  His stomach twisted and roiled as he stared at the meat and vegetables in their thick, disgusting sauce. He should be famished. He’d eaten nothing since those two bites of Mère’s soup at lunch.

  But he shook his head, afraid he would gag if he tried to speak, and turned for the door. Food, rest—everything could wait until he’d found Isabelle and either seen her safe, or died protecting her.

  Chapter Twenty

  Isabelle watched the bed opposite hers in the tiny, dingy room. Jean Paul’s rhythmic breathing filled the space between the ancient stone walls, while sunlight streamed through the room’s single window. From somewhere on the square below, children shouted, women chattered and horses clomped. But she couldn’t take her eyes from the bed where Jean Paul lay.

  He’d wake eventually. The bullet had missed his heart and lungs, entering just right of his left shoulder. He fought not against internal damage, but loss of blood and possible infection. At first, the doctor thought Jean Paul had lost so much blood he wouldn’t live. Since she had already paid for a room at the inn and Jean Paul needed a nurse, she claimed to be his wife so she could tend him until he died.

  But Jean Paul hadn’t died that first night. Or the next night, or the next. For four days, she cared for the man who wanted her dead. And each day his breathing grew deeper and his pulse stronger.

  A chill raced down her spine. Those dark eyes couldn’t open and find her here. What if he tried to kill her again? Each moment she lingered brought her closer to the inevitable.

  She stood and walked across the room, her footsteps echoing on the floor as she headed to the rickety chest of drawers. She opened the top drawer and grasped her dwindling bundle of money. Perchance she could find him a nurse. Someone on the street who needed employment. She’d pay for a week’s worth of care. If Jean Paul needed nursing after that, he could pay for it himself. That way she’d have enough money to go…

  Where? She didn’t have enough to go to Stockholm, and she could hardly abandon Jean Paul in Saint-Valery and head back to Michel. What would she say to him? “I saved your brother’s life, then became frightened he might still try to kill me, so I left him half-dead in Saint-Valery”?

  As though Michel would be willing to listen to her after how she’d tricked him.

  She clutched her money to her chest and reviewed the words they’d exchanged in his workshop.

  You deceived yourself, Michel. I didn’t need you. I never needed you.

  I should let you go and refuse you when you come crawling back after your little adventure ends in chaos.

  She slumped forward until her head touched the dresser. Oh, Michel. Would she forever be so independent and stubborn? If only she had listened to him that night, had let him come with her. He would know what to do for Jean Paul.

  How to protect her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Isabelle stilled. The bedcover rustled behind her. Though the voice was groggy, she couldn’t mistake it. Her stomach churned, and her heart beat like the slow, heavy rhythm of a funeral dirge.

  “Well? Answer my question, wench.”

  “I…gathering some things.” She could barely get the words past her thick throat.

  “Get out.” His voice, hardly more than a rasp, held a razor
’s edge.

  I was there when your sister was killed. Do you know what we did after we guillotined her?

  Fury swept through her. She put her money back in the drawer, then slammed it shut and whirled around to face him.

  Vehemence burned so hotly in his eyes she nearly staggered back. Instead, she raised her chin. “Non.”

  “I said, Get out!”

  “I paid for this room. You leave.” The instant she spoke, she regretted her words. A spark of fear ignited inside her. Had he strength to get out of that bed?

  Thankfully, he didn’t try. “You think nursing me will save your neck?” Jean Paul growled. “You’re wrong. I’ll laugh as I watch you die.”

  “Why do you hate me? I love your family. I saved you, though only heaven knows why. You would have bled to death in the storm. Do you realize that? You want to know why I’m here rather than on a ship to Copenhagen or Stockholm or New York? Because I spent my money saving your vile, filthy life. You’d be dead if not for me.”

  “I still hate you, I’ll always hate you. And you know why.”

  “Why? Because your wife died, like you told Michel? I didn’t kill your wife. That’s preposterous. I didn’t even know her.”

  Jean Paul’s hands fisted in the quilt. “She starved to death, because of aristocrats like you.”

  “Ugh.” Had a more insufferable man ever been born? She fought between the urge to pull her hair out and the desire to clamp her hands around Jean Paul’s neck and squeeze. “She died of pneumonia.”

  “She caught pneumonia, but that didn’t take her. It was—”

  “Stop.” She’d no desire to hear of the circumstances that had prompted Jean Paul to leave his family and kill innocents in the name of the Révolution. That had caused him to cheer when Marie was executed or that made him drive her from Michel’s arms.

  Jean Paul hardened his jaw. “A little uncomfortable to speak of, is it? We followed the doctor’s instructions with Corinne and gave her the medicine.”

  Isabelle worried the folds of her skirt, wishing she could shut out the story.

  “She started to get better, but she was thin. We had barely any food. We’d sold half our chickens. The hail the summer before took our harvest and destroyed our garden save a few root vegetables. And the price of flour was rising.”

  His brow wrinkled, and fresh pain and bitterness swept his features. “I gave her my food and went without. So did Michel and Ma Mère. But Corinne didn’t…she couldn’t…”

  A tear swelled in the corner of his eye. Jean Paul used his good arm to push himself farther up on the bed, his face whitening under the strain. “I went to Seigneur Montrose and asked for grain. He had a whole barn filled with wheat from the harvest two years earlier. And more chickens than he could count, and hogs and cows. And…”

  The scar beside his eyebrow bunched into an angry fist as his muscles tensed. “The seigneur laughed. Asked if I knew how much a sack of grain was worth because of the famine. I told him half the grain in the barn wasn’t his, anyway. He hadn’t worked for it. He’d stolen it from peasants and called it his land duty.” Jean Paul’s hands shook. “The seigneur had me thrown out.”

  Isabelle wrung her hands. She could well speculate as to what happened next.

  “Two mornings later, I woke, and Corinne was dead. Seigneur Montrose had laughed at me, and Corinne starved to death. Practically on his doorstep.”

  “I—I’m sorry.” Her words sounded weak.

  “Sorry? You say Corinne’s death wasn’t your fault? What about your père, the Duc de La Rouchecauld?” Jean Paul seared her with his smoldering gaze. “Did he throw open his barns and storehouses that winter so the peasants living on and working his land didn’t starve? Did he pay for a doctor when a widow fell sick or take grain to a starving child?”

  Isabelle took a step backward. “Mon Père? I don’t know.”

  “You lie. You were how old, fourteen, fifteen during the famine of ’89?” The smoldering fire in his eye burst into a blaze.

  “Sixteen.”

  “You’d remember.”

  She stared into his blind hatred, and heaven help her, a tear streaked down her face. She deserved it, she supposed. This man’s wrath, the hatred of the entire French working class. “We—” she cleared her throat “—we were at Versailles during that time. At court.”

  He laughed, the cruelest, most bone-chilling sound she had ever heard. “Ah, so you were playing games and entertaining the king. How many peasants working for your father do you suppose died during that famine, while you were away?”

  Bile rose in her stomach. Why was he saying such things? She’d no control of her father’s affairs. “I—I don’t know. No one, I think.”

  But she felt the guilt somewhere deep inside, as the bile surged to her throat. Had she even bothered to ask her father what he was doing about the famine? She knew about it, oui, but only as a subject of conversation within the palace walls. While others were dying, her family and friends lived in opulence, feasted even, during their last days at Versailles…until a mob of women demanding bread drove them from the grand palace.

  “You only hope no one died.” Jean Paul sneered, disgust covering his face. “You think you deserve my gratitude because you saved me? You were playing while my wife starved. Where were your grand gestures then? Even now, you’re not here because of me. You’d have let me die if not for my brother, oui?” His eyes narrowed. “Get out of this room. If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”

  Her chest tight, she fled out of the room, through the corridor and down the stairs. She barely reached the door before the bile building inside her swelled to her mouth and she retched.

  Sunshine filtered down on her, a haunting contrast to the misery in her soul. She jumped out of the way as a horse-drawn wagon filled with a family rolled by. To her left three boys chased a ball. Past the boys, two men with red faces looked to be in a heated debate. The town square teemed with people coming and going, women with children in tow, men with purposeful strides, even a meandering dog.

  Air. She needed air. And space. But the busyness of the town pressed upon her, the walls of the medieval village closing in. She raced toward the northern gate and the bay, gulping breaths but never seeming to fill her lungs.

  How dare Jean Paul refuse her help? She had saved him. Paid for a doctor and room at the inn. Given up England for him. What did he think? That without funds she could just board a ship to Copenhagen or Stockholm or some other such city?

  She wanted to say his actions didn’t matter, that his words didn’t hurt, that he could rot in that lumpy inn bed for all she cared. But if it didn’t matter, why did her heart feel as though it had shattered?

  A tear rolled down her cheek as her feet tapped against the weathered cobblestones. She could feel people’s eyes boring into her back. What a fright she must look. A woman with a basket of eggs sauntered into the street in front of her, forcing her to move to the other side of the road.

  She swiped at the tear. So what if she’d saved Jean Paul because of Michel? Did her reason make that much difference? She’d still saved him, and he was alive today because of her. Didn’t that mean something? Anything?

  She reached the harbor and sank down in the sand. Jean Paul had haunted her dreams for months, ever since that first attack in the woods. And four days ago, when she had stood over his lifeless body with the opportunity to either save him or walk away, she had saved him.

  Still he hated her, blamed her for a death over which she’d had no control.

  Michel had said she needed to forgive her attacker, just as God had forgiven her. Isabelle stiffened as she recalled the words. Had he spoken them only five days ago? It seemed the whole world had changed since then.

  She’d told Michel no. Perhaps God h
ad forgiven her for a mistake. But Jean Paul’s actions against her had been calculated, deliberate. Even now, after saving his life, he still wanted her dead.

  She stared out into the harbor. A vessel laden with exports looked ready to disembark and fishing boats dotted the bay. One small craft edged toward the open sea, free to sail or float wherever it willed, despite the threat of British warships lurking in the waters beyond. Yet she was stuck in France, with nothing but a handful of coins and a few dying dreams to sustain her.

  No… She didn’t even have her money. She’d left that and her belongings in the inn with Jean Paul.

  Her hands dug into the sand and fisted around the tiny granules. “Wasn’t saving him enough, Father? You would require forgiveness from me now? I can’t forgive him. He tried to kill me. Would have killed me if Michel hadn’t found me.” How much more could she endure?

  But God had forgiven her despite what she did to Marie.

  “I can’t, Father. I just can’t. I’m not as strong as Michel. Oh, God, how do I even start to forgive him?”

  Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. God asked no more of her than He asked of His own Son.

  Did she want to face her life racked with bitterness toward Jean Paul? Her bitterness over Marie’s death had nearly destroyed her.

  So, what were her choices? She could walk away this instant and leave Jean Paul. The man wasn’t likely to forgive her anytime soon. Though if she left, she didn’t know what she would do, nor where she would go. She would find work somewhere, perchance. Until she earned enough money for passage—and how many more years would that take?

  Or she could forgive Jean Paul.

  The revolutionaries in Paris spouted nobility as the only cause for the Révolution, and people like Jean Paul believed it. Who was really to blame for the attack on her? Jean Paul, or the commander who sent Jean Paul to patrol northern France, or the seigneur who had laughed when Jean Paul wanted food for his wife, or God for allowing it all to happen?

  But Michel had told her that even though sin motivated the actions of men, forgiveness came from God.