by Regina Scott
Danielle sat with her back to him, her hair long and free and matted like her mother’s, but a dark, shiny ebony rather than the russet-and-red shades of Brigitte’s tresses.
“Guessed you’d come as soon as I started the fire.” Danielle didn’t turn to face him. “I was hungry.”
“Looks like a good meal.” He squatted beside her. A skinned squirrel lay impaled on a makeshift spit over the flames.
“It’ll do.”
“You get the squirrel with the knife I gave you?”
She nodded toward where the bloody blade lay on a rock. “Oui. I aimed between the eyes like you showed me, but I caught the tail instead. I got ’em between the eyes with my second knife, though.”
“You’ve been practicing.” Something thick and foreign swelled in his chest. Pride, mayhap? Or satisfaction? Hitting a moving animal was no small feat, and he’d taught the girl to throw. “You did good, Danielle. After you eat the critter, we can head—”
“I’m not going back, so don’t waste your breath asking.”
She wasn’t going back? He shifted to better glimpse her profile. Fool that he was, he’d assumed finding the girl would be the hard part, not bringing her home.
Of course, he could always sling her over his shoulders and haul her away by force.
But then nothing would prevent her from running off the next time her mother turned her back. “Why won’t you return home?”
“She didn’t tell you, did she?” Danielle’s blazing eyes flew to his, full of fire and vehemence. “Should have figured as much. She’s going to bring you trouble, Citizen Belanger. Best to kick her off your land and wash your hands of her.”
Kick Brigitte out? Had the girl gone daft? He couldn’t send away a woman who bore the responsibility of housing and feeding three children. Let alone a woman who looked at him as though he had something to offer the world, as though he was somehow more than a murderer. “Whatever’s going on between you and your mother, forcing her to leave won’t solve anything.”
And he wasn’t about to announce that he’d already told Brigitte to leave. Last night. Right after he kissed her.
“You’re wrong.” Danielle toyed idly with a blade of grass at her side. “It would have solved everything. It’s probably too late now, but you should still send her on.”
“To Reims, you mean?”
Her shoulders rose and fell listlessly. “Doesn’t matter. Wherever you send her, she’s got trouble coming.”
“Which makes me want to keep her close and help her.”
“You’ll end up dead.”
A chill travelled up his back as he stared into Danielle’s flat blue eyes. Was she serious about him ending up dead? What kind of trouble had Brigitte gotten herself into? “I’m a hard man to kill. Remember how I taught you to use that knife? Those types of skills are helpful if a man is attacked.”
She pushed off the ground and paced before him. “I don’t understand how she could do this to us. To you! What was she thinking? You’re the kindest man we’ve ever met. You’ve given us food and shelter, care and—”
“Enough.” He shoved a hand through his hair. He couldn’t bear to hear such untruths. Not from Danielle. Not from the practical, sensible daughter of the woman he was coming to love. A man with his past deserved no compliments.
Danielle stopped pacing to stare at him, the familiar scowl etched back across her face. “My words are true, regardless of whether you like them.”
“You don’t know everything about me. Your mother might have her secrets, but I have mine, as well. And in this instance, you’re wrong. Very, very wrong. I’m not kind. I’m the furthest a man can ever be from kind. Come now, let’s eat this squirrel and get you back to the house.”
She dug her heel into the dirt. “I told you I’m not going.”
“Non? And what happens if I take your advice and send your mother on her way to Reims? Do you stay here and live off my land? Never to see your brothers or mother again, even after you’ve calmed? Even after you’re ready to apologize? I know not why you’re so angry with your mother, but are you willing to lose your family? If not, then you oughtn’t say such things.”
Her slender shoulders fell and she stared at the tips of her worn shoes. “I love them. I don’t want to lose them like that, non.”
“Your mother was beside herself with worry when she sought me this morning. Did you know she woke the boys and spent the entire night looking for you?”
Danielle shook her head, her free mane of hair wild in the gentle breeze. “I just curled up and went to sleep in the woods. I wasn’t even far from the cottage. She should have stayed and gone to bed, not taken the boys out and searched for me.”
He stood and laid a hand on her shoulder. “She loves you and was worried you might have gotten hurt or met someone with ill intent. How could she not look for you?”
Danielle sniffled and swiped at her cheek with the back of her hand.
“Let’s go show her you’re well.”
“All right.” Danielle blinked up at him. “But you ought not trust her so easily.”
“I’ll not tolerate any more disrespect for your mother. If I have questions, I’ll ask myself.” And he would. Though she’d already given him answers about why she was in Abbeville and had approached him about a post. And he could hardly condemn Brigitte for any secrets she might be hiding in light of how he’d likely killed her husband.
*
Brigitte rolled her neck from side to side against the back of the rocker and yawned. She must have fallen asleep while waiting, and now she likely wouldn’t be able to move her sore neck for the rest of the day.
She gazed wearily around the room, the soft light of morning filtering through the windows. Dawn had come and gone, but how long ago? How long had Jean Paul been out looking for her daughter? She stood and stretched, then checked on her boys. Both slept peacefully in the bed where Jean Paul had placed them, and both would likely be hungry when they woke. She should get some bread baking and head to the chicken coop for eggs. The least she could do was keep busy until—
The door to the house creaked open and she jerked her head up. One glance at the slim body with ebony tresses and she flew forward.
“Danielle!” She wrapped her arms about her daughter and squeezed. “Are you well? Did anything happen to you? Oh, love, I was so worried.” She buried her face in Danielle’s hair, clutching the girl even harder to her chest.
“She’s well.” A gentle hand landed on her shoulder, and the deep familiar timbre of Jean Paul’s voice resonated through the room.
Jean Paul’s dark eyes met hers over Danielle’s head, the familiar angles and planes of his face somehow soft in the morning light.
She loved him. She wasn’t sure when it had happened. Perhaps when he’d hauled the soup out of the well and sent her home with a full meal, or when he’d cared for the children during her illness. Or maybe she hadn’t come to love him until later. Perchance the day they went to town and Jean Paul gave Gaston that livre?
But standing here, with her lost daughter safe in her arms and hazy sunlight pouring through the door to bathe the three of them, she need not know the exact moment. Only that she loved him and couldn’t fathom a life without him.
’Twas why she hadn’t wanted to go to Reims last night, nor could she accept Alphonse’s money in exchange for Jean Paul’s coat. Her heart must have realized her feelings before her head understood them.
“You needn’t hug me so tight, Maman.” Danielle pushed against her chest. “I’m fine.”
Danielle wriggled away, leaving her arms cold and empty, and perhaps a bit eager to embrace the tall man beside her.
“You look exhausted, Danielle. Go lie down with your brothers.” Jean Paul gestured toward the bedchamber. “Your mother and I need to talk.”
“All right.” Danielle yawned and wandered toward the other room, her usually quick steps sluggish.
“Thank you for bringing her back.” Bri
gitte took a step nearer Jean Paul. “I don’t know what I would have done without you. I couldn’t have lived with myself had something happened to Danielle. I’d searched all night and couldn’t find her, and then—”
“You need not thank me.”
“But you saved her. Of course, I need to—”
“Non.” He ran a hand through his hair and stared up at the ceiling, then down at the floor, then toward the bedchamber once more before bringing his eyes back to meet hers. “Danielle’s rather upset with you.”
Shame crept into her chest, and she ducked her head.
“She wants me to ask why you came to Abbeville and sought me out for work.”
This was it. The moment where she needed to confess all and explain how she’d come here to spy on him. The instant when she’d finally inquire about the National Guard uniform buried in the trunk in his stable. She sucked in a deep breath.
“Jean Paul…I…” But no further words would come. She opened and closed her mouth, once, then a second time. Everything seemed stuck, held fast by some thick, invisible barrier in her throat. Or maybe the barrier was in her chest, her heart. But either way, the words clumped together inside, and she knew not how to free them. How to even start her story.
Her hands turned hot, then cold, then hot again. But she had to say something, anything, no matter how painful. Perhaps he would send her away and never want to look at her again, but at least no more deceit would stand between them. Because if she truly loved him, she owed him the truth.
“Why don’t we sit, and…and—” her tongue fumbled, but she pressed on “—I—I can tell you a story.”
“We can sit, but you’re not the only one with secrets, Brigitte. I have something to tell you, as well.”
She took his hand and tried to smile. Perhaps if he had secrets, as well, they could forgive each other and move on. Find a way to cling together and forge ahead in this country wracked with revolution and blood.
Or so she hoped.
Until his next words shattered every illusion she held.
Chapter Eighteen
“I think I killed your husband.” The words crashed through the small cottage, stark and irrevocable, drawing memories of blood and death and guillotines from the recesses of Jean Paul’s mind.
And he lost her. Brigitte tugged her hand away from his, her eyes growing wide and her face suddenly pale. In that one instant, with those few little words, he lost the woman who had become so precious to him.
“What mean you?” she said.
Or at least he thought that’s what she said, but her voice was too quiet to know for certain. He swallowed and reached for her hand, intending to lead her to the bench. But she only drew farther away.
He deserved it. He wasn’t worthy to touch her or kiss her or love her. To have her in his life. To keep her with him forever.
So he rubbed the back of his neck, searching for some way to start his story, but ’twas no quick version of the tale. He plopped himself on the table bench and started at the beginning.
“I married Corinne when I was naught but eighteen, and I loved her. More than the sunshine and fields, more than this house or the rest of my family. More than anything else on this earth.”
He blinked back a sudden burning moisture in his eyes. “She was like the rain. That’s what I tell people. The spring rain that tinges everything in its path with gentleness, that gives life and color to all it touches.”
And oh, had she brought gentleness and color and sweetness to his life.
Brigitte’s throat worked slowly back and forth, though she still hovered near the door where he’d left her, too far for him to reach out and pull her near. “That’s a beautiful way to remember your wife. I’m sure Henri never thought of me in such a way.”
He moved his eyes over her, from her tangled hair to her hollow eyes to her trembling chin, down her worn dress and slender body. She stood in the same room as him, but she was separate somehow. All pulled into herself and planning to stay that way. Had no one ever told her she was special? Had no one ever likened her to the rain, or a delicate flower? The gentle, constant breeze that swept his fields?
Yes, that was Brigitte. Gentle, constant, always there. She might not be foremost in his mind when he went out to the fields or delivered food in town. But she was always present, and if she were to leave, something in his life would seem terribly wrong.
He held out his hand to her again. “Please Brigitte, come sit with me. ’Tis a long story.”
But she didn’t reach for his hand, and he didn’t make her sit. “Corinne and I had been married two years when trouble came. ’Twas the winter of ’89, and we’d lost our crop to hail, so we hadn’t any food.”
“I remember,” she said quickly.
Of course she did. All of France remembered the brutal summer of 1788 and winter of 1789. The lack of wheat and bread had started the Révolution.
“That was when she…when she…” Brigitte’s lip quivered, and her eyes came up to meet his. “Starved?”
“Oui.” He’d forgotten how much he’d told her. ’Twas as though she already knew most of his past—except for the Terror. “She took ill, and at first, we hadn’t money for a physician. She was too far gone before Physician Trudeau ever called. We sold one of our sows to pay for his services, and we followed his every last instruction. She started to improve, but she was so thin and we’d barely any food.”
Something large and thick caught in his throat. “I gave her my food and went without. So did my brother, Michel, and Mother. But Corinne didn’t…she couldn’t…”
He pressed his eyes shut in an attempt to stem the unbidden tears. He was a man, a big man who could strike fear into the hearts of all that looked upon him, and here he was sitting in his house about to weep like a babe over an event that had happened over six years past.
But he’d loved Corinne. Truly, fully, completely. ’Twas no shame in that. “I went to Seigneur Montrose and asked for grain. He had an entire barn filled with wheat from the harvest two years earlier, more chickens than he could count, and hogs and cows. The seigneur laughed.”
His blood surged hot with the memory of it, and he jerked his eyes open to find Brigitte no longer by the door but standing before him, her eyes soft and glistening, the blank expression that had settled over her face now replaced by understanding and compassion. “He asked if I knew how much a sack of grain was worth because of the famine, and 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.
“The seigneur had me thrown out.” Jean Paul’s lips curved with bitterness.
“And she died.” Brigitte whispered into the air between them. “I’m so sorry.”
“Two mornings later, I woke, and Corinne was dead. All I could think was that Seigneur Montrose had laughed at me. Laughed. And Corinne had starved to death. After that, I couldn’t stay here, couldn’t bear to spot the seigneur in town or pass by his magnificent chateau with its full barns.”
“I’d not have been able to stay, either.” Brigitte took a step closer, but didn’t sit. Instead, she looked down and twisted her hands in her skirt. “My uncle in Reims was a seigneur, though I know not how he would have handled a situation such as yours, or how he fared during the Révolution. Our families weren’t close.”
He reached out and took her hand, tugging her down beside him. “You sound as though you’re apologizing, and there’s no need. I understand now that not all seigneurs are like Montrose, though I didn’t after Corinne’s death. I went to Paris. My brother’s a right good hand at making furniture. Made just about everything you see in the house.” He slid his hand over the surface of Michel’s table. “Michel and my father had taught me a bit of the trade, and I’d hoped to find work in the city. But no one in the furniture makers guild wanted to share their business with a farmer from an outlying province. I eventually found labor delivering coal.
“But
I discovered something else, as well, something I hadn’t anticipated. Not just work, but camaraderie, fraternity, brotherhood. People like me. Peasants who had nothing. Who had watched loved ones starve while the aristocrats dressed in silks, ate sumptuous feasts and ran our country into debt. Like me, they despised the highborn nobles who refused to pay taxes themselves but thought nothing of raising ours until we had naught to eat but our own fingernails. And we wanted something better. All of us. Was it so wrong to want more?”
Brigitte remained silent beside him, no answer to his questions on her lips. Still, his dreams and desires of seven years ago must have been wrong. Only something wrong could end in innocent people being dragged to the guillotine. Only something wrong could have led to the Terror.
“So when mobs formed in the Palais-Royal to cry for liberty, I was there. And when the Swiss Guard surrounded Paris and we feared they would slay us in the night, I stormed the Bastille with other Parisians to get the weapons stored inside. When traitors to liberty were guillotined, I attended the executions and cheered. I joined the National Guard, and everyone noticed my fervor. Then when the Convention needed soldiers to travel with the representatives-on-mission to help enforce order in the provinces, I volunteered.”
He pressed his eyes shut against the grisly images invading his senses. The screams of women and children in the night when he dragged supposed traitors away, the scent of blood, the feel of limp bodies in his hands as he escorted men and women to their trials. “I didn’t know there was going to be a Terror. I didn’t think about the innocent people who were wrongly thrust beneath the guillotine’s blade. I only thought of Seigneur Montrose and Corinne’s death. I thought of the aristocrats who rode through Parisian streets in gilded berlins and silk stockings while I hadn’t money for a second pair of trousers. I didn’t think about people like your husband.
“I didn’t think I would one day meet his wife,” he whispered.
“But you did.” The words echoed through the room. Short and simple, yet so terribly complicated.
