“We have all known horrors, have we not?” Evelyne fluttered her fan. “If he remembers why he left France, he has fears enough of his own, without any inheritance from his mother.”
“Of course. You are right.” Perhaps Vienne was the unreasonable one for so resolutely shutting a door on the memories of slamming guillotines, of plazas sticky with blood, and of the masses who cheered for more. For daring to hope that life in Asylum was beyond the clutch of terror.
Zoe finished another song, and this time Vivienne clapped politely as the young woman curtsied. It was not difficult, here in this enclave in the wilderness, to pretend all danger had gone. Still, Sebastien’s final warning echoed in her mind.
Henri glided into the room, Paulette faithfully behind him. Vivienne did not miss the smiles that greeted him as he placed his small hand on her knee. “If you please, Mademoiselle, the hour grows late, does it not? I’d like to go home.”
Gladly. She bussed Evelyne’s cheeks and made her farewells, walking home in the moonlight with Henri and Paulette.
“He’s so tired, but he doesn’t seem to be sleeping well,” Paulette observed once they reached the house. “Let me make you both some tea to relax you. You deserve a good night’s rest.”
Vivienne tousled Henri’s hair. “Thank you, Paulette. I’m sure we’d both love to sleep well tonight.”
If the night went according to Paulette’s plan, they’d sleep so well they’d never wake up. Of course, it was only Henri who truly needed to die. But as Paulette had failed at that twice, this plan was her final hope of success. It was unfortunate Vivienne was in the way. A cost Paulette tried not to notice.
She shooed them into the parlor to wait, then went to the kitchen house and put on a kettle of water. When it was boiling, she made a chamomile tea, then pulled a flask from the back of the cupboard and added enough of the Schultze brothers’ whiskey to send them both into a deep slumber.
She nipped two generous chunks from the sugar cone and stirred them into the tea. Tasting one of them, she wrinkled her nose. The sweetener didn’t quite compensate for the whiskey’s bitterness. After adding a little more sugar, she brought the cups to Vivienne and Henri back in the main house. Medicine didn’t always taste good, after all. “Drink up, now.”
They did, and retired for the night.
Once she was sure they were sleeping, Paulette slipped from the house before she could lose her nerve. She had waited too long to carry out her plan. Corbin Fraser and the other Jacobins in Philadelphia called that weakness. He’d threatened to come do the job himself if she would only grant him directions. No need for that now. She would prove him wrong tonight.
Heart pounding to the drumbeats of “La Marseillaise,” she hiked her skirt above her ankles and raced behind the settlement. To arms, citizens, Form your battalions! March, march! . . . Drive on, sacred patriotism. When she came to the cabin she sought, she banged on the door until it opened.
“Tonight,” she said breathlessly. “You remember the plan?”
Ernest bared his teeth as he smiled. “I’ve been waiting.”
“You have enough whiskey? You and Derek both? You must be thorough.”
“We have plenty.”
“Then it’s time.” She forced the words through her closing throat as the “Ça Ira” clanged in her head.
If we don’t break them, we’ll burn them.
She felt like she was going to be sick.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Gradually, the sound of Henri’s moaning pierced Vivienne’s slumber. He was in the throes of another nightmare. But she was tired, so tired she could not lift her eyelids, let alone reach out to soothe him. Sleep was a giant pinning her down. She was powerless against its weight.
How much time passed, she could not measure, before something stirred her into consciousness. Smoke, and the heat of a fire here in the bedroom. In August.
Lurching awake, she sat straight up. The window glowed orange and red. She dashed to it and stared in horror at Liam’s fields of grain. Hours ago, they were nearly ripe for harvest, and now they were up in flames. She could almost feel the heat.
No, she did feel the heat. In the floor. In the walls. Smoke snaked across the ceiling, gathering between the beams like skeins of wool.
“Henri!” She shook him. “Wake up!” Fighting panic, she yelled until he shuddered awake, suddenly alive with fear. “Let’s go.”
With his whittled horse for Louis-Charles clutched tight in his hand, Vivienne grabbed the other and burst from the room, then cursed herself and darted back inside it, Henri still in tow. Yanking open the bureau drawer, she grabbed two towels, dropped them in the washstand basin, and poured water on top to soak them. “Over your nose and mouth, like this.” She handed one to Henri and demonstrated by folding and holding the wet towel over her face.
Back out into the hall they dashed. “Paulette!”
The maid’s door was jammed. Vivienne banged on it, shouting for the young woman to wake up. Sweat poured from her hairline, stinging her eyes. Running back into her room, she grabbed her pitcher, then went to Paulette’s door and smashed it against the handle until it gave way. She kicked the door in and felt her way to the bed. Empty.
A piece of the ceiling crumbled in a shower of sparks to the mattress, and the hay in the ticking caught fire. Vivienne started to beat at it with her wet towel but then realized the cloth had already baked dry beneath her hand. Lord, help us! How much time had they lost?
“Is this a nightmare?” Henri cried. Flames licked from the bed and chewed through the curtains, which dropped in pieces to send fire rippling across the floor.
Vienne shook her head. It was nightmare and reality, both.
“Madame Fishypaws!” the boy shrieked. “Where is she?”
Frantic now, she pulled Henri down to the floor. She could barely think straight. The cat. He was asking about his cat. “In the barn,” she remembered. “Let’s go!”
They crawled beneath gray haze, knees scraping over the warping floorboards. Smoke stole her breath and pressed in around her, shrouding her senses. Even her brain felt clogged, and she could not find the door to the hall. Pinpoints of pain told her where sparks burrowed into her nightdress, and she struck at each prick as it came.
“Henri.” Her voice rasped against his coughing. She wanted to tell him to mind the sparks, but he wouldn’t hear her. She could barely hear herself. A spot on his shoulder glowed orange, and she slapped it before it spread.
The washstand collapsed as its legs became charred stumps, sending the basin and pitcher rolling across the floor. The crash restored her bearings. Blindly, Vienne led Henri away from the noise, finally finding the hall.
Blisters bubbled on her palms. The timbers in the roof above them cracked as loudly as a falling tree. A beam fell onto the steps, engulfed in crackling fire, blocking the way downstairs and out of the house. Stair spindles burst into pillars of flame.
She tightened her grip on Henri, her heart pounding as though to break through its cage. The taste of things burning filled her mouth. Vienne clutched at her middle to cough and inhaled flakes of ash.
Henri cried out, dashing out a spark on his sleeve. “Your hair!” Panic pitched his voice high.
Lungs burning, Vienne batted at hair that felt too hot to the touch, and she felt Henri’s small hands beat at the wild locks falling down her back.
An explosion, and then another. The windows shattering. She could barely swallow around her thickened tongue, let alone cry out for help. If she and Henri were to survive this, it would have to be with God’s help alone.
Dread corkscrewed through Liam as he galloped toward the smell of smoke and a sky that glowed orange in the night. He stood in his stirrups, thighs burning as he leaned low over Cherie. The horse thundered over the land and splashed through the shallow bend in the river before carrying him to the chaos that was now Asylum.
The slave shanties. All of them, up in flames.
Dismount
ing, he ran to join the line of settlers passing buckets of water between the creek and the burning shanties. “What happened?”
Armand de Champlain passed him a bucket. “Suzanne Arquette. She finally got her revenge for what the slaves did to her family in Saint-Domingue.”
Liam passed buckets from Armand to Derek Schultze as quickly as they came. “Suzanne did this? All by herself?” It didn’t add up. The woman was angry and had lost her wits—so many wits, in fact, that she couldn’t have organized such complete destruction on her own. “That odor,” he said. “Do you smell it?”
Armand sniffed.
“Beneath the smoke,” Liam clarified.
“Alcohol, is it?”
“Whiskey.” Derek laughed beside him, more whiskey on his breath. Mischief sparked in his eyes. “You’re back early, but you’re still too late.”
“What do you—” Oh no. Liam jerked his head toward home. Without another word, he abandoned his post in the line and mounted Cherie again.
His crops were lost, he could smell that straightaway. But his house—Vivienne’s house. Flames leapt to the sky from the sagging roof, or what was left of it. Energy exploded through him as he took it in. In a split second, he grasped the sum of it. Whether or not Suzanne had her revenge tonight, Ernest and Derek Schultze most certainly had. They’d used their whiskey to ignite the fires that destroyed his crops and house. But where were Vivienne and Henri, and Paulette?
“Vivienne!” he shouted, dismounting Cherie and racing toward the flaming house. “Henri! Vienne!” The windows were gone, leaving gaping black holes rimmed with fire.
Armand appeared, panting, beside him. “You don’t think—” Then he ran around the perimeter in the other direction, calling for them, as well.
Liam heard something. They were in there, alive. “I’m coming!” He charged to the front door but found it locked.
“You can’t go in there,” Armand shouted over the roaring flames. “Look!” He pointed through one of the windows at a wall of fire. The heat washed over them in waves, even standing outside. “They must be on the second floor.”
“They have to jump. We’ll break their falls.” Liam sprinted around the side of the house again, Armand right beside him. “Vienne!” he shouted.
“The north side! My bedroom!” she cried.
“Jump out the window! We’ll catch you!”
A pause before she responded. “Count to three!”
Liam and Armand exchanged a glance. Then, arms outstretched, they shouted, “One, two, three!”
Henri came flying through the window, straight for Armand. The older man caught the boy admirably, and both rolled on the hard earth.
“Vienne!” Liam yelled. His eyes watered from the heat. “Now!”
A flash of white appeared in the window, then plunged into Liam’s arms. He collapsed to his knees, still holding her, and buried his face in her smoky mass of unbound hair. “Are you all right?”
She covered her coughing with her elbow, but nodded and clung to him.
It took him several seconds to realize they were missing someone. He lifted his head. “Is Paulette coming?”
“She’s gone,” Vienne gasped.
“Oh no. I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Gone before the fire woke us. I don’t know where she is.”
Strange, but at least no one had died. He tightened his arms around her for one last moment, then said, “Come away from the fire.”
He and Armand led Vivienne and Henri a safe distance away. Their faces were both smudged with sweat and soot. They looked at the house they had all three called home. Walls and roof broke and crumbled, every crack and shudder resounding in Liam’s chest. The house, and his long-held dreams, surrendered.
“Oh, Liam!” Vienne brought her hands to her cheeks. “It’s lost!”
“But you aren’t, and neither is Henri, thank the Lord.” He could rebuild the house, he wanted to say, but his words stalled. He could only stand there and stare at the raging fire.
Footsteps pounded the ground behind him, and he straightened.
“Liam! We had no idea,” Finn cried. “Jethro and I were trying to stop the fire in the fields this whole time, and he’s still there—we didn’t know—” His voice cracked. “Are you all right, Vienne?”
“I will be,” she rasped. Liam wrapped his arms around her waist, and she leaned against him. He would never let her go again.
Finn turned his worried eye to Henri. “And you, lad? How do you fare?”
“Were they trying to kill me?” the boy wheezed and dropped to his knees, coughing. Madame Fishypaws bounded from the shadows and rubbed against his leg.
Vivienne broke from Liam’s hold and sat on the ground, gathering Henri in her arms. He curled into her and she kissed his head, swaying gently with him. Silently, her shoulders shook.
A muscle worked in Liam’s jaw. “This was the work of Ernest and Derek Schultze and the whiskey they made with your still,” he growled to Finn. “They knew this was my house. Whether they knew it was occupied in my absence, I can’t say yet. Find them and hold them for me, would you?” Anger boiled in his veins.
Finn’s face darkened with understanding. “I was never a part of this, cousin, I swear it. I’ll serve them up on a silver platter, I will.”
“Wait.” Liam stayed him with one hand. “If I see those two again, I can’t guarantee I won’t hurt them. It would be better—for them and for me—if they find themselves in the care of the sheriff without my so-called help. I’d consider it a personal favor if you see to it. I’m certain they lit the shanties on fire, as well, so Talon will surely lock them up until the Wyalusing sheriff can collect them.”
“I’ll take care of it, Liam. I vow.”
Armand brushed grass and soot from his silk lapel. “I’ll help.”
As they left, Liam sat on the ground by Vienne. If there were any hope of saving anything inside, he would have done so. But the house had been expertly torched, the fire’s blaze an impasse impossible to breach.
With the smell of charred crops and burning timber cinching around him, he watched the roof of the house collapse onto the second floor, which broke with the weight of its flaming burden. He had placed every shingle, hewn every log, pounded every nail in place himself. Even the furniture had come into being from his hands.
“I’m so sorry,” Vivienne choked out on a ragged breath. She gestured from the smoldering house to the smoking fields. “Everything you labored to bring forth, everything you love, gone.”
“Nay. Not everything.” But he could say no more around the blade in his throat.
She looked at him, eyes glassy and rimmed with red, and her composure left her at last. Tears spilled down her cheeks. As he pressed her head to his shoulder, Henri reached out his hand, and Liam ensconced it with his own.
Thunder rolled above them, and almost as quickly, heavy drops splashed his face and hands. He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over Vivienne. Rain drummed to the earth in sheets, sizzling onto the burning house and fields, pouring over his head. A deluge. Now. When most of the damage had already been done.
The ground turning to mud beneath them, Liam rose and helped Vivienne to her feet.
Paulette stumbled over a tree root as she ran through the woods toward Vivienne’s house. Finn O’Brien and Armand de Champlain had come charging toward the bucket line, accusing Derek and Ernest of exactly what they’d done. But neither had mentioned whether Henri had survived. She had to know. She had to see for herself whether she’d succeeded or failed.
She didn’t know what she hoped to find.
Rain speared through the branches overhead, splattering her hair. Wiping her face, she fisted her skirts and threaded her way through the edge of the forest. In her mind, she rehearsed what she would say when the Schultze boys blamed her. Why would I want the house to burn down? I live there! Besides, she hadn’t told them to do it, hadn’t given them any tools or weapons. All she had done was
fan the flames of their hate and told them when Mr. Delaney was gone. No one could convict her on such flimsy facts as those.
Branches snapped behind her. Was she being followed? Thunder continued to roll, and lightning bleached the gray curtain of rain. In that instant, she looked over her shoulder and saw him, his bald head gleaming in the storm’s flash. Suddenly she was as rooted to the earth as the trees around her.
Corbin Fraser, however, suffered no such paralysis. Mere moments later, his hand clapped onto her shoulder, fingers digging below her collarbone. Though shadowed by night and forest, she could see his lips spread in a grimace. “I told you to get the job done or I’d come do it myself.”
“But how?” She hadn’t told him how to get here, and unless a guide like Sebastien Lemoine showed the way, Asylum was all but impossible to find, as had been intended.
“Delaney came to the Four Winds Tavern. The staff hadn’t forgotten to bar my entrance, but there was no stopping me from listening outside the window while they ate. Or from waiting and watching the door. When he left the next day for Asylum, I followed. And here we are. Where is the boy?”
“I was just going to see myself.” She led him the rest of the way until they could see the ruins of Mr. Delaney’s property. The flames were dying down beneath the rain.
“Were they locked inside?”
“Of course.”
“Did they stay locked inside?” Rain streamed down his face like water over a rock, and he did not blink it away.
Paulette chewed her lip. She hadn’t been able to stomach watching it burn down around them. If she had heard them cry for help, who knew but that in a moment of weakness she would have gone to their aid and set them free? “I wasn’t here,” she confessed. “Didn’t you hear? This was the work of two young whiskey rebels bent on revenge.”
A Refuge Assured Page 37