Duty to the Crown

by Aimie K. Runyan

  “Indeed, I am. What may I do for you, Madame—?”

  “Savard.”

  Gabrielle felt the color drain from her face and knew that René’s wife would see the guilt there. Be calm. Don’t act as if you’ve done anything wrong. She’ll never make him as happy as you do.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Madame Savard.” Gabrielle forced a smile. “I do believe I have some mending for your house. Shall I fetch it for you?”

  “Yes. And don’t expect more work from us. The servants will get on as they did before—you.” She knows. She must know everything. Gabrielle fetched the parcel with a few of René’s chemises he’d brought for mending as a pretext for visiting.

  “Was some of my work not up to your standard, madame?” It was perfect. Every stitch.

  “Your services are superfluous. We already have the staff to do the work.”

  Of course you can’t be bothered to do it yourself, you lazy cow.

  “Very well, madame. But do feel free to call on me if ever you’re in need of any mending or sewing.”

  “Good day, Madame Patenaude. We won’t have occasion to see each other again.”

  Gabrielle watched Madame Savard leave the shop, carrying the parcel out from her body with two fingers as though it contained a decaying carcass rather than her husband’s clean shirts. Gabrielle always kept the shop door unlocked during daylight hours as a point of pride, but she barred the door behind Madame Savard and rushed up the stairs to her room before anyone walking on the street below could see the tears streaming down her face.

  She knows everything. She will ruin me if I step near him again, or him near me. Why would God dangle him before me just to take him away?

  * * *

  Two days later, as Gabrielle stood to bar the door for the night, a gentle rapping sounded before the door swung open.

  “What are you doing here, René?” Gabrielle busied her hands sorting some scrap fabric she’d left on her worktable.

  “Annette said she’d been here.” He made no move to approach her, didn’t embrace her as he had done every time they’d been alone for the past few months. She’d been expecting this visit since his wife left the shop, but it didn’t lessen the pain she felt in the center of her chest.

  “She had her friends spying on me for weeks. It seems her trip to Trois-Rivières was just a pretense for her to give you and me time alone . . . so her old crones would have a chance to catch us. . . .”

  “Heavens above, what a charming woman.” Gabrielle flung the last of the scraps in the appropriate basket and shoved it back on the shelf. “How many times are we women told to look the other way if our husbands stray. To accept responsibility for their infidelity. To end it, if possible, by making home a haven of comfort and affection. Has she transformed into an angel of domestic tranquility since her return?”

  René snorted and rolled his eyes. “Hardly. She’s been a proper shrew since she came back.”

  “Then why do you tolerate it? For pity’s sake, you’re a man and can do as you please, whether it’s fair or not to your wife or any other woman.”

  “Dearest one, you must understand . . . I simply cannot afford to anger her father. She’s threatened to write to him. If she does, he could ruin me. I should never have agreed to bring her here. She wasn’t always quite so . . .”

  “Surly? Unpleasant? Cruel?”

  “I’m sorry Annette came to see you. I would never have allowed it if I had learned of her plan.”

  “So you’re casting me out. Leaving me to my cold bed for the rest of my days, then?”

  “Don’t be like that. Don’t be like her. I’d spend the rest of my life with you if I were free. But I’m not. I only thank God that I haven’t gotten you with child and that I leave your reputation intact.”

  “My reputation. My reputation. What of yours? I wasn’t here alone all those nights.”

  “Don’t you think there wouldn’t be consequences for me here in town if things were to come out in the public eye, Gabrielle? I’m a deputy of the governor. I cannot afford to have a scandal attached to my name. Even someone like you must understand that.”

  “Someone like me? What, pray tell, do you mean by that?” Gabrielle slammed a bolt of fabric down on her workbench with an unsatisfying thunk. She wished her pots and pans were in closer proximity to make a proper clatter.

  René raked his fingers through his hair and stared at the ceiling, perhaps willing it to provide him with patience. “Someone who doesn’t live in the public eye, someone who doesn’t live in the first circles. A private person, so to speak.”

  “A nobody.” I will not make this easy on you.

  “That’s not what I said, woman, and you know it. I loved you. This is killing me and you’re mocking me.”

  Loved. The tears stung so painfully she grimaced against them. “Then go, René. Go and be well and we can pretend to be utter strangers when our paths cross. Go home and be with her if that’s what you want.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Our paths won’t cross, Gabrielle. Annette and I are going back to France. She insisted, and I agree with her. I wouldn’t be able to be an honorable husband with you nearby and she will be happier back in Paris. I’m certain of it.”

  Gabrielle looked up and finally locked her gaze with his.

  “You’re leaving me.”

  “I don’t see how things could have ended any other way. I wish things could be different.” His eyes cast downward. At least you feel some shame. I’d hate to bear it all alone.

  “Things could be exactly as you want them to be, but you’re letting her lead you about like a wayward horse. You refuse to use your crop and rein her in.” She turned her eyes, looking for something to tidy on her workbench, but found nothing out of place.

  “You’re being incredibly unfair.” René’s arms crossed over his broad chest, shielding himself against her accusations.

  Gabrielle looked up from her well-ordered worktable. “Honestly, René? You think of the three of us that you’re the one being treated unfairly? Do you hear yourself?”

  “I know. I’m sorry. So desperately sorry.”

  “As am I. I thought you were a man.”

  René crossed the room to her, cupped her face in his hands. She allowed herself to fall into the softness of his kiss. This will be the last time he kisses you, enjoy it.

  “Good-bye, my love,” he whispered.

  “Good-bye.” She choked on the word, the pain stealing the air from her lungs.

  For several minutes, perhaps longer, she stared at the door that René shut behind himself. She might see a glimpse of him from time to time in town. He might bow, almost imperceptibly, if they passed on the street. He would never speak to her again. She would never hear the rich baritone of his voice directed at her, but she might hear him address others more worthy of his notice if she happened by him in the settlement.

  Those scraps of René would only last for a few weeks. Days, more likely. No more than a month if they were to find a ship returning home that year.

  At least your last word wasn’t spoken in anger. At least his words were tender ones.

  The supper she’d planned forgotten, she ascended the stairs to her bedroom. She clung to the faint smell on her sheets of the perfumed soap that he must have brought over by the trunkful from France.

  Not his. His wife’s. It was her soap.

  The revelation kicked her in the gut, but she refused to give in to her misery. She had the luxury of a spare set of sheets, so she leaped from her bed, stripping the bed clean with one fluid motion. She pulled the pillows from their cases to replace them with unoffending linens. She would remove every trace of his scent—every trace of him—with boiling water and plain soap the next morning.

  She climbed back into her bed, which now smelled of innocent pine boughs Elisabeth sewed into sachets for her linen drawers. I must remember to thank her.

  But the image of her loving mother gave way to Annette Sav
ard’s angelic face as she wrestled with sleep. Annette is his wife . . . you ought to put yourself in her place. How would you react if you found out your husband had been untrue?

  Gabrielle thought of Patenaude and snorted to herself. I could have only been so fortunate. She could have borne some of the misery with me.

  But René was not Patenaude. He was a kind man who owed his wife more consideration than he gave her. Try as she might, she could not despise Annette Savard for her outburst in the shop.

  She felt bruised as she settled into her bed, but hopeful that sleep would come, blissful in the knowledge that she greatly preferred pine to exotic spices and flowers that could never flourish in their frozen forests.

  * * *

  As Gabrielle predicted, René and his household were gone a week and a half after he bade her farewell in the shop. She spent every hour of daylight with mending in her hand or crafting the odd new garment. Elisabeth had commissioned a new everyday dress that was a much welcome diversion. Evenings were harder. She would sit before her thin soup and hunk of bread. Eat, you dolt. There are many without. Open your mouth and just eat it.

  She no longer took solace in embroidery after a day hunched over with her mending. She would have enjoyed a visit with Claudine or Manon, but married bliss had claimed them both. She had taken to long meandering walks since the August sun set so late and the warmth of the evening did not chase her back to her hearth. She took the little paths east of town, breathing in the air, free from the scent of sweat and excrement that never really dissipated in town, especially in the heat of summer.

  Not anxious to return home, Gabrielle saw a patch of late-summer wildflowers in a secluded field. She gazed over the field, ablaze with orange and red blooms punctuated with embers of blue and purple. There was not a soul to be seen, so she ran out into the field and rolled in the middle of it, carefree as a horse let loose to run after a long stint cooped up in a stable.

  She lay on her back, looking up at the sky, streaked with the first shards of pink sunset. She breathed in the delicate scent of the wildflowers . . . not as pretentious as the roses and lavender true ladies preferred. They smelled of grass and earth and goodness. She used to escape to fields like this when she was a girl. When Raymond Giroux had taken to drink or was in a foul mood. Either she’d come out to escape his wrath or recover from it when she was too late.

  She’d not done so after Patenaude’s outbursts. The lands near their homestead were not so lush and verdant as this. As if he’d chosen the rockiest, most inhospitable patch of land in all of New France out of spite. It suited him.

  For a while she wondered what it might be like to stay the night, ensconced in a bed of wildflowers and willowy grasses, but her pragmatic nature reminded her that the chill of night would soon chase her home and it would be better to find her way before the light died completely.

  I will take the meadow home with me. I deserve some beauty there at least. She took her mending shears from her apron pocket, rarely leaving home without them, and cut a massive armful of flowers to brighten the somber timbers of her shop. She was careful to cut a few flowers from a patch and move on so that the effect wouldn’t be ruined for the next passerby, and so their seeds might produce another splendorous display the following year.

  She arrived back home well before dark settled in earnest, and was glad for the prudence of her decision.

  “Out awful late, aren’t you?”

  The flowers erupted from her arms in a cascade of color as she jolted from the shock. Bailiff Duval sat in her best chair by the window, legs crossed as though he’d been prepared to wait the night.

  “Pardon me, Bailiff, you startled me.” Gabrielle knelt and began gathering up the discarded blooms.

  “I was surprised not to find you at home at such a late hour.” Don’t offer to help. Don’t apologize. Fat oaf of a bastard.

  “It’s not yet dark, monsieur. I like to take a brief walk after my supper.”

  “I see. Some might think you’re up to trouble.”

  “Gathering wildflowers from an empty field, monsieur? Surely there’s no crime in that. Nothing worrisome, even for you.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve come to ask you a few questions.”

  “Has the judge sent you, monsieur?”

  “No, but don’t be surprised if he does.”

  “I will be happy to answer his questions when the time comes, monsieur. I don’t believe I’m under any obligation to do so now.”

  “I’d watch my tongue if I were you, young madame. It’s come to my attention that Monsieur Patenaude might not have died in an accident. That you might have wished him ill so that you might have been free to dally elsewhere. Say, with our recently departed deputy?”

  The stems of the flowers she had picked up from the floor now cut into her hand. She forced herself to loosen her grip before she destroyed her harvest completely, the blood rushing painfully back through her whitened fingers.

  “Monsieur, do you realize I never made the acquaintance of the deputy until several months after my husband passed away? I was living out on a homestead and never ventured back into town. He visited here once on the governor’s bidding and commissioned some mending a handful of times after that. You’re being remarkably presumptuous.” Gabrielle wished she could have swallowed back her words as soon as she’d spoken them. Duval isn’t a man who likes to be argued with. And he’s in no real position to make your life worse. That’s for the judge. He’s merely a complication.

  “Might be, but your making doe eyes at the deputy didn’t help but to feed the fires, so to speak.”

  “And does idle gossip now constitute grounds for a formal inquiry?” Fling the flowers at his fool head. The vase, too. Gabrielle gripped her hands behind her back to keep her less noble thoughts from realizing themselves.

  “People say you kept a musket with you, and none of Patenaude’s hunting companions ever gave any sort of account of what happened.”

  “Monsieur, my husband was a hunter. A fur trapper. He was gone for weeks at a time. Do you honestly think it wise for a woman alone to stay out in the wilderness unarmed? Would you have Madame Duval do so?”

  Gabrielle was careful not to let a smirk cross her face. Duval had risen from farming stock and abhorred any comparison to those who worked the land.

  “Just know, questions are being asked. Were I you, I’d be prepared.”

  “Thank you ever so much for your warning, Bailiff. If that is all, I suggest you find your way home to supper. Madame Duval won’t appreciate your tardiness on my account.”

  Gabrielle did not dignify his presence with words any longer and held open the door into the darkening night.

  As she shut the door, with a resounding crack behind Duval, there was no wondering why, after all these months, her innocence had come into question.

  What a kindly gift your wife has left me, René. She’s done her best to send me to the gallows, and you’ll never know if I swing.

  CHAPTER 29

  Manon

  September 1679

  Why did I not take Mother Onatah’s advice and learn how to cook properly? Manon fumbled about the kitchen as she attempted to prepare breakfast for Pascal and Théodore. Every mealtime she missed Mother Onatah in a way she never anticipated. She spent the years when she’d have learned to keep house learning how to mix herbs and concoct fever remedies instead. She was a passable seamstress, thanks to Rose, but in all other respects, she was helpless as a housekeeper. She was raised by Mother Onatah to be a healer and by the Lefebvres to be a lady. In the end, she was not destined to live either of those lives.

  She toasted some bread over the fire and fried up some eggs and a ham steak. The odor was pleasant and the smoke not too bad for once. The eggs looked fluffy and yellow as they should; the ham steak looked well browned, but not charred. Success at last! The smell of the sizzling pork stirred both man and boy from their beds, staggering bleary-eyed to the table.

  “It sme
lls good,” Pascal said tentatively, eyeing the food cautiously. Too many failed attempts. The poor boys will starve if I don’t improve.

  “Better,” Théodore pronounced, chewing slowly.

  “Better,” Pascal agreed.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Manon asked, her sigh of exasperation audible.

  “It would help ever so much if you cooked the meat through. It’s lovely and crisp on the outside and raw in the middle.”

  “I swear I’m cursed. It’s either raw in the middle or completely burnt. I’ll never get the handle of it.” She crossed her arms over her chest in defeat. A small kick from her midsection protested her decision to stop eating.

  “You’re learning, my darling. It just takes practice.”

  “All well and good so long as you two don’t waste away in the meantime.”

  “We’ll manage. We always do.” Pascal kissed her cheek and left as soon as his plate was cleared, Théodore chasing after him.

  Poor man. I must find a solution.

  There was mending to be done, but she’d saved enough pocket money to hire Gabrielle to do the work. Pascal wouldn’t have need of the wagon and the horse, so she decided that it would be as good a day as any to deliver the basket of clothing.

  When Manon entered the shop, Gabrielle had several customers, so Manon left the bundle of clothes on the workbench with an approving nod from the busy patroness. She’s managing well despite the threats hanging over her head. Manon and Claudine had assured Gabrielle that the bailiff’s warnings were all a bluff, but indeed the judge had begun investigating Patenaude’s death in earnest. More questioning was certain, and it set Manon’s teeth on edge to have Gabrielle still tortured by the evil man she’d married.

  At the Lefebvre house, she found Nicole was out on social calls, and she was sure Alexandre would be too busy to be bothered with a visit. The children would be engrossed in their studies, and oughtn’t be disturbed either. The sound of well-ordered clanging and banging of the experienced cook, Madame Yollande, came from the kitchen along with the enticing aroma of the meal that would be served at midday.