“Benjamin?” Denise asked. “The brother who is here in Louisiana?”
Julianne swallowed her bite of food. “Last I heard.” She glanced at Monsieur Caillot and found him leaning forward, eyebrows raised. “He enlisted as a soldier a few years ago and was sent here.”
“After the war? Strange time to enlist.”
It was. Two years before her brother enlisted, France had lost the War of the Spanish Succession, the French king’s attempt to join France and Spain into one empire. Thirteen years of fighting had drained France’s treasury and the morale of its military. Soldiers had deserted in droves near the end.
“They wouldn’t have taken him any earlier. He was fourteen years old when he sailed in 1716.” Still a boy. And still mourning the recent passing of their father, whom Benjamin had only ever wanted to please.
“Voilà!” Jacques presented a misshapen triangle napkin to Julianne, who praised him lavishly before suggesting he use his own spoon to trace more shapes into the thin layer of sagamité still left on his plate.
“Your heart must have broken to see Benjamin go.” Denise rocked Agnes, now dozing peacefully.
“It did.” Especially since she had not even said good-bye. One day, he’d said he had news to tell her, but she was flying out the door to meet Madame Le Brun for a birth. It was the first month of her apprenticeship, and she could not be late. Nor did she leave the birthing chamber for the two days it took that mother to deliver her child. By the time Julianne returned home, the only thing waiting for her was a note explaining that Benjamin had sailed to Louisiana as a soldier for the king. It would be one less mouth for her to feed, he’d written, and assured her he would be fine. I’ll come back, the note said. But he hadn’t.
“Where is he stationed?” Monsieur Caillot asked.
Julianne swallowed a sigh. “That’s the trouble. I’ve no idea. The last I heard from him was in 1717, and he was in Mobile. He wrote that he was about to begin a grand new adventure with the natives, and that if I didn’t hear from him for another year or so, not to fear, but that ‘disappearing’ was part of the plan. At least for a while.”
“And you’ve received no word from him since?” Monsieur Caillot frowned. “Quite a riddle. But then, mail between here and France could have easily been delayed or lost altogether.”
Jacques dropped his spoon in his sagamité and laid his hand on her arm. “You lost your boy, madame?” His brow furrowed.
Julianne blinked in surprise. “Oui, mon ami. I don’t know where he is.”
“You will find him though. And then, how happy he will be!”
Tears stung her eyes as she smiled down at him. “Oh, indeed. How happy we both will be.”
His torso slick with sweat and humidity, Simon pounded another piling into the marshy ground, then dropped his hammer and circled his right arm in a windmill motion to stretch his muscles. After barely exerting himself for five months, his shoulders and biceps burned from the day’s work. If he hadn’t been fueled by anger as well, he wouldn’t have had the strength to complete three outer walls of his home, each about twelve feet in length.
Chest heaving for breath, he leaned against the outer post and cast his gaze at the moon and stars, which had provided light enough to see by thus far. Slate grey clouds now drifted in the sky, veiling the constellations like wraiths.
With bullfrogs twanging in his ears, Simon stiffly lowered himself to the ground. Right on top of yet another fist-sized mud chimney, courtesy of the crayfish who had decided Simon’s dirt floor belonged to them. He broke the mud chimney from the ground and cast it as hard as he could toward the swamp behind his lot. He hated crayfish.
Right now, Julianne was no doubt snug in a real bed in the St. Jean Inn, with real food in her belly. And Girard expected Simon to stay here, day following day, night following night, with nothing?
Rising, he swiped his shirt off the post where he’d left it, slung it over one shoulder, and stalked through the settlement. A gust of wind cooled the sweat on his chest as he made his way past darkened cabins and a tavern overflowing with music, laughter, and the reek of corn liquor. In the jaundiced glow spilling from its windows and open door, women with uncovered heads and barely covered bosoms draped themselves over men. A couple of them looked up as Simon marched by half dressed.
“What’s your hurry, handsome?” one called. Another made a lewd gesture.
He ignored them all. On the riverbank, Simon disrobed and splashed into the water, completely unconcerned about who might hear or see him. Down by the docks, small waves lapped rhythmically against the boats anchored among them. He scooped a fistful of sand from the riverbed and scrubbed it over his body until the grains escaped between his fingers, then repeated the process until he felt relatively clean. He slicked his hair back from his forehead as he climbed out and sluiced the Mississippi from his skin the best he could before donning the same filthy clothing he’d been wearing for months. Fleetingly, he considered that he should have worn his clothes into the river and washed them as well. But now was not the time. Right now, laundry wasn’t his priority.
Still dripping when he arrived at St. Jean’s Inn, Simon beat his fist on the door until Madame St. Jean opened it a few inches.
“We’re full.”
Before she could shut him out, Simon stuck his arm through the doorway. “I’m not here for a room. I’m here to collect my wife.”
Her eyebrows arched. “At this hour? She’s sleeping. Surely you can come back in the morning for her.”
Simon forced his way into the inn and shut the door behind him. As Madame St. Jean stepped back, he could see from her candlelight that they stood in a large store room, the walls lined with boxes and trunks that likely belonged to the guests. “I’m here now. And I won’t leave without her. If you don’t fetch Julianne, I will.”
He pushed past her and took the stairs two at a time until he reached the next level of the inn. The floor beneath his bare feet was made of smooth planks. Moonbeams fell through windows onto two long tables spotted with wine or tobacco stains. The scents of roasted game, olive oil, and rosemary still lingered in the cooling night air. Instantly, his stomach clenched.
Madame St. Jean appeared at the top of the stairs. “You would yank that girl from the first good night of sleep she’s had in months? And for what?” A moth fluttered in her pool of yellow light.
Simon didn’t answer her. He didn’t answer to anyone but himself. “Julianne!” he called as he walked toward the corridor he assumed led to the guest rooms. “Julianne LeGrange!”
“Shh! Shhh! You’ll wake all the boarders!” Madame St. Jean flapped around him, waving her hands in a downward motion, as if that would convince a man to obey a woman who came only to his shoulder.
“Julianne!” he shouted, louder this time.
From somewhere beyond his vision, he heard the distinct creak of a door opening. Footsteps hurried toward him until Julianne appeared in a white nightgown that billowed behind her slight frame, hair sticking up on one side of her head. As she neared, Madame St. Jean murmured an apology to her. No one ever apologized to Simon. For anything.
Hastening past Madame St. Jean, Julianne stood before him. “I’m here, husband.” The soft scent of rose oil lifted from her radiant skin. “What is it?”
“I just—” His gaze trailed to her lips, then to the hollow of her throat before returning to her shimmering eyes. She looked scared. It wasn’t what he wanted. He sighed, the anger draining out of him. “You’re my wife. We have a home. It’s not much, but it’s ours, and we ought to be together. Come, Julianne. It’s time to go home.”
He offered his hand and waited.
Hesitating, Julianne remembered the first time she had trusted her hand to his in the priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs. Lifting her gaze to meet his, she searched his eyes for some hint of his heart, just as she had the day she chose him as her groom. For better or for worse, she had chosen him.
A lump bobbed in Simon’s t
hroat. “Shackles or not, we are still in this together, husband and wife. It isn’t right for us to be apart.” His voice was low now, his tone undemanding.
It was one thing to select a man on first sight, and quite another to say yes again, knowing his faults and tempers. But for all the disappointments, and all the walls they had erected between each other so far, Julianne could not find fault in his reasoning. A wife’s place was with her husband.
Nodding, she slipped her hand into his and felt a ridge of calluses at the top of his palm. He’d been working on their house all day while she had bathed, and eaten, and rested. He was dripping wet and cleaner than she’d ever seen him, water beading on the floor around his feet. He was trying. So would she.
“Francoise, you have been so kind to me. I will pay what we owe as soon as we have the dowry.”
Francoise squeezed her shoulders. “Let me fetch your things.” She swept away, taking her flickering light with her. “Take this,” she said as soon as she returned. But even in the half-light, Julianne could see these were not the rags she had worn on the voyage. “My washerwoman laundered your things today. They aren’t dry yet. Take this gown instead, and keep the nightdress too. You can return them once your own things arrive.”
“Thank you,” Julianne whispered. “I do hate to trouble you.”
“It’s nothing, I assure you.”
“I’d like to change into the dress before leaving,” Julianne said to Simon. “I may not have much pride left, but I’m not walking through town in a nightdress.” A smile tilted a corner of her lips, and he answered it with his own.
Julianne hastened back into her room to change and emerged in the silk gown. The nightdress she draped over one arm.
The way Simon looked at her made it clear it was the first time he’d ever seen her dressed like a lady. She tried to smooth down her uncooperative hair. Just as quickly, she scolded herself for her vanity when her husband stood waiting, looking as famished as he had ever been. Francoise’s candlelight highlighted the sharpness of his cheekbones and the lean lines of his once muscular frame.
Julianne approached Francoise. “One last request, if I may be so bold. If you trust us to repay you soon, if there was any food left over from supper, could we take it with us?”
“Why, yes of course!” Francoise’s eyes glimmered. “I only wish I had more to offer to help you gain some weight back.”
Julianne smiled. “I had it in mind for my husband, actually. Simon, have you eaten?” For a moment, she wondered if he had heard her. “Simon?”
Abruptly, he shook his head. His blue eyes softened.
“Whatever you can spare,” Julianne directed to Francoise. “Put it on our account. We will pay as soon as we can.”
After the slightest pause, Francoise nodded. “Of course. I’ll see what I can find. Wait here.” Returning moments later, she placed a knapsack and a rolled animal skin in Simon’s arms. “Oiled deerskin, to sleep on,” she explained. “Water won’t soak through it.”
“Merci.” Julianne bussed Francoise’s cheeks before leaving with Simon.
Though cold, the duck meat and cornbread were still fragrant through the cheesecloth knapsack. When Simon’s stomach growled a few steps from the inn, Julianne took the deerskin from his arms.
“Please.” She nodded at the bundle of food.
Without hesitation, Simon untied the corners of the cheesecloth and began eating as they passed an unsteady knot of drunkards on the street. Though thunder rolled and darkness thickened, Julianne could still hear his satisfied sigh and see his shoulders relax. Soon he was tucking the cheesecloth into his breeches pocket and taking the deerskin and nightdress to carry himself.
With no light to guide them, Julianne took Simon’s arm just as large, cool drops of rain splashed her skin. The dirt road beneath her feet would turn into mud in no time. With her other hand, she gathered her skirts and hoisted them above her ankles.
“It isn’t far now,” Simon said.
Suddenly the rain drove down in sheets, as if the underbelly of the clouds had been slit open all at once. Simon quickly handed the nightdress to Julianne and then unfurled the deerskin and held it over their heads as a canopy. His strides lengthened, and she hurried to keep up until, a few minutes later, he halted.
“We’re stopping?” She looked around but could see nothing in the rain-drenched darkness.
“We’re home.” Lightning cracked the sky and illuminated for a fraction of a second three walls of pilings driven into the marshy ground, forming a U-shaped room. There was no flooring but mud, no roof but the sky.
Julianne’s heart sank. “Oh.”
“You’re welcome.” Sarcasm edged Simon’s voice as rain streamed down his face. “I didn’t say the house was done. I said we have a home. Wherever we are together is home.” He turned his back on any protest she might have made, leaving her with the deerskin to herself, and stomped away.
Only when lightning flashed did she see what he was doing: Fastening one end of a long willow branch between the tops of two posts. Fixing the other end of the same branch on the opposite wall. Back to the pile of willow branches. Repeat.
Petticoats already sticking to her legs, Julianne wrapped her nightgown in the deerskin and stuffed it into a sprawling stack of palmetto leaves, then ran to help her husband. Rain poured over her bare head like a baptism and spilled down her throat and chest, plastering her chemise to her skin. Blinking water from her eyes, she hurried to the far wall. She reached up, grabbed the loose end of the willow branch Simon held at the opposite end, and wedged it between the pilings. The mud was now up to Julianne’s ankles, and she feared Francoise’s gown was splattered beyond redemption.
Once they had positioned and secured several more branches as a framework for their roof, Simon grabbed a palmetto branch, scooped a ladder from where it lay half buried in the mud, and leaned it against a wall. Climbing up to the top rung, he placed the spiky, fan-shaped fronds over the willow branches. Julianne ferried more palmettos to him, handing them up one at a time whenever Simon reached down.
Still stinging from wrestling the willow poles into place, her palms prickled from handling the palmetto fronds. The sharp, stiff leaves were lined with tiny hairs that burned the skin until she felt as though she’d been handling hot coals. But as Simon moved the ladder to different posts along the walls, she kept up with him until the willow canes were covered.
Shivering, and as wet as if she had jumped into the river with her clothes on, Julianne waited by the ladder as Simon climbed down.
“Well, that was . . . motivating.” He exhaled. “Shall we?”
She agreed. Mud sucked at her feet and pushed between her toes as she walked along the side of their three-walled house. More than once she felt the hard shell or pinchers of a crayfish against her sole. As she neared the gaping maw that was the opening of her home, Simon laid his corded arm across her shoulders. Before she knew what was happening, he slipped his other arm behind her knees and scooped her up.
“You are still my bride, Julianne. And this . . . magnificent chateau is our first house. Might as well do things right.”
An amused chuckle bubbled up out of Julianne as he carried her over the threshold into their home. Leaning her drenched head against her husband, the pressure in her chest burst into a laugh so hearty that her shoulders shook. When Simon laughed too, tears of merriment mingled with the rain on her cheeks.
Cloaked in shadows, he lowered her until she stood near the back of the house. Rain dripped through the thatched roof, and some sprayed between the pilings that formed the walls, but the shelter provided more relief than she’d imagined it could.
Gently, Simon took the deerskin from Julianne, handed her the nightdress that had been wrapped safely inside it, and then unrolled the oiled hide and spread it on the muddy floor. “You need to get out of those wet clothes,” he told her, then took the nightdress back once more to free her hands.
Though darkness offered all the
privacy she could desire, she turned her back to him anyway to unbutton her bodice and untie the strings that held her chemise and skirts in place. Once she had peeled off her sodden dress, she traded it for the nightgown, which was blessedly dry, if not warm, against her skin.
“Sit.” Simon’s hand found hers, and he led her to rest on the dry side of the waterproof deerskin.
Julianne sat on the edge, knees up under her chin, twisting her nightgown around her legs. “My feet—they’re filthy!”
Framed by the sky behind him, Simon pulled his shirt over his head and knelt before her. His rough hand warmed her ankle as he guided her feet one at a time to his lap and used his shirt to wipe the mud from her skin in long, gentle strokes. When he grazed the scar left by the shackle that had bound her to him, he stopped. He traced the jagged ridge with one finger and sighed.
“It is not the marriage any girl would dream of.” His voice gentled. “I know.”
Between the words, Julianne heard what neither of them needed to say. The forced wedding. His desperation in the Saint-Nicolas Tower, when he cut her arm with the sergeant’s sword. The voyage, full of sickness and hunger, taut with tension. Neither of them had expected the turns their lives had taken together.
She tucked her feet under her and wished she could see him better. But even in the dark, his hand found her shoulder, slid up her neck, and cupped the side of her face. With his thumb, he brushed the tears and rain from her skin.
“We can begin again,” she whispered, her throat tight with emotion, and caught his hand against her cheek.
Thunder boomed above them. The flash of lightning blinked through the chinks in their shelter, gleaming on Simon’s bare chest and shoulders and arms as he knelt in the mud, one hand outstretched for Julianne. His blue-eyed gaze locked with hers before the darkness rushed in again. She squeezed his hand, released it, then made room for him on the deerskin.
The Mark of the King Page 7