The Mark of the King

by Jocelyn Green

  In an instant he was kneeling before her, taking her hand. He was resplendent in his uniform, the picture of chivalry bent on one knee. “Marry me.”

  Surely she’d misheard him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I do not force this upon you, Julianne, but I do offer myself to you as an alternative to consider. Marry me, and let me shelter you with my provision. A house, garden, food, clothing. Any need you have will be supplied. You can practice midwifery for the love of your work and for the good of the colony, not for income. Allow me the honor of caring for you.”

  Shock shuddered through her.

  He bowed his head over her hand for a moment before lifting his face once more. “Your brother adored you. He was completely devoted. If he were here, he would have provided for and protected you to the best of his ability. And Simon—you said yourself that if I had only told you the truth about Benjamin as soon as I knew who you were, he would not have gone looking for him, would not have put himself in the danger that took his life. Let me atone for my sins. Allow me to care for you as they no longer can.”

  He was breathtaking. She pressed her hand against her thundering heartbeat. “You would do this for me?”

  “I promise I’ll not abuse you, nor take from you what you do not willingly offer. You may sleep in your own bedchamber. Bienville may order you to marry, but he’ll not be briefed on what transpires between these walls.” He took her other hand and brought them each to his lips in turn. “Gladly would I call you wife if you would only consent to have me. Don’t answer me now, on the day you’ve just buried your son. The ship that would carry you back to France, if you choose, isn’t due to arrive in New Orleans for another month. In the meantime, say you’ll consider my proposal.”

  “How very generous,” she whispered.

  He rose and smiled tenderly. “It would be no sacrifice to be your husband.”

  In her own cabin again at last, fatigue weighted Julianne’s limbs. She should feel more than gratitude over Marc-Paul’s proposal, but grief for her son blunted all other emotions.

  Dusk’s rosy glow filled the room. Outside, children shouted as they chased each other. Above her bed, a spider went about spinning a home for itself among the palmetto fronds and willow canes. It was a double cruelty that came with each death—that everything else kept on living, that the world did not pause for even an instant while Julianne slowly picked up the broken pieces of her heart.

  Exhausted, she shucked her gown from her body and exchanged her chemise for a nightdress. Wary of disturbing the scabs on her back, she stiffly performed the necessary tasks of her pre-bed routine and eased herself onto the mattress, where she rested on her stomach. Her stripes stung and itched beneath the binding towel she’d kept in place, and she gritted her teeth. Tomorrow she’d ask one of her friends to dress her back again. For now, the only relief at her disposal was sleep.

  Panting, she lurched from a nightmare and fought to regain her bearings. Darkness enveloped her. She inhaled deeply, then expelled her breath slowly to calm her frantic heartbeat. It was only a dream, she told herself. She was safe at home.

  The door creaked, and a thin ribbon of moonlight unspooled toward her. Had she forgotten to latch it? Of course not. Not after Matthieu had followed her home.

  Had he returned?

  Her heart thumping wildly in her chest, she struggled to hear anything above the sound of her blood rushing in her ears. Lifting her head off the pillow, she scanned the interior of the small cabin. Gossamer threads of pale moonlight hung in the air like cobwebs, but she could barely see a thing by their silvery filament. Her fear, however, cast shadows and footsteps where there were none.

  Lord, protect me. Still on her stomach, she dropped her hand to the floor. She searched with her fingers for the musket, expecting at any moment to feel its cool, smooth barrel against her skin. It was already loaded and ready to fire.

  But she felt nothing. She reached farther back toward the wall, then up toward the head of the bed, then back down toward the foot until she had traced circles with her fingertips far beyond where the gun should have rested. Panic hammered behind her eyes. The gun was gone. Whoever had stolen her defense could have done so during the previous week, while the cabin was empty, but instead he had waited until she came home to break in. Clearly he wanted her to know how close he could get to her.

  How close is he? The dried moss in her mattress seemed to crunch with the volume of snapping twigs as Julianne raised herself up to sit in the corner of her bed. Straining her eyes against the darkness, she saw only what her imagination set before her. Terror rattled her teeth, so she clamped shut her jaw and held her breath, listening intently for the breathing of another, for the creak of a footstep. For the click of the hammer on her own flintlock. For the hiss of an arrow piercing the air, or a tomahawk slicing the night.

  The next morning, Julianne rose from the sofa as Marc-Paul stepped into his salon, hat in his hand. “I’m sorry to startle you.” Aware of her fingers worrying the folds of her skirt, she clasped her hands to still them. “Etienne assured me I could wait for you here.”

  “I’m glad he did.” He tossed his hat onto a side table and crossed the room to stand before her. Questions loomed in his eyes as he neared. “Are you—are you well?”

  “My gun is gone,” she blurted. “It was there when I went to sleep, but I woke in the night, and when I reached for it, it wasn’t there anymore. Someone was in my cabin and took my gun from under my bed while I slept.” She bit her lip to halt the rush of words.

  Marc-Paul’s eyes darkened as he listened. “You’re certain?”

  “I’m certain.” Her heart galloped as she retold the tale, as if the clock had turned back its hands and set her in the dark with a stranger once more. “I sat on my bed and kept vigil until dawn, but I neither saw nor heard anything. Who would have done such a thing? And why?” She ended with a whisper.

  His gaze bore into hers. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know one thing.” He took her hands and kissed them both. “If anything had happened to you, I—I—” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Not even a day has passed for you to consider my proposal, but say you’ll be my wife, Julianne. Let me protect you. Make this house your home, and be safe.” He cupped her chin and rested his other hand in the hollow of her waist. “Marry me, for pity’s sake,” he whispered.

  She warmed beneath his touch. “For pity?”

  Marc-Paul shook his head, the color rising in his cheeks. His gaze rested on her lips overlong before meeting her eyes once again. “For more than that, if you desire it.”

  Heart throbbing at his nearness, she blinked back tears. With the slightest nod of her head, his hand slid to the small of her back, and he gently pressed her closer, careful not to touch the places where she’d been lashed. Julianne held his arms as he bent his head and tenderly took her lips.

  When his kiss deepened, all doubt dissolved in Julianne’s heart. It might have been duty that drove him to propose, but something stronger would bond them as man and wife.

  Chapter Eighteen

  By the time the violin stopped singing and the wedding reception guests stopped twirling over the grass outside Francoise’s inn, Marc-Paul was more than ready to be alone with his bride. Their engagement had lasted two weeks, during which Julianne had stayed at the St. Jean Inn. It was time enough for her stripes to heal, for Francoise to prepare this party, and for him to prepare his house and heart for his wife.

  It had not been time enough, however, for him to discover who’d stolen her gun while she slept. He searched the barracks and found nothing. He re-inventoried the commissary, to detect whether Pascal had used the stolen weapon to replace one of the guns he’d taken during the summer. But the numbers were off by the same margin they’d been before. If Pascal had managed to get past the double guard and add a gun to the stock, Marc-Paul doubted whether he could identify it, anyway. With a little polish, Simon’s barely used gun would look like all the rest.
When questioned directly, Pascal had said he was a customer at the tavern all night that night. A short and awkward conversation with a girl named Helene confirmed it.

  “Congratulations, Captain!” One of his men, Andre, raised his glass to Marc-Paul, snapping him back to the present moment. “You’re a lucky man.”

  Thanking him, Marc-Paul resolved to put the thief out of his mind, at least for the present, lest the mystery rob him of this moment’s joy as well.

  A smile curved his lips as he watched Julianne. The violet shades of twilight did not dim her glow as she kissed Denise and four-month-old Angelique on their cheeks to bid them adieu. Jean Villeroy vigorously pumped Marc-Paul’s hand before ushering his family away.

  “And here I’d lost all hope of you ever settling down.” Pascal sauntered over to Marc-Paul, and Julianne immediately broke away—in search of better company, no doubt. “Didn’t think you were the type, old friend.” He clapped a hand on Marc-Paul’s shoulder.

  Marc-Paul shrugged it off. “I don’t recall inviting you to the party.” In fact, he distinctly remembered leaving him off the guest list.

  “Oh, I was just here at the inn for dinner. It’s a public place, recall. Heard the music on my way out and couldn’t help but say hello. I’m hurt you didn’t ask me to join your celebration, after all we’ve been through together. Truly offended.”

  “You’re offended?” Marc-Paul shook his head in disbelief at Pascal’s nonchalance. “Excuse me.”

  Julianne beckoned him to join her, and he gladly strode over to her side.

  Pascal stayed with him. “I must say, I wouldn’t have matched a convict with someone who loves the law so very much. Although, she does have a certain appeal about her, if you ignore her past—and yours.” Pascal raked Julianne with a carnal gaze that twisted Marc-Paul’s gut.

  Julianne’s face flamed red, matching Marc-Paul’s anger, which simmered dangerously close to the surface. Taking his bride’s elbow, he led her away from Pascal and thanked Francoise, her son, Laurent, and Lisette for their efforts in hosting the reception. After a few more good-byes to soldiers in his company, he walked home with Julianne on his arm and Pascal’s words rattling in his ears. If she asked him to explain the cryptic comment, what would he say? Pascal couldn’t know that Marc-Paul had sent her brother to his death. But he certainly knew about Willow.

  Once they were a musket shot away from the inn, Julianne broke the silence. “I won’t ask you what he meant about your past, Marc-Paul. You know my own history, and yet you’ve chosen to yoke yourself to me just the same. If there is something from your life before I knew you that you’re not proud of, don’t let that horrid man dangle it in front of you the way he does with me. I’ll pay no heed to his taunts. I trust you to tell me the truth about anything I need to know.” She laced her fingers in his as they walked along. “I trust you.”

  Her words counterbalanced his tormented conscience. She was only asking for that which she needed to know. Why would she need to know about the exact nature of Benjamin’s death? It was over. She had mourned her loss, and knowing about his dishonor would only sharpen her grief. Learning that Marc-Paul’s testimony had sealed the young man’s death sentence—he could think of no reason to tell her that.

  As for Willow, the young Mobilian woman who kept his bearskin bed warm during his twenty-third winter, she held no claim on his heart. He had confessed his youthful moral lapse to the Almighty and trusted that he was forgiven. Confessing it to Julianne, however, would only hurt her.

  Marc-Paul brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them. “Thank you for that. I trust you too. And if there is one person in Louisiana I don’t trust, it’s Pascal Dupree.” It pained him to say it, all the more because he had once trusted the man with his life.

  “Oh!” Julianne snapped her fingers. “I never did ask you. After I delivered Dancing Brook of her son, she kept repeating a certain phrase alongside Pascal’s name. I may be saying it wrong, but it sounded to me like this.” She repeated the native phrase. “Do you know what that means?”

  Marc-Paul raised an eyebrow. He knew Pascal used Indian women to satisfy his own lusts. But it was no secret, and not at all uncommon. And it did not account for this. “I should talk to her myself. I need to be certain.”

  “But what do you think it means?”

  Suddenly wary that someone may be watching them, Marc-Paul pulled her close and whispered into her ear: “Two Faces. It’s the name she’s given him. She calls him Two Faces.”

  “Because he abused her and killed her baby, and yet pretends to be a gentleman?”

  “Likely so.” But there could be more to it than that. Marc-Paul intended to find out what.

  “You’re home, Julianne.”

  Marc-Paul’s tender smile as he opened his front door for her should have melted her heart. But once inside, the sound of the latch clicking into place behind her sent her pulse racing instead. Vesuvius ambled over, and she reached down to scratch his ears before he sauntered away.

  It was a beautiful home, a real house, where cypress shingles would keep her head dry and polished floors would keep her feet clean. Instead of the smoke of an indoor fire, here the pine walls and thin, oiled linen over the windows would keep the mosquitoes and flies out. She would sleep on a feather bed, not a mattress of dried moss suspended by ropes, and would eat on porcelain rather than tin and wood. The library offered a bounty of books, the salon an array of cushioned sofas. The gallery behind the house looked out over roses, orange trees, vegetables, and herbs for the kitchen and medicine cabinet. It was more than she could have dreamed she could call her own.

  Yet this was the place where she had lost her son, and never could she forget it. Knots formed in her middle at the thought of sleeping in that room again, on the same bed where she nearly died.

  “Marc-Paul,” she said, “your bedchamber . . . it holds such sorrow for me.” Her throat grew tight, and she willed him to understand. She could not sleep there and would not make love there when it was haunted by memories of miscarriage, still fresh after only two weeks’ time.

  “And you never have to enter it again, if that’s what you desire.” He guided her down the hall until they stopped before another closed door. “How would this suit?”

  She opened the door and stepped into a room aglow with candles in glass hurricanes. A glossy walnut bed nestled beneath a counterpane of blue and white toile and bolsters to match. Matching toile curtains draped the windows, softening the room.

  “It’s lovely! And I confess, more feminine than I imagined your house could be!”

  Marc-Paul laughed. “I have a confession of my own to make. The counterpane and curtains are a gift from Francoise. She wanted you to be surprised.”

  “I am!” Then she spotted the bearskin rug on the floor before the bed and immediately slipped off her shoes to walk upon it. Even through her stockings, she relished the luxurious softness.

  A walnut washstand with turned legs, matching the style of the bedposts, held a pure white china washbasin and pitcher, with an oval mirror hung on the wall above it. There was also a chaise longue in the corner of the room, upholstered in camel-colored silk and brass studs, with a small table beside it.

  “Turn around,” Marc-Paul prompted, and she did.

  On the wall opposite the window, there was a toilette table draped with lace that flounced to the floor and topped with a set of silver pots, brushes, and a silver-plated mirror. The traditional gift from a French groom to his bride, it clearly came directly from the mother country.

  “How on earth did you get it here?”

  “Are you impressed?” His lips tipped up in a lopsided grin. “Then I should let you go on believing its arrival was nothing short of miraculous. But I’ll tell you the truth. All this furniture, including the toilette table, is here because of Vesuvius. So be sure to thank him.”

  “Your dog?”

  “That’s right. A concessionaire up the river lost his wife to fever, and he w
anted to be rid of everything that reminded him of her: her furniture, her toilette table and jewelry, her gowns—which you’ll find waiting for you in the dressing room—and her pug. But as he was too impatient to sell it off piecemeal, he bundled it all together in one package and sold it at auction.”

  “And you bought all of it?”

  “I wanted Vesuvius.” He laughed. “And I paid a pretty price for him too. Still a bargain!”

  With impeccable timing, Vesuvius waddled into the room and draped himself over Julianne’s stocking feet on the bearskin rug. “Does he keep you warm at night too?” Kneeling, she rubbed behind his floppy black ears.

  “It’s really a case-by-case negotiation. And in this case, he’ll keep Etienne company for the night.” Marc-Paul scooped up the pug, and Julianne rose as well. “Etienne,” he called at the doorway, and the Canadian appeared moments later. “You don’t mind having a bedfellow tonight, do you?”

  Blue eyes sparkling, Etienne reached out and took Vesuvius, the two missing fingers on his right hand bearing witness to his trapping days. “Why do you look so worried, pug?” His gruff voice was laced with humor. “You’d better get used to that expression, madame,” he added. “It’s the only face he’s got.”

  “I’m glad of it. I find him charming.” Julianne couldn’t resist rubbing his velvety ears one last time. “Good night, my handsome fellow.”

  “I knew she was a good woman,” Etienne directed toward Marc-Paul. “Takes a heart of gold to love a wrinkled face.” Smiling broadly, lines seamed his own countenance as he turned and retreated down the hall.

  Julianne laughed as Marc-Paul closed the door to the bedchamber. When he met her gaze, however, his smile faded. “And now, ma chérie, to put you at ease. I almost hate to mention it, but it warrants being addressed. I know what happened on your wedding night with Simon. That you were forced to—the guards told me what they did to you prisoners. It was unconscionable. And I can only think those memories threaten to poison this night as well. So the bed is yours. Completely yours, until you invite me into it. I will not force myself upon you. You will not relive that nightmare.”