Sanctuary for a Lady

by Naomi Rawlings

  As the mob must have been for her sister’s. A sob welled in Isabelle’s chest, but she shoved it down. She’d not think of Marie now, nor of her role in her sister’s death.

  The leader snorted. “Isabelle Chenoir, daughter of a cobbler? You lie again, but your name matters not. You all end up at the guillotine.”

  Yes, let him think her name didn’t matter.

  One of the soldiers trotted over. “Found the money.”

  The leader held out his hand for the pouch of coins and bundle of assignats she’d hidden in the secret pocket of her valise. Her stomach clenched. Five years of her seamstress’s wages, and the man palmed it as though she’d earned it in an hour.

  Even as he took the money, the leader’s gaze never left hers. A silent battle raged between them. Isabelle refused to drop her eyes. He was waiting for that very thing, it seemed. Her final surrender. If only her stare could fend him off forever.

  He released the hair he’d been fingering and touched her cheek. She resisted an instinctive flinch as his cold skin pressed against her face. “You know what gave your identity away? That stare. A seamstress wouldn’t look at me as though she were a queen.”

  He backed away. “Kill her, boys.”

  With the first blow to her kidneys, she couldn’t stifle her scream.

  * * *

  Michel Belanger surveyed the land before him as the early sun painted the bare fields golden. He drew in a deep breath, smelled the earth and cold and animals.

  His eyes traveled over the small, tree-lined fields as they did every morning.

  Thirty-six acres. The land had been his for four years, seven months and thirteen days.

  And he loathed it.

  He’d promised to care for the farm when his father died, but the obligation choked him, forever chaining him to northern France.

  His neighbors were fools for thinking a declaration from the National Assembly freed them. True, the August Decrees four and a half years ago liberated land from the seigneurs and Church. But before, a man could leave a farm and seek work elsewhere. Now peasants like him owned their land. And the ownership only tied them to the monotonous work. Shackled their children and grandchildren to the unforgiving earth.

  In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. It was a verse he’d rather not have memorized.

  Michel’s eyes roved the fields yet to be planted and rested on the stone and half-timbered cottage that sat at the field’s edge. He knew every bump and crag of the chipping wattle and daub, the manner in which sunlight slanted through the windows, the way shadows played in the corners of the two rooms. He came into the world in that house, and despite his dreams, he’d leave the world in that same structure.

  But a promise was a promise, and he would work the land until it drained the life from his blood, as had happened to Père. The Belangers hadn’t worked for three generations only to have the eldest son turn his back on the land. He would work hard. He would tame the land and add to it. And one day, he would pass it to his son. And mayhap that son would love the land as his late father had, as his brother still did, despite Jean Paul’s decision to leave home.

  But the day for heirs and inheritance lay distant, the only flicker of hope against a broad, dark horizon.

  Until then, he would work.

  Fishing pole in hand, Michel turned his back and followed the deer path through the woods to the pond he’d fished for the past twenty-one of his twenty-seven years. He and Mère hadn’t much meat to grace their table. That should’ve changed with the Révolution, and had—for a time. Then last summer the beshrewed Convention in Paris said bread in the cities cost too much, so they imposed price controls on grain.

  His grain.

  Now a sack of wheat brought hardly enough to care for his mother. Let alone cover the cost of his seed.

  Michel scratched the back of his neck. Five years, and the Révolution that promised liberty, equality and fraternity had given him nothing.

  The four-kilometer path was as familiar to him as the texture of field dirt in his hand, his feet so used to the twigs and stones that the feel of the earth alone underfoot could have guided him. Tilting his face toward the sky, he let the budding light warm his skin. Another month and the sounds of birds and frogs would serenade him while squirrels chased one another up beech trees.

  A stick cracked beneath his boot, and the noise sent a startled woodcock flying from the brush with its distinct whirr. He smiled, his eyes following the flight of the brown bird into the sky. Then he glimpsed something foreign in the familiar sea of earth and tree trunks and logs. A scrap of blue fabric. He veered from his path, took a step closer.

  Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. Three meters past a ripped valise and the discarded dress that first caught his eye, a body lay facedown on the forest floor.

  Chapter Two

  A mass of wild black hair covered the back of the girl who lay before Michel. Her dress was torn and stained with mud and filth, one sleeve shredded and bloody with a thorny branch still entangled in the crude linen.

  The flurry of footprints surrounding her told the story of her struggle. And struggle she had, against what looked to be a gang of four or five men.

  Michel scanned the familiar trees, his fingers aching for the worn wood of his musket. Were her murderers still here? No movement caught his eye. No palpable tension raised the hairs on his neck. Most likely her attackers had dragged her from the road, brought her to the clearing to rob and rape, then killed her, abandoning the body immediately after.

  He hoped her death had been swift. No one deserved such a painful and humiliating end.

  He picked his way through the scattered clothes and neared the girl. Was there family to notify of her death? A father searching for his beloved daughter?

  He crouched to touch her hand, and swallowed back a sudden surge of bile at the sight of her left forearm twisted at an impossible angle.

  Whoever would treat an innocent girl such deserved death.

  Laying his fishing pole in the dirt, he ran his fingers over her hand. Cold, but not icy, not stiff. Could she be alive? Using both hands, he gently rolled her onto her back.

  And stilled.

  A fairy-tale princess. She must be. Dark curls of hair fanned beneath her head and rippled like waves on a pond. Her creamy skin looked as though it had never seen a day under the sun. A curtain of dark eyelashes fell against her high cheekbones. But no deep red hue stained her lips. Instead, a deathlike white clung to their shapely form.

  Still, her features seemed too perfect, too delicate, to be from his world. As if, like Sleeping Beauty or another tale from his school days, a kiss could breathe life back into her.

  Michel smoothed a strand of hair away from her cheek. If only the world would be so simple that a kiss could save a woman’s life.

  Instead of pressing his lips to hers, he covered her nose and mouth with his hand. A faint exhale of air tickled his skin.

  Alive!

  He touched her forehead and cheek, then ran his hands down her torso and legs as he searched for injuries. When he touched the left side of her rib cage, she inhaled sharply and groaned.

  Michel sat back. The girl would require care: a place to rest, a doctor, medicine. He could bring her home, but he couldn’t provide her with much. Would it be enough?

  Leaning forward, he bent his ear to her chest in search of a heartbeat. His ear bumped something hard beneath her dress. Frowning, he placed his fingers over the spot, and finding a chain, he fished the necklace out from beneath her fichu and chemise.

  A heavy cross emerged from her neckline and fell into his palm. Silver vines curled around a gold cross and at its
center sat a large square emerald. It was beautiful, a relic from times past, not like the jewelry sold every day in the market. And it was authentic. If the weight didn’t give its genuineness away, the mesmerizing gleam in the center stone did.

  He dropped the cross irreverently.

  The woman was no beggar. No traveler.

  Perhaps she was a member of the bourgeoisie. The wife of a Parisian accountant or lawyer. That would explain the expensive adornment.

  Michel stood. Then she wouldn’t be traveling alone, dressed in coarse wool and linen. She’d have a finer dress. Non. She could only be one thing: an aristocrat disguised as a peasant and seeking escape. She’d made a good attempt by getting within twenty kilometers of the shoreline. Most aristocrats had already fled the country or met the guillotine, but she apparently survived—until now.

  He gritted his teeth. To think he’d felt sorry for the wench. It mattered not whence she came or how hard her journey. Her class had grown rich off his sweat and deprivation. Perhaps the fools in Paris set the price of his grain, but they hadn’t stolen from him the way the aristocrats had. They took half his crop in taxes and then taxed the money his crops brought in. They played games while he worked, frolicked while he plowed both his fields and their land. Then they banned him from hunting and fishing the woods for food while they did so for sport and left animal carcasses to rot in the sun.

  Michel stepped back. He wouldn’t help her. He couldn’t.

  He surveyed the trees for movement yet again. Was she a trap? Had roaming soldiers attacked her rather than thieves? Did they watch to see if anyone helped?

  He took another step away. Judging by her skin’s temperature, she would die soon, and being unconscious, she would feel no pain. There would be no cruelty leaving her where she lay. He grabbed his fishing pole and turned toward the pond.

  I was naked, and ye clothed me.

  Michel halted as Father Albert’s words from a Sunday long past scalded his mind.

  But the girl wasn’t naked. And he couldn’t help her, not even if he wanted to—which he didn’t. He’d be guillotined if he took her in and got caught.

  He strode toward the pond. Besides, Father Albert had been talking about clothing the orphans in Paris, not the rich who had dressed in silks at his expense.

  I was hungry, and you gave me meat.

  Oui, and he wouldn’t have any sustenance for himself if he didn’t get to the pond and catch something. He quickened his pace.

  I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.

  Michel sighed and cursed himself for memorizing so much scripture. “She’s not asking for water,” he mumbled.

  I was sick, and you visited me.

  This counted as a visit, didn’t it? He’d bent down, touched her, contemplated helping her. And turned his back the second he realized she was an aristocrat.

  Michel straightened his shoulders. He wouldn’t feel guilty. She’d have done the same to him under the Ancien Régime.

  If you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me.

  He stopped walking. “She’s not the least of these, Father. She’s the greatest. She’s lived her entire life off the backs of me and my kin.”

  In prison, and you visited me.

  “And prison’s exactly where she deserves to be.” He turned to take a final look at the girl. “Waiting for the guillotine.”

  I was a stranger, and ye took me in.

  He huffed a breath. He threw down his fishing pole and stormed back to the girl. Assuming he took her in, what would he do with her? Nurse her? She’d probably die regardless.

  But what if she lived?

  He couldn’t nurse her and hope she’d die. Cross-purposes, to be sure. He ran a hand through his hair and paced beside the body.

  He wouldn’t be able to eat tonight if he left her. Or look at a church. Or wave at Father Albert in the market. Or pray tomorrow when he went fishing.

  Sighing, he set his fishing pole down, bent and hefted the burden into his arms.

  She weighed no more than a bale of hay, but he felt as though he carried his own cross to Golgotha.

  * * *

  Light, voices, shadows, whispers swirled around her, eluded her, like a dream she chased but couldn’t catch.

  Grass, matted and thick, tickled her fingers, back and legs. Tall strands of it waved in the wind while dandelions turned their golden heads toward the sunlight. Overhead, two birds chased each other.

  Isabelle looked up from the field she lay in and raised herself onto her elbows.

  The Château de La Rouchecauld towered before her, its triangle of red brick walls kissing the brilliant sky as it had for seven centuries. No garish chars from a fire marred the windows. No broken furniture littered the ground. No grass and flowers lay trampled by the mob. No gate demolished by angry peasants.

  She was home.

  Someone touched her forehead. Mother?

  “Oh, Ma Mère! It’s been so terrible. You should have seen…”

  The hand pressed harder. Too large. Too rough. Not Mother.

  Father, then.

  “Mon Père, how did you escape the mob? I thought they…” The hand left her forehead. Cold! A frigid cloth replaced the warm touch.

  She reached up to move the rag. Pain whipped through her hand and down her arm. She groaned and shifted her limb.

  “Well, well,” said a deep voice. “She lives.” The cloth left her forehead.

  Isabelle cracked one eye, but the blistering brightness of the room forced it shut again.

  “Wake up, woman. I’ve a farm to run.”

  Temples throbbing, she turned her head toward the impatient voice. “Who are you?” Her vocal cords, gritty from disuse, ground against each other.

  “The man whose hospitality you’ve enjoyed while lying delirious with fever for these two weeks.”

  Two weeks? She opened her eyes again, slowly fluttering her eyelids until the burning sensation stopped. The only light in the room spilled from two open slits in the bare wattle-and-daub wall. A man, dreadfully familiar, hulked over her.

  His broad chest strained against the two buttons at the top of his undyed linen shirt. While the material gathered at the neck, shoulders and wrists would accompany much breadth of movement, it ill hid his wide shoulders and thick forearms. Light brown hair in desperate need of a trim fell against his forehead and curled around his neck. His chest tapered down into a lithe waist, with his lower body encased in brown woolen trousers. In one hand, he held a worn, uncocked hat by its brim.

  It’s him. The soldier. The leader of the band that attacked me. The shoulders, the height, the massive arms were all painfully familiar.

  She screamed, shrinking into the bed and clutching the quilt. Her bandaged arm shook with pain, but she cared not.

  Why had he brought her here? Surely he wouldn’t make her endure another beating. She shut her eyes and heard the jeers, saw the men standing over her, felt their blunt boots connect with her lower back, her rib cage, her abdomen.

  She should be dead. Oh, why wasn’t she dead? He was making sport of her.

  “Calm yourself. I’ll not hurt you.”

  At the sound of his indifferent voice, her breath caught. That certainly wasn’t familiar—his voice had been full of loathing in the woods. She opened her eyes and gulped, pulling the quilt up with her good hand until she could barely peek over it. The stranger shifted his weight and paced the small confines of the room.

  “I don’t believe you.” She stared at him, measuring his movements, comparing him to the man who haunted her memory.

  He tunneled a hand through his hair and set his wide-brimmed hat on his head. “It would better serve you to believe the man who brought you home, kept
you warm and fed you.”

  This man walked differently than the soldier, and his hair…was lighter, shorter. His stature smaller. She let out a relieved sigh. Oui, this man resembled the soldier from the woods, but was not the same person.

  Hard lines and planes formed a face weathered by the elements, but not altogether uncomely. His straight nose and strong jaw made him appear rugged rather than harsh. The leader of the soldiers had a hardened look that this stranger did not possess.

  “Had you no part in the attack?”

  Annoyance flashed, but no malice. “I don’t rape women and beat them nearly to death, if that’s what you ask.”

  “They didn’t rape me.” The words rushed out before she could check them. The man turned to face her fully. No scar curled around his eyebrow. Oui, he was innocent.

  And he had nursed her for two weeks. ’Twas a long time to care for a stranger, although he couldn’t know she was of the House of La Rouchecauld.

  She bit the side of her lip. He’d shown her kindness, and she blamed him for attacking her. Furthermore, she brought the threat of soldiers, arrest and the guillotine to his door. She’d naught have helped him were the situation reversed. “I’m sorry to accuse you falsely.”

  His crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “You’re forgiven.”

  His simple words washed over her, offering comfort and security. “Merci.”

  Though he watched her intently, her eyes drifted shut. Oh, to go back to that place she found while sleeping, where she was home, her family still lived, food filled the table and death didn’t stalk her. But she wasn’t in Burgundy, where a mob killed her parents and little brother outside the gates of their home. She and Marie escaped only because they took a different route to England, parting ways with her parents at Versailles and heading north via their aunt’s estate near Arras. News of their parents’ deaths had taken months to reach them.

  Then Marie died anyway.

  Her fault. Isabelle clutched her throat. All her fault.

  “Are you having another spell?”

  She opened her eyes.