by Regina Scott
“Non. Not that it’s any of your concern.”
His dark eyes travelled her body once more, from the top of her mobcap down her overlarge dress, pausing a moment at her stomach before drawing his gaze down to her ill-fitting shoes. Why he should have the need to examine her yet again, when all he’d done was stare at her since she’d arrived, she hardly knew.
Whatever he saw must have convinced him she spoke the truth, because his eyes moved back up to her face. “Did you eat the soup and bread I sent yesterday?”
“Oui.” And that wasn’t a lie. He needn’t know the food was gone already, or how little of it she’d consumed herself. “Have you thought more about hiring me as a maid?”
“The bread will suffice.” He reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out two coins. “Here are two livres for your labor.”
She took a step back. She needed money, yes, but not so much. Bread sold for perhaps one livre in town, maybe less, as most of that price was tied into the cost of wheat—something Citizen Belanger had much of. “Sixteen sous should suffice, since you provided the flour.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Look at you, woman. You’re nigh on starved, plus you’ve bruises beneath your eyes and tired lines at the edges of your mouth. I might not know who you are or from whence you came, but I can see you need two livres, not sixteen sous. Take the coins, or don’t bother returning with more bread on the morrow.”
The impossible man. Was he really going to make her argue about getting paid less? “One livre, four sous, but not two livres.”
His face remained hard. “’Tis not up for bargain.”
She stared at the two livres nestled in his palm, their value of twenty sous a piece easily worth twice the loaf of bread she’d brought him. But if she didn’t accept, where did that leave her tomorrow? Or the day after that? The two livres would allow her to purchase more pulse in town with several sous left over. Perhaps she could even buy fabric for Serge’s trousers and Danielle’s dress. “Fine, then. But tomorrow I take one livre and four sous.”
“Only if you don’t wish to return the next day. Wait here.”
She opened her mouth to ask what he was about, but he disappeared into the house before she could speak, the insufferable oaf.
She tapped her foot on the ground, peering through the doorway to catch glimpses of him rummaging by the table. But she wasn’t going in to see what he was doing, no. He probably expected that. He’d suck her into his house and then…then…then…
She blew a breath upward, the gust fluttering the wisps of hair hanging near her face. She didn’t know what the man would do if she went inside. Didn’t know much of anything about him. Things weren’t going according to plan. She had to meet Alphonse’s man this evening, and at this precise moment, she was further away from getting the job she needed to spy on Citizen Belanger than she’d been when first they’d met.
The time for being polite was past. She needed to convince him to hire her, and she needed to do so now.
She walked inside. The most obvious place to start cleaning was the table, but since Citizen Belanger hulked there throwing food into another bundle, she started with the bench beside the door. She took up the folds of her apron and wiped the smooth wood. Her worn apron was hardly white to begin with, but after cleaning the bench, dark streaks of dust stained the fabric.
“What are you doing?”
She jumped at the stern sound of his voice but straightened her shoulders. “It appears you do need a housekeeper. Look at the dust I wiped from this bench.”
She turned and held out her apron, then gulped. Citizen Belanger’s jaw clenched and unclenched as he stared down at her, while muscles corded in tight ropes along his neck and arms. He looked ready to stride over and strangle her.
She took a step backward. Perhaps she’d been a little too hasty in coming inside.
But no. She couldn’t let him frighten her. She had to protect her children first, and that meant gleaning information from the irate man before her—however unpleasant that prospect might be. “You stand rather straight, Citizen Belanger. Tell me. Have you ever been in the army?”
His hands tightened into fists around the bundle of food he held, and he stalked toward her.
She took another step back only to bump into the bench behind her.
“My past is hardly your concern.”
Oh, no. He was supposed to see her work and decide to hire her, not get angry. He was supposed to answer her questions, not corner her against the wall. She licked her lips. “I was simply making conversation. You know I’m from Calais. Why can I not know whether you’ve been in the army? You’ve the bearing of a well-trained soldier.”
“I have nothing of the sort. And I might know you’re from Calais, but I hardly know why you’re here, or where you’re staying, or why you’re suddenly so concerned with whether I was a soldier.”
She sucked in a painfully sharp breath. Did he see the way her hands trembled? Did her face look as cold as it felt?
And why could he not answer this one question? He turned every situation around until she was the one under interrogation. About where she lived. How much she’d eaten. Whether she was sick. If she carried a child.
“Why are you so concerned with my past?” His eyes narrowed, as though they could bore through her flesh and clothes and see straight into her heart.
She pushed down the urge to curl like a babe against the wall and raised her chin. “I told you. I was making conversation.”
“If you’ve such a penchant for conversation, you provide it. Where are you staying?”
She stared back at him. She couldn’t tell this stranger, this possible murderer, where she and the children hid, no.
“I see you like being interrogated as little as I do.” He thrust the bundle of food toward her stomach with such force she had little choice but to take it. “Here’s more flour, yeast and oil.”
She opened and closed her mouth before finally finding some words. “I’ve plenty yet left over from yesterday.”
He frowned, which did nothing to soften his already austere face. “You should be nearly out of flour. I’ve been making bread for nigh on a year now. I know how much is needed.”
“Oui, but you gave me two days’ worth.”
“Non. I gave you one day’s…” His voice trailed off, and the furrows across his brow deepened along with his frown. “Made you no bread for yourself?”
“’Twas your ingredients I used. I’m no thief to take them for myself.” Or she wasn’t yet. She only prayed her task for Alphonse wouldn’t turn her into one.
“Mayhap I gave you that amount so you could take a portion,” he growled.
“Well, you neglected to inform me.”
“I assumed it understood. You’re thin as a corpse and pale as fresh snow.”
“And you’re large as a mountain and meaner than a bull, but I don’t think such traits make you a thief.”
She clamped her teeth into her tongue the instant the words flew out. Why, oh, why, must she blurt such things when she argued with him? First the comment about a slug and now this. She’d never had such trouble when she argued with Henri—though that might have been due to the fact she’d never really argued with her husband, just obeyed.
Yet no emotion flitted across Citizen Belanger’s face as the words settled between them, not even a registering of the insult. If anything, his demeanor grew harder, more like stone and less like flesh and blood. “Sustenance is nothing about which to jest. People die from lack thereof. Have you any soup remaining from yesterday?”
“I’m not starving.” And she wasn’t. She managed to eat every day, even if it was less than the little Serge consumed. “If you would simply hire me as your maid, you’d see the ridiculousness of your concerns.”
“I asked if you have any soup left. Answer me, woman.”
She pressed her lips firmly together. Let him take that as her answer.
“Wait here.”
He tromped back to the shelves beside the table, mad at her for some inexplicable reason. She was taking his food and eating it, was she not? Why should he grow angry?
When he returned, he clutched a bundle of salt fish. “Take this. And I’ve raspberries in the stable. Follow me.”
He shoved past her and strode outside.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Everything kept growing worse rather than better. Here he was plying her with food when she needed a chance to search his property.
She headed to the stable to find a wagon already laden with produce waiting just inside the doors. “As I’ve told you before, I don’t need your charity. I need a post.”
“And as I’ve told you before, I’ve no post for you.” He walked around the wagon and plucked a crate of raspberries from the back.
“And then you hired me to make bread, which only proves you could use my labor but are too stubborn to admit thus.”
A shadow crossed his face, dark and brooding, transforming him from the oversize person that had given her food into the dangerous menace that had stared at her inside when she’d asked whether he’d been in the military. The man before her now could hurt her without a flicker of emotion crossing his granite face.
The man before her now might well have killed Henri.
He came forward and held out a small crate of raspberries. “Things aren’t as simple as they appear. Now be off with you. I’ve a trip to make to town and fields to tend thereafter. I’ll expect my bread the same time tomorrow. And make two loaves for yourself this day.”
He turned and went farther into the stable, leading an aging gray horse out of its stall and guiding the beast toward the front of the wagon.
Brigitte tightened her grip on the food and watched him, his face still hard and void of expression as he hooked the horse to the cart.
He was likely going to town to sell his vegetables, and he’d be gone at least two hours, if not half the day. She’d already tried asking about his past and cleaning his house. So if she couldn’t ask questions and she couldn’t snoop under the guise of being his housekeeper, that left sneaking.
Could she do such a thing? Break into another person’s house while the owner was gone?
The moisture leached from her mouth. But if she wanted evidence of Citizen Belanger’s past before she met with Alphonse’s man, then she’d have one chance to get it. Later this morning, after he left for town.
*
Jean Paul watched her stomp from the stable, back straight and head high. Women, they were naught but a sore trial, and this one more so than most. How many times must he refuse her before she understood he wouldn’t hire her?
A dozen? Two dozen? A hundred?
He scowled, and Sylvie—a mare too old for the army to bother confiscating—snorted back at him.
The confounding woman would likely keep asking for as long as she brought him bread. What made her so set on working for him? Had she heard stories of the others he’d helped?
But the others lived elsewhere and didn’t come to his house each day. He saw some once a week and others once a month, a few only when rent was due on the property he let. He didn’t have to open his home to them.
His heart gave a solid, painful beat inside his chest. The woman with the bread would get the same answer each time she asked about a post.
He couldn’t have someone else about the place when he harbored such terrible secrets from his past. When he still longed for his wife.
And he doubted he’d ever be ready to open his home, or his heart, to another.
Chapter Five
She was a miscreant. A traitor. An utter and complete hypocrite.
Showing up on Citizen Belanger’s doorstep to ask for a job two days ago had seemed like a sound plan. So how had she ended up here, sneaking through his front door, about to become a criminal?
And all so she could do Alphonse’s bidding. She’d hated Henri’s illegal activities, but once she stepped inside Jean Paul’s house, how was she any different than Henri?
Because she was trying to save her family? That answer felt hollow. A wisp of truth cloaked in a lie. She was breaking into a person’s house because she feared her father-in-law, and that fear was pushing her into the dark world she’d despised for so long. Wasn’t there some verse in the Bible about such things? Not the one about her sin finding her out that her governess had been so fond of, but another. One that the priest used to quote at mass. Something about…about…about…
Reaping what you sowed. Yes, that was it. From Galatians chapter 6. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”
She grimaced at the door in front of her. Well, she certainly wouldn’t reap life everlasting by sneaking about. But she needed information.
She tucked her perpetually errant strand of hair back up under her mobcap and gave a final look about the yard.
Empty. Not so much as a bird overhead to watch her.
Though the wagon was gone from the stable, she knocked and waited one moment, then another, to be certain no one tarried within.
Everything lay still and quiet.
She slowly lifted the latch and let herself inside, heading straight toward the shelves lining the far wall. But she stopped when her gaze fell to his table. It was beautiful, a masterpiece fit only for a king or some royal relative. She’d been too far away to notice the details earlier that morn, but cornucopias had been carefully carved along the edge of the table, the generous cones overflowing with grapes and squash and apples. The fruit spilled down the side of the table, etched onto the legs with what must have been painfully accurate carving skills.
When Citizen Belanger had left Abbeville before the Révolution, he’d supposedly gone to Paris to make furniture. Perhaps there was a grain of truth in the tale, after all. Citizen Belanger must have made the table and matching chairs himself, for a farmer could hardly afford to purchase something so exquisite.
She trailed a finger over a cornucopia carved on the top of a chair, then forced her gaze away from the furniture and toward the shelves beside the hearth. She had an entire house to search and hadn’t time to tarry, regardless of how beautiful the furniture.
*
“You’re late.”
Jean Paul barely glanced at the gendarme as he pulled his wagon to a stop in front of the gendarmerie post. He hopped down and scanned the yard for Captain Monfort, but the gendarme glowering from beneath his black bicorn hat was the only one out of doors.
“I’ve been waiting for over a quarter hour.”
“My previous stop took longer than I planned.” As had the talk with his mysterious bread maker that morn. He hefted a crate of lettuce and carried it toward the entrance to the kitchen. “My apologies.”
Gravel crunched behind him, then came the gendarme’s morose voice. “A contract to supply the gendarmerie with food is hardly a trivial matter. I daresay if you continue to be late, we’ll have to look elsewhere for our food.”
Jean Paul rolled his eyes. Who was this whelp of a soldier? If the man wanted to be intimidating, he needed to stand straighter and give a hard gaze rather than shift away from one. But either way, his dourness had naught to do with Jean Paul’s late arrival. The man had helped unload deliveries for the past three weeks and had been ill tempered each time.
Jean Paul nudged open the door to the empty kitchen and set his crate down with a thud before heading back to the wagon. “I’ll try to be more punctual next week.”
He set the flour and remaining crates of vegetables by the side of the road and hopped back atop his wagon. If the gendarme was going to be so friendly, he could carry the rest of the food back to the kitchen himself.
“Where are you going?” the other man barked.
Jean Paul took up Sylvie’s reigns as the gendarme hastened toward him. “Away. You have your food.
Two sacks of flour, four crates of produce. ’Tis settled.”
And he had little tolerance for ill-mannered men in uniform.
“’Tis hardly settled. You’ve more turnips left, and raspberries.” The gendarme stalked to the back of the wagon and reached in for the final crate of berries.
Jean Paul jumped down, clamping his hand about the other man’s arm. “You’ve raspberries aplenty. What remains is for Widow Arnaud.”
“You hardly gave us enough raspberries to keep the gendarmerie two days, let alone a week,” the other man sputtered, his cheeks dark with red.
“’Twill have to suffice. My contract is for four crates of produce. I decide what that produce entails.”
“The widow won’t know they were coming, and thus won’t miss them.”
Jean Paul crossed his arms over his chest and glared. “The widow has three boys and a daughter who delight in berries. Furthermore, she’s a widow because her husband died in the Batavian campaign. I should think a soldier like yourself would be respectful of such sacrifice.”
“Are you implying I’ve a lack of respect?” The gendarme moved his hand to the hilt of his sword.
Jean Paul drew in a small breath. He must tread carefully. ’Twas a reason he sold food to the gendarmerie. Doing so kept him in their good graces, and they therefore asked no questions about his staying in Abbeville—though with his shoulder injury mostly recovered, he could manage as a soldier in one of the military campaigns. They also didn’t question why he’d suddenly returned to Abbeville a year ago, nor did they wonder where he’d gotten the money to purchase the land surrounding his farm.
They simply bought his food.
True, his contacts in Paris could quash any resistance the gendarmerie post gave him, but he’d rather not go that route. Too many townsfolk would raise their brows if Paris got involved.
Yet he wasn’t about to let widows starve while the waists of the gendarmes expanded, either. One person, one gift, one act of generosity when Corinne was ill, and she might be alive today. “The raspberries go to the Widow Arnaud, and if that’s a problem, I can start taking my raspberries to market instead of here. I’ll get a better price than you give me.”