by Regina Scott
He expected to have naught but nightmares.
He just hoped Brigitte had left his house when he’d told her to. The knowledge that he’d killed her husband should push her away, but he wouldn’t approach the farmstead until well after dark. Better to not chance seeing her again. If she was smart, she’d gone back to the hut, packed her belongings and left Abbeville. She should have enough money to reach Reims now.
But how would he manage with her gone? Every moment he spent in her presence, he fell a little more in love with the brave woman that fought so hard for her children. That had approached a complete stranger in order to procure work. That didn’t let raging fever or past heartache hinder the future she had planned for herself and her younglings.
None of which even included the feelings he had for the children who had wiggled their way into his heart.
He’d known his past would come back to haunt him. But to learn to love all over again only to discover his sins would forever keep him from making the family he cared for his own? ’Twas a cruel penance.
Forgiveness had seemed easy last year in Saint-Valery after Isabelle de La Rouchecauld forgave him for trying to kill her. A simple prayer and all was well. But if God had forgiven him, why did he still carry the shame of his past, memories of the Terror, and guilt that bound his chest so tightly he could hardly breathe at times?
He’d merely sought justice for his wife. Or at least, that’s what he’d told himself. But it hadn’t been justice, at all. He’d wanted retribution, and he’d gotten it…
More than he wished.
Father forgive me, he whispered to the sky, but to no avail. Just as last time, the wretched words fell back to litter the ground surrounding him, never making their way to God.
God probably had little desire to listen to prayers from a man like him, anyway.
The shadows at the edge of the field shifted, and a flash of white glinted in the dying sun. Jean Paul blinked then furrowed his brow. Sure enough, a figure walked along the edge of his field. Just a glance at the auburn tresses hanging down beneath her mobcap and the creamy hue of her skin, and he knew her.
What was Brigitte doing in his fields as darkness descended? He dropped the hoe where he stood and opened his mouth to call out, then stopped. Perhaps it was the fierceness in Danielle’s gaze earlier when she’d warned him to send Brigitte away. Or maybe it was the ice in the girl’s voice when she’d proclaimed he would end up dead. But either way, Brigitte heading away from both the farmstead and the hidden cottage hardly made sense.
So he followed.
She left his property and moved on to his neighbor’s, her footsteps quick and sure. A white bundle lay wedged beneath her arm, and she held her back rigidly straight. Again he nearly called out but some unnamable hunch made him stop. Instead, he moved into the forest where trees shrouded him and continued across the springy ground with quiet steps. Her white cap and apron stood out as the sun’s final rays left the sky, but not until darkness had nearly swallowed her did she veer into the woods.
A sickening awareness twined through him. He scanned the forest, quiet and still at this time of night. But someone else was there, an unknown presence lurking just out of sight. He hunkered down and squinted at the bed of soft soil beneath his feet. Sure enough, a second set of footprints lay indented in the dirt, and too large to be a woman’s shoe. Brigitte was meeting someone. A man. Alone. At night. In a secluded place.
His stomach twisted as he inched forward.
*
“Bonne. You’re here.”
Brigitte frowned at the unfamiliar voice and blinked into the darkness, but as usual only shadows greeted her. Did her nerves make her hear things that weren’t so? Or perhaps the gendarme had taken on a cold, making his voice unrecognizable. She was at the designated rendezvous place at the appointed time, and the guard stayed hidden in the trees. Everything was normal.
But the air held a thick, foreboding sensation. A chill skittered up her spine, and she glanced around. Maybe if she could determine where the gendarme hid…
But no human shadow hunkered among the dark, towering trees—at least none that she could discern.
She smoothed her damp hands against the folds of her skirt. The voice likely seemed strange because her nerves were overtaking her. She clutched the journal tighter beneath her arm and swallowed. She could do this. All she needed was to hand over the book and claim she’d found it with Jean Paul’s coat. He had no reason to accuse her of lying.
Unless he could see the sweat beading on her forehead or hear the rapid thump of her pulse.
But no. He couldn’t sense those things, especially in the dark. And she had to appear strong. In control. Aloof.
“Have you my money?” She managed to form the words without her voice trembling. “I brought Citizen Belanger’s journal, but I want the money first.”
A sneering chuckle echoed from the woods. “You’re not in control. I am.”
She turned to look behind her, her heart quickening yet again. ’Twas definitely not the gendarme’s voice that time. “Who are you? Show yourself.”
“Show me the evidence first.”
“Where’s the gendarme I met last night?”
A louder laugh this time, cruel and unfettered. “Detained. Alphonse expects efficiency from his men. Neither you nor Gilles have been efficient.”
Her hand tightened on the journal despite the moisture saturating her grip. What was she going to do? Would he be harder to fool than the gendarme? More cruel? What if he took one look at the journal and knew what she’d done?
But the man behind the trees was right. She had no control. If she did, she wouldn’t be in Abbeville at all, spying on the man she loved. Tempted to betray him in order to save her children.
She straightened her spine and raised her chin. She only had to be strong one more time, only had to pass along this one falsehood, and she would be done forever. “I want the money first.”
“And I want to see the evidence you’ve brought me.”
She extended the journal in her quivering hands. “Fine. You can have it, but understand that Citizen Belanger is—”
Innocent. A crashing sounded from the forest behind her, and the word froze on her tongue. She whirled toward the noise, glimpsed a towering body and broad, unmistakable shoulders beneath a faint beam of moonlight trickling though the trees.
“Jean Paul.” Dread curdled her stomach. Had he learned of her meeting somehow? Did he know everything?
He paid her no heed but rushed past and leaped into the shadows on the other side of the clearing. Two bodies crashed to the forest floor and rolled into the light until they collided with the trunk of a centuries-old tree. Then one form raised himself up over the other, and a grotesque crack echoed through the forest.
“I should kill you.” Jean Paul’s voice rang out over a moan of pain.
Another crack rent the air, followed by thumps and scuffles and groans.
She tucked the journal back under her arm and stepped closer to the tangled men, only to jump back when they rolled her direction. The thin slices of moonlight slanting through the trees cast a trail of light on the two men, but not enough to tell who was besting the other. Then again, she hardly needed light to know who would win. Jean Paul was too large and strong for another man to pose him much threat.
A third crack sounded, and the form with the overlarge shoulders slowly rose to his feet, leaving another shadow prostrate and still beside the tree trunk.
“I trusted you.” Jean Paul turned toward her, wiping the side of his face with his sleeve.
She ran her eyes up his familiar body etched against the moonlight, then looked away.
She was never supposed to fall in love with him, but she had. She was never supposed to care whether her actions hurt him, but she did. If only she’d come to care a little sooner, had understood the feelings coursing through her body before this morning. Instead, she’d spent the entire day trying to protect him, trying
to keep this moment from happening.
And she’d failed.
What was there to say—besides the bald, horrid truth. “Jean Paul, I—”
“I was a fool.” He spat the bitter words. “Do you know how I felt about you, Brigitte? I thought I could love you. For six years, I’ve not been able to look upon a woman and see a future. Women were no different from children and old men, just more bodies needing bread, likely to starve at the hands of the aristocrats if no one fought for them. No woman has made me smile or laugh or cry. Not since Corinne have I bothered to imagine the way a woman would feel in my arms…
“Until you.” His voice turned quiet, a gravelly rasp against the warm night air. “But it was all a lie, wasn’t it? Every kiss, every subtle glance and worried look was one giant falsehood so you could get—get—” He threw up his hand in a frustrated gesture. “What did you come here for? Money? Revenge?”
She licked her painfully dry lips. “’Tis not how it appears.”
“Not how it appears? Let me tell you how it appears. It appears you had suspicions about me before you came to Abbeville. It appears you traveled here for the sole purpose of getting close to me. Is that why you were so determined to work as my housekeeper?” His jaw moved back and forth in furious little jerks. “Fool that I was, I believed it. Believed you. Who are you truly? Are those children even yours? Or did you find them and—”
“Yes, they’re mine!”
“And you expect me to trust you?”
“Non.” Hot, searing moisture flooded her eyes, and the journal weighed heavy as a bushel of wheat as she extended it toward him. “But at least take this. It shows—”
“I know what it shows.” He yanked the book out of her hand and sent it crashing into the nearest tree. It slid to the ground, the pages fluttering and tearing on the rough bark before it landed in a mangled heap. “The question is, why were you giving it to this man?”
“I was trying to show you innocent.”
He scoffed. “Me? Innocent? Even now, after I caught you trying to destroy me, you offer more lies?”
“It’s not a lie! Look at—”
“Not a lie? Then tell me, Brigitte, why did you first approach me? Why did you weasel your way into my house? Because you believed me innocent? I think not.”
She closed her eyes and ducked her head at the mercilessly raw tone to his voice.
“Those days I went to the field and left you about the house, did you spend them snooping? Scouring every centimeter of my home until you found what you were looking for?”
“Jean Paul, please, you have to believe me. I wasn’t turning you in.”
“Save your words for someone who wants to listen.” He stalked away, putting a good four or five paces between them before he whirled back. “So what happens now? Is someone going to come for my head? Is this man here going to shoot me in the heart one night while I lay abed?”
“Non! Nothing’s going to happen. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
But he wasn’t listening. She could spend all night pleading with him, and nothing would change. He stood before her too furious to hear what she said, too furious to care that she was sorry, too furious to understand she’d changed her mind about working for Alphonse. The man before her held no semblance to the gruff but kind farmer she’d first met, possessed no patience to listen to whatever explanation she might have.
“Return to the cottage and pack your things.” His words shattered the silence. “I’ll visit at dawn, and if you’re still there, I’ll…I’ll…”
His voice broke, and he turned his back to her yet again.
“Just look at the journal. Please. It’s—”
“It’s private. Not something you should have ever touched. Something you’d not have found were you not snooping around my property.”
“It’s not what you think. I changed it.” The words wrenched from her mouth. She stared at his back, willing him to listen, to care, to understand that though she may have been working against him for the past two weeks, today she’d been working for him.
He held up his hand. “Enough. You have until dawn to leave. I suggest you make haste if you don’t wish to be dragged before the magistrate.”
She glanced at the journal laying mangled on the forest floor and pressed her lips together. Perhaps he would take it with him and look at it come morning, then he might understand.
But she’d be gone by morning. He’d given her no other choice.
Or rather, she’d given herself no other choice from the moment she’d first agreed to work for Alphonse.
Chapter Twenty
Brigitte wiped the tears from her face as she moved through the tall trees toward home. Or more accurately, toward the place that had been her home.
If only Jean Paul had let her explain, or if, even now, he would just open the journal and realize she’d been trying to protect him, that she’d fallen in love with him despite what she’d done. Then he could come to the house and claim her before she left for Reims.
And she was dreaming the dreams of an errant schoolgirl. She’d spent the past two weeks working against the one man who had been kind and generous to her family. Why would he now come claim her?
She rubbed more tears from her cheeks and sniffled to stem the ceaseless stream. She would leave and go to some other city. It couldn’t be Reims now, for Alphonse would surely search for her there. But she could start a new life with the money she’d earned from Jean Paul. It would be hard at first, but she could make do. And when memories of Jean Paul and his kindness visited her in the night, she’d push them away much like she did her longing to see her twin boys.
She gulped in a breath and moved swiftly over the uneven ground toward the cottage ahead, the familiar shadow of trees looming above despite the already dark night. Not even the flicker of a faint candle shown through the windows. Her children were all abed and now she’d have to wake them.
She opened the door and stepped inside. “Danielle, Serge, I’m sorry to wake you, but we must—”
An arm curled around her throat, yanking her back against a hard chest. She screamed, but another hand clamped over her mouth.
“Don’t waste your breath screaming. There’s no one around to hear.”
Her heart pounded against her rib cage, and she sucked in a panicked gulp of air before shaking her head wildly. Her struggle did little good. The massive hand tightened its grip over her mouth, and the man yanked back on her neck, her chin jerking upward toward the roof of the cottage.
“The children,” she rasped. She moved her eyes frantically toward the bed, trying to discern their small bodies beneath the covers.
“The children, you ask?” Scalding breath feathered over her ear. “They’re already in the wagon, waiting.”
Waiting for what? To go where? Why was this strange man here, in her house during the darkest hours of the night?
But she knew why. Indeed there could only be one answer to all of this: Alphonse. His men hadn’t just interrupted her meeting with the gendarme, they’d also come to her home.
A burst of terror ignited in her stomach, tearing across her chest, her mind.
Her heart.
She’d been close. So very close to…
To what? A lump that had nothing to do with the forearm across her neck rose in her throat. What did she even want anymore? She wanted her children safe and away from Alphonse. But she didn’t want to leave the man she loved.
He’d killed her husband. Some part of her should want to run to Alphonse with the news. But Jean Paul had been so sick and stricken with grief at the beginning of the Révolution. He was a different man now, one who filled needs rather than created them.
But it mattered not whether she longed to stay with Jean Paul, to throw herself on his mercy and beg to be his housekeeper for the rest of her life so that she might glimpse his face every morn. She’d be forced to go with this guard back to Calais and face Alphonse instead.
Th
ough she had little choice in seeing her father-in-law, she didn’t have to share her findings with him. If nothing else, she would see that he never learned the truth about Citizen Belanger.
“If you scream, I’ll hit you,” the gruff voice snarled against the back of her head, then the hand left her mouth.
“Are the children well? Tell me you didn’t hurt them.” She couldn’t stop the tremble in her voice. Danielle was strong, but how must Serge and Victor have felt to awake at the hands of this man?
“Well indeed. They sleep like babes.”
“They sleep?”
“Oui. As will you.”
He yanked back on her hair, thrusting her chin up again. Before she could sputter a response, a clay mug pressed to her lips and bitter liquid poured down her throat until she was forced to either swallow or choke.
*
Betrayed. Utterly, thoroughly, completely.
Jean Paul rubbed a hand over his chin as he sat against the base of the tree. The first gray fingers of dawn tinged the early morning sky, visible only through breaks in the leafy canopy above.
But he didn’t move.
Hadn’t moved for hours.
How was it he had strength enough to flatten a brute of a man and scare the man away a second time when he’d finally regained consciousness? How was it he had the strength to send away the woman he loved, but hadn’t the strength to move from this tree for hours hence?
He raised his head and surveyed the little patch of forest floor once again. ’Twas obvious from the flattened earth and foliage this area had been used before last night. How many times had Brigitte met with that man and his comrades? How much information had she passed along before he discovered what she was about?
Did she know of his agreement with the Convention and the letters he wrote every month? Of the men he sometimes sheltered in his stable?
Or did she snoop because of his role in the Terror? Because he’d killed her husband?
He should have asked who she’d been working for before sending her off. Not that he expected her to tell him the truth. It could be some Girondist or Federalist. Any powerful person he’d happened to wrong while he was in the National Guard or working for Joseph Le Bon.