by Regina Scott
He’d likely discover her spymaster soon enough. Now that she had the information she sought, it wouldn’t be long before his opponents showed themselves. Then again, mayhap they wouldn’t show themselves at all. They could always sneak into his house while he slept and slit his throat.
He tilted his head up toward the heavens, the rough tree bark snagging the back of his hair. “Did You do it a’purpose, God? Did You know who she was and make me fall in love with her, anyway?”
Some sort of vengeance for his past sins?
Oui. Vengeance indeed. He’d been worried about that very thing when he’d looked upon Brigitte lying in her sick bed. Had figured God would give her to him for a time and then yank her away as He’d done with Corinne. But God had different plans in store this time.
He raked a hand through his hair. ’Twould almost have been easier to lose Brigitte in death rather than have her betray him in life. But betray him she had, and for some addled reason, he couldn’t force himself up from the spot on the ground where he’d sunk after he sent her away.
“Citizen Belanger!” A familiar voice carried through the still morning air. “Jean Paul!”
He straightened against the tree and glared warily in the direction of the ruckus. What was Danielle doing here? She should be well on her way to Reims with the rest of her family—if they were truly her family.
He sighed and glanced around. It was too much to hope the girl wouldn’t find him. He’d taught her to track, after all, and the path to this little clearing had been trodden enough that it hardly remained secret.
He raised himself up off the ground as Danielle’s form bounded through the trees.
“You’re supposed to be headed to Reims,” he bit out.
She slid to a halt and scrunched her brow. “Reims? Non. ’Tis Calais.”
“Reims, Calais. I care not, so long as the woman you call a mother goes away. Now why are you here?”
“You know, then.” The girl’s eyes turned dark and flat.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Oui, I know. As you did yesterday morn, but you didn’t tell me.”
Her gaze dipped to her boots. “’Tis why I ran off. I couldn’t bear the sight of her once I learned her reasons for working here.”
Well, at least they were agreed in wanting nothing to do with Brigitte—or they had been. How had he ever convinced Danielle to return home with him yesterday? “Your mother betrayed me. I never want to see her again.”
She jerked her head up. “You can’t say that, not after she sacrificed everything for you.”
He gave a hard, bitter laugh. Brigitte hadn’t sacrificed a flea for him. But Danielle’s eyes locked with his, fierce honesty burning in her gaze.
Almost as though she spoke the truth.
He clamped his jaw together. She couldn’t speak the truth. ’Twas impossible.
Yet the look in her eyes couldn’t be falsified.
A memory of their first meeting flashed through his mind, Danielle standing proud over his stolen chicken, knowing she’d done wrong but refusing to cower or lie. Danielle Moreau might be strong and determined, but she’d tell him the truth and then throw punches to defend herself rather than spout falsehoods.
“Stop staring at me as though you think me dishonest. Maman needs your help, and we haven’t time to lose.” She turned and started down the little path.
Jean Paul dug the heels of his boots into the ground. “I don’t help traitors.”
Danielle whirled back and stalked toward him until the tips of her shoes met his. Then she tilted her proud little nose in the air and glared up at him. “She wasn’t betraying you. She was trying to save you.”
“Trying to save me? ’Tis laughable, child.”
She jutted her chin toward the journal laying in the moist dirt. “Have you looked at it?”
Jean Paul glowered at the leatherbound book. “Why would I? I wrote the words. I well know what’s in it.”
Blood. Pain. Memories he tried to forget every night when he closed his eyes.
Danielle curled her bottom lip. “That’s where you’re wrong. It was written yesterday—and not by you.”
The girl was befuddled, which wasn’t terribly surprising given her conniving and manipulative mother. ’Twould be hard for any person to stay sane when forced to live with Brigitte Moreau.
“’Tis enough. I’ve work to do and haven’t time to dally longer.” He moved to retrieve the book then started down the path. First he needed to find a new hiding place for his journal—hopefully one that wouldn’t be discovered so easily this time. Then he needed to stop by the second cottage and finish this business of forcing Brigitte off his land. After that he had breakfast to see to, since the woman no longer worked for him. Turnips lay waiting to be dug in the far field, and he needed to inspect Pierre’s clovers. Then—
“Wait!” A small, hard body hit him from behind, causing his knees to buckle as he lurched forward.
“What are you doing?” He took the girl by her shoulders and held her out from him. “Go help your mother pack and leave me be, or I’ll drag the lot of you before the magistrate.”
“I know not what happened between you and Maman last night, though I can guess you found her meeting with one of Grand-père’s men.” Danielle swiped a tangle of dark hair out of her face. “But I speak truth when I say she needs your help. Now. They’ve captured her and Serge and Victor. Every moment you tarry, they get farther away.”
So someone had betrayed the traitor. ’Twas a fitting end. Mayhap now Brigitte would think harder before agreeing to carry out such dastardly tasks. “Who is this ‘they’ you speak of? Your mother’s employer? I know not for whom she works.”
“’Tis my father’s father, and he doesn’t give people choices about working for him. He forces it. Though I think he promised Maman we could leave Calais and move to Reims if she spied on you.”
If nothing else, the girl was tenacious in defending her mother, though her reasoning made little sense. “Your mother could have left Calais on her own. She hardly needs to take on some ill-intended assignment from your grandfather.”
“You don’t understand who my grand-père is, or the power he wields.” Danielle shook free of his hold. With her dress torn and dirt smudged on her cheeks, she should look like nothing more than a filthy urchin, yet somehow she was magnificent in her disarray. “His name is Alphonse Dubois, and he’s both a seigneur and a smuggler.”
Dubois.
Dubois.
Dubois.
The name rang like a bell through his head. He remembered it well, one of the few that stuck out from the Terror. There had been a Dubois in Calais, yes, a seigneur—not that the Révolution acknowledged such positions these days—who’d used his power to build a massive smuggling ring before the Révolution started. Though the Dubois family lands would have been lost with the rise of the Révolution, the man’s smuggling power extended far.
Le Bon, the representative-on-mission from the Convention, had been set on bringing the smuggler down, but Calais closed up around them whenever they made inquiries. Jean Paul had only arrested one group of smugglers for an illegal import of wool, and the captured men had refused to speak one word of their leader, even though the arrest had landed them the smuggler’s son. Henri Dubois.
Henri, the name of Brigitte’s first husband. And not Moreau, but Dubois.
Jean Paul stilled, his pulse thrumming hard against his wrists and neck while silence descended over the forest. A man like Alphonse Dubois would want revenge for his son’s death. A man like Alphonse Dubois, ruthless enough to strike fear into an entire town, would use his son’s widow to get it. A man like Alphonse Dubois didn’t care whom he hurt or why he hurt them, just as long as he got his way. And he was very used to getting his way.
His gaze slid to Danielle. Had Dubois threatened Brigitte’s children? Is that why she’d come to spy on him?
“Well?” Danielle pinched her lips together. “Do you know my grand-
père?”
“I know of him, and I…ah…I arrested your father.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “Maman told me yesterday when I helped with the journal. She had to give Grand-père’s men proof of something, so rather than turn in the journal she found hidden, she wrote a new one that showed you innocent.”
Innocent? Brigitte had been trying to prove his innocence? Blood roared in his ears and he struggled to suck in breath as he opened to the first page of the book. There the letters stood, bold and unmistakable in a poor imitation of his hand. He flipped through, page after page, certain words jumping out at him, like furniture maker and apprentice, journeyman. The entries were short and sparse but they covered from March 1789 until the time he’d been shot and Isabelle nursed him in Saint-Valery. The journal made no mention of his serving as a soldier or even setting foot in Calais.
“She didn’t tell you last night?” Danielle asked quietly.
“I think she tried, but I didn’t let her.” He bowed his head. What had he done? He’d been so furious that he’d seen only her betrayal. If he’d have let her talk, simply trusted rather than turned his back… “I’m an oaf.”
A small hand rested on his forearm. “We haven’t time to waste. Grand-père sent men for us last night. They have Maman and the boys.”
Dubois had already taken her and the children? He wasn’t just an oaf, but a heartless, wretched one.
“Citizen Belanger,” Danielle prodded.
He blew out a breath and looked up. The girl had the right of it. ’Twould be time to wallow later, but first, he had to find her. “Tell me everything of these men. What time did they come? How did they find you?”
“They came last night while Maman was still away. They made us drink a sleeping potion, bound us and threw us in the wagon, then laid a trap for Maman. It won’t be good once Grand-père has hold of her.
No. He didn’t imagine so. “And you escaped?”
A grin split her pretty little face. “Of course. I made it look like I choked on the potion, but really I spewed most of it out, and what I didn’t spew out, I let dribble down the side of my mouth. “My neck and dress are sticky, see?”
She patted her slender neck and a stained spot at the top of her dress. “I’ve kept that knife you gave me strapped to my thigh. ’Twas a simple matter to feign sleep while they bound me, then cut the ties once the wagon began to move.”
“I’m glad you escaped.” If not for Danielle, he’d still be furious at Brigitte and ignorant as to the danger surrounding her. “Now come, we must make haste.”
Facing a smuggler might not be so terrible. But a smuggler whose son he’d killed during the Terror? A smuggler who now held the woman and children he loved captive?
If he did nothing else, he would go to Calais and free Brigitte and the younglings. She deserved little less after being used so terribly by Dubois. Then she could move to Reims and finally be with her family.
And what of his feelings for her? His heart gave a long, hard thump. He had no business loving a woman like Brigitte Dubois. He’d known it from the first. Because no matter how much he loved her, no matter how many men he fought to free her, he was still the murderer who’d killed her husband.
He could say he’d changed…but even the new man he’d become had let her down, let her come to harm when she should have been under his protection. He’d failed her, just as he’d failed Corinne.
Losing her from his life just as he’d lost his beloved wife was nothing more than what he deserved.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jean Paul burst through the door of the gendarmerie barracks then stopped to survey the room. The gendarme on the bunk closest to the door raised up on his elbow and squinted through sleepy eyes.
“Where’s Gilles?”
The other man plopped back down on his bed. “Third bed on the right. Top bunk.”
He turned back to Danielle, standing in the doorway. “Wait here.”
Of course, the urchin didn’t listen. She followed him down the aisle between the beds until he stopped at the bunk where Gilles lay peacefully turned on his side, slumbering as though he hadn’t a worry in the world.
Well, that was about to change. He hauled Gilles up by his shoulder with one hand while wrapping his other around the man’s throat.
The gendarme’s eyes snapped open, instant panic flickering in their depths.
“Where are they?” Jean Paul growled. “Where are the guards taking them?”
Gilles opened his mouth then closed it before swallowing thickly beneath Jean Paul’s hand.
Right. Strangling the man was rather prohibitive to talking. He released Gilles’s neck and gripped the scoundrel’s shoulder instead. “The truth, or my hand goes back on your throat.”
“I know not of whom you speak.”
With a single heave, he jerked Gilles halfway off the bed, their breaths tangling as he stared into the gendarme’s frightened eyes. “Don’t play daft with me. You were supposed to meet Brigitte Dubois last night, were you not?”
The man’s face whitened at the mention of Brigitte’s true surname. “So you know.”
“Only that she’s been taken. Danielle tells me you threatened her and the children two nights past. And I can surmise she was supposed to meet you last night, not the other man I found. Now speak. What know you?”
Gilles pressed his eyes shut. “They have her son, Julien. Dubois had men waiting for his grandson in Le Havre, and they captured him when his ship arrived. Dubois must have grown impatient with how long Brigitte was taking here. I had naught but a day’s warning before the men arrived. They asked where Brigitte stayed and when our next meeting was.”
“And you told them.” He tightened his grip on the gendarme’s shoulder. One more answer such as that, and he’d not be able to stop his hand from wrapping back around the other man’s throat. “How dare you turn vile men like that on her?”
“I hadn’t a choice. They’d have…”
The man’s mouth clamped shut, but his thoughts lay written across his face. Men like Alphonse Dubois based their empires on fear, not loyalty. Dubois’s henchmen would have killed Gilles had he not been truthful—or made him wish he were dead.
“Were they angered that you didn’t have more information on me?”
“Oui.”
“But they left you here alive.” And they’d taken Brigitte. His heart twisted. Why could they not have taken the clod in front of him and left the woman he loved alone?
“They gave me another task with which to prove myself.” His eyes were flat and lifeless as the words fell from his mouth.
“What kind of task?”
“I’m to go to your property and kill you, burning your remains in your house before I set fire to your land.”
Jean Paul pulled back. Kill him and burn his fields? Alphonse Dubois didn’t waste time. “You tell me this rather easily.”
Gilles’s eyes drifted down to where Jean Paul’s hands fisted in his nightclothes. “They’ll kill me if I fail. But it seems you’ve a mind to kill me first.”
“Oui. I should snap your neck.” Yet somehow he couldn’t stomach it. He had every reason to drag this man before Captain Monfort, the mayor and the magistrate to see him guillotined.
But enough death already stained his hands to last three lifetimes over. He released the man and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m feeling a bit merciful this morn. I might be convinced to barter your life for information—and a promise not to burn down my home and fields. Tell me more of what happened with Brigitte, and start at the beginning.”
Gilles pushed himself up on the bed until he sat, then glanced about the room. One man stirred in the far corner, but otherwise the chamber remained still, most guards sleeping for another hour yet. “Dubois hired me some years back. I usually just…ignore certain signs of his smugglers’ doings as I carry out my duties.”
He was paid to ignore Dubois’s smuggling activities? They
’d likely been working against each other from the start, with Jean Paul reporting suspicious activities to the Convention once every month, and Gilles trying to cover them up.
“But when his daughter-in-law came to town, I was tasked with seeing she followed Dubois’s orders.” The man avoided meeting Jean Paul’s eyes, but his face contorted with jealousy and pettiness. Hardly a surprise, given the man’s sneering animosity toward him and his dealings with the gendarmerie. With an opportunity such as this, to see the local hero come to harm or at least be publically disgraced—the scoundrel had probably volunteered.
“She’d a full fortnight to perform her duties, yet she moved slow from the beginning. I tried to get her to work faster, but she fell ill and took a fancy to you. ’Twas plain to see my…uh, encouragement had little effect.”
An image of Brigitte rose in his mind, sick and scared, and that wretched fever slowly overtaking her as this gendarme forced her to choose between her principles and her children. Why hadn’t he discovered her situation sooner? Why hadn’t he demanded she tell him more of her time in Calais?
“I heard naught from Dubois when she went past the fortnight, but I knew he must grow impatient. So two nights ago, when she missed our rendezvous, I searched out her house and waited. ’Twas obvious she’d found something of import before she’d returned. The woman is a poor liar. But she didn’t want to talk so I did some persuading of my own.” Gilles’s chin rose defiantly.
Did the man feel no shame over terrifying a woman and her younglings? “What did you do?” Jean Paul all but snarled the words.
“He threatened us,” Danielle piped up from where she stood at the end of the bed.
Jean Paul narrowed his eyes until blackness blocked out everything in his vision save Gilles. “How?”
The man swallowed, color draining from his face. “Ah…I…um…” Gilles gripped his hands together and then looked away. “I said I’d hold a knife to the babe’s throat if she didn’t speak.”
“How dare you!” He lunged at the bed.