by Regina Scott
Gilles rolled to his side, well anticipating the move, and shifting just enough to avoid being caught. “Have you a wish to hear the rest or not?”
“If you think you’ve a choice, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough when I made my own threat,” Jean Paul spat.
“’Tis not what you think. She pleaded for you, anyway, the heartsick fool,” the gendarme grumbled, jumping off the other end of the bed, putting a good meter between them.
“She what?”
“She said she found a hidden National Guard uniform, but she argued the uniform meant nothing, that many a man had worn such a coat and it didn’t make them murderers.” Gilles’s sullen words were little more than a whisper in the quiet barracks. “I insisted she meet me yesterday’s eve with the uniform, anyway. But Dubois’s men arrived.”
She’d pleaded for him? Had defended him to this vile man? If so, then he’d played a bigger role in Brigitte’s deceit than he thought. If she’d found his trunk two nights ago, ’twould have been right after the kiss he’d ended so brutally. Right after he told her to leave and not return. He’d watched her run into the stable then. Was that when she’d found his trunk?
It must have been. And after Gilles gave her an ultimatum between producing evidence or seeing harm done to her children, she’d still pleaded on his behalf.
How had the woman survived this endeavor? How had she managed to walk the line between protecting her children and not betraying him? When he’d found her with the journal last night, he’d assumed the worst. But he’d been wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. She’d faced impossible circumstances and still found a way to protect both her children and himself.
But she’d needed protecting, as well, and he’d failed her.
Jean Paul met Gilles’s eyes over the top of the bed. “Gather your things. I won’t turn you in to the magistrate, but only if you come with me to Calais. You’ll help undo this wrong.”
The gendarme laughed, a harsh, hollow sound. “’Twill do you no good, save getting you killed sooner. I’ve never been to Calais, nor know I where Dubois stays. My father was indebted to him, and Dubois’s men approached me after he passed. ’Tis that obligation I seek to work off.”
“All the more reason for you to come and see that Dubois’s smuggling ring is stopped.”
“You suggest the impossible. Dubois’s strength is vast.”
Mayhap he underestimated Alphonse Dubois’s strength, but he understood right and wrong, justice and injustice. The smuggler needed to be thwarted, and Jean Paul didn’t plan to stop until one of them lay cold in a grave—hopefully after Brigitte and her children were free.
“I have a means of fighting back.” Indeed, his letter from Fouché gave him such capabilities, though he wasn’t about to proclaim his relationship with Paris to a filthy criminal like Gilles.
Gilles smirked, his overlarge nose tilting arrogantly in the air. “You understand little. You’ll have to take the force into Calais with you. No one in that town will side against the one who employs nearly all the men to one extent or another. And even if you can muster the men to fight, you still know not where to find Dubois.”
“I know.” A quiet voice echoed into the otherwise silent room.
Jean Paul turned toward Danielle.
She took a step forward, her chin jutting in that familiar, determined angle so similar to her mother. “I know where Grand-père stays, and I’ll help you get him.”
*
Dark. Everything was dark. And bumpy. Something jolted her, sending her already throbbing head to crash against a hard surface.
Brigitte blinked her eyes open and groaned, though neither action did much good. Her mouth didn’t work quite right, and a blurry darkness still surrounded her.
Water. She needed a whole liter of it, and a soft bed, not this hard, jostling…
The surface on which she lay listed to the right, and she rolled.
“Whoa there,” an unfamiliar masculine voice called out.
“Watch that rut.”
“Don’t tell me how to handle a wagon.”
A wagon. That certainly explained the movement, and the hard surface beneath her side. She moved to push herself up, but her hands didn’t work, either. They were stuck behind her back and…and… She gave another tug on her arms, and a biting sensation pinched the skin around her wrists.
They were tied.
She attempted to move her feet, but stiff bands of rope dug into her ankles. She moved her lips to call out, only to find a thick cloth on her tongue and a pinching sensation at the corners of her mouth. She’d been gagged, as well.
No wonder her mouth hadn’t seemed to work right. But why was she bound and gagged and lying in the back of a wagon? And why had it taken her so long to figure out she was tied?
An unbidden tear slipped down her cheek. What was wrong with her? How did she get here, and why did her head ache? She fought back through her memories for an answer, but a thick, murky fog shrouded her mind. Something important had happened yesterday. What was it?
She drew her forehead down and stared into the darkness. It shouldn’t be so hard to remember. There was something important… Something… Danielle! She’d run off and Brigitte had spent the entire night searching with…
The children.
She craned her head around and peered into the darkness. Were they in the back of the wagon with her? She blinked, but the black only turned more blurry with the action. Non. They couldn’t be with her. They wouldn’t be so quiet…
Unless they slept. Or were also gagged.
And she had no way of finding out unless she crept along the wagon bed. Using her shoulder to slide forward and her feet to push, she inched along the wooden planks like a slug. Heat stained her cheeks and more tears crept into her eyes, but she slid forward despite her humiliating position. Her children were more important than being forced to crawl like a bug.
She bumped into a soft, warm body. A small one. Victor. Was he well? She listened through the creaking of the wagon and grinding of the wheels against the road until his shallow breaths resonated in her ears. If one child was here and well, then the others must be also.
Or so she hoped.
She crept on. Just behind Victor, she nudged into Serge’s still, breathing form, but not Danielle’s.
Danielle, being the largest, should be the easiest to find. Where could she be?
Brigitte inched her way to the back of the wagon, then rolled and started her search again. Panic burned hotter and brighter with each moment. She passed by Victor and Serge once more, their little bodies unmistakable, but she reached the front of the wagon without any sign of her daughter.
Where was Danielle? Had she somehow escaped, or had the men who’d captured the rest of them done something terrible to her daughter? She tried to move her tongue around the gag, tried to force sound from her mouth and words from her lips, but only a loud groan emerged.
The wagon slowed and the canvas fell back to reveal a dark form towering above her. “She’s awake. Douse the cloth.”
Brigitte scooted herself up higher. “My daughter.”
Or at least, she tried to say my daughter, but one sound was indistinguishable from the other with the gag constricting her speech. Though it did not stop her from trying again. “Where is she?”
“Stop moaning, wench. You’ll wake the countryside.”
A damp cloth pressed against her nose and mouth.
She inhaled the sickeningly sweet smell and nearly gagged, then the edges of her vision faded and her world went dark again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The cold woke her, harsh and biting. Brigitte blinked and raised her head from the hard floor to look slowly about the bleak stone room.
Alone, with no sign of her children.
Her body shook with a bone-jarring shiver, and her head pounded as relentlessly as the nearby surf. But despite her brain’s sluggish churnings, she knew she could only be one place.
Calais, and n
ot in the warehouse, but in Alphonse’s castle.
She pushed up until she sat against the wall, her head pounding fiercer with each movement, then she wrapped her arms about herself and rubbed. The warmth lasted naught more than a moment, and as soon as her hands stilled, the frigid dampness crept back.
She swallowed and her throat burned from dryness—which shouldn’t be possible given how cold the rest of her body was. The small, high slat of a window near the ceiling let in the only light, and the corners of the room remained shrouded in shadow.
She should rise and bang on the thick wooden door, or at least call for someone. But the incessant throbbing in her head barely allowed her to sit, let alone stand, without throwing her stomach into turmoil, and her throat felt too swollen to speak. She narrowed her eyes at the open slit in the door. Alphonse would know she was awake, anyway. The guards had likely informed him the instant she began to stir.
So she waited. Head throbbing, throat aching, stomach churning. She huddled against the wall as a fresh bout of shivers racked her body. If only the guards had left a blanket, or a mug of water. A little straw tick on which she could lie. But even those bare comforts had been denied.
Alphonse must be angry indeed. He’d relish that he stood above her when he deigned to visit, as powerful and immortal as ever, while she huddled at his feet. What other tortures would she suffer at his hands? ’Twas only the beginning, this bare cell.
The door banged open, and she sucked in a breath.
But Alphonse’s sharp voice didn’t resonate through the room. A younger, softer one did. “Mère.”
She jerked her head up. “Julien?”
“What have they done to you?” He surged across the room and sank to his knees beside her.
She shook her head—a mistake. It spun so badly she clamped down the urge to retch.
“Put your head between your knees, like this.” Julien cupped a hand to the back of her neck and guided it down. “Slow, deep breaths. That’s it. ’Tis from the drugs, whatever they gave you.”
Tears blurred her eyes as she worked to steady her breathing and calm her sick head and stomach. Her son was here, beside her after over a year of absence. How she’d missed the familiar blue eyes, so similar to Henri’s and Danielle’s. How she’d longed for the quiet comfort of his presence, the quizzical looks he gave her when unsure of something, the silent responsibility he’d taken upon his shoulders whenever his father was gone.
“I’ll have words with Grand-père over this.” His hand stroked through her matted hair. “He ought not treat you such.”
“He ought not treat many people as he does. Yet no one stops him.”
“Hush.” He bent his head close enough to whisper. “A guard stands just outside the door. He’ll surely repeat such words to Grand-père should he overhear us.”
“Why are you here?” She stared into his young face, the proud nose and high cheekbones, the disheveled hair a few shades darker than her own auburn tresses. His skin was tan now, doubtless resulting from the year spent at sea, and his body was stronger, broader of shoulder and thicker of chest. Yet he still carried the air of youth about him, that fragile demeanor of hope that life slowly stole from the young. “I didn’t want you in Calais.”
Because Julien’s presence here could only mean one thing: Alphonse intended to train her son as his successor.
“Grand-père sent men for me when my frigate docked. I hadn’t much choice in returning, only in how I went.”
“But I wanted… Julien, you have to promise…” A fresh bout of tears welled in her already swollen throat. She gripped his hand. “You must—”
“A family reunion. How lovely.” Alphonse stood in the doorway, as pale and gray as death itself, his body thin as a walking corpse. “Julien, I never gave you permission to be here. François will be punished for letting you in.”
“Non. François will not be punished.” Julien rose from his hunched position and met Alphonse’s gaze. He was taller than his grandfather now, his new muscles painfully obvious beside Alphonse’s weak body. “François well understands the precarious state of your health. He’ll be working for me in a matter of months, and he wishes to retain his position after you leave us. You see, Grand-père, you can drag me from my post in the navy and name me as your heir, but not without consequences.”
Brigitte drew in a ragged breath. So Alphonse had indeed brought Julien back here to take his place.
“Leave us.” Alphonse barked at her son, his voice loud and thin.
“Non.” Julien drew himself taller, a muscle working back and forth in his jaw. “She’s my mother. I’ll see her whenever I wish, and I’ll not ask your permission. Anything you have to say to her can be said in front of me.”
Alphonse’s eyes turned as cold as ice-encrusted iron, but he held his tongue, his gaze locked in a silent battle with Julien.
Hope unfurled in her belly. She’d always assumed that if Julien or Laurent took over the smuggling enterprise, they’d be like their father, sucked in by greed, hardened to cruelty and fully subservient to Alphonse’s will. But what if Julien was strong enough to break the cycle? What if the ages-old lures of power and wealth didn’t sway her son? Maybe, just maybe, she’d raised a child with principles enough to defy Alphonse.
“Do you need water, Mère? Or food?” Though Julien spoke to her, he didn’t take his eyes from Alphonse. “It seems Grand-père has been remiss in offering hospitality.”
Alphonse darted a look her direction, and a cruel gleam flickered in his eyes. “Non. Traveling doesn’t agree with you, mon petit chou.”
His little owl. If he called her that again, she might well retch on his shoes. “Because you drugged me.”
“If you cooperate better next time, I’ll not have need to drug you.”
“There should have never been a first time, and there certainly won’t be a next time.” Of that she was positive. She would never again use deceit to betray an honorable person like Jean Paul.
“Enough of this foolishness,” Alphonse snapped. “Where’s your daughter?”
Her heart quickened inside her chest and she cast a glance about the bare stone room. “She’s not here?”
“Don’t play me for a fool.” Alphonse’s boots echoed against the floor as he approached.
“I’m not. I’d assumed…” The flicker of a memory haunted the corners of her mind, her hands and feet bound as she inched along a wagon bed in the dark and searched for Danielle. She glanced down at her wrists, bruised and chafed from a rope. Had Alphonse’s men bound her after they drugged her? They must have, and at some point she’d woken and realized Danielle was missing.
“If she’s gone, I know naught of it.”
A foul word flew from Alphonse’s mouth.
Brigitte swallowed despite her painfully dry throat. If Alphonse and his men didn’t have Danielle, was she safe? Had she gone for help or done something to warn others about Alphonse?
But then, where could Danielle have gone except to Jean Paul? And he wanted naught to do with her now. Besides, Danielle’s disappearance didn’t mean she was unharmed. Some other ill could have easily befallen her, and Alphonse doubtless had men out combing the countryside for her even now.
“Enough questions.” Julien squatted down and wrapped a solid arm around Brigitte’s shoulder. “Mère needs to go upstairs where she can sup and bathe and rest.”
“Your mother stays here.”
Julien’s body tensed, muscles coiling tightly like a wolf about to pounce. “She’ll not be treated like some criminal, locked in your prison and deprived of sustenance.”
Something dark and cruel flickered in Alphonse’s eyes.
“Just go,” she whispered. “I’ll fare fine.”
His arm tightened around her shoulders. “Non.”
Alphonse cocked his head to the side, his thoughts obviously spinning, though she couldn’t begin to guess what dastardly thing he’d settle on. “Very well. She can come upstairs, but onl
y if she swears not to attempt escape.”
“I swear it.” She wasn’t a fool. Escape would be futile with how well guarded Alphonse kept his lair. And no one in Calais would shelter her against his will.
But her father-in-law had something planned—the look in his eye gave him away. Though Julien had defended her for now, Alphonse was hardly finished. The next time they spoke, Julien wouldn’t be interfering.
*
“I need men. Fast.” Jean Paul slammed the letter down.
Captain Archambault, the commanding officer at Guînes’s gendarmerie post, uncrossed his legs and leaned over the desk, frowning as he surveyed the letter. “This is from the Convention in Paris.”
Jean Paul attempted not to grit his teeth. Did the man have to waste time with obvious statements? Brigitte had been gone four days. Four! ’Twas enough to drive a man crazy with grief and worry.
Hopefully Brigitte’s journey from Abbeville had been slow. Hopefully the brutes who’d carried her and the children in the old fruit wagon Danielle had described had taken a wrong turn and ended up lost. Hopefully something, anything, had happened to keep Brigitte away from Alphonse Dubois for a few hours longer.
“Why, exactly, do you need my men?” The captain leaned back in his chair and tapped the ends of his fingers together. Slowly. Far too slowly.
“Convention business.” It wasn’t a lie. Not that the Convention had envisioned his current situation when he’d agreed to write monthly reports last fall. The missive had merely been a precaution in case he ever needed assistance, though capturing a notorious smuggler was surely need enough to justify the use of soldiers.
“Last time the Convention sent men to our town, it ended in a bloody massacre at the guillotine.”
Jean Paul coughed and reached up to tug at his collar. Must the man speak of the Terror?
The captain furrowed his brow and studied him. “Paris is a long way off. If I refused to lend you men, ’twould be weeks before the Convention found out. Provided this letter isn’t a forgery.”
Brigitte slipped farther into Dubois’s clutches with each second he lingered in Captain Archambault’s office, and the man wanted to thwart him? He could hardly face a smuggler as powerful as Alphonse Dubois with merely himself, a wayward gendarme and a thirteen-year-old girl.