by L. B. Joramo
“You have a twig in your shirt.” Monsieur Beaumont said, as he gingerly retracted the small dagger of green wood from the arm of my men’s white linen shirt.
Another week passed with the only pause in our conversations during the nights and early mornings. I was dreadfully behind in my farm work, but I didn’t care. I went as far as to ask Jonah to not worry too. I’d told him it was spring, and we should enjoy the fine weather for once. I also had mentioned something about the birds singing their praise for the glorious earth, and he’d stared at me as if I’d spoken Armenian. He asked if I felt well, but I’d had to meet with Monsieur Beaumont, so I gave him some ridiculous excuse and ran away.
As Monsieur Beaumont worked the tiny piece of wood out of my shirt, we sat very close to each other, as if it was still raining. But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The bright azure heavens only poured surplus sunbeams, making my skin feel at once luscious yet prickly like I had a slight fever. We sat with our backs against the walnut tree, sagging in our posture as if we were losing our strength. Perhaps we were.
The tiny branch was not getting undone, which made Monsieur Beaumont’s face purse in frustration. He seemed especially careful not to touch me.
While he worked on my shirt he asked, “Mathew has told me you play the pianoforte. Yes?”
His words were wrapped tighter in his French accent. I noticed how when he was excited or nervous, his accent was stronger. If I didn’t already know French, I would have been lost to much of what he was saying.
“Aye. I do play the pianoforte. It was a rather expensive gift from my father when I was but a child and my sister was only a toddler. My sister, now, has an angelic singing voice. And I try to accompany it.” I watched as his fingers smoothed the white linen where a small hole appeared after he’d removed the branch. With the tiny piece of wood still in his palm, he released my shirt on a heavy breath.
He smiled at the place where his fingers had worked on my shirt. “I can imagine your family all playing music together, laughing together. I like you—your family very much. I haven’t had much occasion to be in the company of such friendly and warm people in so long.”
He sounded forlorn, as if really it had been a thousand years. “How long?”
He sighed. “Ah, at least fifty years.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Are you ever going to stop jesting that you are some ancient relic?”
His eyes brightened. “Relic? Hmm . . .” But he shook his head and returned to the earlier subject. “You said your sister sings, but do you not, Miss Buccleuch?”
“I sing horribly, Monsieur Beaumont. And you?”
He laughed. “I sing horribly as well, but also play the pianoforte. Perhaps horribly at that too. I was wondering . . .” He paused and perused where the twig had been in my shirt again. I noticed he still had the bark in the palm of his hand, and was fingering it. “. . . wondering if I might take your family to the opera in Boston. You know Mathew is going there for some convention of some kind, and I was merely escorting him, but I thought why not invite you and your family too? Do you like the opera?”
“Mathew isn’t going for some convention. Maybe he’s told you that, but really, he’s going so he can drink at all the taverns his distant relatives establish, so he can talk about the upcoming congress meeting in Concord in just a few days. Er, forgive me, the Committee of Safety meeting.”
“You know about the secret meeting?”
I laughed. “It’s no secret. I’m sure even General Gage knows of its whereabouts. What we New Englanders are most proud of, we cannot hold our tongues in check of.”
Monsieur Beaumont’s smile wavered. “Is there no confidence? Confidentiality?”
I shrugged. “I keep secrets for the people I love or anyone I suppose, if they just ask.”
“Does anyone keep your secrets safe?”
I didn’t respond.
I’d never had a secret—until now. He, Monsieur Beaumont, was my secret.
I was very skilled at ignoring my emotions, but I didn’t view that as clandestine. It was the only thing that could keep me waking so early in the morning to fasten the reins on Bess and plow and sow and work so hard until my fingers would bleed. The only desire I had until I met Monsieur Beaumont was to provide for my sister and mother. To hell with blisters and bleeding and tiredness, if it gave to my family.
But now my emotions were acting like vehemently angry children, yelling at me all the time about how I longed to touch Monsieur Beaumont—his black whiskers around his mouth and jaw line. Would it prickle like sandpaper? Or was his day’s length beard soft? And, oh, the glossy black fan of his eyelashes, surrounding his dark, dark blue eyes . . . Could I just feather my fingers against those onyx lashes?
I fantasized about Monsieur Beaumont when I wasn’t with him, which anymore wasn’t very long. I ached to be closer to him when I was in his presence. My body hummed a constant hymn for him, my heart opened long locked doors for him, my head—oh, it was my undoing.
I hated myself for my traitorous feelings, but surely I could purge my affections. Although my father was Quaker, my mother came from Puritanical stock. The belief that one could cleanse oneself from desires, from wanting, from the body’s own needs was simplistic, but lovely. I could do that. I had to. This infatuation—yes, I knew I was utterly smitten with the man, the proof was extraordinary!—was silly and frivolous, and I was certain in time I could stop my heart’s disloyal pining.
It didn’t help though when Monsieur Beaumont took my hand in his, like he was that very minute. Ach, my idiotic heart.
He offered, “I will be your confidant, if you’d like.”
“I’d like that . . . very much. I could be yours, if you’d like. Your confidante, I mean.”
“Oui?”
I nodded.
He smiled then let it fade as he retracted his hand from mine. The phantom of his hand still around mine played with my mind and body in a cruel way and was enough for me to collapse.
“You first, tell me a secret of yours.” He mischievously arched a black brow while he gave me a tiny smile.
Oh dear, that had been a half-cocked idea of mine. I only had one secret, except—
“Hannah—Hannah’s been courting a redcoat,” I confessed. “I know she’s already quite enamored with this young officer, but, now this is the secret, there’s something off, regarding their courting. I’ve never told my mother or Mathew, especially not Hannah. But I believe Hannah’s lieutenant is . . . not quite honest with her. You see, Hannah’s lieutenant has never called on my sister, never stepped foot on our farm. I think it rather disrespectful of him. Hannah has told me that he has to do drills almost every day, but surely he can come during Sabbath to meet Hannah’s family, don’t you think?”
“You have never met this man of Hannah’s?”
I shook my head and looked down at the brown soil carpeted with pine needles and brown lacey leaves. “I’m frightened he might be of the wrong ilk for my sister. What if he’s using her for some selfish game? I have no grounds to merit my fears, but I have them all the same.”
Monsieur Beaumont took my hand in his again, this time holding it tighter than before. “What is the name of this officer?”
“Lieutenant Mark Kimball.”
“I will find him and discover just what kind of man he is. I will obtain all the details you seek.”
I blinked a few times, letting what he had just divulged sink in.
“You are a spy?” Although it was a question, I made it sound more like a statement.
Monsieur Beaumont nodded and smiled brightly. “You are so clever. You have discovered one of my secrets. Does that mean I need to tell you another, to balance our confidence in each other?”
“How can you make light of such a thing? You’re a spy!”
“I am not making light of this, as you say. Mathew does not even know what I am. If you told one person what I am, then I would hang in the gallows faster than you could
say—”
“Never! I would never tell a soul.”
At that moment I gripped onto his other hand furiously, seeking for him to know undoubtedly he could trust me. The sensation of his callused hands against mine was enough to make me stop breathing.
His voice was very low. “I thank you for that. I would hate for my neck to be stretched to an ungodly length. ”
“How can you jest so much?”
“If I do not, I fear, I would be weeping, which then might lead you to question my masculinity.”
“Men can cry. In fact, I find that I quite admire a man who can cry.”
He pretended to boohoo, which got him a smack on his shoulder. He caught my hand that had jabbed at him, while he grinned at me—both my hands in his again. His smile slowly diminished. He seemed to hold his breath.
As much as I loved his touch, I was deeply curious. “How do you do what you do? How do you spy? Are you more a spy for your country or my colony?”
He shrugged. “Most often I have informants who love divulging their state’s secrets to me. I give the intelligence to my government. I usually break people’s confidentiality.” He stared out into the space through the forest’s trees. His face turned distant, cold. He morphed into a statue of himself, no longer the warm man I now knew so well. “Sometimes, I am a fly on the wall. I find ways of entering important meetings—no one sees me, and I extract all that I hear.
“At the moment my country is aligning itself to be a source of power and money for your colony, all the American colonies to be precise; therefore, one might incur that I am a spy for both my country and your colony.”
He glanced back at me. Then looked again. His eyes sparked with a blue, blue fire. The stone visage he wore cracked and dismantled completely as he took in two sharp breaths. “I know I don’t deserve it, being the kind of man I am. But now you know almost everything there is to me. And you promised me . . . more than I have given to others. But I will never tell another soul your confession regarding your sister’s officer. I will find all I can on the man. I promise. I will give to you . . . what you give to me.” He cleared his throat. Still, his voice was quiet when he asked, “Now that we are confidants, may I call you Violet when we are in private?”
I couldn’t answer immediately. My heart had stopped and restarted a million times over as he’d spoken. Just as his dark eyebrows furrowed I could finally spit out, “Yes . . . oui.” I bit my bottom lip while he smiled at my use of his language.
He softly chuckled and caught a stray strand of my black hair out of my eyes. He smoothed it behind my ear, then skimmed my earlobe delicately. No, that had to have been my imagination. All of it had to be my mind running wild, except, of course, for my now thunderously racing heart, trembling body, and skin so tight I wondered if would burst off me.
His jaw twitched with fast movement, as if kicking at a thought. His pine and leather scent waved into me.
“I have something more I need to confess to you,” I whispered.
His nose flared and he slowly nodded.
I swallowed. “I—I—I don’t know which name you would prefer to be called. You have so many—André Marie Jean Jacque.”
He blinked, swayed, then began to laugh. “Jacque, you may call me Jacque.”
“Jacque, it is then.”
His smile disappeared, but he said animatedly, “I like how you say my name, like Jack.”
I looked down at our joined hands. Surely that was a dream. It felt too wonderful to be anything real.
When I looked back up at him, his eyes were so lucid, yet still such a dark blue, I did wonder about my sanity. His breath was rapid, and his eyes kept bouncing down to my lips. Yes, I was merely dreaming. I had to be!
“Yes,” I said breathlessly.
His black brows drew down in confusion.
“Yes,” I continued, “I, er, my family and I would love to go to the opera with you.”
He laughed and withdrew his hands from mine, and I’d never felt so cold in all my life.
Chapter Five: Detours