Love Inspired Historical April 2014 Bundle: The Husband Campaign\The Preacher's Bride Claim\The Soldier's Secrets\Wyoming Promises (59 page)

Chapter Fourteen

J
ean Paul twisted and writhed on his bed, a state of half sleep and half wakefulness hazing his mind. The memories whirled and spiraled, a flowing river that raced across time and space, full of hidden eddies and deep pools, rocks and fallen logs and broken pieces of his life.

He stood again on the streets of Paris, hunkered against a building, his back pressed to the cool stone as he choked down the bit of cheese and bread he'd stuffed into his pocket. His stomach growled at the first taste of food he'd had in over a day, and he ripped a bigger chunk of bread off the loaf before shoving it into his mouth.

The food would hardly sustain him. He'd only the one loaf to last two days, and he'd had to wait in line outside the baker's for three hours before dawn to get it.

He'd thought they'd had little food in Abbeville, but he hadn't known the half of it. People might starve by the dozens in the provinces, but they starved by the droves in Paris. He glanced across the street toward the muddy, churning waters of the Seine, its dirty banks filled with fishermen and washerwomen loitering rather than working. Who had money to buy fish these days? Or pay someone to wash their clothing?

The nobility and clergy. They had funds for such luxuries, but they would never leave their lovely palace and grounds at
Versailles
to enter the crowded, coal-blackened city of Paris. And why should they, when they merely needed to ring a bell and three servants would appear to take away their soiled silk culottes and stockings?

Jean Paul glared down at his own rough linen trousers, stained from the coal he'd delivered to the
Palais-Royal
last night. Silk culottes or linen trousers? The men of all France could be divided into two groups based on what they wore.

He scarfed down another bite of cheese then dragged in a ragged breath, heavy with the scent of coal and fish and muddy waters. The air was another thing no one had warned him about. Abbeville had more clean air than its inhabitants could use, but half the Parisians likely suffered from some foul lung disease after daily breathing this air.

“Charron, there you are.”

Jean Paul turned instinctively at the name, the one to which he'd been answering for five months. He couldn't say what had driven him to use a different surname when first arriving in Paris. Perhaps a desire to forget the cherished days he'd spent with his wife. Perhaps a desire to hide his anger and hatred.

But he'd little need to hide in Paris. People teemed in the streets and poured from the tenements. One got lost in the anonymity of it all, in the endless string of voices and faces and empty stomachs. And everyone was just as angry as he.

“Charron. Has your mind ceased functioning? I've been calling your name for the past block.” Jacques Lavigne, Jean Paul's friend and fellow worker, approached, his hands and clothes smeared with so much coal one couldn't identify the color beneath the grime.

He swallowed another bite of bread—what would likely be his last morsel of food until the morrow. “I was thinking.”

Jacque raised an eyebrow. “About the women at the
Palais-Royal?
”

“About home.”

The smile disappeared. “And why would you think of home when there's much to do in Paris? Come, you're about to miss the speech.”

“What speech?”

“Robespierre's. At the
Palais-Royal.
And have you seen this latest report from
Versailles?
” Jacques shoved a paper in front of him.

Jean Paul took the sheets from that morning's press and scanned the article, his blood burning hotter with each word he read. “She tells us to eat cake?
Cake?
” He crumpled the paper in his fist and stomped it beneath the heel of his shoe. “We have no bread, and our queen wants us to eat cake?”

Jacques grabbed his arm and tugged him down the street. “'Tis more than that. The king has called in soldiers from Flanders and Prussia and ordered them to surround the city. They'll kill us all in our sleep if we don't act.”

“Kill us? Why? Because we haven't cake to eat?” Marie Antoinette should be stripped of her crown for such a statement. Did she think he liked being hungry, liked watching Corinne starve while the rich sat down to feast-laden tables every night?

“'Tis why we must rid France of the monarchy. Now make haste.”

And he did. Jean Paul stuffed the remainder of his bread in his pocket and quickened his steps. A mob of people had indeed gathered at the
Palais-Royal,
and Robespierre stood atop a table in the center of it all, shouting,
“Liberty, equality, fraternity!”

“Liberty, equality, fraternity,” the crowd echoed back. “Liberty, equality, fraternity.”

Jean Paul lent his own voice to the chant.

“And what shall we do about the Swiss Guard?” someone cried above the melee. “How shall we defend ourselves from the soldiers who would steal our liberty?”

“They would cut off our heads in the night before they let us be their equals,” another voice shouted.

“We must act!”

The bodies grew restless and hot around him, fists pumping the air and unintelligible voices ringing out, but the mob was no longer just men. Now women and children surrounded him, and rather than shouting for liberty, they wailed and pleaded. Robespierre no longer stood at the front of the crowd. Instead, a guillotine loomed before the people, set up on its platform for all to see when the glaring blade fell.

“Save him. Save my husband.”

“Citizen, my son is innocent. He doesn't deserve to die.”

A hand landed on his forearm, the feminine fingers slim and gentle.

He need not look to know who the hand belonged to, but he raised his gaze nonetheless. Redness rimmed Brigitte's eyes and tears streaked her cheeks. Her hair fell in dark tangles down her back, and with her free arm, she hoisted Victor on her hip. “Jean Paul. Help us, please.”

“What do you need?” His voice sounded hollow, the empty words reverberating back at him.

She blinked a fresh bead of moisture from her eyes. “You have to stop this.”

Something tugged on his coat, and he looked down to find Serge, tears streaming openly down his smooth cheeks. “They have
Papa.
They have
Papa.
”

“Please save him.”

Jean Paul bolted up from the bed, his chest heaving with images from the nightmare. Brigitte. Serge. Victor. The only Moreau he hadn't seen was Danielle. But then, she was probably off plotting a way to free her father rather than begging him to help.

He pressed a hand to the back of his neck and stared down at his quivering stomach. How had Brigitte's husband died? He'd assumed the man had been a soldier, but what if he hadn't? What if...?

No. His blood pulsed with the denial. Brigitte's late husband, Citizen Moreau, couldn't have been guillotined. Only criminals had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror, only people deserving of death.

Or at least that's what he'd been told. But how many people had been led to the guillotine's wooden platforms for some innocent reason? Some false charge of committing a “crime against liberty?”

Jean Paul threw off the covers and leaped out of bed. He needed fresh air, mouthfuls and mouthfuls of it. He stalked out of the bedchamber and through the house before bursting outside. The gray-tinged light of early dawn surrounded him, and he leaned against the house, sucking in heavy breaths.

How had his life come to this? How had a handful of revolutionary meetings six years ago led to the atrocities he'd committed during the Terror?

He'd hardly known what he was involving himself in when he'd started attending those gatherings. But one assembly had grown into two, and two into three, and eventually he'd lost count.

Somewhere amid all those meetings, the delegates to the Estates-General had announced that France now had a National Assembly. This new Assembly was somehow supposed to represent people like him, make sure bread didn't cost a full day's income and that the common worker wasn't forced to pay exorbitant taxes that the nobility and clergy evaded. But while the delegates to the National Assembly made their elaborate speeches, people still starved and the king continued to move a hired army to surround the city. There had seemed only one option: to fight.

“Jean Paul?” a small voice questioned from the side of the yard. “What are you doing out here?”

He turned to find Brigitte, her forehead drawn into a subtle frown and her eyes dark with concern. The image from his dream flooded back. Her hair matted and tangled, dirt smeared across her face and eyes rimmed with tears as she begged him for her husband's life.

“Your husband.” His voice rang loud and rough in the quiet morning air. “How did he die?”

“I beg your pardon?” She took a step back from him, her eyes darting about in confusion.

She should be confused, should move away. He was, after all, a murderer. “Was your husband a soldier?”

“
Non. Non.
He was a...” Her lips pressed together.

“A what?” He pushed off the side of the house and moved closer, but she took another step back.

“A merchant.”

Dread curled in his stomach. “Did he take ill?”

She ducked her head and stared at the ground.

“The Terror?” he rasped.

The air stilled around them, no faint breeze to rustle along the grass, or birdsong to float through the morning; no crickets to chirp and frogs to gurgle. 'Twas as though nature itself held its breath and waited for Brigitte's reply.

But she didn't speak. She didn't need to. Her head came up slowly, her eyes red and brimming with tears—just like in his dream.

“Non,”
he whispered. He wanted to shout it, bellow it, run into the fields and yell his denial until the word became true. Until the woman before him had her husband brought back. Until her precious children had a father once again.

“I'm sorry,” he offered inanely. As if his trite words could restore her husband to life.

“Why are you apologizing?” She wrapped her arms around herself and stared hollowly up at him. “His death had naught to do with you...did it?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His feet ached to step forward, arms longed to draw her body against his and hold her close. But he couldn't. 'Twas as though some invisible chasm stretched between them. Brigitte was from Calais, had told him so on numerous occasions. And if she was from Calais, if her husband had been there during the Terror...

His throat tightened. How could he answer her question? How could he stand here, meet her eyes and tell her he might well have taken part in her husband's death? But that he would never know for certain, because there'd been too many people, too many deaths, for him to remember them all.

He forced his shoulders into a straight line and stalked off toward the stable.

“Jean Paul?” Brigitte's wavering voice called to his back. “Where are you going?”

He didn't turn and look, couldn't bear the image of her standing there, eyes red and swollen as they discussed the husband he might have killed. “To the fields.”

“What about breakfast?”

“I'm not hungry.”

And after this morn, he doubted he'd be hungry ever again.

* * *

Brigitte stared at Jean Paul's retreating form. It wasn't true. It simply couldn't be. Perchance he was gruff at times, and he could certainly be menacing when he wanted to, but he was all soft mush beneath.

If Jean Paul had been involved with the Terror, why would he return to a town like Abbeville and live the life he now did? It made no sense. He'd just stood before the entire town yesterday and defended an innocent young boy. He could have let Gaston face Citizen Pagett and the mayor on his own. Why expose himself like that if he was some hiding criminal?

Gaston, the townsfolk. Yes, they must be upsetting him, not some involvement with her husband's death. Of course, Citizen Pagett's sharp words yesterday would have bothered him. Who wouldn't be ill-tempered after someone spouted false accusations about him before half the town? She'd ask him about it at the midday meal and they'd set everything to rights.

Because the alternative was too wretched to consider.

Chapter Fifteen

T
he sun dipped behind the trees as Jean Paul trod back to his house, his feet weary and back aching. 'Twas two days in a row he'd worked past supper, and all because of the woman keeping house for him.

A fresh pang of hunger gnawed at his stomach, and he scowled. He'd not worked without sustenance all day because he enjoyed being hungry, but somehow the hunger seemed better than facing her. He only hoped she'd left a plate of food on the table.

He pushed the door open and stepped into the dimly lit chamber.

“Are you unwell?”

His eyes followed the soft voice to where Brigitte stood drying the last of the dishes and placing them on the shelf. Why was she still here? After everything he'd said to her this morn, the way he'd walked out on her before breakfast and tarried in the fields an hour later than yesterday, she should have fled long before now.

Yet she'd waited for him. He ran his eyes down her willowy form, so familiar as she stood in his house, puttering about with homey movements. A warm sensation started in the center of his heart and spread outward.

Something was changing between them, upsetting the precarious balance he'd instituted after his return to Abbeville. In the days and weeks they'd known each other, she'd become more to him than a mere stranger. She'd become someone he trusted; someone he cared for.

Someone he loved?

No. He couldn't love her. He still loved Corinne.

Didn't he?

Of course he did, and he always would. But his heart wasn't full of only Corinne. 'Twas almost as though his heart had expanded and there was room for Brigitte, too.

“I'm glad you returned.” She came forward, her hair falling in wavy strands from beneath her mobcap and pink tingeing her cheeks from warmth of the dying fire. She was so beautiful it hurt to simply look at her. “I was worried.”

“I thought you'd be gone.” They were the only words he managed before he turned for the door, but her slim hand on his arm prevented him from heading out of doors. “I, ah...forgot something in the stable. I might be a while. Mayhap you should go home.”

“I waited for you. After you left this morn, I couldn't...couldn't...” She shrugged and looked about the house. “Please don't leave again. Not without telling me what troubles you.”

What troubled him? The question brought memories of that morn flooding back. What was he doing standing alone with her, soaking in her company, enjoying her presence when he'd likely killed her husband? “'Tis best that I stay away.”

“'Tis not for the best when you starve yourself all day and then try to run the moment you see me.” Her worried brown eyes peered up into his face.

Did they see the horrors from his past? The evil things he'd done in the name of liberty?

“Come and sit.” She tugged on his arm. “Let me at least warm your food.”

No. She saw not the guilt, just his weariness and hunger.

He could well send her off and warm the food himself. But his feet throbbed, and sweat stuck to his back and face. His shoulders ached with the familiar pain of a day spent in the fields, and his head pounded.

What he wouldn't give for the comfort that had invaded him yesterday, when her breath had feathered over his skin and her lips had touched his cheek for the briefest of instants. “Let me wash before I sup.”

A smile curved her lips. “Certainly.”

She moved away, puttering about the table and hearth with comfortable, familiar movements. He tore his gaze from the subtle sway of her skirts and headed toward the washstand in the bedchamber. He scrubbed the sweat from his neck, arms and chest, then pulled on his extra shirt, clean and soft from Brigitte's laundering.

By the time he entered the common chamber, she had a warm plate of chicken, turnips, beans and bread waiting. He sank into his chair and pinned his eyes on the plate before him, lest they accidently drift to Brigitte and he start thinking about...well, things best left unthought.

“You must be famished.” She slid onto the bench across the corner from him.

He was. “You needn't wait for me. Go home and see to your younglings.”

“Danielle's putting them to bed, so I've a few minutes of time yet. I can wash your plate before I dump the water.”

“I can wash my own plate.” His words came out a little too rough, and he stuffed a bite of food into his mouth.

Her forehead drew down until those irresistible little wrinkles appeared in the center of her brow. He tightened his fingers around his fork lest he accidently reach forward and smooth the furrows away.

“Something's still bothering you.” She tilted her head to the side. “Will you tell me?”

Yes. No. He knew not what to say or do with the confounded woman.

Well, that wasn't quite true. He glanced at her lips as she nibbled on a single slice of bread.

He wanted to kiss her. To hold her in his arms and melt his lips into hers until she couldn't breathe, to feel more of the warmth that had crept through him when he'd entered his house and seen her working there, waiting for him. To taste her mouth and discover whether it was sweet or salty, soft or firm, responsive or flat.

He'd bet his mare the kiss wouldn't be flat.

“You've been upset ever since we returned from town yesterday afternoon.” She surveyed him with that puzzled expression on her face. “You didn't like everyone watching you while you helped Gaston.”

He jerked his eyes away from her lips and shoved another bite into his mouth before he forgot why he shouldn't kiss her.

Because he had a reason for not kissing her. Truly he did.

If only he could remember it.

“Jean Paul?” She leaned closer and pressed her slender hand, roughened from work, to his brow.

The calluses felt like silk against his skin.

His gaze fell back to her lips, close enough now for her breath to fan his cheek. He need only lean forward a few centimeters and...

“Non.”
He jerked back.

Brigitte's frown widened. “You're certain you're well?”

He swallowed. He hadn't been saying no to that, but the word still served his purposes. He was as well as a man could possibly be when in the presence of a beautiful woman he could never permit himself to touch—even though his eyes kept drifting to her lips and his mind kept imagining how they would taste.

She rested her elbows on the table and shifted forward, bringing her face close to his yet again.

Torture. The woman was pure, simple torture.

“So if you didn't like everyone in the crowd watching you, why did you barrel into the center of it?”

The crowd? Was she talking about yesterday and Gaston? He couldn't seem to remember much of anything save the way her lips glistened in the light from the hearth. “The boy needed my help, so I helped him.”

Her eyes took on a shining look. The kind of look she'd likely give him right after being kissed.

He cleared his throat and scooted to the side, but that didn't stop her from reaching out to rest her hand on his arm.

If she kept touching him, he couldn't be held responsible for kissing her.

“The world needs more people like you.” Her gently whispered words floated through the cottage.

It was a lie. The world didn't need anyone like him.

But Brigitte's eyes still held that tender look, her hand rested ever so slightly on his arm, and her lips...

Her lips...

He clamped his hand over hers and leaned forward, just a centimeter, a millimeter, nothing more than the width of a hair.

But it was enough. His lips touched hers and nothing mattered but the softness of her mouth against his. The alluring combination of salt and sweet, the warm fever from her lips that spiraled inside him until the kiss echoed through every last crevice of his body.

“Brigitte.” He pulled back. “I can't...”

But he could. And so could she. She left her place on the bench, coming around the corner of the table to curl against his chest. Her lips brushed his cheek and trailed feather-soft kisses along his jaw. He wrapped his arms around her and lost himself in the comfort, in the warmth, in a place with no memories of the past and no horrors in the future. In a place where love erased all burdens and guilt.

He pulled her closer and felt the heat of her breath on his lips, smelled the scents of sunshine and bread in her hair, tasted their sweetness on her skin.

She sighed softly, and her hands stretched up to curl in the hair at the back of his neck.

The back of his neck.

The back of his
neck.

The very place where the guillotine struck its victims.

* * *

Brigitte closed her eyes and melted into Jean Paul's arms. How long since she'd had a kiss like this?

Henri's kisses had always been hard and fast, wanting something of her that she'd struggled to give.

But not Jean Paul's. For a man so large and with such a forbidding scowl, one might expect his kisses to be harsh and forceful. But there was nothing demanding about his mouth on hers. His lips were soft and gentle, timid even. As though he was afraid she would shatter if he kissed her too hard.

But she wouldn't shatter. Not here. Not now. Not with his arms wrapped strong and secure about her back and his soft breath fanning her cheek and neck. She burrowed deeper into his solid chest and stretched her hands up to toy with the hair at the back of his neck...

And then she was on the floor, her bottom landing hard against the packed dirt and her back jarring with the impact. She leaned back on her elbows and blinked up at him.

He no longer sat in his chair but towered above her, his gaze dark while the scar around his eyebrow tightened into a furious knot.

“Go.”
He ground the single word through gritted teeth.

A hot wave of mortification swept through her. Go? He couldn't tell her to go. He'd just taken her in his arms and kissed her as though...as though...as though he loved her.

And then he'd dropped her on the floor.

She scrambled off the ground. “I refuse to leave until you explain yourself.”

“I owe you no explanation. You can either remove yourself on your own, or I'll throw you out.”

She stared into his face, the hard planes and austere lines, the dead, flat look in his eyes. Why was he so angry with her?

“Don't try me, Brigitte. Just leave. Now. And...and...don't come back tomorrow.” His chest heaved as he spewed the words.

She whirled toward the door and ran, barreling into the dim evening light. Her stomach churned as she stumbled across the yard, racing for the first shelter she spotted—the stable. The doors stood shut up tight for the evening, but she shoved the massive handle aside. Near darkness wrapped around her, mingling with rich scents of straw and animal as she rushed past the stalls and flung herself on the pile of hay at the back of the outbuilding.

She'd merely wanted a kiss, the feelings of belonging and rightness that had niggled through her yesterday when she'd kissed his cheek. He'd look so tired and weary, so needy sitting there shoveling food into his mouth. Was it that wrong to kiss him?

Evidently, seeing how he'd thrown her on the floor and told her to get out.

A cry welled in the back of her throat and moisture scalded her eyes. She pressed her hand to her mouth—the mouth Jean Paul had unapologetically claimed just moments ago—and attempted to stem the flood.

To no avail. A sob rose inside her, so deep and powerful neither her hands, her will nor her mind could stop it from bursting free. It tore from her chest in a deep, keening wail, and she buried her face in the hay.

She didn't fight the torrent but rather let it come. She hadn't cried like this when Henri died or when she'd sent her boys off to the navy or even after Alphonse had issued his ultimatum. She wasn't even sure why she wept. Maybe she cried for everything, or nothing, or the parts that hurt the worst. It hardly mattered. In a few moments, she would drag herself up and walk home to her children, where she couldn't cry, couldn't be sad, couldn't even state the reason she'd come to Abbeville.

So she burrowed deeper into the hay and let the tears flow until they dampened the bedding beneath her face. Until her head throbbed and her throat ached and her eyes were so swollen they could barely open. And then she lay there, still and exhausted in the sweet smelling hay.

The mare snorted from somewhere behind her, and a sow pawed at the ground of her stall. Night had nearly descended outside, making the stable almost dark. She rolled onto her back to stare up at the roof above, but her shoulder bumped against something hard. She shifted and frowned, turning toward the object. In the dim light she could barely make out the edge of a box as it poked through the strands of bedding.

She brushed some hay from the lid then sank back on her knees. It wasn't a box, and it certainly wasn't here by some accident or mistake. A trunk sat straight against the back wall of the stable, with a tight lock clasping the lid shut. When she tested the handle, she found it securely locked. She shoved more bedding away until it lay before her in its entirety, large and old and big enough to hold secrets from Jean Paul's past.

She gasped. The meeting with the gendarme. How could she have forgotten? She'd woken with thoughts of it this morn, but when she'd arrived at the house to find Jean Paul so upset, the rendezvous had slipped from her mind.

Even if she left now, she'd not be able to make the meeting.

Not that she wanted to meet the vile man. She was better off never laying eyes on him again.

She swiped a stray tear from her cheek. Perhaps Jean Paul did have secrets, but who was she to delve into them? The man Alphonse had told her to spy on was supposed to be cruel and vicious. A murderer bent on killing. But Jean Paul was nothing of the sort. Alphonse had the wrong person, even if Jean Paul did have suspicious memories of Paris and a body so large and burly the mere sight of it would frighten most sane people.