Love Inspired Historical April 2014 Bundle: The Husband Campaign\The Preacher's Bride Claim\The Soldier's Secrets\Wyoming Promises (58 page)

The crowd erupted with cheers and shouts.

“You've no right to speak ill of Citizen Belanger.”

“
Oui.
See if we visit your shop again, Citizen Pagett.”

“He's brought us food and money before. Are you going to accuse me of stealing, too?”

Brigitte slunk back amid the people as the cries continued. She now knew what Alponse's man had meant when he'd said a person couldn't simply kill Jean Paul. Too many people liked him. Too many people paid attention to his deeds. The haggard widow had only questioned whether he was trustworthy and people were threatening to protest her business. But if Jean Paul was found murdered in his bed one morn, this crowd would likely form a mob of vigilantes.

She glanced around the intent faces riveted to every word Jean Paul spoke. What would these people do to her if they knew the reason she was in Abbeville? Why she'd been so adamant about working for Jean Paul? Or about the proof she had to provide by tomorrow night? The air grew hot and thick around her, the press of bodies stifling and intolerable. She had to get away. Now.

* * *

“That's enough.”
The words rasped against Jean Paul's throat. He shifted away from a group of women at the front of the crowd, only to find a man standing close behind him. Sweat beaded on the back of his neck, a drop trailing down between his shoulder blades.

These people didn't understand. They looked at him with awe-filled eyes and hailed him as some gift from the Heavenly Father, when his past rivaled that of the vilest murderer. “I don't do more than anyone else. If I see a need, I fill it, that's all.”

Citizen Pagett harrumphed, her wrinkled, aging arms still crossed about her chest. “Maybe I don't believe you were in Paris making furniture all those years you were gone. Maybe I think you were up to something else. Furniture doesn't make a man enough money to come back home and buy up all the land you did. Furniture doesn't give a man with a strong back enough coin to pay little urchins like Gaston a
livre
for work you could do yourself.”

Something thick rose in his throat. So Citizen Pagett suspected his lie. He shouldn't be surprised. The flimsy tales of making furniture during the
Révolution
had held up too long as it was.

He glanced about the crowd of people, all so happy to see him come to Gaston's defense. What would the townsfolk say if they knew the truth? What would they
do?
He deserved to be in a prison cell more than anyone else in this town. Oh, the Convention in Paris might look at his past actions as legal, as helping to maintain order during a turbulent time. But he knew the truth, and so did God.

He didn't deserve to be alive after the crimes he'd committed.

“That's quite enough.” The mayor waddled between him and Citizen Pagett, coming to his defense.

Always coming to his defense.

He'd done no more than any other man would have when he'd heard the screams of women and raced into the chateau after returning to Abbeville last year. Had given no thought to the importance of the women he'd saved. He'd have done the same for any street girl.

But those women hadn't turned out to be street girls. They were the mayor's relatives, and for the past year, he could do no wrong in the mayor's eyes. Then when he'd let land to Pierre and taken that first load of vegetables to Widow Arnaud, the entire town had hailed him as a hero.

A killer turned hero.

His gut twisted, but he shoved away the sickening sensation and surveyed the faces surrounding him. Some old, some young, nearly all familiar and—with the exception of Widow Pagett—every last one elated with his actions. Then his gaze rested not on a face, but on a back. Brigitte Moreau need not turn for him to recognize her. He knew her by the subtle sway of her hips as she walked, by the tresses of auburn hair dangling from her cap to tickle the back of her neck. She headed toward the wagon behind the crowd, her arms wrapped around herself and her shoulders hunched.

What did she think of this spectacle? Of him?

And why did her thoughts matter? Because of the kiss she'd given him naught but an hour ago?

The feel of her soft lips against his cheek still lingered in his mind.

“Au revoir,”
he whispered to Gaston and then started through the crowd. He had to get away from these people, away from the hero worship and looks of adoration. And Brigitte gave him the perfect excuse.

If only she didn't intend to leave for Reims once she earned more money. Then he'd be alone again, bereft of her bright eyes and happy smile in the morn, bereft of children's laughter echoing through the yard.

But then, he deserved a life of loneliness after the horrors he'd committed.

Chapter Thirteen

J
ean Paul wiped the sweat from the back of his neck and opened the door to his house. His muscles ached, his head throbbed and his throat felt parched as a dry and crumbling well. A wall of heat hit him as he stepped inside, the warmth from the fire making the two-room dwelling nearly unbearable, but with the heat came the scents of fresh-baked bread and chicken.

He inhaled slowly, drawing the homey aromas deep into his lungs. He'd made bread and soup and fowl aplenty since he'd returned to Abbeville. But nothing he'd cooked—or that his mother had prepared before she'd passed—had smelled quite so good.

Why had he not hastened from the fields earlier? He well knew that no amount of back-straining work could rid his heart of the memories that plagued him, or he'd have worked the guilt off seven times over by now.

The children gathered around the table, Danielle and Serge talking quietly while Victor grinned and babbled. And there at the foot of the table stood Brigitte. Though her back was strong and proud as it had been that afternoon when she'd come to Gaston's defense, she had a quiet grace about her. A soft efficiency that made her beautiful even while she did something so mundane as slicing bread.

Is this what he might have had if Corinne had lived? The sight of his own family awaiting him every evening? His own wife busy about the kitchen?

“Can I have another,
Maman?
” Serge nudged his plate nearer Brigitte and the bread.

Jean Paul moved farther inside and closed the door.

Brigitte's eyes came up to meet his, her lips spreading into a soft smile. “You're here. When you didn't come inside after we returned from town, I thought...” Cheeks suddenly pink, she hurried to the hearth where she'd set a plate of chicken and turnips. “We'd have waited, but I assumed you meant to work through supper.”

“Don't worry yourself. Just let me wash first.” He headed to the bedchamber, where he gave himself a quick scrub in the washbasin before heading back into the outer room. His plate sat in its usual spot at the head of the table, and he slid into his chair, the mere action of sitting making his muscles ache all the more for the weeding and hoeing and harvesting he'd put them through that afternoon.

Brigitte put a second slice of bread on his plate, then sank onto the bench in front of her own half eaten food. “Danielle, clear the table once you finish, please. After that, go back to your studies. We've yet to look at that question from your English lesson.”

He stared at Brigitte's lips as she spoke, the same lips that had touched his cheek that afternoon. So soft. So warm. So sweet. Evidently the hard labor had done little to drive such thoughts from his mind. What might happen if she sent the children on their way a bit early tonight and they spent some time—

“I'd rather not.” Danielle speared a turnip with her fork.

Heat stained the back of his neck. What was he thinking? Brigitte had duties to see to, children to tend and little business kissing him again.

“The English or the table?” he asked Danielle, if for no other reason than to clear his mind of Brigitte's lips.

Which were busy chewing at the moment.

Not that he'd noticed.

Because he certainly wasn't staring at them again.

“The English,” Danielle muttered around her bite of turnip. “The table will take but a few moments.”

“Ah.” He drew his gaze up from Brigitte's mouth and forced himself to meet her eyes. Unfortunately her eyes weren't much easier to look at, as soft and warm as her lips. The memory of their dazed gleam after the kiss crept into his mind. Of course, she'd pulled away a moment later and then refused to look at him for the rest of the ride to the gendarmerie post. He shoved some food into his mouth. “English is a rather ambitious subject for you to take on with your daughter, think you not?”

“She doesn't think anything's too ambitious.” Danielle stood from the table and dumped her plate into the washbasin. “That's what happens when your mother used to be a governess.”

Brigitte raised one of her eyebrows and gave Danielle a frosty glare. “Do not try me, daughter.”

“A governess?” A new image of the woman stole across his mind, one of Brigitte standing beside a globe, spectacles perched on her nose as she lectured her charges on geography. “I'd never have guessed it.”

“
Oui.
In Reims, before I met my husband and moved to Calais. For a time, my twins and Danielle attended the church school in Calais, but once the
Révolution
started and the schools closed, I brought out my old lesson books.”

“Your former profession has proved rather useful then.” He ate another forkful of juicy chicken.

“More like a means of torture,” Danielle retorted.

Brigitte shot her daughter another quelling gaze. The girl looked away and scooped up Victor, wiping the breadcrumbs from his mouth.

“What's torture?” Serge asked, his mouth stuffed with food.

“English.” Danielle shifted the babe on her hip. “I—”

“Enough,” Brigitte snapped. Danielle's mouth clamped together, and Brigitte rubbed her temples before turning back toward him. “Sometimes it feels as though I've lived two separate lives. One as a child in Reims and another as an adult in Calais.”

As had he, except his life didn't divide into time spent in two cities, but rather into time spent as a farmer and time spent submerged in darker activities. “Childhood and adulthood oft separate themselves on their own. One doesn't need a move to accomplish it.”

At least he hadn't. His childhood dreams had come crashing down the day Corinne took sick.

“Have you lived here your whole life, then?” Brigitte picked up a slice of bread and spread a smear of butter on it. “In the crowd today, I thought I heard mention of you leaving Abbeville for a time.”

Had she heard such a thing? He well remembered Citizen Pagett's voice ringing accusations in front of the town.
Maybe I don't believe you were in Paris making furniture all those years you were gone. Maybe I think you were up to something else.

The mouthful of bread he'd been chewing stuck in his throat.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.” Brigitte laid a hand over his for the briefest of instants before sliding it away. “I simply thought to make conversation.”

He gulped in a breath and slid his chair back from the table, no longer hungry despite only finishing half his plate. Innocent questions, that's all. She'd spoken of her past and now asked of his, all part of the normal give and take in a conversation.

Or maybe not. Had Citizen Pagett's accusations from earlier aroused Brigitte's suspicions, as well? Or mayhap she'd never heard Citizen Pagett's words but the murmurings of another townsperson. At what point had she left the crowd and returned to the wagon? She'd stepped into the clearing and defended him, but he hadn't noticed her again until she was nearly to the conveyance. Regardless of when she'd left, something about her trip into town had given her questions about his past.

Questions he dare not answer.

Then again, how could he lie when she asked him so directly? All the town already knew he'd left Abbeville after Corinne's death.

“Oui.”
His vocal cords ground against each other with the simple word. “I've spent time elsewhere, six years in Paris.”

“Paris?” Danielle's eyes lit up, and she moved Victor's plate to the washtub while carrying the babe on her hip. “What was it like? I've never been.”

“Dirty and crowded.” Teeming with starving mobs that hated the aristocracy, and an aristocracy that ignored the masses and their needs.

“
Maman
had a book with paintings of Paris, but we left it in Calais. Did you see the
Cathédrale Notre Dame?
”

“Oui.”
As it was being sacked. He stuck a finger into his collar and tugged.

“And the
Palais-Royal?
”

“It's called the
Palais de l'égalité
now,” he snapped a bit too quickly, then clamped his mouth shut.

Brigitte stilled, her fork clattering against her plate. “The revolutionaries renamed it?”

“Ah...” Indeed they had. France could hardly call such a famous Parisian landmark by the name
royal
now that the country was a republic controlled by the people. But how to explain such a thing without sounding like a radical?

Which was rather difficult considering he
was
a radical, just not a radical who stood for the blind slaughter of innocent people. “
Oui,
I believe it got renamed.”

Believed it because he had seen it happen, round about the time the Duc d'Orléans had thrown off his hereditary title and started calling himself by the name,
Philippe Égalité.
And since
Égalité
had owned the palace, it was only fitting that the
Palais-Royal
be changed, as well.

“That's doltish.” Danielle poked out her bottom lip, her face dark. “Why must everything get renamed? As if the changes in the calendar and holidays aren't bad enough, now they've got to start renaming places? I no more than had the months memorized when we switch to the revolutionary calendar, and now—”

“Watch yourself, child.” He cast a glance toward the door, which was ridiculous since the Terror was well and truly over. People weren't being guillotined for such careless statements anymore. But a year ago...

No. He refused to think on it. The girl had meant nothing by her words. She didn't understand the need for the changes, the unarguable demand that every remembrance of the tyranny and oppression which had once dominated France be cut from the country's future. She was growing up in the First Republic and likely wouldn't remember the horrors and debt that had plagued the country under the reign of the Bourbon kings.

But the new France could hardly use a calendar designed by a church that had seen fit to tax peasants so its priests could grow rich and fat while people like Corinne starved. Though some priests had truly endeavored to help the needy, far too many clergymen had allowed greed to consume them, just as the aristocracy had.

“What shall Serge and Victor do if we ever change back to the old calendar?” Danielle asked. “They'll have to memorize two, as well.”

“It's not coming back.” It couldn't. That would mean the Republic failed and the old system of government had been reinstated. And if such a thing ever happened, the average French citizen would once again be stripped of food and land and liberty.

He cleared his throat and glanced around at the serious faces watching him. “I see your mother hasn't failed in her geography lessons. You know much of Paris for never having walked its streets.”

The austere look left Danielle's face and she smiled brilliantly. “
Maman'
s never been. But
Papa
went often. I used to beg him to take me. He had the most amazing stories.”

“Mayhap you can go sometime, then. But I advise you to wait until the
Révolution
is over. You never know what the streets of Paris hold these days.”

“You were there during the
Révolution?
” Brigitte whispered.

He lurched to his feet, the well-intentioned comment giving away far more than he'd intended.

“Did you see when the people stormed that prison?” Serge glanced at his sister. “What was it called again, Danielle?”

“The Bastille.”

Serge climbed down from the bench and bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “
Oui,
did you see that?
Maman
told us all about it.”

Jean Paul swallowed and stared down at his hands, hands that had meted out far more harm than should ever have been allowed. Hands that could have been used for good, but had been bent on destruction instead.

“I was there to make furniture,” he rasped, the lie painful on his tongue. “When my wife died, I left to make furniture. Now if you'll excuse me.”

He stormed across the chamber and burst through the door into the fading sun, any hope of a pleasant meal with a delightful family forever shattered. Better that he muck out the stables and eat salt pork after the Moreaus left. Because he couldn't go back into that house, look into those innocent faces and pretend he was a normal, honest farmer.

So he'd work. His farm, his animals, the dirt, the straw, the feed. Anything to make him forget.

* * *

“Why'd he storm off like that?” Danielle scraped the food from Jean Paul's half-eaten plate and plunked it into the washbasin.

“I know not.” Brigitte stared at the door, the echo of its slam still reverberating through the room. “'Twas almost as though the memories of Paris were too wretched for him to bear. But if his memories were that awful, then that must mean—”

“Is he coming back?” Serge gripped the side of her arm. “He promised to take us fishing again.”

She laid a hand over her son's. “I doubt that shall happen tonight.”

Or ever again, if the suspicions churning in the back of her mind were true. What had Citizen Pagett said earlier that afternoon? Something about her doubting Jean Paul's word as truth. She'd taken the older woman for a fool, but what if the widow wasn't a fool at all? What if the woman was smarter than anyone in Abbeville knew?

Citizen Pagett sensed something amiss with Jean Paul's story, just as Alphonse and the gendarme had.

A cold chill crept over her, stealing the warmth from her cheeks and the breath from her lungs. Jean Paul couldn't be a murderer, not with how he fed the poor and cared for her and the children. 'Twas impossible to imagine.

But what if it was true nonetheless?