Love Inspired Historical April 2014 Bundle: The Husband Campaign\The Preacher's Bride Claim\The Soldier's Secrets\Wyoming Promises (62 page)

“Danielle!” She wrapped her arms about her daughter and squeezed. “Are you well? Did anything happen to you? Oh, love, I was so worried.” She buried her face in Danielle's hair, clutching the girl even harder to her chest.

“She's well.” A gentle hand landed on her shoulder, and the deep familiar timbre of Jean Paul's voice resonated through the room.

Jean Paul's dark eyes met hers over Danielle's head, the familiar angles and planes of his face somehow soft in the morning light.

She loved him. She wasn't sure when it had happened. Perhaps when he'd hauled the soup out of the well and sent her home with a full meal, or when he'd cared for the children during her illness. Or maybe she hadn't come to love him until later. Perchance the day they went to town and Jean Paul gave Gaston that
livre?

But standing here, with her lost daughter safe in her arms and hazy sunlight pouring through the door to bathe the three of them, she need not know the exact moment. Only that she loved him and couldn't fathom a life without him.

'Twas why she hadn't wanted to go to Reims last night, nor could she accept Alphonse's money in exchange for Jean Paul's coat. Her heart must have realized her feelings before her head understood them.

“You needn't hug me so tight,
Maman.
” Danielle pushed against her chest. “I'm fine.”

Danielle wriggled away, leaving her arms cold and empty, and perhaps a bit eager to embrace the tall man beside her.

“You look exhausted, Danielle. Go lie down with your brothers.” Jean Paul gestured toward the bedchamber. “Your mother and I need to talk.”

“All right.” Danielle yawned and wandered toward the other room, her usually quick steps sluggish.

“Thank you for bringing her back.” Brigitte took a step nearer Jean Paul. “I don't know what I would have done without you. I couldn't have lived with myself had something happened to Danielle. I'd searched all night and couldn't find her, and then—”

“You need not thank me.”

“But you saved her. Of course, I need to—”

“Non.”
He ran a hand through his hair and stared up at the ceiling, then down at the floor, then toward the bedchamber once more before bringing his eyes back to meet hers. “Danielle's rather upset with you.”

Shame crept into her chest, and she ducked her head.

“She wants me to ask why you came to Abbeville and sought me out for work.”

This was it. The moment where she needed to confess all and explain how she'd come here to spy on him. The instant when she'd finally inquire about the National Guard uniform buried in the trunk in his stable. She sucked in a deep breath.

“Jean Paul...I...” But no further words would come. She opened and closed her mouth, once, then a second time. Everything seemed stuck, held fast by some thick, invisible barrier in her throat. Or maybe the barrier was in her chest, her heart. But either way, the words clumped together inside, and she knew not how to free them. How to even start her story.

Her hands turned hot, then cold, then hot again. But she had to say something, anything, no matter how painful. Perhaps he would send her away and never want to look at her again, but at least no more deceit would stand between them. Because if she truly loved him, she owed him the truth.

“Why don't we sit, and...and—” her tongue fumbled, but she pressed on “—I—I can tell you a story.”

“We can sit, but you're not the only one with secrets, Brigitte. I have something to tell you, as well.”

She took his hand and tried to smile. Perhaps if he had secrets, as well, they could forgive each other and move on. Find a way to cling together and forge ahead in this country wracked with revolution and blood.

Or so she hoped.

Until his next words shattered every illusion she held.

Chapter Eighteen

“I
think I killed your husband.” The words crashed through the small cottage, stark and irrevocable, drawing memories of blood and death and guillotines from the recesses of Jean Paul's mind.

And he lost her. Brigitte tugged her hand away from his, her eyes growing wide and her face suddenly pale. In that one instant, with those few little words, he lost the woman who had become so precious to him.

“What mean you?” she said.

Or at least he thought that's what she said, but her voice was too quiet to know for certain. He swallowed and reached for her hand, intending to lead her to the bench. But she only drew farther away.

He deserved it. He wasn't worthy to touch her or kiss her or love her. To have her in his life. To keep her with him forever.

So he rubbed the back of his neck, searching for some way to start his story, but 'twas no quick version of the tale. He plopped himself on the table bench and started at the beginning.

“I married Corinne when I was naught but eighteen, and I loved her. More than the sunshine and fields, more than this house or the rest of my family. More than anything else on this earth.”

He blinked back a sudden burning moisture in his eyes. “She was like the rain. That's what I tell people. The spring rain that tinges everything in its path with gentleness, that gives life and color to all it touches.”

And oh, had she brought gentleness and color and sweetness to his life.

Brigitte's throat worked slowly back and forth, though she still hovered near the door where he'd left her, too far for him to reach out and pull her near. “That's a beautiful way to remember your wife. I'm sure Henri never thought of me in such a way.”

He moved his eyes over her, from her tangled hair to her hollow eyes to her trembling chin, down her worn dress and slender body. She stood in the same room as him, but she was separate somehow. All pulled into herself and planning to stay that way. Had no one ever told her she was special? Had no one ever likened her to the rain, or a delicate flower? The gentle, constant breeze that swept his fields?

Yes, that was Brigitte. Gentle, constant, always there. She might not be foremost in his mind when he went out to the fields or delivered food in town. But she was always present, and if she were to leave, something in his life would seem terribly wrong.

He held out his hand to her again. “Please Brigitte, come sit with me. 'Tis a long story.”

But she didn't reach for his hand, and he didn't make her sit. “Corinne and I had been married two years when trouble came. 'Twas the winter of '89, and we'd lost our crop to hail, so we hadn't any food.”

“I remember,” she said quickly.

Of course she did. All of France remembered the brutal summer of 1788 and winter of 1789. The lack of wheat and bread had started the
Révolution.

“That was when she...when she...” Brigitte's lip quivered, and her eyes came up to meet his. “Starved?”

“Oui.”
He'd forgotten how much he'd told her. 'Twas as though she already knew most of his past—except for the Terror. “She took ill, and at first, we hadn't money for a physician. She was too far gone before Physician Trudeau ever called. We sold one of our sows to pay for his services, and we followed his every last instruction. She started to improve, but she was so thin and we'd barely any food.”

Something large and thick caught in his throat. “I gave her my food and went without. So did my brother, Michel, and Mother. But Corinne didn't...she couldn't...”

He pressed his eyes shut in an attempt to stem the unbidden tears. He was a man, a big man who could strike fear into the hearts of all that looked upon him, and here he was sitting in his house about to weep like a babe over an event that had happened over six years past.

But he'd loved Corinne. Truly, fully, completely. 'Twas no shame in that. “I went to
Seigneur
Montrose and asked for grain. He had an entire barn filled with wheat from the harvest two years earlier, more chickens than he could count, and hogs and cows. The
seigneur
laughed.”

His blood surged hot with the memory of it, and he jerked his eyes open to find Brigitte no longer by the door but standing before him, her eyes soft and glistening, the blank expression that had settled over her face now replaced by understanding and compassion. “He asked if I knew how much a sack of grain was worth because of the famine, and I told him half the grain in the barn wasn't his, anyway. He hadn't worked for it. He'd stolen it from peasants and called it his land duty.

“The
seigneur
had me thrown out.” Jean Paul's lips curved with bitterness.

“And she died.” Brigitte whispered into the air between them. “I'm so sorry.”

“Two mornings later, I woke, and Corinne was dead. All I could think was that
Seigneur
Montrose had laughed at me. Laughed. And Corinne had starved to death. After that, I couldn't stay here, couldn't bear to spot the
seigneur
in town or pass by his magnificent chateau with its full barns.”

“I'd not have been able to stay, either.” Brigitte took a step closer, but didn't sit. Instead, she looked down and twisted her hands in her skirt. “My uncle in Reims was a
seigneur,
though I know not how he would have handled a situation such as yours, or how he fared during the
Révolution.
Our families weren't close.”

He reached out and took her hand, tugging her down beside him. “You sound as though you're apologizing, and there's no need. I understand now that not all
seigneurs
are like Montrose, though I didn't after Corinne's death. I went to Paris. My brother's a right good hand at making furniture. Made just about everything you see in the house.” He slid his hand over the surface of Michel's table. “Michel and my father had taught me a bit of the trade, and I'd hoped to find work in the city. But no one in the furniture makers guild wanted to share their business with a farmer from an outlying province. I eventually found labor delivering coal.

“But I discovered something else, as well, something I hadn't anticipated. Not just work, but camaraderie, fraternity, brotherhood. People like me. Peasants who had nothing. Who had watched loved ones starve while the aristocrats dressed in silks, ate sumptuous feasts and ran our country into debt. Like me, they despised the highborn nobles who refused to pay taxes themselves but thought nothing of raising ours until we had naught to eat but our own fingernails. And we wanted something better. All of us. Was it so wrong to want more?”

Brigitte remained silent beside him, no answer to his questions on her lips. Still, his dreams and desires of seven years ago must have been wrong. Only something wrong could end in innocent people being dragged to the guillotine. Only something wrong could have led to the Terror.

“So when mobs formed in the
Palais-Royal
to cry for liberty, I was there. And when the Swiss Guard surrounded Paris and we feared they would slay us in the night, I stormed the Bastille with other Parisians to get the weapons stored inside. When traitors to liberty were guillotined, I attended the executions and cheered. I joined the National Guard, and everyone noticed my fervor. Then when the Convention needed soldiers to travel with the representatives-on-mission to help enforce order in the provinces, I volunteered.”

He pressed his eyes shut against the grisly images invading his senses. The screams of women and children in the night when he dragged supposed traitors away, the scent of blood, the feel of limp bodies in his hands as he escorted men and women to their trials. “I didn't know there was going to be a Terror. I didn't think about the innocent people who were wrongly thrust beneath the guillotine's blade. I only thought of
Seigneur
Montrose and Corinne's death. I thought of the aristocrats who rode through Parisian streets in gilded berlins and silk stockings while I hadn't money for a second pair of trousers. I didn't think about people like your husband.

“I didn't think I would one day meet his wife,” he whispered.

“But you did.”
The words echoed through the room. Short and simple, yet so terribly complicated.

Yes. He had most certainly met Brigitte Moreau, and he was just as certainly falling in love with her. But how could a man forge a future with a woman whose husband he'd killed? “You said he died in the Terror, did you not?”

She nodded dumbly.

“I was there, in Calais with Representative Joseph Le Bon. I may have even arrested your husband.”

“I think you did.”

Something sharp knifed through his heart. “How do you know?”

“I was there when you took him. The whole family was.”

“Brigitte,
non.
” She couldn't have been there. He'd have remembered. Or at least, he should have remembered. But there had been so many people, so many families.

He moved his hand to reach out and pull her against his chest, but she was already putting distance between them and staring blankly across the room rather than glancing his way.

“You came in the night to arrest him, yanked him out of bed where he slept beside me.” A humorless smile twisted her lips. “'Twas rare that Henri was home at all rather than warming some tavern wench's bed. But he was there, and you came...”

Her words trailed off, but the implications saturated the air between them until he could hardly breathe.
And you came.
Those three words said more than he had in the past half hour.

“I remember your shadow against the moonlight from the window. A big hulking brute of a man. 'Twas what frightened me when I first approached you by the stable the other week. You were so large you reminded me of the soldier, and then you turned and moved toward me, your shadow blocking the sun, and I...I...grew ill.”

“I'm sorry.” He rested a hand on her shoulder, but her body stiffened beneath his touch. “I look back on those years of my life, and I feel naught but regret. Bitterness and grief controlled me, and I gave no thought for anyone save myself. 'Tis why I told you not to thank me for the food and shelter I've provided. 'Tis why I hate when the town lauds me for rescuing the mayor's sister or when Widow Arnaud and Annalise grovel because I bring them food. I'm a murderer. I don't deserve any gratitude. If I could go back to the Terror and sacrifice myself so that an innocent person might keep life, I would.”

He stared blearily down at his lap. “But I can't.”

* * *

Jean Paul hung his head, and moisture formed in Brigitte's eyes at the image of the strong, determined man slumped beside her.

Her worst fears were true. He had indeed killed Henri. He was the man Alphonse sought.

Could she tell the gendarme that he'd confessed? No. Never. Not even in return for her freedom. Because the listless man next to her wasn't cruel or vicious. He was humble, a hard worker who had left his violent history behind and dedicated his life to doing good. A strong person who couldn't rid himself of the guilt from his past.

A caring man she'd accidentally fallen in love with.

Her heart ached and her throat felt swollen and dry, her eyes gritty from tears that welled but refused to come. 'Twas as though Henri was being ripped away from her once more. Was Henri a criminal? Yes. A man deserving of death? Yes. But the hollowness that had consumed her as Jean Paul dragged her husband away against her children's cries and her own pleas returned to fill her now. She'd had such faith in Jean Paul. He'd seemed so good and honorable and right.

“What happened?” She suddenly had to know. “How did you change from the man who arrested Henri to the man who gives away food?” Because there had to be a story. Murderers didn't turn into benefactors on a whim.

“I passed through here while the Terror still raged.” His voice was soft in the already-quiet room. “After Le Bon visited Calais he came to this region of France. While travelling through Abbeville my men and I happened upon a girl one night. Isabelle de La Rouchecauld, second daughter of the Duc de La Rouchecauld—though I didn't know it at the time. I suspected she was noble, though, so we beat her and left her for dead and I moved on to the next town. After all, I was too busy serving the new France and accusing people for crimes against liberty to spend much time on one forgettable girl.”

Bitterness dripped from his words, and he drew in a huge, heaving breath. “But she wasn't dead, and Michel found her.”

“Your brother?” She nearly choked. “Did he know that you'd...you'd...”

“
Non.
He didn't even know I worked for Le Bon. He thought I was in Paris making furniture. All of Abbeville still thinks that's what I did while I was away.”

Which explained the rumors about his past. He'd left the little town for that exact reason. No one would know his life had turned into anything different unless he told them, or someone bore witness to the contrary.

“Michel took the girl in, nursed her until she was well and fell in love with her along the way. But when the Terror came to Abbeville, I returned home and found her with Michel. By then I'd heard of a duc's daughter who had escaped capture in Arras, and I'd wondered if it had been the defiant girl we'd found on the road. But I'd left her for dead. I never thought, never would have dreamed that...that...that...”

His voice cracked, and he pressed his eyes shut. But he need not speak of the memories or the pain they evoked for her to understand. The emotions etched across his face in harsh, regretful lines.

“I was so angry, and when I saw her standing in this very house, rage filled me anew. We fought, my brother and I. 'Twas the first time I'd ever gone to blows with him.”

He blew out a breath and raked his hand through his hair. “And somewhere in all that, the girl ran off and headed to Saint-Valery to find passage to England. My men and I followed, but there were... ah...well, difficulties between me and one of the men. I ended up shot in the shoulder.”