Love Inspired Historical April 2014 Bundle: The Husband Campaign\The Preacher's Bride Claim\The Soldier's Secrets\Wyoming Promises (69 page)

“Non.”

“Tell me, and I'll make him pay.”

“You came in time. He didn't hurt me, not yet.”

Jean Paul touched his hand to her cheek one final time, then turned toward the door. “Come. We must make haste.”

He poked his head into the corridor, then reached for her hand. The steps from the dungeon were narrow and uneven, crumbling like the rest of the castle. He drew her close and led her up before stopping at the top of the stairs. Shouts and footsteps resonated from the other side of the door as he looked through the small window slatted with iron bars.

“How did you ever find enough men to take on Alphonse?” she whispered.

He didn't bother to look at her but kept his eyes riveted on the events beyond the door. “I still have a bit of sway with the Convention in Paris, enough that I can rally men if needed. Now come, the men look to have things in hand.”

He tugged on her arm and they stepped out into a massive room, likely a meeting place from centuries before, with its towering ceiling and arched windows. Men in gendarmerie uniforms grouped at the other end of the room, some conferring while others darted up staircases and into any number of the passageways leading from the great hall. But each carried a determined set to his jaw and an aura of importance and authority as he went about his business.

“André, have we caught him?” Jean Paul barked at one of the men racing past.

“Not yet. Archambault's convinced he's still inside, though.”

Jean Paul merely grunted as he led her across the imposing room.

In the far corner beyond where the gendarmes stood sat a group of men trussed hand and foot, some familiar and some she'd never seen, but each glaring violently at their captors.

A pair of dark gray eyes met hers. She shivered and stared back at Gerard, his beefy muscles bound by such small ropes. What if he broke free?

Jean Paul wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Give them no heed, love.”

But she couldn't help one more backward glance. They were missing the most notorious prisoner. “Are you keeping Alphonse somewhere else?”

He quickened his pace toward a set of stairs in the corner. “That's who I just asked Hugues about. We haven't found him yet.”

She watched the gendarmes, each coming back and reporting to a man with a decorated uniform and graying beard, likely the commander. “Is that why everyone's still busy?”

“
Oui.
We'll move the search out of doors if we don't get him soon.”

“If he finds a way outside, you'll never catch him. He'll simply move his headquarters elsewhere and pay off the locals.”

“I'll not let that happen,
ma chérie.
” He pulled her up another set of stairs, the same one Alphonse had taken her up when he'd allowed her out of her cell yesterday, and into a long, dimly lit corridor.

“The children's chamber is right...” He stilled, his every muscle tightening as he stared at the end of the passageway.

The faint tap of footsteps sounded, and was that a flash of gray?

Jean Paul dropped his arm from around her and raced forward, jerking his pistol out as he ran. She followed quickly behind, fear twisting her stomach.

He burst through the last doorway in the corridor. She flew through the opening behind him...

And stopped cold.

Her heart pounded in her chest and blood roared in her ears. She blinked her eyes once, then again. This couldn't be happening. Not now. Not when she and the children were so close to freedom. But all the blinking in the world wouldn't change the truth of the scene before her.

Jean Paul stood with gun already drawn, and Alphonse faced him from the center of an opulent bedchamber, a knife pressed to Serge's throat.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“J
ean Paul Belanger, I presume.” A hard, thin voice permeated the air while the man dressed in gray held the silver blade steadily to Serge's neck. “We meet at last.”

“Alphonse Dubois.” Jean Paul would have known the smuggler anywhere. The man carried an aura of danger and power that Robespierre himself would have envied.

Light footsteps echoed on the floor behind him, then a soft gasp. Brigitte. But he didn't turn. Instead, he kept his pistol aimed between Dubois's eyebrows, not that the musket ball would actually hit between the eyebrows at three meters. The old gun wasn't that accurate at one meter, let alone three. But Dubois would have no way of knowing how inaccurate the old gun truly was.

“Let the boy go.”

“You killed my son, and now you've invaded my home and taken captive an enterprise that took decades to build. That's reason for me to hunt down every person you love and make them die a long, slow death.” Alphonse repositioned his blade against Serge's neck, and the boy yelped.

Jean Paul flinched, meeting Serge's wide, terror-filled eyes.

“Ah, so you do love them.” Alphonse's lips curved into a cruel smile. “And here I'd only guessed.”

Had that single glance at Serge given him away? No doubt Dubois would now track the rest of the family were he to escape.

Which was why he wouldn't escape.

One good shot could stop him. “Release the boy, or die.”

“Ah, I'm afraid we're at a bit of an impasse, as I have no intention of releasing the boy. And while it's true you could kill me with that pistol, the boy would die, as well. It only takes a slight jerk of my wrist, and his life is over.” Alphonse moved the blade ever so slightly against Serge's throat, letting a trickle of red slide down his creamy skin.

“Don't harm him,” Brigitte sobbed. “He's done nothing.”

Alphonse's eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “Harm is exactly what will happen if your man here doesn't comply. You've a decision to make, Belanger. Either kill me and the boy, or slide me your pistol.”

Jean Paul looked from Serge to Brigitte and back. What choice had he? He'd gladly forfeit his own life before letting Dubois kill Serge. Not that he'd give up so easily—he still had his knives, which he could throw more accurately than the gun could shoot. He drew in a long breath, then squatted down and placed the pistol on the floor. It didn't slide far across the uneven stone, but the little distance was enough.

“And your knives,” Dubois commanded.

'Twas as if the man could decipher his very thoughts. He yanked the knife out of its place at his waist and laid it on the floor.

“And the other.” Dubois glared down at him. “I'm sure you carry more than one.”

Brigitte sucked in a loud breath, her desire to sob pulsing through the air like a tangible entity.

He clenched his jaw and grabbed the one at the small of his back, then slid that over the rough stone.

“And I'll take the one in your boot. I'm told you always carry one there.”

This man had studied him too well. Jean Paul yanked the blade out of its hiding place and threw it across the floor, scarcely caring when the tip wedged between two uneven stones and broke. The blade wouldn't do him any good at present, anyway.

“Now you may rise.” Something hard and feral glinted in Dubois's eyes as Jean Paul stood. “Finally, the man who killed my son stands weaponless before me. Such justice.”

Idiocy is what it was. “Your son was a criminal. He deserved to be held accountable for his crimes.”

“And you don't?”

Jean Paul worked his jaw back and forth and stared into eyes as cold and hard as granite. “Mayhap I deserve death, but your grandson doesn't. Your quarrel is with me. Let him go.”

Frantic footsteps sounded from...

From where?

Not from behind him, and not from the massive open doors on the other end of the room. Then the tapestry on the wall moved, and Danielle sprinted out from behind the heavy fabric.

“Serge!”

“Halt!” Dubois's sharp command resonated against the ancient walls. “Or I'll slit your brother's throat.”

Danielle stumbled forward another two paces before she managed to still. Her eyes moved from her grandfather to her mother to Jean Paul to the pistol and knives on the floor. “
Grand-père,
what are you doing?”

“I'm leaving. Belanger here is going to call off his men and let me walk out of this castle with your brother. But first I need you to take a few steps away from me,
mon petit chou.
Go stand beside Belanger there.”

“
Oui,
move behind me.” At least he could put himself between the crazed smuggler and one of Brigitte's children.

For the first—and likely only—time in her life, the girl obeyed without argument, coming to stand directly behind him.

Alphonse took a step backward toward the tapestry and hidden doorway, pulling Serge with him. A fresh panic lit the young boy's eyes, but Dubois kept inching steadily toward the hidden door.

Jean Paul bunched his hands into helpless fists at his sides. The smuggler was going to escape, and if he so much as called for the men, Dubois might use that knife. When he'd left Abbeville and gathered gendarmes, he'd meant to rescue Brigitte and her children. Now Serge stood in danger, and he'd no way to save the child. Was this his fault? It should be. Had he never involved himself in the
Révolution
or the Terror, then he wouldn't be watching a vile smuggler toy with an innocent boy's life.

Nor would he have the bloody nightmares that plagued him, or the guilt that fisted around his chest so tightly he struggled for breath at times. And he wouldn't—

Something cold and hard slid against the waist at the back of his pants.

A knife. And not just any knife, one of
his.
One whose weight and balance he knew. One he could throw with deadly accuracy.

He forced his cheek muscles to harden, lest they inadvertently smile and give him away. Of course, Danielle would think to give him his knife. Now he didn't have to stand helpless while a child paid for his mistakes. One throw, straight at the smuggler's head and...

No. He had no wish to kill again. And besides, hitting Dubois in the head with a knife posed the same problem that shooting him had. If he hit the smuggler in the forehead, the man would fall backward, his blade likely slicing Serge.

But Dubois must have a weak point somewhere. If only he could find it. He narrowed his eyes, scanning the thin old man.
The forearm.
'Twas the perfect target. A good stab into the muscles that ran between the bones there, and the smuggler would drop his knife.

He tensed his arms at his sides, ready, waiting. But Dubois's eyes remained riveted on him. If he reached for the knife now, Serge's throat would be slit before the blade had left Jean Paul's fingers.

“In here!” a masculine voice cried.

Boots, an entire horde of them, clomped and echoed through the wide doorway at the other end of the room.

“Take another step, and the boy dies,” Dubois cried out, but his gaze remained pinned to Jean Paul.

The clatter of boots on stone stopped, the men likely taking in the situation before them, but Jean Paul didn't dare pull his eyes from the smuggler and Serge.

The boy's fear-stricken eyes scanned the newcomers, and he swallowed.

Jean Paul held his breath and nearly cursed. Too big of a swallow, too quick of a movement, and Serge's life would be gone.

“Call the men off, Belanger,” Dubois barked. “Tell them to wait in the corridor. Then I'll leave. If anyone follows, the child is dead.”

“No,” Brigitte whispered.

“Now, Belanger!”

Jean Paul opened his mouth. Did he have any choice but to obey? His men had invaded Dubois's crumbling structure, yet the smuggler still lived, prepared to sacrifice his grandson's life for his own freedom. How did one prevent that?

God,
he prayed earnestly, frantically. Not that he expected God to listen when God had been ignoring him for six years' time, but in a situation this desperate, he had nowhere else to turn, nothing to cling to but the faith he'd learned as a child.
If You could send some sort of distraction. It can be anything. I only need an instant to reach the knife and throw.

And then the most amazing thing happened. 'Twas almost as though God had heard his prayer, as though God cared enough about a filthy murderer like him to listen.

A lone set of footsteps clomped down the corridor behind him, entering through the door at his back, and Dubois's eyes darted toward the newcomer.

Just for a moment.

But Jean Paul needed only half a moment.

He whipped the knife from the back of his waist and threw. The breath stilled in his lungs as the blade flew through the air.

A thunk. A scream. A jerk. Who had cried out? Serge? Brigitte?

Dubois.

Pain etched the old man's face while Serge broke free of the hold and ran toward his mother.

Captain Archambault charged forward, leading the gendarmes to descend on Dubois while the smuggler sank to the floor, cradling his bleeding arm.

Danielle intercepted Serge halfway to Brigitte and threw her arms around him. Brigitte's eyes and cheeks streamed with tears as she rushed toward her children and wrapped them both in a fierce embrace.

Jean Paul surveyed the scene before him, his heart still thudding wildly against his ribs, as though his body had yet to realize danger had passed.

Something shifted in the corner of the room. He took a protective step toward Brigitte then stopped. The distraction had come from that very part of the chamber. Who had drawn Dubois's attention when half a gendarmerie post hadn't been able to help?

His eyes landed on a tall youth with tanned skin and unruly auburn hair slightly darker than Brigitte's. The lad lifted his gaze to meet Jean Paul's, and eyes as clear and blue as Danielle's stared back at him.

“Julien Dubois?” It could only be Julien. 'Twas no mistaking the family resemblance, and Laurent was still at sea.

The young man gave a curt nod. “You must be Jean Paul Belanger. Serge has much to say of you.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. What did a man say to such things? That he didn't deserve Serge's praise? That he'd killed Julien's father?

“Thank you for saving my brother's life.”

“I put him in danger,” he growled. “It seemed only just I get him out of it.”

The young man's gaze wandered to his family. “You didn't put Serge in any more danger than I. I knew I tread a treacherous path in attempting to appease
Grand-père
enough so he wouldn't harm my family. When he sent me away on a ‘mission' last night, I understood what he was about, but I couldn't get back any sooner. I...I didn't think he'd hurt them.” His voice shook, then he snapped his mouth shut.

Though Brigitte, Serge and Danielle huddled together not three meters away, the boy stood alone, blinking against his tears. A suspicious moisture filled Jean Paul's eyes, as well, and something hard tightened around his chest. But not the familiar guilt. No. He'd done right by this family. He'd come here and faced his past, and a part of him had been freed in the process. If he felt anything tight around his chest, 'twas love rather than regrets.

A love he knew not what to do with, since he wasn't worthy of Brigitte or her children.

“Go fetch Victor from the nurse down the hall and then see to your mother, boy,” he gritted out. Then he turned and left, because if there was one place he didn't deserve to be, it was in Brigitte's arms, surrounded by her children.