Love Inspired Historical April 2014 Bundle: The Husband Campaign\The Preacher's Bride Claim\The Soldier's Secrets\Wyoming Promises (70 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

“I'
ve been looking for you.”

Brigitte's fragile fragrance wrapped around Jean Paul as she sank into the long grass beside him. Rather than look at her, he stared out over the marsh toward the wall that cut off the fortified town of Calais from the sea.

“I grew concerned when no one could find you.”

Why was Brigitte here? She should be within, surrounded by her children and basking in their love and safety—a love and safety he'd endangered not an hour earlier. “I wish to be left alone.”

She slid her long, slender fingers beneath his palm. “Well, I don't wish to leave you. I wish to thank you.”

He turned to her then, stared into her deep brown eyes and took in the defiant hair hanging free about her shoulders, the soft curve of her cheeks and moisture on her lips. He loved this woman, yet he'd killed her husband and then endangered her when he'd sent her away from Abbeville. She'd proclaimed she loved him in the dungeon, but those were words spoken in haste.

Now Brigitte was free. She could return to her home in Calais or move to Reims. The only thing she couldn't keep doing was loving him. “I've told you before not to thank me. I didn't do anything worthy of being thanked.”

“You just freed my son from a man who would have slit his throat.”

“Consider it repayment for having your husband killed.”

“Non.”
She gripped his cheeks between her hands and pulled his head down so he had little choice but to look at her.

It was torture, the wild hair begging to be touched, the soft lips waiting to be kissed, the eyes full of love and trust and other emotions begging to be returned.

He could have none of it.

“You mustn't think that way. You were merely doing your job. As it was my job to spy on you for Alphonse. And I'm so terribly sorry. You didn't deserve what I did to you, but my husband deserved his punishment.” She sunk her teeth into the side of her lip and glanced down. “You must hate me.”

Hate her? Had she gone mad? “I once thought it right to kill others to revenge Corinne's death. I'm in no position to judge, and I hardly hate you.” He swallowed, working his jaw back and forth before he blurted the rest. “I love you, Brigitte, but that doesn't change my past.”

The air stilled, a crackling sensation filling the space between them. “You love me? Truly?”

He nearly rolled his eyes. Teach him not to better mind his tongue.

And yet, as he gazed into her sincere face, he could hardly lie. “
Oui,
I love you. I realized it about a quarter hour after I sent you away. Danielle found me sitting against one of the very trees where we had quarreled. I couldn't convince myself to move, only sat their thinking how much I loved you and...”

“And how deeply I'd betrayed you.”

“You hadn't much choice. I didn't understand at the time, but I do now.” He raked a hand through his hair. If only he'd let her explain when he'd found her and Alphonse's man in the woods, so much could have turned out differently.

“But I did have a choice. I could have walked away from Alphonse when he first gave me my task. Instead, I chose to bow to him and deceive you. Then even when I knew I owed you the truth, I put it off, making excuses until you discovered what I was about. I deserve what happened.” She pressed her eyes shut and sucked in a ragged breath. “I almost lost everything. I would have—if you hadn't come. You claim you don't deserve me, but truly, 'tis the other way around. You're far too good a man for someone like me.”

His hands shook, aching to reach up and smooth the matted hair from her face, to cause those lips to curve in a smile, to bring light back to her lifeless eyes. If only gentle words and tender touches could heal the wounds between them, but the festering sores of his past ran too deep, too painful. “No, Brigitte, I'm still not deserving of you.”

Her mouth pressed into a firm white line and her eyes flashed. “Did you leave your sanity back in Abbeville, Jean Paul Belanger? You just travelled four days to save me. Four! You freed Serge from near death a half hour ago and captured one of the most sought-after men in our country. And if today's events aren't enough to prove your value, think of your endeavors in Abbeville. You give food to the hungry and work to the lame. You try every day to right the wrongs you committed a lifetime ago.

“Look at me.” She got up onto her knees and stared him straight in the eyes. “I love you, and I'll not be able to stop loving because you wish it.”

He dropped his gaze to his lap and the tall amber grass crushed between his legs. “Perhaps you think you love me now, in this moment, after I just pulled you from a dungeon cell and saved Serge. But will you still love me in three years? After your life has settled, will you be able to look at me—the man who killed your husband and children's father—with love rather than hate?”

Her eyes glazed with tears. “I don't simply love you, Jean Paul, I forgive you. For what you've done both before I met you and after.” She reached out and pressed her palm to his cheek, her skin cool and soft against his. “My love lets me forgive you, just like God's love for us lets Him forgive us.”

He pulled back and sucked in deep gulps of air. Forgiveness again. Just like Isabelle had spoken of at the inn over a year ago.

He'd been cruel to his future sister-in-law in those days, still wishing her dead though she'd saved him, taunting her until she'd cried and fled the room. But she'd returned, sand from the beach ground into the knees of her skirt and fierce determination in her eyes.

I forgive you.

He'd wanted to spit fire. Had actually spit at her feet, if he recalled.

* * *

“I don't want your forgiveness. You deserve to die.”

“I forgive you, anyway. What you do with it is your choice.”

“Why are you rescuing me, forgiving me after I tried to kill you?”

She swallowed then, but she met his eyes. “Because it's what God wants. It's no less than He did for me.”

* * *

No less than what God had already done. Jean Paul shuddered at the memory. Isabelle and Brigitte made forgiveness sound so easy, but 'twas as impossible as taking on an army with a band of four men.

He raised his eyes to Brigitte's. “You understand not how little I deserve God's love. Why should He forgive a person such as myself?”

She reached for his hand, the small connection flooding warmth through his body—a warmth from which he couldn't bear to pull away. “Because that's the beauty of God's love. None of us deserve it. Not I, nor you, nor Danielle and Julien, or even little Serge. But God bestows His love, anyway. And it isn't something you need to earn by giving away vegetables or renting land to armless tenants. It's just there. You only need reach out and take it. Surely you know this, Jean Paul. Surely you've heard it before.”

He hung his head.
Oui.
He'd heard it. And perhaps he'd even known it somewhere deep inside. Maybe Isabelle had been right that day at the inn. Maybe all his mumbled prayers hadn't been barred from heaven. Maybe they'd gone straight to the ears of God, and he'd only imagined them stopping because he hadn't believed God would listen.

Because why would God want to love and forgive him if he didn't want to love and forgive himself?

His body turned cold, yet his eyes burned suspiciously. Could he have been wrong all this time? Could God have truly heard the prayers he'd uttered over the past year? Have offered forgiveness the first time he'd asked for it in that little room in Saint-Valery? He raised his eyes to the heavens, but instead of whispering yet another hopeless plea for forgiveness, he offered one of thanks.
Father, thank You for forgiving me. For loving me. For restoring my life and giving me a chance to correct my wrongs.

The coldness left his body and warmth settled about him, creeping in to the darkest places of his heart, the places that had been cold for longer than he could remember. He drew in a deep, calming breath. Felt the touch of the sun on his face and whisper of the breeze against his skin.

“You were right.” He squeezed Brigitte's hand, which somehow still rested beneath his. “It wasn't God who refused to forgive me. It was I who refused.”

She leaned in and dropped a soft kiss on his lips. “Well, accept it now. And then forgive me.”

He placed his hands on her sides beneath her arms and scooted her forward, grinning all the while. “Of course. Need you even ask? I mustered a gendarmerie full of men and came to Calais to save you.” He lowered his head for another kiss. And this time, when his mouth met hers, no warnings screamed inside his brain declaring he didn't deserve her, no guilt haunted him as he wrapped his arms around her and tumbled her back into the grass. He was free now. God's love and forgiveness had made him so.

He pulled his lips away from hers for the barest of instants and whispered against her neck. “Marry me, Brigitte Dubois. Come back to Abbeville and be my wife.”

She smiled up at him, her eyes alight with life and hope. “I wouldn't want anything else.”

“Today. We'll see the magistrate before we leave Calais.”

She giggled. His Brigitte, giggling like a schoolgirl.

He found her lips again, the tall grass tickling his neck and hands as he lay with her in the sunshine.

In many ways, he still wasn't worthy of her love. But then, what man was worthy of a woman like Brigitte? If he lived a thousand years, he'd never let go of her, the light and laughter she'd restored to his life, the feelings of forgiveness and understanding that twined through him.

From the rainy day he'd watched his first wife's body lowered into the ground until this moment, he'd been on a long, hard journey. A journey in which he'd made a slew of poor choices and had caused unspeakable harm.

But God forgave him, anyway. And God loved him enough to offer him a chance to make right choices and love again. A chance to welcome the family he'd thought he'd lost after Corinne's death.

He buried his face in Brigitte's matted hair, dragged her familiar scent into his lungs, and pressed her tighter against him...because he wasn't going to let this new chance slip away.

Epilogue

One year later

T
hwack!... Thwack!... Thwack!... Thwack!

Brigitte tucked a strand of hair beneath her mobcap and pulled open the door of the cottage, letting the sunlight flood inside.

Sure enough, Danielle stood with Jean Paul, her face fierce as she gripped a knife and scowled at an upright log already impaled with half a dozen blades.

“Your grip is too tight. You've got to hold the knife hard enough so it doesn't fall, but loose enough so it glides forward when you thrust. And don't flick your wrist.”

Danielle glared at the log. “I'll get it,
Papa.
”

Papa.
Brigitte pressed a hand to her neck and swallowed. She never tired of hearing her children use that word. Even though Julien and Laurent were still away in the navy, she and the children had forged a true family with Jean Paul, so unlike the days of fear and loneliness that plagued her with Henri.

She rested a hand on her back, the ache there growing a little worse each day. Just a couple weeks, if her calculations were correct, and her heavy, protruding belly would give way to a babe. 'Twas a bit ridiculous to be having a baby with Jean Paul at her age. She'd already raised two boys to near men. But then, she wanted nothing more than to share a child with the man who loved her and shared his life with her, who gave her foot rubs at night and insisted Danielle—and sometimes even Serge—clean up supper rather than her.

Thwack!

Brigitte jumped with the sudden sound, just as Danielle let out a holler and threw herself into Jean Paul's arms.

“I did it,
Papa!
Did you see? Right in the center like you showed me.”

Jean Paul wrapped his arms around Danielle, his face alight with pride. “I saw.”

“I'm going to hit it again.” She wriggled out of his arms and raced toward the log where the knives stuck.

Brigitte smiled from where she stood in the doorway. “Danielle's getting better.”

Jean Paul turned, his lips curving into a soft smile as he ran his gaze over her distended body. “I didn't realize you were watching. Come here.” He held his arms out, open and waiting.

She came forward. “Your eyes are tired. You should be napping, not playing with the children.”

He enfolded her from behind and rested a hand on her belly. “I'm not the one with child, love.”

“
Non.
You're the one with the nightmares that keep you up for hours in the darkness.”

His body tensed behind her, and she could well imagine the contentment on his face growing into a serious mixture of hard lines and foreboding angles. “Just when I think they're starting to leave, they return with renewed force.”

“They're not as bad as when we first wed.”

“I owe that to having such a nice distraction when I wake.”

She turned in his embrace and wrapped her arms around his neck, something she could barely manage now that her belly was big as a bushel of turnips. “Do you now? And what else do you owe to me, since we're on the subject?”

He pressed his forehead to hers. “I don't know. Is there something nicer than that?”

She released her arms from around his neck and shoved at his chest, but to no avail. His solid arms were looped too tightly about her back.

“Your meals,” she spouted. “You owe your meals to me. And your mended clothes. And the dusting. I've tended the herbs this year, not you, and...”

Thwack!

“I did it again!” Danielle's voice, proud and elated, rang from behind them.

“
Maman,
come look, come look, Danielle got it!” Serge called from where he and Victor played in the side yard.

“Yelle get it,” Victor mimicked in his sweet toddler voice.

She tried to turn, but Jean Paul still kept his arms locked around her, his eyes serious. “The children. I owe the children to you.” His gaze dipped to her stomach. “Even the wee one. My happiness, joy and contentment. I owe that to you, as well.”

“I can't give you happiness or joy. Only God can do that.”

He hugged her tight. “Which is exactly why God gave me you.”

She leaned against him, settling into the familiar strength of the man she loved, the man she didn't deserve, the man God had given her, anyway. The children's voices rang through the yard, accompanied by the steady
thwack, thwack, thwack
of Danielle throwing her knives. Birds danced in the sky above, and a faint breeze whispered through the wheat in the nearby field.

She pressed her eyes shut and sank deeper into her husband's arms. She offered no sensual words or kiss of passion, and she didn't need to. Her husband's presence was merely enough.

The
Révolution
might still rage, leaving the government in turmoil. British warships might still stalk French vessels on the sea, and Austria might well take up arms against France once again.

Yet here she stood, wrapped in the arms of a man who didn't merely offer security, but love and forgiveness and understanding. Together, they had strength to face whatever the future held.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from WYOMING PROMISES by Kerri Mountain.