Saving The Marquise's Granddaughter (13 page)

Johan was about to say that he’d just seen her, but since he wasn’t supposed to have been in France, he clamped his mouth shut. The large room chilled him with its clinging moisture.

“Don’t yell. Your voice is like a cannon booming. Come outside and we’ll talk.”

“Ja.” He kept his voice quieter. Inside his gut, his breakfast strudel seemed to be churning round like grain inside the mill.

“She was found in her cottage.”

“When?”

He could barely hear over the grindstone’s rumble.

The miller wiped his hands against his apron and motioned to his laborer to continue.

Back out through the entryway, his nose full of the scent of grain, Johan exhaled.

“Stabbed.” Phillip placed his hand over his heart. “With a rapier.” His cousin cleared his throat.

Two women carried sacks of rye grain inside.

“Come here, Johan.” They trod down the grassy bank to the water and sat on two large boulders. “It happened near the time you arrived with the French girl.”

“Her name is Suzanne.” Could the murderer have been after her? His vest suddenly grew tighter. “Was it robbers?” Ridiculous, since Aunt Louisa owned nothing valuable.

Phillip shifted uneasily. “Cousin Noel said the blade belongs to an aristocrat—the cut was made by something extremely sharp but light.”

A nobleman. With reason to find Suzanne. Who would want her that badly that he would take a life of an innocent elderly woman?

He swallowed. “Did Noel find her, did he see anything else?”

“No, the groundskeeper from the estate checked on her. Found her body.”

Johan had to find out if Uncle Vincent knew—and if he was safe. And he had to talk with Suzanne. Needed to know why such a thing would happen.

“Your parents want to send Nicholas to the colonies.” Phillip narrowed his eyes and gave Johan a hard, cold look, his voice suggesting suspicion. “Why not send that girl with him? What do you really know about her, anyway?”

Johan closed his eyes tightly to block out Phillip’s face and held his fists down at his sides.
Patience, Lord, please help me not to beat him to a bloody pulp.
He flexed his fingers and opened his eyes to see Phillip backing away from him, his hands held up, palms facing Johan.

“I’ll be back to get our flour later. With Suzanne. Good day, cousin.”

~*~

The bell above the door jingled as Suzanne entered the shoemaker’s shop.

The young woman inside wiped her hands on her apron.

With a smile so welcoming, Suzanne immediately wanted to trust her. Magnificent auburn braids encircled her head. Could this be Nicholas’s paramour?

“
Guten tag.
” Her deep voice held suppressed laughter.

An older woman, silver hair plaited and wrapped around her head, stood behind her.

Suzanne licked her lips. The scent of new leather reminded her of Guy. Of his many pairs of polished boots ready for use in the army. “Are you Nicholas’s intended?”

Greta’s already rosy face took on a pinkish glow around her eyes. “I…uh…” She pulled off her white apron and turned toward the woman seated on a tall stool behind the counter. “Mama, might I take a little walk?”

Her mother looked up from her work. “Nicholas tells everyone but us that he will marry Greta.”

Suzanne chuckled. “Oui, madame.”

When Greta’s mother glanced in her direction and frowned, Suzanne regretted that she hadn’t used the woman’s own language.
Too late.

The young woman nodded toward the door. “Come. I’ll show you where Nicholas and I meet when he comes into town.”

“I see.” But she didn’t. Had Nicholas even bothered courting this girl?

They exited the shop and Suzanne and Greta walked side-by-side toward the village center.

“Tongues are wagging. They say he’ll marry you, not me.” Greta laughed. “Of course, he’s never said one word to me about being his wife. Talks a lot about how he doesn’t know how he and Johan could both keep families on their farm.” Stopping at the corner, Greta handed a small coin to a girl holding a bucket of tulips and pulled out two flowers, one red and the other yellow, from the assortment.

“Danke.” The child grinned up shyly at Greta. Her hazel eyes widened when she surveyed Suzanne’s face.

They continued on and Suzanne leaned in toward Greta. “I love another…” She covered her mouth. The words slipped out before she’d considered. How many times had she told Jeanne that she loved Etienne? Greta reminded her of Jeanne. A crawling sensation ascended her neck. She hadn’t referred to Etienne just now. She meant Johan. “Nicholas said he plans to marry you soon.”

Auburn eyebrows worked together for a moment.

A group of girls walked by, their disapproval of Suzanne evident on their faces.

Greta took a deep breath, her eyebrows raised as though she was deciding whether to share her opinion. “I don’t understand Nicholas.”

Suzanne patted her shoulder. “It’s all right. If you don’t feel the same way you should tell him.”

“But I do!” Greta wrung her hands. “I don’t put up with any of his nonsense and he respects me.”

Unusual basis for a marriage.
“Do you love him?”

“Of course. Always—since our schoolroom days. He was so smart. So sweet and shy.”

Sweet? Shy? Greta’s flawed opinion startled her but she’d not express that. Suzanne needed to depart the Palatinate and be on her way. “I won’t be here too long with his family. And…I need help.”

Greta linked her arm through Suzanne’s and they strolled toward a statue of a mounted cavalryman in the village’s central plaza. A fountain flowed in the circle beyond it, surrounded by flowers and greenery. Greta stopped. “What kind of help?”

“Can you get a letter out for me?”

A man on the corner, selling sausages on thick crusty buns, offered Suzanne one, and she declined. She was too nervous to eat.

“Perhaps. Where to?”

Suzanne retrieved the missive from her bag. Could she trust this girl? Nicholas said Greta’s parents sent packets into France regularly. What would one more letter matter? “To Versailles.” She stared boldly into the other girl’s green eyes, so reminiscent of Jeanne’s. She always thought Guy would marry her best friend. Now it would probably never be. A weight of sadness settled upon her.

Greta’s pretty lips parted. “Versailles?” She bowed her head. “I won’t ask you why. It would do me no good and could do harm.” Greta was both kind and discerning. No wonder Nicholas cared for her. “I’ll put it in with the other packets my parents send out.”

“Merci, Greta. It’s very important to me.”

A stout man carrying a stack of leather squares smiled at Greta but averted his eyes from Suzanne.

The pit in her stomach opened up. She was French. The man probably thought of the despised French army. She turned to look at the tanner’s back as he continued on. Leather. Boots. Guy. She peered back at the statue of the Palatinate general on horseback. Rochambeau. He would be her next line of attack in her search for her brother.

~*~

“Suzanne?” Now was the perfect time for him to ask while they traveled back. She couldn’t escape him.

Seated as far away from him as possible, she stared off into the distance, a line worked between her eyebrows. “What is it?”

He wanted to tell her about Louisa. Would wait. “Tell me about yourself.”
Dear God, was she from the French nobility?

Her long eyelashes fluttered. “What do you want to know?”

“Who are you really?” She wasn’t a Huguenot peasant.

She clutched the front of the bench. A rut bounced her toward him and she grabbed his arm. “Oh!”

“I want to know everything.” He wanted to know what it felt like to kiss those pink lips. To tell her he’d protect her. But an aristocrat wouldn’t want that. Not from him.

“What did the priest tell you about me?” By the twitch in her cheek, and the way she pursed her lips together, he knew he needed to choose his words carefully.

He sighed. “Father Vincent is my mother’s uncle.”

She began to work a knot into her apron. He’d have to get firm with her, no matter how good she smelled with those flowers in her hair. No matter how he wished to pull her even closer to him. “Tell me everything.”

Sitting up higher, her posture rigid, she gazed beyond the golden wheat fields.

Toward France?

“I am Suzanne Richelieu, my parents were Huguenots. Both are dead. I don’t know where my brother is, and I’m supposed to go on to Amsterdam and sail from there to the American colonies.”

Heat flared up his neck and he clenched the reins.
“Nein.”
He knew his voice was hard, but he needed to know if she was from one of those ancient French noble families. Too good to even love the likes of him.
Love.
He’d allowed himself to think the word.

“Oui, I already told you.”

“Don’t mock me.” He hadn’t meant to raise his voice so loud or to cause those bright spots of color to appear on her cheeks. The muscle in her cheek tensed—an indicator that she was about to become silent. He wouldn’t allow it. A family member had died and maybe from something she hid.

“Who would kill my Aunt Louisa because of you?”

Her face blanched. Suzanne squeezed his arm hard. “No! She cannot be dead.”

“It’s true. She was murdered.”

“
Mon Dieu,
no.” She clung to his arm, a look of horror on her face, and then buried her head against his shoulder, moisture soaking through the cloth.

He let her stay there, even when he sensed her pulling something from her pocket, a string of round hard objects that clicked against his thigh. He spied the blood-red beads, garnets, linked by chain, as she clasped them into her hand and pushed them back into the pocket she wore over her skirt.

Nicholas was right. She was Catholic.
No, not Catholic.
Suzanne didn’t seem to have any true faith at all. And that had been troubling him when he’d allowed himself to imagine a life together with her. She bowed her head as though in prayer, she asked questions, but Suzanne didn’t seem to know his Lord. And he’d never marry a woman who didn’t share his faith.

11

Suzanne repeated her confession so many times, she almost imagined it was she who had killed Johan’s Aunt Louisa. And the more she wore her knees out on the oval rug, the more she almost became convinced she was responsible for her family’s deaths, too. How, she wasn’t sure, but it seemed to have something to do with the LeForts and DeMints. Or perhaps her best friend. No. Jeanne wouldn’t have betrayed her—not even if Guillame had spurned Jeanne’s interest. She shook off the unwelcome thoughts and finished pinning her hair up. But the vision of the rapier she’d forgotten, piercing the kindly woman’s heart, couldn’t be chased away.

The Rousch family was taking her to their Lutheran church, where they worshipped publicly. Her breath caught in her throat. Maman and Papa had never had that chance. They worshipped as a family in private, away from the prying eyes of court and of her Grand-mère.

After the short ride to the small church, the two women were helped down from the carriage and entered together. Grand-mère’s beads clicked against Grand-père’s coins in Suzanne’s pocket. Her heart beat in time with them as she walked the short aisle, members gawking at her as she passed. Her rituals no longer soothed her and she was haunted by vague memories of her father’s Bible lessons and the peace evidenced in his life.

Maria waved Suzanne toward the end of the pew. No incense burning here, just the scent of damp wool, fresh greenery on the windowsills, and newly hewn wood.

Adam joined them. “Johan made these pews.” He smiled and slid his hand along the back of the golden wood.

“Truly?” Pleasant surprise warmed her.

He smiled. “Johan is very talented with his hands.”

She eased into the pew, the coarse linen of the skirt scratching her legs. When she got to Aachen, she’d substitute the gown for one left at the statue of the Lady of Aachen. If the story held true—that women left their finery at the feet of the statuary.

Nicholas removed his hat, and then leaned in, his smooth cheek brushing hers. “Did you bring that fine rosary with you today, Suzanne?”

She clutched her handkerchief in her lap. He had to have been in her room. In her things.
Or he’s watching me so closely, that…

He prepared to settle himself on the pew next to her when Johan shoved him aside.

No, please do not let them come to fisticuffs in here.
“Sit by Mama. I want Suzanne to sit by me.” Johan’s loud voice surely carried to the back of the small church.

Her cheeks heated.

“Of course, why not?” Nicholas shrugged. “Suzanne and I can talk later.”

Not if I have anything to say about it.

Nicholas moved to the other side of Maria.

“That’s better, ja?” Johan bestowed the first smile upon her since learning of his aunt’s death.

Suzanne tried to get comfortable on the bench, but worry made her jittery. The tittering of young girls a row or two back irritated her, and she couldn’t relax.

Johan took her hand and began to massage the top of it with his thumb.

She pulled her hand away. “That’s not proper.”

“Why not?” He genuinely sounded perplexed.

She exhaled. “Not in church. With all these people here.” Even as she said it, she recalled how readily she accepted his every embrace. Schmusen, he would call it. He hugged everyone, didn’t he? Last week when they’d left town, they couldn’t turn a corner without him being greeted by ladies with open arms. And he gathered into his arms every lady who wished a hug. She slid her hand back over to him, hoping no one would see.

His blue eyes, like a fathomless sea, asked permission before he took her hand and placed it between his own. “It’s not proper to come into God’s sanctuary and fail to worship him, either.”

His words stung because they were true. Lately it seemed to her that God was trying to talk to her in her dreams. That He was calling to her. She wadded her handkerchief in her hands. “I…I mourn the loss of your aunt.”

They rose to begin singing the hymns.

But all she could think about was Louisa. Dead. Because of her. The culprit might pursue the priest. She had to get to Aachen. To warn Father Vincent. Her stomach lurched—would her message to Jeanne be intercepted? Could she trust her best friend? She shouldn’t have sent it. But surely, Jeanne wouldn’t have anything to do with something so heinous. Was Pierre so obsessed that he’d kill to learn where she was? Even a monster like him wouldn’t risk imprisonment or the defamation of his family should he be discovered. Someone else, but who?