Sing Me Home (30 page)

Suddenly, from outside the door, came the high roiling reel of Padraig’s unmistakable pipe.

“It looks,” she said, tugging on Colin’s Irish braid, “as if you put an end to the witnessing of the bedding.”

“That I did.”

“Didn’t I make you a promise,” she whispered, “about dancing naked for your eyes alone?”

THE END

A personal note from Lisa …

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Don’t miss Lisa Ann Verge’s other sexy, adventurous, historical romances!

TWICE UPON A TIME
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THE FAERY BRIDE
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THE O'MADDEN: A NOVELLA
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THE CELTIC LEGENDS SERIES: Boxed Set
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HEAVEN IN HIS ARMS
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Also available––the Novels of Lisa Verge Higgins

THE PROPER CARE AND MAINTENANCE OF FRIENDSHIP
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ONE GOOD FRIEND DESERVES ANOTHER
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FRIENDSHIP MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER
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RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
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SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY
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Enjoy this excerpt from HEAVEN IN HIS ARMS, another road-trip historical romance!

HEAVEN IN HIS ARMS

Prologue

Paris, July 1670

T
his was her only chance.

Genevieve pressed against the stone wall. The dampness seeped through her woolen dress and chilled her skin, already clammy with fear. She dug her fingers into the bundle clutched to her chest. She had come this far. All that was left was to pass the guard at the end of the hallway, and she would be free.

The distraction had already begun. A slip of a girl emerged from one of the doorways. That girl raced toward the dozing female guard and startled the woman from her nap. The guard blinked at the wild-haired creature while the young girl—a deaf-mute—gestured frantically toward the gaping door of her cell. Sighing, the stocky guard hefted out of her seat, grasped a sputtering candle, and followed her down the hall.

As soon as the guard disappeared into the chamber, Genevieve leapt out of the shadows. She raced on bare feet toward the oak doors. She would only have a few moments before the guard realized that the young woman's unspoken fears were imaginary—the crazed ravings of a simpleton, the guard would think—and then the old laywoman would shrug it off and return to her station.

But Genevieve Lalande would have already escaped.

The brass handle chilled her hand. She eased the door open to prevent the hinges from squeaking. When it was cracked enough, she slipped through and edged it closed behind her. She leaned against the door for a moment, sucking in the night air as she waited for her blood to stop pounding. But she was already late. If she didn't hurry, her second accomplice would lose courage and destroy all their plans.

She scanned the enormous courtyard of the Salpêtrière, her prison for the last three years. The night was clear but moonless. Bits of gravel scattered the starlight, making the courtyard glitter as if it were covered with frost. There was no sign of her accomplice, but she’d hoped that the girl would have more sense than to stand like a lost child in the middle of the open courtyard. She glanced at the debris scattered at the opposite end, where the church of Saint Louis was being built. There was no better place to hide than among the hewn stones, the piled earth, and the skeletal wooden scaffolding.

She clung to the walls as she worked her way over. Chips of gravel bit into her feet. A breeze swept through the open courtyard, heavy with the stench of the Seine River. The rows of windows in the opposite building winked at her like a thousand eyes and she was so distracted that she stubbed her toe against a pick abandoned by some day worker. She squeezed her eyes shut until the pain passed. Then she limped on until she reached the shadows of the scaffolding.

Marie should have been here by now. The last note Genevieve had sent her was specific: Tonight was the night they were to meet in this courtyard to complete the plans they had so painstakingly formed over the last three weeks. She and Marie had been passing notes back and forth through the same system without fail for too long for there to be a sudden mix-up.

Come, Marie. Come.

Somewhere in Paris church bells rang. Above her, birds startled with an anxious fluttering of wings. A stream of silt filtered down from the higher scaffolding, dusting her shoulder. As the church bells faded, she saw a figure separate from one of the buildings.

Genevieve sucked in a breath and pressed back against the masonry. If one of the guards saw her, she’d be right back where she started, and who knew when she’d get a chance like this again. But as she watched the figure enter the courtyard, she realized this was no guard. It was a woman, a young woman by the quick pace of her walk, an anxious woman by the way her head pivoted back and forth.

Genevieve intercepted her near a pile of bricks. “Marie?”

The young woman stopped short and pulled back the edge of her scarf, revealing a pale, drawn face. “Genevieve?”

“
Oui
. Come into the shadows.”

She had never seen Marie before today. With relief, she noticed that they were of about the same height. Height would have been the most difficult to disguise.

As she approached, Marie loosened her head rail and pulled the scarf off her hair. “Thank God you are here. I feared you would leave. The housekeeper on my floor would not fall asleep. I had to check three doors before I found one unlocked.”

Refined speech
. Well, Genevieve could mimic that well enough. “You had nothing to fear,” she said. “I would have stayed until dawn.”

The young woman squinted at her. “I have never seen you before.”

“Nor I you.” She didn't bother to explain that she was housed in a separate building, isolated from women like Marie. Marie was a
bijou,
a jewel of the Salpêtrière, an orphaned daughter of the petty nobility, pampered and educated and protected.

“You write with such a fine hand,” Marie murmured, glancing at Genevieve's common russet skirts. “I thought you might be one of the noblewomen housed in another building.”

Genevieve felt the muscles of her neck tighten. In another time, in a better world, she might have been worthy of being called a
bijou.
But that was long ago and best left forgotten. She gestured to Marie's skirts. “Is that what you planned to wear tomorrow?”

“Yes.” Marie parted her cloak to show a dark blue traveling dress. “I've packed a small case and left it by my bed. In it, you'll find several other dresses and a few gold pieces. This is all I can give you for what you are doing for me.”

Such foolish, innocent generosity. “You should have kept the money. You'll need it more than I—”

“No, that isn’t true.” Marie twisted her scarf in her hands. “You do know what you're doing, don't you? I couldn't live with myself—no matter how happy I'd be to escape this place—if I misled you.”

“I'm the one who suggested this plan.”

“But I’m going to be sent away—
you’re
going to be sent away,” Marie corrected. “King Louis XIV himself has dowered me. He has paid my passage to some horrible place called Quebec and he intends to marry me off to some coarse, half-savage settler—”

“I know you're a king's girl.” Every year since she’d arrived in the Salpêtrière, dozens of girls had been given a dowry by the king and sent off to the Caribbean islands or to the northern settlements of New France, to marry and settle in the colonies. “I chose you because you're being sent away from here.”

“Do you know anything about Quebec?”

Genevieve took the mangled scarf out of the other girl’s hands to stop her from crumpling it. “I know enough.”

“The forests are filled with red-skinned savages. The winters are long and frigid, and there's so much snow that it tops the rooftops.” Bereft of the scarf, Marie's smooth white hands knotted and twisted and pulled at each other. “And the voyage—over the sea—halfway across the world, in storms and sickness. Why are you doing this? Why would you take my place and go to that dreadful colony and leave all this behind?”

Genevieve glared at the long buildings of the Salpêtrière and thought,
I'd rather sell my soul to Lucifer than spend another hour here.

But Marie wouldn't understand that. She and Marie both lived in this “charity house,” but they lived in entirely different worlds. Marie lived in the Salpêtrière of King Louis XIV, the charity house that succored aging servants with no pensions, old married couples of good birth, and the younger daughters of impoverished petty nobility, a charity house staffed with religious women and headed by a benign Mother Superior. Genevieve lived in a place ruled by brutal guards, a place peopled by orphans and waifs and beggars taken forcefully off the streets of Paris. Since the day she herself had been captured, three years ago, she'd found no charity in this place.

“I'm surprised Mother Superior didn't recommend you to the king himself,” Marie continued into the silence. “I've been told she's having a difficult time finding enough girls of modest birth to fill the king's ship.”

“I'll make a better match in marriage disguised as a Duplessis.” Genevieve folded the silky scarf and laid it upon her own bundle. “Because of your birth, you'll be set aside for the wealthiest men in the colony.”

Marie cast her gaze down. “I didn't think of that.”

Of course she wouldn’t. This woman had never tasted a stolen apple. She had never raced through the streets of Paris after cutting a nobleman's purse, fearing hunger more than the threat of capture and punishment by whipping.

“But of course, it makes perfect sense now.” Marie's hands fluttered white in the starlight. “When I found your first note among my laundered shifts, I was sure someone was playing a trick on me. The girls are terrified of being shipped off to this dreadful place. They’re sobbing for me and Cecile as if tomorrow the two of us will be executed in the square.”

“But you won’t be going now. Have you heard from him?”

“Yes. Yes.” Her face lit with joy. “I received a note this morning. François is waiting for me, just inside the gates of Paris.”

So that was the name of the French Musketeer Marie loved enough to risk everything to marry. Genevieve dearly hoped this François wasn't like the other strutting, shifty-eyed Musketeers she had known in her younger days. In their blue coats and shimmering braid, they had terrorized the city, taking whatever women pleased them and pulling their swords at the slightest provocation.

“We mustn't delay any longer.” Genevieve nodded to Marie's cloak. “Take off your clothes.”

The young woman started. “Here?”

“Quickly.”

“But what am I to wear?” Marie glanced up at the skeletal scaffolding of the church and crossed herself. “I can't escape in your clothing.”

Genevieve footed her bundle toward the girl. “You'll wear the clothing of a governess—a black wool skirt, a white coif, and a black mantle. Then you can walk out the front gates without being stopped.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Never mind that. Hurry.”

Genevieve unlaced her bodice, tugged it off, and then slipped out of her russet wool skirt. The night was balmy, and the breeze toyed with her tattered shift as she stuffed her old clothes beneath a pile of bricks. As Marie fumbled with her own laces, Genevieve scrutinized the girl more closely. Marie's tresses were long and chestnut-colored. Genevieve's own hair was a mass of copper, a gift, her mother had once told her, from the father she had never known. Marie's skin was smooth, while Genevieve had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. Problems, she thought, but nothing that couldn't be overcome by brushing the roots of her hair with an ashy comb, covering her head tight with a scarf, and patting her face thick with powder.

Genevieve snatched Marie's bodice and thrust her arms through the sleeves. “Tell me about your family. I'll need to know their names, ages, and everything about them that's important.”

As Marie struggled out of her skirt and petticoat and reached for the bundle of clothing, she told Genevieve that her mother had died in childbirth when Marie was only a few years old. Later, impoverished by the civil wars which had flared through France, she and her father had lived on the charity of distant relatives until her father died, leaving Marie to the mercy of an unscrupulous second cousin. He refused to dower her or pay to put her in a convent, so she was sent to the Salpêtrière. Genevieve noted all the names and dates as she slipped on Marie's discarded petticoat and skirt. She would need to know as much as she could remember for when she got to Quebec.

But her mind wandered from Marie's monologue as Genevieve slipped on the blue travelling dress. The feel of the soft cloth against her skin brought a rush of memories. She blocked them out. The past was the past—it was the future that mattered now.