Sanctuary for a Lady

Mère bit her cracked lip. “How’s she feeling?”

“Poorly. Can’t stand.”

“Did she eat much?”

He tunneled a hand through his hair. She’d not eaten anything but spoonfuls of broth for more than two weeks. And he hadn’t even asked if she was hungry.

Or thirsty. “I should see how she’s faring. Come meet her?”

Mère stepped backward, her treasures forgotten and a shine of fear in her eyes. “I don’t know, Michel. She’s a stranger.”

“She’d like to see the bonnet you’re planning.” If the girl didn’t use the bonnet’s ties to strangle him for stranding her in the bedchamber despite her protests.

He took his mother’s shoulders and stooped to look her fully in the face. “Ma Mère, if anyone asks about her, say she’s Corinne’s cousin visiting from Paris. You can’t say I found her in the woods. Not to anyone. It’s important.”

Life or death important.

He’d repeated those words every day since bringing the girl home, but as always, Mother’s glazed eyes just blinked back at him.

Please, Father, let no one ask.

“Come.” He returned his mother’s discoveries to the sack and reached for her hand. “She’ll want to meet you.”

Hopefully. God forgive him for lying if the girl didn’t.

He grabbed his hat off the peg by the door and led her outside. A thundercloud approached from the west. A quick afternoon storm, more than likely, but the spring rains would come soon. He’d best examine the sandbags in the lower field tomorrow.

He tugged Mère along. “The girl’ll be happy to…”

The gate to the swine’s pen stood wide open. “Wait here.”

He left her standing in the yard and trudged toward the empty pen. The lily-livered sow! Getting the mean beast back would take the better part of his afternoon. Nothing seemed amiss with the gate while he mucked the stall. The beast must have been angrier than he thought and barreled through the barrier.

But the gate looked pristine with no visible damage to the door, latch or fence post. Michel rubbed his hand over his jaw. His pitchfork rested beside the post. Surely he hadn’t left the gate open. He wasn’t that daft.

But he’d been awfully distracted with the girl…

He pressed his eyes shut. He’d no memory of closing it. The girl and sow had troubled him, and he must have stormed to his workshop without latching the gate. He eyed the cloven prints that led toward the bottom field and stream, almost as though the sow made a beeline for his neighbor Bertrand’s property.

Thunder rumbled closer. He glanced at the gathering darkness, then back at the hog’s tracks. If Gerard Bertrand found her, he’d butcher her and the litter without thought, then lie to the magistrate about taking the sow.

Michel walked back to his mother. “Better get on inside. Rain’s coming, and the sow got loose. You remember, the one carrying the litter?”

She nodded even though her eyes showed no comprehension.

“You just go in and work on your mending. The girl should be sleeping. Leave her for now, and I’ll introduce you when I return.”

A bolt of lightning, a clap of thunder, and the sky loosed a torrent of fat raindrops. He smashed his hat farther down onto his head and watched Mère scurry inside. Then he turned to face the elements alone.

* * *

Thunk.

Isabelle’s eyes flickered open at the muted sound of the outer door closing, followed by soft voices from the other room. The candle still burned on the bedside stand, and the book the farmer’s mère had given her, The Tales of Mother Goose, rested facedown on her stomach. The woman had been kind to her, offering broth and water, giving her a book to read. But Isabelle must have drifted off soon after the woman left. Darkness had fully descended now, shrouding the room in its shadows. How long had she slept?

She shifted slightly, and a flash of movement caught her eye. The man entered, barefoot and soaked. Rainwater dripped from his sleeves and trouser hems onto the floor, making a muddy mess as he headed toward the dresser.

He placed his candle atop the dresser, its light illuminating the side of his chiseled face. She’d not heeded how attractive he was earlier, likely because she’d been too concerned about getting to Saint-Valery and then too angry with the man for insisting she lay abed. But now she couldn’t deny his comeliness. Muscles played across his back as he hunched down and rummaged through the third dresser drawer. His chest was so thick it would take three of her to fill it, and his arms so powerful they looked as though they could accomplish any task given them.

He must be so strong from working in the fields. She’d never seen her father’s torso this closely—he’d always worn layers upon layers of fabric, and none of them soaked to the skin, like the farmer’s—but Père’s forearms hadn’t been nearly so muscular nor his hands as beefy. And none of the courtiers at Versailles nor her former suitors had carried themselves the way this farmer did, with his strong shoulders and solid chest. She’d felt the strength of his arms and torso when he caught her from falling earlier.

Oui, he must be a hard worker, indeed.

He turned his head her direction, and she swiftly shut her eyes. He needn’t know she was awake—or ogling him. She was too tired to defend her actions or rationalize her thoughts. She’d no desire to engage in another argument, and she’d little reason to rouse and attempt her journey until she determined a way to earn back the money she lost.

Warmth spread over her body. He stared at her, and she felt it from the tip of her toes up through the roots of her hair. Her eyelids involuntarily fluttered, as though they longed to open and let her eyes meet his dandelion-green gaze, but she forced them shut.

The moment passed, the heat leaving her body and replaced by a cold loneliness. Fabric rustled in the farmer’s direction.

She opened her eyes. He stood sideways in the candlelight with fresh clothes piled atop the dresser. He undid the two buttons at his collar, then reached down and pulled the bottom of his shirt up.

She slammed her eyelids shut and turned her head away. She’d no business seeing this man bare of chest, especially not when she needed to focus on getting to England.

Chapter Five

The miserable wall. All it did was sprout holes.

Despite the chill in the air the following morn, a bead of sweat trickled between Michel’s shoulder blades. He hefted another sandbag from the wagon onto his shoulder and trudged to the weak spot in the makeshift dam.

Miserable wall. Miserable field. Miserable sow. Miserable life.

Twenty meters from where he walked, a stream glittered in the sunlight, and two large ash trees on the bank cast shadows over the water. It probably looked picturesque—to someone who didn’t know any better.

Nature’s deception at its best. One good rain and that creek would flood its borders—and his field. The ground rose on the other side of the stream, forming a gentle hill and Gerard Bertrand’s property. But Bertrand didn’t need to dam up his fields.

Nature did that for him.

If ever a field should revert back to forest and wetlands, this cursed lower parcel was it. After a few hours of rain from the day before, the ground transformed into a heap of mud that needed draining, not planting. And the creek had yet to flood, as it did every spring.

And every second summer.

And every third fall.

He set the sack into position on the wall and headed back to the horse and wagon for another. The farmwork, day in and day out, would rob a man of his strength. Take and suck and slurp until nothing was left. Then in the end, after the land stripped away a man’s muscle and mind and endurance, it took his heart.

It had stolen his father’s. In this very field. One moment the man had been plowing while Michel built up the dam, and the next moment Père fell to the ground behind the plow, his hands clutching his heart, his face a deathly gray. Michel had rushed to his side, just in time to promise Père he would take care of his mother and the farm.

His throat burned with the memory. How much of Père’s death was his fault? He’d been the one to leave the family and go off to Paris with dreams of making furniture. After a year of being denied an apprenticeship by every prominent furniture-maker in Paris, he’d returned home, his savings depleted, his dreams crushed, to find his father nearly dead from taking on the extra work.