Sanctuary for a Lady

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)

Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One

Germinal, Year II (March 1794), Picardy, France

Silence surrounded her, an eerie music more haunting than that of any chamber players. It soaked into her pores and chilled her blood.

Isabelle surveyed the shadowed trees of northern France, so different from the wide fields she’d grown up with in Burgundy. The woods lay still, most animals caught in winter’s slumber. Her breathing and the crunch of her shoes against the road formed the only human sounds amid acres of forest and earth and animals—or the only human sounds of which she knew.

She clutched her cloak and glanced behind her. Did someone follow?

Her feet stumbled over the hard dirt road, her body trembled with cold, her gloved fingers stiffened until they nearly lost their grip on her valise and her vision blurred. Fatigue washed through her like waves lapping higher and higher on a shore. The long periods of dark through which she had traveled stretched into one another until the ninth night seemed no different from the first but for the growing blisters on her feet and cramps in her arms. One more day.

She was close, so terribly close. If she could just survive tonight, she’d nearly reach her destination.

A whisper. A crackle. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. Something’s out there.

A rustle in the bushes ahead.

Isabelle reached to her waist, clasped the handle of her dagger and unsheathed it.

Was it an animal? A person? Please, no, not a person.

The bushes rustled again.

Her hands slicked with sweat. Low to the ground, two reflective eyes appeared in the brush.

A wolf? She held its gaze, her heart pounding a savage cadence for each second the creature glared back. Fear licked its way into her chest. She sped her pace and clasped the dagger so tightly her fingers would surely leave imprints on the leather handle.

Her hand began to shake. She’d kill him if he rushed her. She must. But where to stab him?

As suddenly as the eyes appeared, they vanished.

Dropping her valise, she clutched her throat with her free hand and forced herself to take a breath.

She wiped her damp forehead, then groped for her elegant cross pendant and slipped it from beneath her dress. The silver glinted in the moonlight, but the shadows turned the emerald at its center a sullen black. Like her, the pendant survived, the only remaining fragment of her life before the Révolution.

In her mind, she could still see the light from the stained-glass windows that had slanted down on her six years past, when her father presented the cross for her sixteenth birthday. Even now she could feel his thick fingers as they fumbled to fasten the clasp at the back of her neck.

But was He still there? The God of the cross she wore?

“Holy Father? Give me strength?” More a question than a plea, nevertheless she uttered the words into the night. There had been a time, before the Révolution started five years ago, when her words would have been strong and sure. Now they floated into the gloom, a glimmer of hope swallowed in an abyss of doubt.

Through the wind’s filter, a distant noise teased her hearing.

A trickle of voices? She turned her head. The faint sound whirled and dissipated. She scanned the road toward the west and then the east.

Silence. Only the primitive night surrounded her.

Then a group of men burst from the woods, the four or five soldiers sprinting toward her.

Father, no! Don’t let them catch me. Not when I’m so close.

“Look, there’s a girl,” a voice rang out.

A hot explosion of fear seized the base of her spine and spiraled upward. Enacting a plan she’d rehearsed thousands of times in her head, she gripped her bag and ran into the woods opposite the men.

“Stop, in the name of the Republic.”

She sped toward the darkest places within the shadowed forest, seeking a large fir tree, a thick clump of saplings, anywhere that might shelter her for a moment. Perchance her pursuers would lose sight of her or trip over a log.

She didn’t want to die. Not here. Not at the hands of those who’d already killed her family. She could die the moment she reached her destination. A carriage could run over her or an illness take her. She’d accept death by another means, but not at the hands of the armée.

Her bag caught on a branch. Leave it, her mind screamed, but she couldn’t let these beasts find, tear through and claim her belongings. They had no right to her bag, no right to her.

“Stop, you vixen, or we’ll make you pay.”

“Come here. We want to tittle-tattle, that’s all.”

The shouts rang closer. Her pursuers’ panting grew louder than her quick inhales. The men stumbled over rocks and saplings she evaded. They trampled the dead leaves across which she flitted. But still they gained.

She tripped on a rock, twisting her ankle. She cringed and bit back a cry as pain seared up her leg and her shoe gouged into a blister. Still, she pressed forward.

“Quit running, wench! We won’t hurt you.”

She veered to the right, following the thickest trees. Surely she could duck into some spot and let the beasts run past her. But the ground here was flat and barren beneath the trees. Not even a fallen log to hide her.

“Get her, fool.”

“Where’d she go? I can’t see her.”

“By the tree.”

Heavy footfalls from behind sounded as though they would trample her. Or was that her heart thumping its erratic rhythm? Hot breath teased her neck and ear. No. They couldn’t be so close. It must be the wind swirling her hair.