Falling for the Enemy

Not that she wanted to marry any of them, but most girls four years her younger were happily married and bearing babes. Shouldn’t she have had at least one marriage proposal by now?

Or rather, she’d had one, she supposed.

Well, more like a dozen. But none of them from men any sane woman would marry. Perhaps if she was blind and docile and preferred spending her days mucking stalls and spinning yarn, she could be happily married. But she certainly didn’t take to mucking stalls—they stank too much. Or spinning yarn—one had to sit far too still to manage such a task. She wasn’t blind, and as for the docile part, well...

“I could only get one.” Serge, her younger brother by six years, emerged from the tangle of trees and shrubs lining the creek. A squirrel dangled from his hand by the tail.

She rolled her eyes. “Go back for another, then.” He held out the squirrel for her to take. She merely crossed her arms. “Papa said you need to practice.”

“Come on, Dani. You can have it skinned in half the time.”

Which was likely why her younger brother had reached sixteen and was the slowest animal skinner in all of Abbeville.

“I caught and cleaned the rabbit last night. It’s your turn.” She eyed the bloodied animal, a large stab wound gaping in its chest. “And you’ve little choice about going back for more. Mayhap we could have shared just the one had your blade hit between the eyes. But knifing it in the chest like that, you lost too much meat.”

Which her brother should have known.

Maybe he wasn’t just the worst in Abbeville at handling a knife. He had to be the most inept in all of northern France.

She pushed up from her crouched position by the fire and stood, stretching her back before turning to head upstream.

“Where are you going?” Serge called after her.

“To look for berries.”

“In January?”

She shrugged. So mayhap she wouldn’t happen upon berries, but she might find some burdock or cattail root to dig. Anything to get her away from the fire. If she lingered there, she’d end up doing all Serge’s work, and she could hardly sit still long enough for him to find another squirrel.

He likely wouldn’t return until after dark, the dunce.

She made her way along the water, sluggish from the coolness of winter, but not frigid enough to turn to ice. Leafless brambles and shrubs sprang from soil still damp from yesterday’s rain. She shivered inside her cloak and glanced up at the gray sky through the tree branches above. Home would be more temperate than this, near enough the channel’s warm waters to drive winter’s chill away.

Something rustled ahead, then a rabbit scampered out from beneath a bush and darted toward a little thicket. Within half a second, she had her blade in hand, her fingers gripping the familiar leather handle. One throw, quick as lightning and silent as a snake, and she’d have their supper.

Except Papa had all but commanded she let Serge do the hunting on their trip, saying he had to learn sometime. And she’d done most of the hunting on the way to Reims, then yesterday, on the first day of their journey, she’d killed a rabbit.

She was going to be good and obedient—for perhaps the third or fourth time in her life—and let Serge do tonight’s hunting. She sighed, her grip loosening on the knife.

As though sensing the sudden lack of danger, the rabbit stopped and turned, sniffing the air before staring straight at her.

Too easy a kill to bother with now anyway. What was the fun of throwing a knife when her target was still rather than moving? She bent and slipped her blade back against her ankle and continued down the little stream, winding her way deeper into the woods.

She could almost see the resigned look in Maman’s eyes and hear her exasperated sigh when Maman realized her eldest daughter had returned to Abbeville husbandless. Two towns, with a suitable groom yet to be found. Two! Papa claimed God had a plan for her. That she only needed to wait on Him, and everything would fall into place.

Evidently Papa didn’t understand how hard it was for her to wait for anything—let alone for God, Whom she couldn’t see or touch.

As though waiting for the right man to happen along hadn’t already taken long enough.

A rustling sounded from the trees behind her. Likely another rabbit. But no, the noise was too loud for such a small animal. A fox, perhaps?

She stilled until only the trickle of the creek over rocks and the tapping of tree branches in the wind filled her ears. Another sound, deep and rich, carried on the faint breeze.

A distant, undeniably male voice.

She reached for the knife strapped at her ankle once more, then straightened, stepping stealthily around twigs and through a tangle of saplings.

Probably not anyone to worry about. Just another traveling party stopped to make use of the stream.

Except they were settled awfully deep into the woods to be merely traveling.

Then again, she was nestled rather deeply into the woods, as well. But the trees provided ample opportunity to find game, and with only her and Serge, she didn’t want to invite trouble. She could defend herself well enough, ’twas true, but she wasn’t going to seek disquiet, either.

A different person would probably turn around and head back to the campsite, pack up and move another kilometer downstream before settling in for the night. That would certainly be the safe thing to do. The predictable, normal, safe thing.

But then she wouldn’t know who the travelers were, whether they posed a threat.

She crept closer to the voices. The cadences were low, all male but slightly different. She slipped silently between two shrubs, years of moving quietly through the woods while hunting with Papa aiding her stealth. She only needed to creep a bit closer.

Something about the voices didn’t sit right. The intonation seemed off, rough and coarse, without the gentle roll of French off one’s tongue. Perhaps if she overheard a word or two, she could better understand why they were camped so obscurely. The men could be anyone from gendarmes to army deserters to thieves.

Or they could be normal travelers having just left Reims and heading toward the coast like her and Serge.

Either way, she needed to know.

She crouched lower and inched forward. Something moved ahead, a flash of cream on the other side of the brambles. Then a cough sounded, loud and harsh and from deep within the chest.

Whoever made up this party, one of their members seemed not much longer for this world.

A gruff voice filled the air. “I still say we’re better to travel during the day.”

The breath in her lungs turned to ice. She couldn’t have heard right. No. Certainly not. It almost sounded as if they spoke...

“He’s right,” another man rasped, followed by a small cough. “We can’t travel at night. We hardly know which way to go during the day. We’d be lost within a matter of hours.”

English.

She swallowed against her suddenly dry throat. That vile country’s navy had killed her older brother. If she never saw another Englishman or heard the language spoken again, she’d be happy, indeed.

But what were a band of Englishmen doing here?

She squeezed her eyes shut. No. Never mind. She didn’t want to know.

Definitely didn’t want to know.

Most assuredly didn’t want to know.

She simply needed to get herself and her younger brother away from this place.