Sanctuary for a Lady

The leader held out his hand for the pouch of coins and bundle of assignats she’d hidden in the secret pocket of her valise. Her stomach clenched. Five years of her seamstress’s wages, and the man palmed it as though she’d earned it in an hour.

Even as he took the money, the leader’s gaze never left hers. A silent battle raged between them. Isabelle refused to drop her eyes. He was waiting for that very thing, it seemed. Her final surrender. If only her stare could fend him off forever.

He released the hair he’d been fingering and touched her cheek. She resisted an instinctive flinch as his cold skin pressed against her face. “You know what gave your identity away? That stare. A seamstress wouldn’t look at me as though she were a queen.”

He backed away. “Kill her, boys.”

With the first blow to her kidneys, she couldn’t stifle her scream.

* * *

Michel Belanger surveyed the land before him as the early sun painted the bare fields golden. He drew in a deep breath, smelled the earth and cold and animals.

His eyes traveled over the small, tree-lined fields as they did every morning.

Thirty-six acres. The land had been his for four years, seven months and thirteen days.

And he loathed it.

He’d promised to care for the farm when his father died, but the obligation choked him, forever chaining him to northern France.

His neighbors were fools for thinking a declaration from the National Assembly freed them. True, the August Decrees four and a half years ago liberated land from the seigneurs and Church. But before, a man could leave a farm and seek work elsewhere. Now peasants like him owned their land. And the ownership only tied them to the monotonous work. Shackled their children and grandchildren to the unforgiving earth.

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. It was a verse he’d rather not have memorized.

Michel’s eyes roved the fields yet to be planted and rested on the stone and half-timbered cottage that sat at the field’s edge. He knew every bump and crag of the chipping wattle and daub, the manner in which sunlight slanted through the windows, the way shadows played in the corners of the two rooms. He came into the world in that house, and despite his dreams, he’d leave the world in that same structure.

But a promise was a promise, and he would work the land until it drained the life from his blood, as had happened to Père. The Belangers hadn’t worked for three generations only to have the eldest son turn his back on the land. He would work hard. He would tame the land and add to it. And one day, he would pass it to his son. And mayhap that son would love the land as his late father had, as his brother still did, despite Jean Paul’s decision to leave home.

But the day for heirs and inheritance lay distant, the only flicker of hope against a broad, dark horizon.

Until then, he would work.

Fishing pole in hand, Michel turned his back and followed the deer path through the woods to the pond he’d fished for the past twenty-one of his twenty-seven years. He and Mère hadn’t much meat to grace their table. That should’ve changed with the Révolution, and had—for a time. Then last summer the beshrewed Convention in Paris said bread in the cities cost too much, so they imposed price controls on grain.

His grain.

Now a sack of wheat brought hardly enough to care for his mother. Let alone cover the cost of his seed.

Michel scratched the back of his neck. Five years, and the Révolution that promised liberty, equality and fraternity had given him nothing.

The four-kilometer path was as familiar to him as the texture of field dirt in his hand, his feet so used to the twigs and stones that the feel of the earth alone underfoot could have guided him. Tilting his face toward the sky, he let the budding light warm his skin. Another month and the sounds of birds and frogs would serenade him while squirrels chased one another up beech trees.

A stick cracked beneath his boot, and the noise sent a startled woodcock flying from the brush with its distinct whirr. He smiled, his eyes following the flight of the brown bird into the sky. Then he glimpsed something foreign in the familiar sea of earth and tree trunks and logs. A scrap of blue fabric. He veered from his path, took a step closer.

Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. Three meters past a ripped valise and the discarded dress that first caught his eye, a body lay facedown on the forest floor.

Chapter Two

A mass of wild black hair covered the back of the girl who lay before Michel. Her dress was torn and stained with mud and filth, one sleeve shredded and bloody with a thorny branch still entangled in the crude linen.

The flurry of footprints surrounding her told the story of her struggle. And struggle she had, against what looked to be a gang of four or five men.

Michel scanned the familiar trees, his fingers aching for the worn wood of his musket. Were her murderers still here? No movement caught his eye. No palpable tension raised the hairs on his neck. Most likely her attackers had dragged her from the road, brought her to the clearing to rob and rape, then killed her, abandoning the body immediately after.

He hoped her death had been swift. No one deserved such a painful and humiliating end.

He picked his way through the scattered clothes and neared the girl. Was there family to notify of her death? A father searching for his beloved daughter?

He crouched to touch her hand, and swallowed back a sudden surge of bile at the sight of her left forearm twisted at an impossible angle.

Whoever would treat an innocent girl such deserved death.

Laying his fishing pole in the dirt, he ran his fingers over her hand. Cold, but not icy, not stiff. Could she be alive? Using both hands, he gently rolled her onto her back.

And stilled.

A fairy-tale princess. She must be. Dark curls of hair fanned beneath her head and rippled like waves on a pond. Her creamy skin looked as though it had never seen a day under the sun. A curtain of dark eyelashes fell against her high cheekbones. But no deep red hue stained her lips. Instead, a deathlike white clung to their shapely form.

Still, her features seemed too perfect, too delicate, to be from his world. As if, like Sleeping Beauty or another tale from his school days, a kiss could breathe life back into her.

Michel smoothed a strand of hair away from her cheek. If only the world would be so simple that a kiss could save a woman’s life.

Instead of pressing his lips to hers, he covered her nose and mouth with his hand. A faint exhale of air tickled his skin.

Alive!

He touched her forehead and cheek, then ran his hands down her torso and legs as he searched for injuries. When he touched the left side of her rib cage, she inhaled sharply and groaned.

Michel sat back. The girl would require care: a place to rest, a doctor, medicine. He could bring her home, but he couldn’t provide her with much. Would it be enough?

Leaning forward, he bent his ear to her chest in search of a heartbeat. His ear bumped something hard beneath her dress. Frowning, he placed his fingers over the spot, and finding a chain, he fished the necklace out from beneath her fichu and chemise.

A heavy cross emerged from her neckline and fell into his palm. Silver vines curled around a gold cross and at its center sat a large square emerald. It was beautiful, a relic from times past, not like the jewelry sold every day in the market. And it was authentic. If the weight didn’t give its genuineness away, the mesmerizing gleam in the center stone did.

He dropped the cross irreverently.

The woman was no beggar. No traveler.

Perhaps she was a member of the bourgeoisie. The wife of a Parisian accountant or lawyer. That would explain the expensive adornment.

Michel stood. Then she wouldn’t be traveling alone, dressed in coarse wool and linen. She’d have a finer dress. Non. She could only be one thing: an aristocrat disguised as a peasant and seeking escape. She’d made a good attempt by getting within twenty kilometers of the shoreline. Most aristocrats had already fled the country or met the guillotine, but she apparently survived—until now.

He gritted his teeth. To think he’d felt sorry for the wench. It mattered not whence she came or how hard her journey. Her class had grown rich off his sweat and deprivation. Perhaps the fools in Paris set the price of his grain, but they hadn’t stolen from him the way the aristocrats had. They took half his crop in taxes and then taxed the money his crops brought in. They played games while he worked, frolicked while he plowed both his fields and their land. Then they banned him from hunting and fishing the woods for food while they did so for sport and left animal carcasses to rot in the sun.

Michel stepped back. He wouldn’t help her. He couldn’t.

He surveyed the trees for movement yet again. Was she a trap? Had roaming soldiers attacked her rather than thieves? Did they watch to see if anyone helped?