The Soldier's Secrets, page 5
She took a step backward. Perhaps she’d been a little too hasty in coming inside.
But no. She couldn’t let him frighten her. She had to protect her children first, and that meant gleaning information from the irate man before her—however unpleasant that prospect might be. “You stand rather straight, Citizen Belanger. Tell me. Have you ever been in the army?”
His hands tightened into fists around the bundle of food he held, and he stalked toward her.
She took another step back only to bump into the bench behind her.
“My past is hardly your concern.”
Oh, no. He was supposed to see her work and decide to hire her, not get angry. He was supposed to answer her questions, not corner her against the wall. She licked her lips. “I was simply making conversation. You know I’m from Calais. Why can I not know whether you’ve been in the army? You’ve the bearing of a well-trained soldier.”
“I have nothing of the sort. And I might know you’re from Calais, but I hardly know why you’re here, or where you’re staying, or why you’re suddenly so concerned with whether I was a soldier.”
She sucked in a painfully sharp breath. Did he see the way her hands trembled? Did her face look as cold as it felt?
And why could he not answer this one question? He turned every situation around until she was the one under interrogation. About where she lived. How much she’d eaten. Whether she was sick. If she carried a child.
“Why are you so concerned with my past?” His eyes narrowed, as though they could bore through her flesh and clothes and see straight into her heart.
She pushed down the urge to curl like a babe against the wall and raised her chin. “I told you. I was making conversation.”
“If you’ve such a penchant for conversation, you provide it. Where are you staying?”
She stared back at him. She couldn’t tell this stranger, this possible murderer, where she and the children hid, no.
“I see you like being interrogated as little as I do.” He thrust the bundle of food toward her stomach with such force she had little choice but to take it. “Here’s more flour, yeast and oil.”
She opened and closed her mouth before finally finding some words. “I’ve plenty yet left over from yesterday.”
He frowned, which did nothing to soften his already austere face. “You should be nearly out of flour. I’ve been making bread for nigh on a year now. I know how much is needed.”
“Oui, but you gave me two days’ worth.”
“Non. I gave you one day’s...” His voice trailed off, and the furrows across his brow deepened along with his frown. “Made you no bread for yourself?”
“’Twas your ingredients I used. I’m no thief to take them for myself.” Or she wasn’t yet. She only prayed her task for Alphonse wouldn’t turn her into one.
“Mayhap I gave you that amount so you could take a portion,” he growled.
“Well, you neglected to inform me.”
“I assumed it understood. You’re thin as a corpse and pale as fresh snow.”
“And you’re large as a mountain and meaner than a bull, but I don’t think such traits make you a thief.”
She clamped her teeth into her tongue the instant the words flew out. Why, oh, why, must she blurt such things when she argued with him? First the comment about a slug and now this. She’d never had such trouble when she argued with Henri—though that might have been due to the fact she’d never really argued with her husband, just obeyed.
Yet no emotion flitted across Citizen Belanger’s face as the words settled between them, not even a registering of the insult. If anything, his demeanor grew harder, more like stone and less like flesh and blood. “Sustenance is nothing about which to jest. People die from lack thereof. Have you any soup remaining from yesterday?”
“I’m not starving.” And she wasn’t. She managed to eat every day, even if it was less than the little Serge consumed. “If you would simply hire me as your maid, you’d see the ridiculousness of your concerns.”
“I asked if you have any soup left. Answer me, woman.”
She pressed her lips firmly together. Let him take that as her answer.
“Wait here.” He tromped back to the shelves beside the table, mad at her for some inexplicable reason. She was taking his food and eating it, was she not? Why should he grow angry?
When he returned, he clutched a bundle of salt fish. “Take this. And I’ve raspberries in the stable. Follow me.”
He shoved past her and strode outside.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Everything kept growing worse rather than better. Here he was plying her with food when she needed a chance to search his property.
She headed to the stable to find a wagon already laden with produce waiting just inside the doors. “As I’ve told you before, I don’t need your charity. I need a post.”
“And as I’ve told you before, I’ve no post for you.” He walked around the wagon and plucked a crate of raspberries from the back.
“And then you hired me to make bread, which only proves you could use my labor but are too stubborn to admit thus.”
A shadow crossed his face, dark and brooding, transforming him from the oversize person that had given her food into the dangerous menace that had stared at her inside when she’d asked whether he’d been in the military. The man before her now could hurt her without a flicker of emotion crossing his granite face.
The man before her now might well have killed Henri.
He came forward and held out a small crate of raspberries. “Things aren’t as simple as they appear. Now be off with you. I’ve a trip to make to town and fields to tend thereafter. I’ll expect my bread the same time tomorrow. And make two loaves for yourself this day.”
He turned and went farther into the stable, leading an aging gray horse out of its stall and guiding the beast toward the front of the wagon.
Brigitte tightened her grip on the food and watched him, his face still hard and void of expression as he hooked the horse to the cart.
He was likely going to town to sell his vegetables, and he’d be gone at least two hours, if not half the day. She’d already tried asking about his past and cleaning his house. So if she couldn’t ask questions and she couldn’t snoop under the guise of being his housekeeper, that left sneaking.
Could she do such a thing? Break into another person’s house while the owner was gone?
The moisture leached from her mouth. But if she wanted evidence of Citizen Belanger’s past before she met with Alphonse’s man, then she’d have one chance to get it. Later this morning, after he left for town.
* * *
Jean Paul watched her stomp from the stable, back straight and head high. Women, they were naught but a sore trial, and this one more so than most. How many times must he refuse her before she understood he wouldn’t hire her?
A dozen? Two dozen? A hundred?
He scowled, and Sylvie—a mare too old for the army to bother confiscating—snorted back at him.
The confounding woman would likely keep asking for as long as she brought him bread. What made her so set on working for him? Had she heard stories of the others he’d helped?
But the others lived elsewhere and didn’t come to his house each day. He saw some once a week and others once a month, a few only when rent was due on the property he let. He didn’t have to open his home to them.
His heart gave a solid, painful beat inside his chest. The woman with the bread would get the same answer each time she asked about a post.
He couldn’t have someone else about the place when he harbored such terrible secrets from his past. When he still longed for his wife.
And he doubted he’d ever be ready to open his home, or his heart, to another.
Chapter Five
She was a miscreant. A traitor. An utter and complete hypocrite.
Showing up on Citizen Belanger’s doorstep to ask for a job two days ago had seemed like a sound plan. So how had she ended up here, sneaking through his front door, about to become a criminal?
And all so she could do Alphonse’s bidding. She’d hated Henri’s illegal activities, but once she stepped inside Jean Paul’s house, how was she any different than Henri?
Because she was trying to save her family? That answer felt hollow. A wisp of truth cloaked in a lie. She was breaking into a person’s house because she feared her father-in-law, and that fear was pushing her into the dark world she’d despised for so long. Wasn’t there some verse in the Bible about such things? Not the one about her sin finding her out that her governess had been so fond of, but another. One that the priest used to quote at mass. Something about...about...about...
Reaping what you sowed. Yes, that was it. From Galatians chapter 6. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”
She grimaced at the door in front of her. Well, she certainly wouldn’t reap life everlasting by sneaking about. But she needed information.
She tucked her perpetually errant strand of hair back up under her mobcap and gave a final look about the yard.
Empty. Not so much as a bird overhead to watch her.
Though the wagon was gone from the stable, she knocked and waited one moment, then another, to be certain no one tarried within.
Everything lay still and quiet.
She slowly lifted the latch and let herself inside, heading straight toward the shelves lining the far wall. But she stopped when her gaze fell to his table. It was beautiful, a masterpiece fit only for a king or some royal relative. She’d been too far away to notice the details earlier that morn, but cornucopias had been carefully carved along the edge of the table, the generous cones overflowing with grapes and squash and apples. The fruit spilled down the side of the table, etched onto the legs with what must have been painfully accurate carving skills.
When Citizen Belanger had left Abbeville before the Révolution, he’d supposedly gone to Paris to make furniture. Perhaps there was a grain of truth in the tale, after all. Citizen Belanger must have made the table and matching chairs himself, for a farmer could hardly afford to purchase something so exquisite.
She trailed a finger over a cornucopia carved on the top of a chair, then forced her gaze away from the furniture and toward the shelves beside the hearth. She had an entire house to search and hadn’t time to tarry, regardless of how beautiful the furniture.
* * *
“You’re late.”
Jean Paul barely glanced at the gendarme as he pulled his wagon to a stop in front of the gendarmerie post. He hopped down and scanned the yard for Captain Monfort, but the gendarme glowering from beneath his black bicorn hat was the only one out of doors.
“I’ve been waiting for over a quarter hour.”
“My previous stop took longer than I planned.” As had the talk with his mysterious bread maker that morn. He hefted a crate of lettuce and carried it toward the entrance to the kitchen. “My apologies.”
Gravel crunched behind him, then came the gendarme’s morose voice. “A contract to supply the gendarmerie with food is hardly a trivial matter. I daresay if you continue to be late, we’ll have to look elsewhere for our food.”
Jean Paul rolled his eyes. Who was this whelp of a soldier? If the man wanted to be intimidating, he needed to stand straighter and give a hard gaze rather than shift away from one. But either way, his dourness had naught to do with Jean Paul’s late arrival. The man had helped unload deliveries for the past three weeks and had been ill tempered each time.
Jean Paul nudged open the door to the empty kitchen and set his crate down with a thud before heading back to the wagon. “I’ll try to be more punctual next week.”
He set the flour and remaining crates of vegetables by the side of the road and hopped back atop his wagon. If the gendarme was going to be so friendly, he could carry the rest of the food back to the kitchen himself.
“Where are you going?” the other man barked.
Jean Paul took up Sylvie’s reigns as the gendarme hastened toward him. “Away. You have your food. Two sacks of flour, four crates of produce. ’Tis settled.”
And he had little tolerance for ill-mannered men in uniform.
“’Tis hardly settled. You’ve more turnips left, and raspberries.” The gendarme stalked to the back of the wagon and reached in for the final crate of berries.
Jean Paul jumped down, clamping his hand about the other man’s arm. “You’ve raspberries aplenty. What remains is for Widow Arnaud.”
“You hardly gave us enough raspberries to keep the gendarmerie two days, let alone a week,” the other man sputtered, his cheeks dark with red.
“’Twill have to suffice. My contract is for four crates of produce. I decide what that produce entails.”
“The widow won’t know they were coming, and thus won’t miss them.”
Jean Paul crossed his arms over his chest and glared. “The widow has three boys and a daughter who delight in berries. Furthermore, she’s a widow because her husband died in the Batavian campaign. I should think a soldier like yourself would be respectful of such sacrifice.”
“Are you implying I’ve a lack of respect?” The gendarme moved his hand to the hilt of his sword.
Jean Paul drew in a small breath. He must tread carefully. ’Twas a reason he sold food to the gendarmerie. Doing so kept him in their good graces, and they therefore asked no questions about his staying in Abbeville—though with his shoulder injury mostly recovered, he could manage as a soldier in one of the military campaigns. They also didn’t question why he’d suddenly returned to Abbeville a year ago, nor did they wonder where he’d gotten the money to purchase the land surrounding his farm.
They simply bought his food.
True, his contacts in Paris could quash any resistance the gendarmerie post gave him, but he’d rather not go that route. Too many townsfolk would raise their brows if Paris got involved.
Yet he wasn’t about to let widows starve while the waists of the gendarmes expanded, either. One person, one gift, one act of generosity when Corinne was ill, and she might be alive today. “The raspberries go to the Widow Arnaud, and if that’s a problem, I can start taking my raspberries to market instead of here. I’ll get a better price than you give me.”
The gendarme curled his lips until his teeth showed, but his mouth held nothing of a smile. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“’Tis my food until you put money in my hand. I can sell it wherever I wish.”
“We might visit your farm in the night and raid your food stores.”
“Try it, and see how long Abbeville retains a gendarmerie post.”
A murderous look flitted across the soldier’s face.
“Does your captain know the threats you make?” Jean Paul growled.
The man just glared.
“Perhaps you should make yourself scarce next week when I deliver the foodstuffs, or I might find an urge to speak with your superior.”
“Jean Paul!” a voice bellowed. “I didn’t know you were here.”
He recognized the speaker before he turned.
Mayor Narcise waddled down the steps of the post, a smile wreathing his flabby face. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, my boy.”
“Bonjour, Jean Paul.” Captain Monfort followed the mayor down the steps, his eyes surveying the near-empty wagon. “Our chef was saying to me earlier this week how much he appreciates your deliveries. Did he tell you such?”
“The kitchen was empty when I arrived.”
“Ah, I forgot he ran to the market. I trust Gilles here helped you unload?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Jean Paul slanted a glance at the gendarme, who was steadily backing away from the group with two of the crates.
The captain gave a curt nod and straightened the lapels on his coat. “Good. You’re dismissed, Gilles.”
The scrap of a soldier headed toward the kitchen at a brisk clip.
“Well, then.” The mayor gave Jean Paul a hearty slap on the back. “My sister’s been wanting you over to sup. Nagging me about it for nigh on a week now, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you.”
Supper again. Jean Paul stuck a finger into the collar of his shirt and tugged. He’d been to four meals in town during the past year, each painfully awkward. Everyone sat around the table staring at him, praising him for the day he stumbled upon Citizen Benoit and her daughter being set upon by three army deserters. He’d done nothing special, only what any man of character would have when he chased off two of the scoundrels and dragged the other one before the magistrate.
He hadn’t realized Citizen Benoit was the mayor’s sister.
Or that he would be hailed as a hero for his deed.
“Well, what say you to supper on the morrow?” The mayor slapped him on the back again, then gave Captain Monfort a wink. “We’ll even invite the captain here.”
Jean Paul shook off the mayor’s flaccid arm. “’Tis a busy week with the first vegetables coming on.”
“Make time, boy. You’ve tasted the food my sister serves. The finest in all of Picardy.”
“Oui. ’Tis so,” Captain Monfort agreed.
Jean Paul glanced between the two men, Captain Monfort with his pristine uniform and the glimmer of respect twinkling in his eyes, and the mayor with his protruding stomach and hopeful expression.
He swallowed hard. He was the last person to deserve such respect and reverence. But then, the mayor and captain didn’t understand the innocent blood that lay on his hands from the six years he’d spent away from Abbeville. He’d thought he’d been serving his country, but countless other men served France without ever spilling blood the way he had.
