Naomi Rawlings - The Soldier's Secrets

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.