Naomi Rawlings - The Soldier's Secrets

“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.

“I accept.” His throat tightened on the words, but he forced them out. He could manage one more night of hero worship.

If only he didn’t feel like a fraud.

* * *

Nothing. There was nothing here. Brigitte peeked under the bed one last time, just to be certain. What had she missed? No hidden journal of Citizen Belanger’s military days sat stuffed beneath his pillow. No tattered and stained National Guard coat was secreted away in his chest of drawers. And no mysterious trunk lay under this bed, nor under any of the three others inside the chamber.

Oh, the beds themselves were beautiful, just as breathtaking as the table and chairs had been. One had leaves and acorns carved on it while another had the same cornucopias as the dining set. But after an hour spent scouring every centimeter of the two-room house, she still had no information about where he’d been in April of 1794, when Henri was killed.

What was she going to tell Alphonse’s man? That Citizen Belanger had beautiful furniture? She bit her lip and stared at the empty space under the bed, willing a trunk or secret crate to suddenly appear. Then all she need do was look inside and find proof of Citizen Belanger’s...

Innocence? Guilt? What did she hope to find?

Citizen Belanger was big, like the man who had stolen Henri from their bed. And by his own admission, he’d been to Calais before. Yet Alphonse had said Citizen Belanger disappeared to Paris at the beginning of the Révolution, and she’d found nothing indicative of Paris in his house. Nothing indicative he’d been gone any length of time at all.

Perhaps he was innocent. The man had given her family three meals now and paid her two livres for a loaf of bread. Murderers didn’t care for the poor or search for excuses to give away money.

Did they?

She sighed and wiped a strand of hair from her face. She’d best go search the stable before she left. Perchance he’d something hidden away there.

“Ho, Sylvie.” A masculine voice resonated through the house, followed by the telltale creak of a wagon.

She stilled, blood rushing in her ears and her palms suddenly damp. Citizen Belanger couldn’t be back so quickly. She’d barely been here an hour.

Or had it been two?

She glanced out the bedroom window, its shutters thrown open to let in the warm summer air. The sun was high against the blue tapestry of sky, much higher than it should be had she only been working an hour.

The outer door to the house squeaked open and then thudded shut. She looked frantically about the room, then dove beneath the bed.

Chapter Six

Jean Paul scratched the back of his neck as he surveyed the main chamber of his house. Strange. He could have sworn he’d put Sylvie’s blanket in the stable yesterday’s eve, but the stable held no sign of it. The only other place it might be was inside the house. Yet no blanket lay in a haphazard pile on the table or hastily thrown over the rocking chair.

What had happened to it? A blanket didn’t simply up and disappear.

Or did it?

Mayhap he was losing his mind. There’d been a missing chicken yesterday, an absent mug this morn at breakfast and now his mare’s...

He looked around his cottage one more time. ’Twas more than a misplaced blanket or cup gone afoot. The entire house seemed wrong. The Bible lay at an odd angle on the mantle, the bench by the table was absent of dust, and the quilt on the rocker was folded a bit too neatly.

His heart quickened in his chest. Someone had been here. In his house. In his things.

He stood still, forcing his heart to slow and his blood to cease racing. Forcing the return of his old, familiar calm that had stayed him through all manner of horrors and deeds during the Terror.

He looked around a third time, assessing every centimeter of his house. Who had been here, and why?

Someone who knew of his past? Someone searching for him? Someone who wanted vengeance?

It couldn’t be. He’d moved back home over a year ago, and no one had since found him. Why would a person come looking now?

Or perhaps someone had learned of his letters to the Convention every month, of the men he sometimes sheltered in his stable. A hiding royalist that had escaped the terror, or a spy for the English that had sniffed him out. Then again, the man he’d harbored last night could well have been a spy selling information to the English while only pretending to work for the French.

No, no, no. It couldn’t be. His imagination was running amuck with strange and alarming possibilities while he missed the likeliest culprits: thieves. Or maybe a pair of deserters who had happened upon an empty house.

But while many things were slightly disturbed, nothing of worth was missing. A thief would have taken...

What? He kept little of value in the house, had learned long ago to hide the things he cherished. His gaze landed on the mantle above the hearth. His knife. That was gone.

He moved stealthily toward the bedchamber, footsteps soft, ears open for the slightest of sounds.

If an attacker had tarried, he’d likely be hidden in the bedchamber and would strike the moment Jean Paul opened the door. He glanced again at the empty spot where his knife usually rested, and his gut twisted. He reached for the kitchen knife hanging on a hook against the wall and held it at the ready.

He drew in a breath, then flung the bedchamber door open. It flew backward to bang against the wall.

Empty. The room held no one. But a person had been there. The dusty dirt floor bore fresh marks by all three of the unused beds, and the drawers of his dresser all fit perfectly into place. When was the last time he’d bothered to close the drawers properly?