Naomi Rawlings - The Soldier's Secrets

The breath whooshed out of her, and the air surrounding her grew thick and heavy. He couldn’t get to the older boys. They were safe in the navy.

Weren’t they?

“So which shall it be? Julien or Laurent? Julien would be advantageous in that—”

“What do you want?” She spit the words between them.

He winged an eyebrow up.

“That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?” She toyed with the ends of the shawl lying in her lap. “To ask something in exchange for letting me move to Reims?”

He laughed, a soft, cruel sound. “Very astute, Brigitte. You always have been, you know. ’Twas why I was so in favor of Henri’s marrying you from the first.”

“I’d not have married him had I known he was a smuggler.”

That cruel smile curved his lips yet again. “Which was why you made him such a perfect wife. You faithfully stayed home and bore his seed, not luring him away from his duties with words of love and flattery. Oui, you were perfect. Too dutiful to leave, yet too angry with his work to distract him.”

“You’re evil.”

“It serves me well, does it not?” He took a sip of tea. “But let’s begin negotiations. I have a certain task in mind, one that would perfectly suit a widow with three children to tend. You fulfill your assignment, and I let you and the children return to Reims. I’ll even give you money to buy a house there. A nice little cottage near your sister, perhaps?”

She drew in a long, slow breath. Only one job, and then she and the children would be free. The proposition seemed almost too good to be believable. But then, he hadn’t yet said what he wanted in exchange. “If I do your bidding, Julien and Laurent return to me in Reims when they reach port. They don’t come to you.”

“Of course.”

“And I won’t kill for you.”

Alphonse’s smile turned from cruel to dangerous. “Don’t worry, ma chère. I seek only a spy. And justice. For the man who killed your husband.”

Justice from a man like Alphonse? The very thought made her shiver. But what other choice had she?

Chapter One

Near Abbeville, France, July 1795

The children. She was doing this for the children.

Brigitte Dubois surveyed the countryside. The brilliant blue sky where two birds twittered and flirted with each other, the lush green forest to her right filled with a host of insect sounds, and the rolling fields stretching beyond the farmstead ahead and into the golden horizon.

Serene. Peaceful. A pleasant change from the grimy streets of Calais.

She must have the wrong house.

She’d never before given much thought to the soldier who had dragged her husband away in the night to execute him for his crimes. Had never wondered where he lived, what he did, if he had a family. But farming?

She forced her feet up the curving lane, climbing the little knoll to the cottage. A man stood near the stable, stuffing vegetables into an old wagon.

Her husband’s alleged killer?

Surely killers didn’t farm the pristine countryside or load vegetable wagons on sunny afternoons. They skulked about in the dead of night, meting out death and destruction.

“Bonjour, Citizen.” She neared the stable where the vegetables waited, stacked neatly in crates and sacks.

The man’s forearms bulged as he hefted another crate, his shirt straining against wide shoulders and a torso thick as a tree trunk. He would tower over Alphonse’s guards, and he was so thick of chest her hands wouldn’t touch if she wrapped her arms around him.

Powerful enough to drag a man like Henri from his bed. Strong enough to beat her dead if he learned what she was about.

“If you’re wishing to buy food, I sell it at the market, not here.” The man didn’t stop his work but reached for another sack.

“I’m not in want of food, but a post.” Not that she wanted to work for a possible murderer, but truly, Alphonse had left her little choice.

He turned to her and paused, his hands gripping a crate filled with turnips. Harshness radiated from his being, with eyes so dark and ominous they were nearly black, and hair the color of the sky at midnight. His chin jutted hard and strong beneath a chiseled face, and an angry scar curled and bunched around his right eyebrow.

She wet her suddenly parched lips.

“I haven’t a job to offer you. I only employ tenant farmers, and I’ve three men waiting for plots next year already.” He slid the crate onto the wagon bed, then turned and hefted another. “Have you tried in town? The butcher might be hiring, and we can always use another laundress or seamstress.”

Brigitte glanced down at her lye-scarred hands, unlikely to recover after sixteen months of taking in laundry and mending. Besides, Abbeville was a small town, not like the bustling port of Calais. The people here probably had a favorite widow they took their mending to. “What about working as laundress here? You said you have tenants.”

“Aye, and several of them have wives. There’re women aplenty for doing women’s work and older men to laze about. It’s young men we’ve naught of.”

Yes, she knew. Perhaps the war with the Netherlands had been settled, but France still warred with the Austrians in the east, the Italians in the south, and the English on the sea. Which meant the country sorely lacked young men...

Or rather, young, upstanding men. Her husband and the rest of Alphonse’s smugglers had evaded enlistment.

As had the man before her.

That bore looking into. Why would a strong, healthy man be farming rather than serving his country?

Perhaps he’d gotten leave for some reason, or had already joined the army only to be injured and sent home.

But that still didn’t explain how he had all his tenant positions filled and a waiting list of three farmers for next year.

And wondering these things would do little good unless she procured employment here and could seek answers. She forced her eyes back to the big brute of a man still loading the wagon. “What of you? Have you a wife to do your laundry and housework and cooking? I can bake bread and apple pies, cherry tarts and—”

“Non.” The harsh word resonated through the air between them. “I’ve no wife, and no need of one.”

Heat flooded her cheeks and she took a step back, even though the wagon already sat between them. “I wasn’t asking for your hand, I was offering to hire my labor out.”

She’d already tried to dig into his secrets from afar. She’d moved to Abbeville half a week ago, but talking to the townsfolk had gotten her nowhere. She had a meeting with Alphonse’s man in three days’ time, and nothing to report but the information Alphonse had already given her: officially, after Jean Paul Belanger’s wife had died seven years ago, he’d gone to Paris and spent six years away from Abbeville, supposedly making furniture.

Furniture. In the middle of a revolution.

Did no one else think that odd?

Alphonse did. And Alphonse also thought Citizen Belanger the lead soldier that had found Henri and broken up a smuggling endeavor over a year ago, while going by a different surname. Now she was here to find proof and present it to Alphonse’s man.

“Where did you say you were from?” The large man shoved another sack of grain onto the wagon and turned, his eyes studying her.

“Calais.”

He frowned. “The port on the sea?”

“Oui. Have you been there? You can see England and its white cliffs from the shore. It’s a beautiful city.” Or it was if you lived in the proud stone houses set back from the sea and not in a shack near the harbor.

The man’s eyes grew darker—which shouldn’t have been possible, as they had started out the color of midnight.

He knew what she was about, he had to. She took an instinctive step back. If he flew at her—