Naomi Rawlings - Sanctuary for a Lady

Isabelle’s life spun before her in traces and glimpses, impressions and feelings. Faster and faster the scenes swirled. She tried to latch on to the pleasant memories from before the Révolution arrived—to catch that last view of Christmas with her family, to relive the day Père gave her the pendant, to remember the walks she and Mère once took in the dandelion field.

Instead, she stood in the shade on a warm summer day, lush with the scent of wildflowers and earth. Sunlight filtered through the rustling oak leaves and bathed the world in its warmth.

“This is for the best, Isabelle.” Marie didn’t look up as she plunged the shovel into the earth beneath the tree. “If someone discovers us, the money will be hidden far from the cottage, and we can still escape to England.”

Isabelle bit her lip. England. Reaching that land seemed little more than a wish. Even as Tante Cordele awaited them in London, they lived in the broken, leaking groundskeeper’s cottage on their aunt’s ruined estate.

“Here, let me dig.” Isabelle reached for the shovel, clasping a palm over Marie’s dry, lye-scarred hands. “I wish you’d found different work.”

Marie shrugged off Isabelle’s hold. “I haven’t your hand for needlework. Besides, my job as a washerwoman is only for a time. Once we reach Tante Cordele, I’ll soak my hands in scented water for a month. They’ll be soft as new.”

Marie was right. They needed money. Now. After they’d earned enough for two passages to England, they could stop their backbreaking work.

Marie rested the shovel against the tree and reached for the box Isabelle held, but Isabelle clutched it to her chest. The simple wooden square held no resemblance to the elaborate ivory jewelry box she’d left at Versailles, but inside rested the few earnings they’d scraped together and the coins she had hidden on her person before they’d been stranded.

Laying their treasure in the cold ground seemed almost cruel, but she knelt and placed the box in its new home.

Marie crouched on the opposite side of the hole and grasped Isabelle’s hand. “Swear that if I am caught, you will take this money and flee.”

She jerked her hand away and shook her head. The idea didn’t bear thinking of. “Non. You won’t be caught. We will get to England together. We must. I won’t let the Révolution take you from me.”

“Anything could happen to me, to us. We’ve no guarantee of reaching England.”

“We’ve been hiding for nearly a year, and no one has discovered us. ’Tis guarantee enough.”

“We’ve no certainty of earning money for a second ship fare, no promise that we can evade the soldiers and mobs forever. If I am caught, I will be killed.”

Isabelle’s breath caught. They’d not spoken of this before—one of them dying. Her chest felt as though she were being held underwater, and no matter how hard she fought to draw breath, the substance that invaded her airways grew thick and deadly.

“Izzy, look at me.”

She brought her shaky gaze back to Marie’s.

“If I’m caught, you take the money and map, and you go. Without looking back, without thinking of me. You flee to England. One of us will survive. We must. Whatever happens, we won’t let the mobs destroy the last La Rouchecauld.”

She longed to tell Marie not to be daft, yearned to promise they’d both see England’s shores. But Marie’s eyes, dark and serious, kept her from speaking such things. “And if I am captured, you do the same.”

And there, beneath the shade of the oak, they sliced their thumbs and pressed them together in that ancient ritual of binding a promise.

“Can you hear me, girl? Are you awake?”

The deep voice filtered through Isabelle’s haze of dreams, reaching, clutching, tugging, until it pulled her up, into the bare room lit with day. She blinked at the farmer who towered over her.

Isabelle licked her lips, dry and parched as sunbaked dirt. “What…what do you want?” She barely recognized the rusted sound of her voice.

“To see if you would awaken.” Concern shimmered from his eyes—green eyes, the color of dandelion stems. “You’ve slept another three days. And when you started thrashing…”

Her eyes drifted closed. The farmer should have let her sleep. At least Marie still lived in her dreams.

Isabelle jerked her eyes back open. Marie. England. The promise. She had to get up. Had to find her way to the shore. She could die once she reached England, so long as she kept her oath to Marie. So long as the La Rouchecauld name didn’t die in the clutches of the Révolution.

The man bent low over her, the smells of earth and sun and animals radiating from him. “Can I do something to ease your pain?”

Isabelle propped herself up. Pain seared her ribs, but she nudged her pillow against the headboard until she reclined in a semisitting position. “You have been most kind to me, citoyen. Please, tell me where I am?”

“About a kilometer east of Abbeville.” The man measured his words, speaking slowly.

Abbeville. The name settled into her memory. Oui, the town she’d been approaching the night of her attack. She was just east of it—so close to the sea. “How far, then, to Saint-Valery?”

He shifted closer and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do you ask?”

She swallowed. Was heading to a city on the sea too obvious? Did he know that, once there, she would board a ship? Since the British and French warred over the sea, she couldn’t go straight to London, but she could sail there via Sweden or Denmark, the only two neutral countries on the continent. “I’ve an aunt waiting to receive me.”

It wasn’t a lie, not really. Tante Cordele still awaited her in London.

His gaze held hers. “An aunt. In Saint-Valery-sur-Somme. Convenient.”

Her chest tightened. “You don’t believe me?” He knew everything. He must. Otherwise, he wouldn’t look at her thus.

“Why should I believe a stranger?”

“Because I… Why…it’s…” Her throat burned. Certainly, it had more to do with being thirsty than telling an untruth. But what else had she to say? He’d saved her life. He deserved the truth, if only the truth wouldn’t get her killed—and him as well. Surely she was protecting him by concealing the truth.

She forced a smile. “I beg you, sir. Simply give me the distance to Saint-Valery-sur-Somme.”

“Twenty kilometers.”

Hope surged through her. Only a day’s walk from Abbeville to the Channel. By this time tomorrow, she would be at the port. She gripped the quilt and looked at the man before her. “I am most grateful for your kindness, but I must away.”

“Aye, you must away. But you’ll not leave afore you’ve healed.”

Isabelle frowned. True, her head throbbed and her ribs pulsed with pain, but still… “I’m well enough to walk to Saint-Valery, thank you.”

“You’ve not tried standing, yet you can walk to Saint-Valery?”

“Of course.” She flung the bedcovers back with her bandaged hand. Pain sparked in her fingers and flashed up her arm. Jerking back, she gasped and stared at her wrapped forearm. She trailed her other hand up the wood of the splint that ran along her injured arm beneath the cloth. Surely something was amiss for her injury to smart like this after two weeks’ recovery. “This…it’s not healing properly. You must call the physician back. Who tended it?”

His eyes narrowed. “I’m rather handy with setting bones.”

“You jest. You could no more set my arm than stitch the queen’s drapes.”

He leaned close, placing his hands against the bed frame on either side of her so she couldn’t move. His eyes bored into her, hard and controlled. “I remind you the queen’s been executed.”