Naomi Rawlings - Sanctuary for a Lady

Rescued by the enemy

The injured young woman Michel Belanger finds in the woods is certainly an aristocrat. And in the midst of France’s bloody revolution, sheltering nobility merits a trip to the guillotine. Yet despite the risk, Michel knows he must bring the wounded girl to his cottage to heal.

Attacked by soldiers and left for dead, Isabelle de La Rouchecauld has lost everything. A duke’s daughter cannot hope for mercy in France, so escaping to England is her best chance of survival. The only thing more dangerous than staying would be falling in love with this gruff yet tender man of the land. Even if she sees, for the first time, how truly noble a heart can be....

“Stay.”

“What?” Isabelle asked, half-dazed by Michel’s touch.

“In Abbeville. Stay with me.” He took her hand and tangled their fingers together.

“Oh, Michel.” He didn’t understand the danger she brought him. He couldn’t, or he’d never have asked her to stay. “I can’t stay.”

“You can stay tomorrow. Promise me that. We’ll take things one day at a time.”

“I wasn’t going to leave tomorrow.”

“Then it will be an easy promise to make.”

It should be easy. It meant she gave up nothing. So why did she have such trouble forming the word? She closed her eyes again.

Warm lips touched her forehead, then her temple. “Yes,” he whispered, his breath tingling her ear.

“Yes.”

“For a week. Stay another week.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. She wanted this life so much, this man so much. “Yes.”

If only she could hold on to him forever.

NAOMI RAWLINGS

A mother of two young boys, Naomi Rawlings spends her days picking up, cleaning, playing and, of course, writing. Her husband pastors a small church in Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, where her family shares its ten wooded acres with black bears, wolves, coyotes, deer and bald eagles. Naomi and her family live only three miles from Lake Superior, and while the scenery is beautiful, the area averages 200 inches of snow per winter. Naomi writes bold, dramatic stories containing passionate words and powerful journeys. Sanctuary for a Lady is her debut novel, and if you enjoyed the novel, she would love to hear from you. You can write Naomi at P.O. Box 134, Ontonagon, MI 49953, or contact her via her website and blog at www.naomirawlings.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

—Colossians 3:13

Dedication:

To my husband, for believing in me and supporting me. May I show you the same type of support, encouragement and love you show me.

Acknowledgments:

I would like to thank my editor, Elizabeth Mazer, for yanking my manuscript out of the slush pile and seeing some potential. I also thank my agent, Natasha Kern, for believing in me as a new writer, taking time to teach me more about writing and publishing and not giving up on me despite all the mistakes I make. And finally I thank my critique partners, Melissa, Sally, Glenn and Anne, for trudging through this story with me.

Numerous others have helped with this novel, through giving advice, answering questions and reading portions of this story.

Thank you all for your time and efforts.

“The time has come which has been foretold, when the people would ask for bread and be given corpses.”

—Madame Roland, French aristocrat

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

Germinal, Year II (March 1794), Picardy, France

Silence surrounded her, an eerie music more haunting than that of any chamber players. It soaked into her pores and chilled her blood.

Isabelle surveyed the shadowed trees of northern France, so different from the wide fields she’d grown up with in Burgundy. The woods lay still, most animals caught in winter’s slumber. Her breathing and the crunch of her shoes against the road formed the only human sounds amid acres of forest and earth and animals—or the only human sounds of which she knew.

She clutched her cloak and glanced behind her. Did someone follow?

Her feet stumbled over the hard dirt road, her body trembled with cold, her gloved fingers stiffened until they nearly lost their grip on her valise and her vision blurred. Fatigue washed through her like waves lapping higher and higher on a shore. The long periods of dark through which she had traveled stretched into one another until the ninth night seemed no different from the first but for the growing blisters on her feet and cramps in her arms. One more day.

She was close, so terribly close. If she could just survive tonight, she’d nearly reach her destination.

A whisper. A crackle. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. Something’s out there.

A rustle in the bushes ahead.

Isabelle reached to her waist, clasped the handle of her dagger and unsheathed it.

Was it an animal? A person? Please, no, not a person.

The bushes rustled again.

Her hands slicked with sweat. Low to the ground, two reflective eyes appeared in the brush.

A wolf? She held its gaze, her heart pounding a savage cadence for each second the creature glared back. Fear licked its way into her chest. She sped her pace and clasped the dagger so tightly her fingers would surely leave imprints on the leather handle.

Her hand began to shake. She’d kill him if he rushed her. She must. But where to stab him?

As suddenly as the eyes appeared, they vanished.

Dropping her valise, she clutched her throat with her free hand and forced herself to take a breath.

She wiped her damp forehead, then groped for her elegant cross pendant and slipped it from beneath her dress. The silver glinted in the moonlight, but the shadows turned the emerald at its center a sullen black. Like her, the pendant survived, the only remaining fragment of her life before the Révolution.

In her mind, she could still see the light from the stained-glass windows that had slanted down on her six years past, when her father presented the cross for her sixteenth birthday. Even now she could feel his thick fingers as they fumbled to fasten the clasp at the back of her neck.

But was He still there? The God of the cross she wore?

“Holy Father? Give me strength?” More a question than a plea, nevertheless she uttered the words into the night. There had been a time, before the Révolution started five years ago, when her words would have been strong and sure. Now they floated into the gloom, a glimmer of hope swallowed in an abyss of doubt.

Through the wind’s filter, a distant noise teased her hearing.

A trickle of voices? She turned her head. The faint sound whirled and dissipated. She scanned the road toward the west and then the east.

Silence. Only the primitive night surrounded her.

Then a group of men burst from the woods, the four or five soldiers sprinting toward her.

Father, no! Don’t let them catch me. Not when I’m so close.

“Look, there’s a girl,” a voice rang out.

A hot explosion of fear seized the base of her spine and spiraled upward. Enacting a plan she’d rehearsed thousands of times in her head, she gripped her bag and ran into the woods opposite the men.

“Stop, in the name of the Republic.”

She sped toward the darkest places within the shadowed forest, seeking a large fir tree, a thick clump of saplings, anywhere that might shelter her for a moment. Perchance her pursuers would lose sight of her or trip over a log.