Chapter 13 #3
“I’m getting there, lad,” Heath said gently.
“After the last time the gendarmes came to check on us at night, we knew we had until morning before they checked on us again. We hurried downstairs to the door panel, where the holes made it easy to punch the panel out, then we climbed through into the chapel and propped the panel back in place, so it wouldn’t immediately be noticed. ”
“But then you had to get out of the chapel,” Kit said.
Heath nodded. “The windows had bars, but above one window was a frieze. We put storage items up on a desk to reach the frieze, pushed it out, then climbed through the hole. That led into the general’s garden, but he wasn’t at home that night, so we were able to cross the garden and get to the wall fairly easily, after evading a sentinel.
Unfortunately, we miscalculated how far the drop was, so our rope played out ten feet above the ground.
We ended up falling farther than we expected.
That’s how our friend Morris got hurt— he was older than we were. ”
Maman gave a little gasp, but the boys thankfully didn’t seem to notice. Giselle had never told her mother how Morris was hurt, just that it happened during the attempted escape.
“We made it to our copse, half carrying Morris. We intended to stay in there the next day until Morris could walk, but the gendarmes surrounded the copse in the morning and made us come out. Then we were sent to Bitche prison in irons. There was no more escaping after that.”
“Bitche prison had a dungeon,” Giselle said dully. “Everyone called Bitche the ‘Mansion of Tears.’ It was no place anyone would ever wish to be. Your brother and his friends spent three years there before being set free when Napoleon abdicated.”
“We were in two cells rather than in the dungeon proper,” Heath said. “But they were carved out of rock. All night we could hear those in the dungeon drinking, carousing, gambling . . . sometimes screaming. It wasn’t a pleasant place. There were a number of suicides.”
“There were those at Verdun, too,” Giselle said woefully. “When one’s captivity stretches on for a decade with no end in sight, people begin to lose hope of ever seeing their families.”
With a little cry, Zack threw his arms around Heath. “We’re glad you came home!”
Heath ruffled the boy’s hair, looking a bit taken aback by the show of emotion. “I’m glad I came home, too, lad. I missed all of you—even you, though I hadn’t met you yet. But Mother spoke of you a great deal in her letters, so I felt as if I knew you.”
Giselle blotted her eyes with her handkerchief, hoping Heath did not notice. But how could she not cry for what he had lost? It all seemed so unfair, even to a Frenchwoman. Then again, she was half-English, and her father had suffered with them. It was not right.
After his tale, his brothers had questions. They wanted to know all about life at Verdun and Bitche. She knew much of the first and little of the second, so she was almost as interested as they.
Dusk fell not long into the second half of their journey, but none of them noticed, especially once the small lamps inside the carriage were lit at their next stop. The questions continued, and Heathbrook answered every one until the boys fell silent.
After a while, Zack’s head fell against Heathbrook’s shoulder as the boy dozed, and her mother’s head fell on hers.
On the other side of Zack, Evan stared out the window at the rising full moon.
Kit got quiet next, and she looked over past her mother to where Kit sat next to the carriage wall.
He was propping his head against it in an obvious attempt to doze a little himself.
Time passed, with the only sounds being her mother’s snores and the squeaking of the carriage.
“How much longer?” rumbled Evan’s voice, sounding more like his older brother’s in the dark.
“An hour, I think?” Heathbrook answered. “We should be there soon enough.”
“Do they know to expect us?” Evan asked.
“Of course,” Heathbrook said, a trace of irritation in his tone. “I may not have been here for over a decade, but Father made damned sure I would know what to do with managing the estate once I was.”
The moon illuminated Evan’s head nodding. “Cousin Yates said he hired an estate manager. I never liked him, but I only met him a handful of times.”
“He’s not a talkative chap,” Heathbrook answered. “But he’s good at what he does, and he made it clear from the first day that his loyalties lie with me. I have kept him on. So far, he has not disappointed me.”
More time passed until, all of a sudden, Evan cried, “There it is! Wake up, boys, it’s Longmead! It’s lit up for our arrival!”
Maman stirred beside her and peered around her to look out the window.
“What?” Kit said sleepily.
“It’s too dark to see,” Zack complained, although probably he could not see because he sat between his two taller brothers.
Giselle could see. And what she saw took her breath away.
Lights shone from every window, and there were so many of those that she couldn’t count them all.
The horses’ hooves crunched on gravel as they turned down the wide drive, heading through an imposing gatehouse and beyond that to a circular drive in front of the manor house itself.
The moon cast just enough light to show how very large it was, and she sucked in a breath. It was nothing like she’d expected. It had beautiful, long, stained glass windows on the upper floors, and what looked like a walkway across the top, although perhaps that was a trick of the moonlight.
Her stomach sank as she realized how large the place was.
This was not the dwelling of some minor noble of no consequence or income.
This was the mansion of the obviously important Earl of Heathbrook, a man of great wealth and probably more power than she had realized, at least in the portion of the country she was in.
“Your home is very beautiful, sir,” Maman told Heath in French. “My daughter will never want to leave.”
“She won’t have to,” Evan answered in French. “They’re getting married.”
Never had her subterfuge weighed on her more than now in front of his brothers. Because the truth was, no matter what Maman always said about her being the granddaughter of a count, her grandfather had never owned a home like this.
And Heath, the man she was coming to yearn for beyond endurance, was clearly far, far beyond her reach.