The French House by Helen Fripp (english readers TXT) 📗

you implicitly, but surely the more people who know, the more chance we will be discovered, my dear? I do worry about you,’ he fussed.

Thérésa, who was adept at eavesdropping from the most unlikely distances, glided over to Philippe before Nicole could reply. She flashed him one of her winning smiles.

‘Don’t forget that I escaped the Bastille without a hair being harmed on my head. Paris society is a viper’s nest and I know very well how to deal with a man like Moët. Please don’t give it one second moment of concern, Monsieur Clicquot. I will be an asset,’ she purred.

As the clock struck three, the cart was ready and loaded, exactly on schedule, and Thérésa was now somehow part of the travelling crew, despite everyone’s misgivings. Nicole, Thérésa and Natasha loaded their own possessions into the cab and jumped up behind Monsieur Châtelet, who whispered in the ears of the excited horses to calm them.

Two hours later, as the sun rose over the sleepy village of Isles-sur-Suippe, Nicole breathed again. They wouldn’t be recognised this far away from the Montagne de Reims and the open road stretched, flat and straight, as far as her eyes could see.

Chapter 9

Changing Places

February 1806

‘Only three different kinds of tartes,’ Natasha tutted as they pulled past the boulangerie in Rethel.

Thérésa and Valentin Châtelet smirked. Monsieur Châtelet had refused to get involved in directions, laugh at the escape they’d just made, marvel at the sunrise or generally be a part of their adventure. He just waited impassively for instruction, or spent his time with the horses. Except every time Thérésa spoke, when his indifferent expression softened.

Bloody fool, thought Nicole, steeling herself against a jealous stab in her stomach. The melting glare of her attention never lasted long.

At Saulces-Monclin, Natasha nearly wept at the beautiful creations in the patisserie window and Nicole conceded to a short stop for her. She bought a delicate macaron à la fleur d’oranger and a pert Saint-Honoré and took apart the flavours, remembering the creations she and Daniel had made in their youth.

‘If my mother stays alive long enough for me to reach her, this is what I’ll make her,’ sighed Natasha.

The landscape was flat as a Russian honey-cake and they passed farm workers, field hands and squires who stopped and waved as they rushed by. After their midnight flit, the day was uneventful. Her band of travellers turned heads as they passed through the towns and villages, though they did their best to look inconspicuous. A milk-skinned beauty with a Spanish accent, a dramatic Russian woman with a penchant for macaroons searching for portents in the sky, a young widow in an ungodly hurry with a cargo of coffee, and a field hand who didn’t look like a field hand.

They thrashed the exhausted horses, not stopping until they were safely in Francheville. The horses were blowing and sweating when Monsieur Châtelet pulled up the wagon at the hotel a few kilometres outside of Charleville-Mezieres, where the barge would be waiting for them the next morning. Stiff and dusty, Nicole gave the hotelier a gold coin to have the wagon locked into the barn and Valentin Châtelet agreed to sleep there to keep guard.

Even leaving the wagon for a couple of hours as Valentin joined them for dinner made Nicole uneasy. Her whole future depended on what was in that barn. She ordered a bottle of heavy Francheville burgundy to soothe her nerves.

Places have their own character, their own feel and smell, and she could taste it now in this wine, a top note of the vanilla sun on the Meuse Canal, a reminder of the next leg of their journey.

Valentin drank most of the bottle himself, so she ordered another. She didn’t mind. Perhaps the wine would loosen his tongue.

‘Do you have family?’ she asked.

He didn’t look up from his dinner. ‘No.’

Thérésa flashed her eyes at him. ‘Come now, a good-looking man like you with those melting brown eyes? I find that hard to believe. No golden-haired wife watching the gate for your return? No poor deceived girls in a string of dull villages hoping you’re gazing at the same moon? You can’t tease us any longer. We have weeks together ahead of us and you have kept yourself an absolute mystery. It’s not fair!’

‘Life isn’t fair, Madame Tallien.’ He glowered.

‘Leave him to his secrets if he won’t share,’ said Nicole. ‘We’ll make our own entertainment.’

She ordered him a cognac. He rolled it around in the glass and savoured it, closed his eyes and breathed it in.

‘This is good,’ he said, raising his glass.

She rolled the brandy in her own glass. ‘Grande Champagne cognac from Bordeaux. Not the kind of thing a field hand would ordinarily drink.’

‘Bringing secrets into the light helps the shadows fade,’ said Natasha.

Valentin poured himself another glass.

‘I had a wife. And children. But now I don’t. Is that enough information for your little soirée?’

‘If that’s all you wish to give,’ said Natasha.

‘It is.’

‘I had a husband, once, but no children,’ Natasha offered. ‘I caught his blood in my skirt.’

Valentin drained his glass. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

‘The revolution?’ Thérésa enquired.

He nodded.

‘Many dear friends died on the scaffold. Their only crime was their birth,’ Thérésa sympathised.

‘You survived pretty well,’ he said bitterly. ‘Everyone knows your story.’

‘They know the story I wish to portray,’ replied Thérésa. ‘We all survive as best we can.’

‘I’m sorry, the revolution has made actors of us. We have swapped places with our former selves, taken on new personas to protect us,’ he said guardedly.

‘I’m afraid yours isn’t very convincing, Monsieur Châtelet. As a field hand you stand out like a sore thumb,’ said Nicole with a warm smile. ‘If it helps, your story will never go further than this table.’

He swallowed, and seemed to prepare himself to speak. ‘My daughter was blonde, with green eyes. She kept spiders, loved horses, and me. They sliced off her head.’

Nicole thought of her sweet, perfect Mentine and her heart grieved for this