Saving The Marquise's Granddaughter (18 page)

After paying her passage, she led Fury to a trough by the stable where her brother’s horse was to be left. One more goodbye. She stayed with Fury, currying him and talking to him as though he’d tell Guy everything she’d said.

The stable boy brushed his feet through the sandy soil as he approached her. “They’ll be leaving soon, miss.”

“Merci. Take good care of him.” She pressed a coin into his hand.

After several hours’ wait, the group was prepared to depart. The mother in the small family tried to corral her children, who were running in circles around their father. The handful of other travelers gathered in a queue on the bank.

Suzanne dusted her skirt off and bent over to retrieve her bag as a rider rapidly approached the stable. A tall man, whose sea-blue eyes held no reproach, dismounted. “Just in time. Ja?”

How had Johan known where to find her? She didn’t care. She wanted only to throw herself into his arms and tell him a million times that she loved him. Instead, she gaped at him.

“I’ll be right back.” He ducked into the stables.

Johan returned smiling, took her hand, and brought it to his warm lips. “I’ll watch over you the best I can. Get you safe to where you’re going.”

She snatched her hand away and placed it against her cheek.
So he means only to be my protector.
He didn’t love her. Johan had never said the words. She sighed.
A duty, a responsibility. That’s what I am.
Her hand moved to soothe the sudden ache in her stomach.

Johan searched her face. “All will be fine. You’ll see.”

“Oui. But first, we must pay your passage.” She moistened her lips and led him toward the dock. “How did you find me?”

“I encountered three cavalrymen on my way. I prayed for God to help me.” He gave her a cockeyed grin. “Your friend, Rochambeau, he directed me. And I have papers.”

After they paid and boarded, she gazed upriver to what lay ahead. Their destinies would part when they reached the New World.

But Johan would guard her transit.

Would that be enough?

~*~

Amsterdam wasn’t as Suzanne remembered. Her strongest recollection was of her mother’s delight at this port city. Maman had purchased delftware for their apartments at Versailles and artwork and new tiles for Grand-mère’s fireplace in the dining room. But Maman was gone.

On impulse, Suzanne pulled Johan into a portrait shop she recognized. “This is where I first became fascinated with painting.” She recalled the long hours seated in a chair by the window, the shadowy shapes of the picture taking form over time until at last she could see a picture of herself, captured on the canvas.

“I didn’t know you were an artist, Suzie.”

Dare she tell him of the painting she’d done of him? No. That would be too humiliating. He’d decided he was her bodyguard. Her protector. Until her brother came for her.

“Mademoiselle, how might I help you?” The proprietor, Monsieur Daan, used to tell her that her eyes were golden like a lioness’s. He stared. “Suzanne Richelieu?”

“Oui.” She squeezed Johan’s hand and felt warm satisfaction flowing through her. Here was a man who’d known her and all her family. Under his tutelage, she’d mastered many aspects of oil painting.

Flipping his hand over, Monsieur Daan exposed paint-streaked palms. “What a strange coincidence! Someone brought me a small portrait recently. I recognized it from the sketches of the young man that you’d completed here in this studio.”

He’d given her help with Johan’s likeness. But how could it have gotten here?

The proprietor’s broad smile made him appear younger. “And the picture had that strange little signature you used.”

Heat crept up her neck.

Please don’t say it!
She shot a look at Johan.

“The tiny lioness chewing up an insect. Wasn’t that what you said it was?” Monsieur Daan laughed. “Such a strange sense of humor you had!”

Johan was looking at something over the artist’s shoulder. “That looks like me.”

The man narrowed his eyes at Johan, examining his face before turning around. He held the small gold-framed portrait out for them to see.

Suzanne tried to find her voice. “How…who?”

“Mademoiselle Richelieu captured your eyes and bone structure well. But otherwise you seem quite altered.” The artist rubbed his short, graying beard while studying Johan. “You’re a man now, not a youth.”

If Guy had the painting brought here, he’d have told her. So either Pierre had done so before he died or possibly Madame DeMint or her son. Cold prickles surged up her spine.

Johan rubbed his beard with the back of his hand. “Perhaps I should shave.”

If he did, Johan would be more easily matched to the picture.

“No!” Suzanne shouted and then covered her mouth. “Forgive me, it’s just that…who brought you this painting?”

Johan’s image had been left at Versailles. Someone deliberately brought the painting to this city. Someone who knew where she’d learned to paint, for the person to select this shop. Her chest squeezed tight.

“You painted me, Suzie? Why?” Johan’s eyes had taken on a gleam.

She swallowed her building panic as she addressed the proprietor. “Were they looking for me? Or for the man in this picture?”

“Yes, some men from your grandmother’s estate are looking for you.” Monsieur
Daan raised his eyebrows. “They want to bring you back. Said your godmother was waiting for you. She’d give you shelter. ‘Knows you worship in the one true faith’ is the phrase they used.”

A lie. The DeMints meant to kill her as Guy told her they’d tried to do to Jeanne before Rochambeau rescued her from them.

Johan took her hand in his. “Do you wish to go back there, Suzie?”

Jerking her hand away, she turned to him. “No! You don’t understand. They don’t want me back there. They’re looking to harm me.”

“Surely not! Her own son came here to accompany you in safety.” The proprietor tucked his chin in stiffly, his white neck cloth brushing his jowls.

“No,
monsieur.” Suzanne shook her head so hard she became dizzy and sagged against Johan.

The artist pulled up a chair. “Sit down.”

Johan lowered her into the high-backed wooden seat. “Did they say where they might be staying? Where to contact them?”

“They’re in the Renaissance Inn, and I was to send word to them.”

Johan cleared his throat. “What inn is farthest from the one where they stay?”

An hour later, after explaining to Johan about the DeMints, Suzanne dropped into the ladder-back chair inside their room. “Can you get the tickets? It would be better in case Paul DeMint has any of his spies about.”

Johan set his small trunk down and locked the whitewashed door. “I’ll make a pallet on the floor.”

Surveying the tiny room they’d share, she bit back the urge to tell him she was sorry. Sorry about everything. But in her heart, she couldn’t have borne it if he’d left her. She grasped his arms and looked up, feeling anything but sorry that he’d come with her.

~*~

After departing the inn the next morning, Suzanne scanned faces in the crowd. Strong scents of West Indies coffee and hot chocolate tempted her from the small coffeehouses lining the street.

Johan squeezed her hand and gave her a tight smile. “This city is a busy place. So many people.” He eyed the sweet pastries displayed in the windows. They went inside and purchased two slices of sweet cinnamon bread. Johan produced a battered tin cup and had it filled with
café au lait
, which they shared.

They marched on.

“Very pretty.” Johan pointed to the blue and white tiles that surrounded many of the door frames.

Keeping a lookout for anyone suspicious, Suzanne tugged her head scarf lower on her forehead. As they got closer to the docks, seagulls squawked overhead before swooping down to feast on chunks of dark Dutch bread; the refuse of those travelers enjoying a last bite to settle their stomachs before departure.

Her own insides churned like the foam they’d soon witness on the seas.
I’m really doing this. I’m leaving.

Mothers fussed over their children before charging on down the boardwalks, squeezing tiny hands to keep little ones nearby.
My mother isn’t with me.
As remorse welled up in her, Suzanne sniffed and held back tears. Perhaps it was true that God was gracious in taking her mother so quickly and sparing her this journey.

Maman would have been terrified, looking much like the tall woman with the glazed eyes standing next to them. The brunette stared at the ships in the harbor, a daughter next to her, clutching her arm.

In Suzanne’s imaginings of this day, her brother stood nearby. She looked up at Johan, the sun’s rays illuminating bronze strands in his hair. This wasn’t Guillame, but her brother would join her soon. With Jeanne, if all went well.

“Where’s our ship, Johan?” Suzanne peered around the teeming wharf as carters pushed past, crates stacked high.

A loudly coughing man bumped into her, and she shuddered.

“The ticket master told me to wait for him by that wooden building down there. Said they verify our passage tickets, and then we board.” Johan’s voice held hesitation. He regarded the whitewashed structure.

“Looks like a storage shed to me.” Boxes were strewn around it and bags randomly piled as though discarded.

His strong hand folded around hers and he drew her toward the building. Once they reached the shed, an elderly woman, the tails of her cap flapping in the breeze wailed, “My belongings—gone!” She covered her face with her hands. White hair escaping from his cap, her husband bent down and opened a battered trunk, its contents gone.

Fear prickled up Suzanne’s neck and she pulled free from Johan. “Let me see the tickets you purchased.”

Johan pulled the papers from his leather pouch. He looked around the area. “He isn’t here.”

The older couple approached them. “We’ve been robbed of our belongings. And we don’t see our boat.”

A porter with a stack of boxes on a cart stopped. “Oh, no, not that fellow selling fake passages again. I thought they put him in jail. Let me see what you have. Probably more of his forgeries.”

Their money was spent on the tickets, with little left.

Suzanne scanned the names painted on the sides of the tall-masted ships. She and Johan needed to be on their way. Sensing threat, Suzanne turned and spotted Paul DeMint examining another man’s dagger. Metal glinted in the sunlight as her stomach lurched.

“Johan, come, let’s go down closer to the ships.” She pulled his head down and kissed his cheek, then held his head there to whisper, “They’ve found us.”

Johan almost dragged her along, and Suzanne struggled to keep pace with his longer strides. They stopped alongside a ship whose crew was loading trunks and checking lines and sails, men scurrying up and down the ladders with ease. A man leaning against a stack of wooden crates, with a pile of papers atop, lifted his quill from his ink pot as he looked them over.

Johan asked about how they could get to the colonies aboard the vessel.

But their words escaped her. The sailors’ noisy activities, the boat creaking against the wharf, and the fishy odors by the water felt as if all her senses were scrubbed with sand.

The Dutchman finally finished. “And so, if you wish to make passage, you must sign to be redeemed in the colonies.”

Suzanne swallowed. She, the marquise’s granddaughter, become an indentured servant? Offered transportation wherein someone on the other side of the ocean would make her their slave for up to seven years. She had only enough money left for one—not both—of them to get to the colonies. If Paul DeMint didn’t have her killed first.

Johan shifted nervously. “But we’d be redeemed, chosen once we arrive. I’d be taught a good trade?”

“Yes.”

“And we could pay this off earlier, too, ja?”

The ship’s agent hesitated, before he nodded almost imperceptibly. “You could, yes.”

Suzanne tugged at Johan’s arms. “We must talk.”

The lines of the man’s hard face softened. “I hate to rush you, but we depart soon.”

“I don’t see what other choice we have. We’ll return in a moment.” Johan smiled at the man.

Suzanne stared at Johan. “Must we do this?”

“Come on.” He tucked her arm in his and led her to a shady spot beneath a tree at the edge of the wharf.

What other options did she really have, as he said? She couldn’t simply run to Guy’s army camp. DeMint and his men would attack her and Johan before they ever left the wharf. And she had no time now to get word to Guillame that they sailed for Philadelphia, not New York, as intended.

“Suzie, I think…”

Behind him, Suzanne spotted several men who were peering up and down the dock. In the center of the trio stood Paul DeMint, his hand resting on a leather sheath over his waistcoat. Her stomach knotted. “Johan, we have to get on that boat.” She pulled up Maria’s headscarf, tying it tight around her face.

Digging through the bag beside him, he pulled out the wide green-and-red woven cloth, just the thing a peasant woman would wear on her shoulders, and wrapped it around her. Heart racing, she clutched her bag to her chest.

Would DeMint dare to kill her there on the docks?

Johan bent over her. “You saw them?”

“Yes. Johan, I am now your German wife. Do you understand?”

Confusion, fear, and concern, mingled with a drop of hope, flashed across his handsome face as he took her hand and led her toward the ship’s gangplank.

17

Finally boarded, Suzanne’s stomach lurched more from the stream of passengers than from the boat’s movement as it rocked in the water.

A blonde woman, lines marring her otherwise youthful face, elbowed past her and Johan.

“Excuse me,” Johan offered, as he removed his hat.

Another passenger shoved past them, glowering at Suzanne.

A heavyset man in filthy clothes pushed by. His stench overpowered her, and Suzanne’s hand moved to her mouth as she stifled the impulse to gag.
I cannot sail on this vessel.
“No,” she mumbled, but she knew Johan wouldn’t hear her over the sounds of the water, the passengers, and the ship’s crew shouting.