“I don’t know.” She brushed her hair back wearily. Her face was lovely but gaunt, and her clothing was just short of rags. “Perhaps. I am Marie Duval.” Her French had a touch of German inflection.
“Your husband is unwell. Surely he should be lying down? I swear that neither of you are in any danger from us.”
“I protect what is mine!” Philippe said in a barely audible rasp, weaving in his tracks.
“Marie and I will help you inside where you can get some rest,” Suzanne said firmly. “You must preserve your strength in case a real enemy approaches.” Quietly she removed the rifle from his slack grip and handed it to Simon.
“Yes,” he said dazedly. “Yes, I must be strong.”
With Suzanne on one side and Marie on the other, Philippe allowed himself to be guided back into the damaged remnants of the palace.
Suzanne remembered this west wing reception room as gracious and well furnished, but she wouldn’t have recognized this wrecked entryway as the same place. The grand furniture, paintings, and carpets were long gone, and the only furnishings were a couple of battered chairs and a table that might have been salvaged from the servants’ quarters.
A wide, crude pallet had been laid out by the fireplace, which contained only ashes from a fire that must have kept the young couple from freezing during the chilly spring nights. With the fire burned out, the room was cold and darkly clammy.
Marie was awkward as she helped Suzanne lay her husband on the pallet. Suzanne winced when the stretch of the other woman’s worn gown revealed that she was well into pregnancy. These poor children! Marie couldn’t be much more than eighteen or nineteen, and her husband was only a couple of years older.
Suzanne felt Philippe’s forehead. It was scorching. Guessing that chills would follow soon, she pulled the ragged covers over him. “How long has he had this fever?”
“Two or three days. I think it comes from worry and exhaustion, or I’d have it, too.” Marie’s voice was a whisper. “I can do nothing to help but sponge him off with cool water when the fever burns worst.”
Bemused, Simon had quietly followed them inside, willing to let Suzanne take the lead. He leaned the discharged rifle against the wall, then offered Marie his arm in a courtly gesture. “Madam?” After leading her to the nearest chair, he asked, “Are you only recently arrived here? It doesn’t appear that you’ve had time to settle in.”
“You are most tactful,” Marie said with a weary wisdom beyond her years. “We’ve been here only about a fortnight after walking halfway across Europe. Philippe was sure that when we arrived, we’d find the home he has been yearning for. Instead,this.” Her gesture included the abandoned, devastated château.
Simon leaned against the table, his arms crossed unthreateningly, while Suzanne took the other chair. “I’m familiar with the Duval family,” Suzanne said with massive understatement. “Where does Philippe fall on the family tree?”
“He’s the son of the last comte to live here before the wars drove him out. Jean-Louis Duval.”
What?Concealing her shock, Suzanne said, “I knew Jean-Louis well. He had a wife, but no children.”
“Philippe never met his father’s very grand second wife. His father said that the woman was a shrew and he didn’t want his only son to be persecuted by her.”
“How . . . protective of Jean-Louis,” Suzanne said in a somewhat choked voice. “Who was Philippe’s mother?”
“She was the daughter of a farmer, so beautiful that the young comte fell instantly in love with her.” Marie smiled fondly at her husband. “You see how very beautiful Philippe is. But his mother died in childbed, and the comte was so heartbroken that he couldn’t bear to have his son in his house because he looked so much like his mother.”
“How was he raised?”
“His father took him to his mother’s family. They loved him and cared for him well, so the comte only visited his son occasionally. He gave Philippe his gold ring engraved with the Chambron arms and encouraged him to learn farming so that someday he would be able to manage the full estate of Château Chambron.”
“Then the wars began and everyone’s plans shattered,” Suzanne said. “Jean-Louis left with the second wife and died before he could return.”
“Years later Philippe learned that his father and the wife had died on shipboard during a corsair attack.” Marie sighed. “Philippe wanted to return here to claim his inheritance, but he was an officer in the Grande Armée and he wasn’t free to come back until after the emperor abdicated.”
Suzanne’s startled glance flicked to Simon, whose expression reflected her own shock. So the self-proclaimed new comte was a Bonapartist. Wonderful.
Suzanne felt a sudden desire to giggle. How Jean-Louis would have hated the very idea! Simon didn’t look enthralled either, but he was unlikely to hold Napoleon against a young couple in such distress. At least, she hoped he wouldn’t.
“Outside, you said you might be relatives,” Marie said. “How are you connected to Philippe?”
“I’m a Duval by marriage, like you. My husband is a second cousin to the late Comte de Chambron, so he’s also a cousin to Philippe.” A second cousin once removed? Suzanne would work that out later. “Do you have any means of support? Can the family who raised Philippe take you in?”
“We did go there, but strangers are living in the house and they drove us off. We came here because there was nowhere else to go.” Marie smiled wryly. “I found some root vegetables in the old gardens and Philippe was able to snare some rabbits before he fell ill. I don’t know how. . .” She stopped speaking, her expression bleak as she pressed her hand to the curve of her belly.
Deciding it was time to reveal who she was, Suzanne said, “I am doubly a Duval by marriage because I was Jean-Louis’s wife. The grand one, though I didn’t feel very grand.”
When Marie shrank back as if Suzanne were a poisonous viper, Simon said reassuringly, “Her shrewishness was much exaggerated. I find her remarkably good tempered.”
