Prelude to Heaven (9 page)

Augustus, however, would not stay in the corner, and Alexandre was finally forced to capitulate. He allowed Augustus the dubious pleasure of lying on top of his foot, rubbing the boot leather and purring.

He couldn't help wondering what the petite mademoiselle would say about the hen house. He hadn't cleaned it for her, of course. It was a task he’d been meaning to do for quite some time, and her slightly green expression had sufficed to remind him of that. Still, a tiny little part of him, a part he didn't want to think much about, hoped she would notice and appreciate what he had done.

When she returned to the kitchen, he watched her out of the corner of his eye as she took the pails of milk and eggs to the table. She didn't say a word.

Because she was facing away from him, he could not see her expression. The line of her back was rigidly straight, but her head was bowed, and her hands gripped the table, tenseness in every line of her still form. “Mademoiselle?”

Her head came up. He heard a choked sound. “Yes?”

He set down the knife and turned, disentangling the kitten from his feet, and walked over to stand beside her. She didn't move. Rather concerned now, he leaned forward and bent his head to see her expression, but she perceived the movement and turned her face away. “Are you unwell?” he asked.

She shook her head. “You ...” She paused, taking a deep breath. “You cleaned the hen house.”

“It needed cleaning.” He didn't like this, the way she stood so still, so rigid, as if to keep control over powerful emotions he couldn't fathom.

“Was that the only reason?”

“Of course.” He didn't want to admit, even to himself, that he had done it to see her smile. He dropped his hand from her shoulder and turned away. “What other reason could there be?”

He got no reply to that, and he resumed chopping scallions, a bit nettled by her reaction. He didn't know what he'd expected her to say, but one of her infrequent smiles and a “thank you” would have been nice.

***

A routine became established those first two mornings, and Tess and her employer continued the pattern during the two weeks that followed. He gave her two cooking lessons each day, teaching her how to prepare meats, how to make sauces and soufflés, and how to properly use herbs and spices. But everything was done in a stiff and uncomfortable fashion, without the camaraderie of that first morning in the kitchen.

In the afternoons, while Alexandre went off to paint or sketch, Tess spent her time cleaning, or mending, or doing laundry. Occasionally, when she was sweeping the upstairs floors or putting away laundry, her gaze would stray to the locked doors at the end of the corridor, and she would wonder what lay within those rooms, but she did not have much time to dwell on the matter. There were plenty of tasks to occupy her.

She found herself free to do whatever work she felt like doing. There was no one telling her what to do or how to do it. There was no one to gainsay her if she wished to go for a walk or take a nap. It was freedom, and it should have been glorious. Because Nigel was not there, she should not have felt fear. But she did. She found herself waiting—waiting for Dumond to criticize, to disapprove or demand or lose his temper. She found herself working harder with each day that passed, striving to postpone what seemed inevitable. She wanted to give him nothing to criticize and no reason to hit.

But her pessimistic expectations came to naught. Dumond never said an insulting word to her. In fact, he hardly spoke to her at all. He never lost his temper because he hardly seemed to notice what she did.

It's like walking on eggs
, she thought as she yanked yet another ragweed plant out of the ground and tossed it onto the pile of weeds by her side.

The feeling was a familiar one. During her two years of marriage, she'd walked on eggs most of the time, dread building to an almost unbearable level, and now, even though she was in a different house, and it was a different man, she was still waiting.

She pulled another weed from the ground and gave a grimace as she straightened, pressing a hand to the base of her spine as she surveyed the weed-choked expanse of garden that still remained before her. She'd only pulled a few weeds and already her back was beginning to ache, but she did love being the garden.

The afternoon sun felt warm on her neck and the pleasant hum of bees surrounded her as she worked. The bright red of a ladybug on the leaf of a weed caught her attention. She pushed the insect gently off the leaf before pulling the weed from the ground. A long-ago voice reminded her, “Ladybugs are good to have around, Tessie.”

She smiled, remembering old Herbert laying out bedding plants with gnarled hands, showing his five-year-old assistant how to train pole beans, letting her plant the nasturtiums and sweet peas because she could easily hold the large seeds in her fingers.

The vicarage garden had been one of her childhood joys, one of many. There had been love and laughter in her life then. Even after her mother's death when she was fifteen, even after her father became so very ill, that love had carried her through. He had approved of her marriage. “Aubry will take care of you after I'm gone, Tess. You'll be a countess. You'll never want for anything.”

She hadn't married Nigel because he was an earl. She had married him because she had loved him. The moment she had first seen him at the parish church in Ainswick, she'd been in love. He'd come to Northumberland to visit his mother, but during the days that had followed, it was Tess who had become the object of his rapt attention. Those days of courtship had been exciting and heady. Swept off her feet by an earl's attentions and charming manners, she had never realized what lay beneath. Only after she’d married him, had she discovered the truth.

Tess stared down at the weed in her hand. Somehow, fate had played a cruel joke on her. Fate had given her two loving parents who had shown her what marriage and family were supposed to be like. In marrying Nigel, the man she loved, she had assumed her new life would have the same love and happiness of her old one. But that innocent assumption had been snatched away so quickly, replaced in that first month of marriage with coldness and brutality and pain. Her life had left her unprepared for such sordid emotions, and both her innocence and her love had died a quick death, and she had finally understood that there would never be enough love to fill the deep, empty hole inside her husband.

Not even her father had been able to help her. He had died during her wedding journey. And there was no one else, a fact Nigel had never let her forget. “You're the daughter of a dead vicar,” he'd sneer. “A nobody. You have no money, no family. You have nothing. Without me, you are worthless.”

Tess dropped to her knees and yanked another weed from the ground, anger seething up inside her. She had done nothing to deserve the horrible things Nigel had done to her. She had done nothing to deserve the humiliation, the abuse, the degradation. She had done nothing wrong. Nothing. She wasn't worthless. She would work hard and she would prove it.

She pulled weeds at a frantic pace, remembering how Nigel had denied her gardening, one of her greatest joys. “I have made you a countess!” he'd shouted down at her the first and only time he'd found her on her knees in a flower bed. “Do you want to have callouses and dirty hands?” He had dumped the basket of weeds over her head. “Do you want to be a bloody gardener, countess?” He had pushed her down, grinding her face in the dirt. “Do you? Then you should look the part.” She could still taste the dirt in her mouth.

Tess pushed herself harder, tearing each weed from the ground, crushing it in her hand, and throwing it onto the growing pile as if it were a piece of Nigel’s flesh. On she worked, not stopping until she reached the end of the row.

Breathless and sweating, she paused for a moment and sat back, staring down at her dirty, green-stained hands with both pride and fury. What would Nigel say if he could see her now? She wondered if men could see earth through the flames of hell. God, she hoped so.

***

Alexandre marched through the courtyard, slapping the straw hat he'd brought out for her against his thigh as he walked. He'd seen her through the window, weeding with a frantic energy that alarmed and angered him.

She'd promised him she wouldn't do any hard work. But every day, she seemed to work longer and harder, pushing herself to do more and more and more. He didn't know what was driving her, but it had to stop. He would stop it. “Mademoiselle!”

His shadow crossed her. She did not even pause in her task, but continued pulling weeds savagely out of the ground.

“I did not make you my housekeeper to acquire a slave,” he told her. “Stop this.”

She didn't. Her frantic pace only seemed to increase. “I have to finish this today. I have laundry tomorrow, and mending. And after that—”

“Mademoiselle!” He moved to kneel in front of her, slamming the hat to the ground. He grasped her by the shoulders. “I am your employer, no? I will tell you what work you can and cannot do. And you will do as I say. The sun is hot, and you are in no condition for this sort of work.”

She froze, her wrists locked in his hands. She looked up at him, and all the fight went out of her as quickly as it had come. Her face, flushed a moment ago, was suddenly pale. “Are you forbidding me to work in the garden?”

“Yes,” he said sharply. Letting go of her wrists, he raised angry hands to the sky. “What are you thinking of? Out here during the warmest part of the day, on your knees and pulling weeds in your condition?” His voice rose with his anger and agitation. “Have a care for the babe you carry, mademoiselle! No more!”

He was so frustrated and so preoccupied with his lecture that he did not hear her sharp, indrawn breath. But when he seized the hat and moved to slap it down on her head, she ducked and flinched, holding up her arm in a defensive gesture.

He paused, the hat poised over her, and he was dismayed by the realization of what she thought he’d been about to do.

“
Mon Dieu
.” He rubbed a hand over his face, feeling a little sick in his guts. Moving slowly, gently, he grasped her wrist and pulled her arm down, then placed the hat on her head. “This must stop, mademoiselle,” he said in a quiet voice. “You are working much too hard. I cannot allow you to injure yourself or the babe.”

He watched her slowly relax. Her gaze lifted to his face and he added, “I don't want to spend another week nursing you when you drop from exhaustion. Is that understood?”

When she nodded, he rose and pulled her to her feet. “I will weed the garden, mademoiselle. As for you,” he added as he led her several feet away to the base of a huge chestnut tree. “You will sit here in the shade and rest.”

As she sank to the ground beside the tree, he turned to walk back to the garden, adding over his shoulder, “And from now on, when you go out into the sun, always wear a hat. Your skin is fair, and the Provence sun is fierce. You will burn if you are not more careful.”

He began weeding the garden, trying to figure out what it was about him that she feared so much. True, some of the villagers were wary of him, but Tess couldn't know about that. He knew he was a large man, much larger than the petite woman now sitting under the chestnut tree, but he didn't think he was a man who truly frightened women. Certainly, he'd never frightened Anne-Marie. They had quarreled nose to nose, shouting at the top of their lungs many times. Never had she flinched or trembled. But then, he and Anne-Marie had known each other since childhood. To this woman, he was a stranger. She couldn't know about his past or the rumors surrounding him, or she would never have come here. But perhaps she could simply look at him and know what he was responsible for.

He wished that what he had done three years ago could be undone. But it couldn't. He couldn't forget the past, he couldn't erase it. It would always come back to haunt him. And he would never be able to forgive himself.

***

He had raised his voice, but that was all. He hadn’t hit her; in fact, if the astonishment on his face had been anything to go by, the thought of doing so had never even entered his mind. The tension left her suddenly, washing away on a powerful wave of relief, and she sank back against the tree, tossing aside the hat. He’d been angry, yes, but not angry with her. He’d been angry for her. So long, Tess thought, since anyone had bothered to worry about her. Too long.

She watched him as he worked at an unhurried but steady pace, his tall body bending to pull handfuls of weeds then straightening to toss them aside with a rhythm and economy of movement that were somehow fascinating to watch.

At the end of the row, he paused, took a glance at the sun still high overhead, and undid the three buttons of his shirt. He pulled the white linen garment over his head and tossed it aside, then brushed his forearm across his forehead and bent again to his task.

Tess stared at him, unable to help noticing the strength that rippled along every chiseled contour of his body, from the long legs encased in tight black trousers to the knotted muscles of his bare chest and back and over wide shoulders and powerful arms.

He was so different from Nigel. Taller, wider—brawny where Nigel had been wiry. She thought of how Nigel had thrown her across the room with one push, had sent her spinning with one blow, had cracked her ribs with one kick. Nigel had possessed lightning-quick strength, the ability to lash out, inflict pain, and withdraw. Like a whip.

Alexandre Dumond had a different sort of strength. She thought of how he'd lifted her so easily, carried her up those stairs as if she weighed no more than the weeds he was now tossing aside. Alexandre had a hard, unyielding strength. Like a wall.

She knew what a man's strength meant, how it could hurt, but Alexandre hadn't hurt her. He could. He could decimate her with one stroke, more easily even than Nigel could have done. But he hadn't.

He was in the middle of the garden now, moving between the rows at that same steady pace. A fine patina of sweat made his tanned skin gleam like polished oak, and his long black hair had come loose from its ribbon. He paused again to wipe the sweat from his brow, making her appreciate that he was probably hot and thirsty. Tess rose and walked down to the well, where she drew up the bucket. She removed the jar of that morning's milk, setting it in the shade, and unhooked the bucket from the rope. She also removed the ladle from its hook beside the well and carried both to the garden.