Page 54 of The Autumn Wife
“That situation was different. The viscount paid for false witnesses.” He rattled the bars. “If I have to put my own head in the noose, Ceci, I will see you freed.”
“That’s the problem.” She fixed this moment in her memory—the chill of the air, the fierceness of his expression, the love on his face. This would be the remembrance she would fill her mind with when she climbed the scaffold. “If you do anything rash, they’ll arrest you, too.”
“Ceci—”
“I’m not saying I’ll confess.” She wasn’t sure she could bear this discussion much longer. “I do valuemy life…but I’m not as strong as you think I am.” She raised a hand. “Please, let’s not argue. Let’s talk of other things. Tell me about Etienne.”
Theo frowned at the change in topic, concern still writ large upon his face. “He is safe. Sister Martha broke the rules to keep him inside the convent.”
“Did soldiers come for him, too?”
“For interrogation, yes. But the Reverend Mother refused to let the soldiers into the convent, or bring Etienne out to them.”
Her relieved sigh emptied her lungs to the dregs.
“You should have seen her, Ceci.” Theo’s chest rose and fell, the line between his brows narrowing. “Sister Martha fought like a general. She never denied that Etienne was inside the schoolhouse. He was shouting, everyone could hear him. ‘He’s but a child,’ she told the soldiers. ‘A child terrified for his mother.’ She warned the soldiers that they’d have to knock her down, breach the sanctuary of a holy house, and be accountable to the bishop himself if they dared to take the boy by force.”
She gripped a bar to stay upright. She owed Sister Martha a thousand Hail Marys and a million Our Fathers.
Etienne has sanctuary.
At least one of Cecile’s foolish plans had won out. “Did you speak with my son?”
“Not yet. Sister Martha had to lock him in a closet to keep him from coming to the fort in a rage.That’s what the screaming was about. He’s furious at your arrest.”
“Promise me you’ll protect him.” Outside, the sonorous chime of the first terce bell rang from the fort’s chapel, signaling their time was up. “Most importantly, keep him away from the court, and the investigators, and the law.”
“You don’t want him to testify.”
“Of course not. Self-defense is no defense at all in this situation. We both know that. Also… there’s another matter. A secret I still haven’t told you.”
Theo’s face darkened. “Tell me. I need to know everything.”
She breathed in deep, gathering courage to say what must be said so that Theo could protect Etienne long after she was gone.
“Two weapons were fired that terrible day, Theo. Only one of them was mine.” She swallowed a lump speared with a thousand sharp pins. “But I have sworn—on all the angels and saints—that I will be the only one to hang for this crime.”
Though the sun shone brightly overhead, Theo trudged back to the convent lost in a mental fog, parsing out what a shivering, exhausted, too-thin Cecile had just confessed from her jail cell. He shouldhave recognized the truth earlier. Now he understood why she’d been so stubbornly determined to find Etienne a seat in a monastery school, though the boy had the aptitude, skill, and desire to work with stone. Etienne needed sanctuary that a building site couldn’t provide but a monastery school could.
Such was a mother’s love.
“Monsieur Martin!”
Theo raised his head to find the Reverend Mother huffing and puffing as she surged full steam across the chapel building site.
He took a few jogging steps to meet her halfway. “What is it?”
“He’s gone.”
No need to ask who she was talking about. He looked all around him, up and down the road, toward the banks of the Saint Lawrence River and then farther past the road to the edge of the woods and a gristmill. No sign of a slim boy, or flapping fringe, or flowing dark hair.
He said, “How did he get out?”
“I was a fool.” She gripped her hips while gasping for breath. “He was crying, the poor thing, when I took him food. We talked as he ate. He asked for some work, said the idleness was driving him mad.” She shook her head, the cross hanging from her neck swinging. “I sent him to chop wood just outside—”
“How long ago?”
“No more than a few minutes. I went in to get his coat. He seemed so subdued.” She ran a hand over her brow. “When I came out, it was like the Good Lord Himself had snatched him up to the heavens. I saw his footprints in the grass, heading toward this road. That’s what I was just following. Heaven save us, where did he go?” The nun glanced beyond Theo, along the road to Montreal, and grasped her cross. “If Etienne went to confront the magistrate—”
