Page 56 of The Autumn Wife
“You don’t know what happened that day.” Etienne flung his words. “If you did, you’d march me to the magistrate yourself.”
“Idoknow everything.”
That got a twitch out of the boy—and then a stony stillness, the whir of the windmill blades loud above them.
“Your mother trusts me, Etienne.” Having this conversation was like creeping through sand flats with hidden sinkholes. “After everything she’s gone through, think of how difficult that must have been. I will not break that trust, not to her and not to you either.”
The boy swiveled his head, hiding his face, clearly grappling with the dilemma of whether to trust him or not. Theo waited, sensing nothing he said would make a difference. The boy was turning into a man—he must make his own decision.
“If she told you everything,” Etienne said in a low, shaking voice, “then you know it was self-defense. That bastard had nearly killed Mom a hundred times—sometimes sober or, like that day, in a murderous drunk…”
The story tumbled out. Etienne told of how he’d heard her cry out in the woods, how he’d come running, how he’d stepped between them. He’d nearly lost consciousness at the first blow. He’d come to with his father looming over him, spitting hate. He’d crawled back from him, thrown his arms wide, and felt against his palm the bore of his own already-loaded weapon.
He’d raised it only to find himself staring down the bore of his father’s weapon.
Two blasts had echoed through the woods.
Etienne finished on a strangled sob. Theo gave the boy a few moments to gather himself.
Only then did Theo speak the same words he’d said to Cecile. “You did what had to be done, Etienne.”
Etienne’s Adam’s apple bobbed.
“If you go to the magistrates and confess what you just told me, they’ll call you both guilty.” Theo’s jaw tightened at the thought. “Have you considered your mother’s agony if she had to watch you die on the scaffold beside her?”
“This isn’t fair.” The boy’s lips thinned. “It’s notright.”
“I agree.” Theo pulled a piece of grass from the ground, as the boy had been doing, peeling it apart as he spoke. “Someday, there may come a better system of justice that will be blind to money and power. A system that won’t use torture to elicit confessions. One that will take into account the greater circumstances when determining guilt or innocence. Like for the father who steals bread for the sole purpose of feeding his starving family, or the scapegoat convicted of arson because she has no influential friends to help in her defense, or the young man who shoots a violent killer so he—and his mother—won’t be murdered in turn. Until that time, Etienne, we have to work with the system that exists.”
The boy’s chest heaved as he focused on something a thousand miles beyond the crest of thehill. “What you said before, about rescuing her from the tumbrel. Would you…would you really do that?”
“Yes.”
The boy shot to his feet and paced away a few steps only to swivel on a heel to stand directly in front of Theo. Etienne looked as prickly and alert as a wary porcupine.
A full-grown one.
“If it comes to that, to rescuing her…” Etienne tilted his chin. “I go with you.”
Theo spoke without hesitation. “Agreed.”
Ceci wouldn’t like the deal, but Theo could tell there’d be no locking Etienne away this time. The boy needed to protect his mother, and Theo would not squash the young man’s fiercest and most honorable quality.
Ceci would have to forgive them both later.
And therewouldbe a later. For, looking at this young man, an idea had come to Theo—a better, less criminal plan for a chance at a happy future.
“Come with me.” Theo slapped a hand on Etienne’s shoulder. “Let’s set your mother free.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Shuffling in chains, Cecile fought to keep her spine straight and her face stony as guards led her across the frozen yard of the Montreal fort to the frontier courthouse. Within those log walls, her future would soon be stripped from her. She held fast to dignity—all she had left.
Passing between the pair of soldiers guarding the door, she squelched a quiver as she stepped into a small antechamber. Holding a quill above the pages of a book, the clerk behind the desk didn’t even look up before barking a question.
“Name?”
What foolish officialdom. Was there more than one female prisoner being dragged into court today? The other three cages in the shed had remained empty for the entire week.
