Tracie Peterson by Five Geese Flying

Author:Five Geese Flying
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Jeanine heard the door bar being lifted and knew that the time to confront her captor had come. She had not yet been told that this was the estate of Antoine Colbert, but she was certain that it could be no other. Trembling, she awaited the same lumbering giant who had taken her there the night before. The man motioned from the doorway, almost as if hesitant to come too close to her. He refused to smile or even acknowledge her with more than the single grunt and motion of his hand that indicated she should come with him.

Jeanine drew a deep breath and prayed for strength to face whatever came. She knew that only the hand of God would deliver her from a despairing fate. Step by step, she retraced her way to the ground floor, and when she emerged and came into the great room, she could see that Antoine Colbert did indeed await her.

“So you thought to escape our plans, eh?” he asked her and motioned her to take a seat at the table where food had been placed in order to break the fast. “We will eat and talk of this matter while my man goes to fetch the priest.”

Jeanine shook her head, even though her stomach growled loudly in protest. “I will not share a table nor any other thing—be it name or bed—with you.”

Colbert laughed. “If you choose not to eat then you punish only yourself. If you choose to refuse me, then it will be up to my own cunning to persuade you otherwise.”

“I do not love you, Monsieur Colbert,” Jeanine stated frankly and came to the place where he now seated himself behind a huge platter of food. “I cannot marry a man for whom I have little regard, much less love.”

“It takes not love, nor regard, to impregnate a woman,” Colbert said crudely. “I need sons, Woman! Not romantic platitudes and flowery words.”

“Therein lies the difference between us, Sir,” Jeanine said, tilting her chin upward in defiance. “I require love. I cannot give myself in marriage to a man I despise.”

“What? The good little Christian admits to despising her fellowman.”

Jeanine felt her defenses go up like dry kindling to a spark. “I despise what you stand for, Sir. I despise that you treat people like so much trash to be swept away. I despise that you have wronged and grieved my family.”

“Wait there, Wench. ’Twas not I who broke with our agreement,” Colbert said, roast duckling midway to his mouth. He waved the drumstick like a scepter. “You were the one running away. You take up offense for the purported wrongs done you and your family, yet you lied to those very people in order to take yourself to the docks to play physician to the poor. Yea, and you lied to them as well, for they thought their good doctor was a man, not a scrap of a young woman.”

Jeanine had no argument for him. She was guilty as charged and would have succeeded at her plans had Colbert not had the foresight to stop her.

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