The Prince Kidnaps a Bride Read Free Page B

great deal of gold, and told me that you were given to fits of madness, and that I should keep you safe from yourself.”
    “What?” Sorcha half rose. “Godfrey said what ? He said I was given to madness ? Why would he say that?”
    “That is a question worth pondering. At that time, I concluded he thought it would ensure I would watch over you closely.”
    “Did you?” Sorcha recalled the friendship that had developed between her and Mother Brigette during the first year. “You did!”
    “I’m charged with the safety of each nun under my care, and I would never put them in danger from a madwoman.”
    “I thought you spent time with me because you... ” Liked me.
    Mother Brigette laughed softly. “Within the month I knew you were quite sane, and I had the added benefit of enjoying your companionship. You’re not an ordinary young woman. You’re learned. More learned than I, and I had an exemplary education. Before the revolution, I spent time in the Paris salons with philosophers and scholars. That in itself alerted me to the possibilities of your station. Then I noted that you most assiduously read the newspapers which Mr. MacLaren brings, and you cut out and keep those articles relating to Beaumontagne. From that point, it was a short leap of logic to the realization that you were an exile and perhaps one of the Lost Princesses.”
    Sorcha mulled that over, then whispered, “I think it’s time for me to go out into the world.” She waited, wanting Mother Brigette to disagree.
    Instead the nun smiled and nodded.
    “Yet of course I can’t go.” Sorcha clasped her hands in a spasm of denial. “You need me. The convent needs me. I negotiate with Mr. MacLaren, trade our herbs for his supplies. I tend the garden. I help in the infirmary.”
    “You’re very skilled, but we did all those things for ourselves before. We can do them again.”
    “But if I leave... ” Sorcha had grown to love the nuns, and they to love her. Beaumontagne was far away in the
Pyrenees
Mountains
. She’d never see them again.
    Even without words, Mother Brigette understood. “We always knew we would lose you, and we’re not of the world. We accept loss. We expect loss.”
    But what about her? What about Sorcha? “I like it here.”
    “In your heart, do you believe this is the right place for you now?”
    “Yes. Yes!”
    “Sorcha, do you know what I am?” Mother Brigette asked. “Or rather, who I was?”
    “No. I... ” Sorcha hadn’t ever thought about it. Mother Brigette had been the superior of this convent for all the time Sorcha had been here, and she couldn’t imagine Mother Brigette doing, or rather being, anyone else.
    “My name was Laurette Brigette Ann Genevre Cuvier, countess of Beaulieu in
Provence
in France. When I was thirty-two years old, I lived in a chateau in the summer, I visited Paris in the fall, I lived at court when I pleased, I was a friend of the queen, and I wore jewels in my hair, on my shoes, and on my fingers.” Mother Brigette smiled as if the memory were pleasant, or perhaps as if Sorcha’s blank astonishment amused her.
    “Of course. You were an aristocrat.” That explained so much about Mother Brigette—her education, her speech, her disciplined mind.
    “I had a large family—a husband whom I didn’t love, a father, mother, and sisters whom I adored, a young son, heir to a prosperous estate and the dearest boy in the world.”
    She didn’t have them now, and Sorcha braced herself to hear a terrible tale.
    “The revolution swept through France in a great wave. I saw my queen and friend Marie Antoinette guillotined, as well as my husband, my mother, my father, all of my sisters. In 1795 I was under house arrest with my son, my Tallas, when the chance came to escape. I was to take Tallas and go to the coast. I told no one but Fabienne, my trusted maid, asking that she help me pack. That night when we tried to leave Beaulieu, we were captured. For a few coins and her own redress,