Surrender to a Stranger

by Karyn Monk

Genres: Action & Adventure Romance; Historical Romance; Victorian Romance

Synopsis

From Karyn Monk, author of The Witch and the Warrior and Once a Warrior, comes an enthralling love story that is as passionate as it is suspenseful....

She trusted him with her life....

Sentenced to death, Jacqueline never expected to be rescued from her filthy cell by an unlikely visitor--a man whose disguise hid a devastatingly handsome British agent. Now the two were on the run--and for as long as he was there to protect her, she felt strangely safe....

But could she trust him with her heart?

They called him the Black Prince, and to save the unjustly condemned he took hair-raising risks, slipping in and out of courtrooms and prisons, brazenly defying the threat of capture and death. The reckless spy tried to tell himself that Jacqueline was just another prisoner to be spirited away to safety. Yet there was something about her fierce dignity, her unrelenting sense of honor, her unbreakable spirit that made him never want to let her go....

HE RISKED HIS LIFE TO SAVE HERS....

She thought she was about to die when her family's farm came under attack.  Instead, a handsome stranger rode to her rescue and took a bullet to save her.  But when the bloodshed and terror were over,Josephine Armstrong discovered that the man she owed her life to was a British soldier.  She could not betray Lt. Col. Damien Powell -- not after what he'd done for her.  But she would pay dearly for harboring the enemy, forced to prove her patriotism by becoming the rebels' most beautiful spy....

BUT WOULD SHE GIVE HIM HER HEART IN RETURN?

When he saw the lovely young woman struggling with her captor, Damien didn't care which side of the bloody war she was on.  He only knew that he had never seen such an incredible mixture of extraordinary beauty and raw courage in his life.  Yet Damien couldn't know that one day this innocent farm girl was destined to betray him.  She would become Charles Town's most irresistible spy, dazzling officers with her charms even as she stripped them of strategic secrets.  But when a twist of fate brings Josephine back into his life again, Damien will gamble everything on the chance that he can make this exquisite rebel surrender...if only in his arms. -->

Release date: June 13, 2006

Publisher: Bantam

Print pages: 496

Sample

November 1793

She stood tall in the dock, her hands resting lightly on the polished surface of the bar that separated her from her accusers. The wooden rail was warm despite the chill of the room, it sent heat into the icy flesh of her fingers, and Jacqueline wondered if the prisoner before her had gripped the bar in fury or in desperation. As she faced her five judges, who were yawning and shifting with weariness and boredom while the charges against her were read, she decided it was easy enough to feel both.

"Citizeness Jacqueline Marie Louise Doucette, daughter of the convicted traitor Charles-Alexandre, former Duc de Lambert, you are charged with being an enemy and a traitor to the Republic of France. . . ." read the public prosecutor. He went on to list the charges against her. Viciously attacking a member of the National Guard and thereby interfering with the execution of his duties. Engaging in counterrevolutionary activities, including the hoarding of gold, silver, jewels and food, and the illegal transfer of said money and jewels out of France. Assisting with the illegal emigration of members of her family, and conspiring with enemies of the Republic. Corresponding with émigrés and writing counterrevolutionary propaganda. The list went on, some of the charges accurate and some purely fictional. It did not matter. The trial was merely a formality. Her sentence was inevitable.

She pulled her gaze away from the judges, who instead of listening to the public prosecutor were busy arguing over how many cases they had yet to hear before they could retire for the day. Her eyes swept over the audience. The rough men and women who packed the courtroom were obviously enjoying the proceedings immensely. They shouted at her as her indictment was being read, calling her a traitor, a whore, demanding that she lose her head for her crimes. They laughed and jostled each other as they yelled at her, some spat on the floor to show their contempt, while others drank and ate and knitted as if they were watching an amusing piece of theater. She stared at them, dressed in their rough, greasy clothes with their red woolen caps and their tricolor sashes looped about their chests and waists. She was not upset by their hatred of her. She simply wondered how they could believe that her death, and her father's, and her brother's, could possibly make their miserable lives any better. Tonight, when she was lying stiff and cold in a pit of dead bodies, they would not have any more bread or wine on their tables than they had before.

"Citizen Barbot, would you tell us if this is the woman who attacked you as you were attempting to perform your duties to the Republic of France?" demanded the public prosecutor, Citizen Fouquier-Tinville.

"It is," replied the soldier in the witness box. He looked at Jacqueline and smiled. She could see the dark hole in his mouth where she had knocked out two of his teeth.

"And before she attacked you, did she make antirevolutionary statements?"

"She did," affirmed the soldier with a nod.

"Would you tell the Revolutionary Tribunal and the citizens of this court exactly what Citizeness Doucette said to you?"

The soldier paused and cleared his throat. "She said the National Guard was an outfit of thieves and pigs and that we could all go straight to hell." It was obvious even repeating such an antirevolutionary statement made him uncomfortable.

"It's that bitch that's going straight to hell," shouted a man from the back of the courtroom.

"Carrying her head in a basket," added another. The crowd in the courtroom burst into laughter.

Citizen Fouquier-Tinville waited for his audience to settle down before continuing. "And is it not true, Citizen Barbot, that Citizeness Doucette attempted to prevent you from entering her home, even though you showed her you had a legal warrant for the arrest of her brother, Citizen Antoine Doucette?"

"She slammed the door in my face," admitted the soldier, looking somewhat irritated by the memory.

"And what did you and your men do?" asked Fouquier-Tinville.

"We smashed the door down," the soldier replied proudly.

"What happened then?"

"We began to search the château, looking for the Marquis de Lambert, and any incriminating documents. We found Monsieur le Marquis in his room, in bed. He was evidently ill," the soldier explained.

"Made sick by his father's greed," called out a woman in the front row.

"Hiding under the covers," cackled another. Jacqueline fought the urge to step out of the dock, walk over to the woman, and slap her soundly across the face.

"And what did you do?" demanded the prosecutor.

"We informed the former marquis of his arrest and ordered him to get up. And he refused."

"He was sick with fever and barely knew you were there!" objected Jacqueline.

"Silence!" thundered the judge president. "The prisoner will not speak to the witness."

"What did you do when Citizen Doucette refused to comply with your orders?" asked the prosecutor.

The soldier shrugged his shoulders. "I had my men drag him from the bed and force him to his feet."

"Good for you!" shouted a spectator.

"He is a true republican," commented another.

"Is that when Citizeness Doucette attacked you?" asked Fouquier-Tinville.

The soldier nodded. "She came into the room carrying a dagger and told my men if they wanted me to live they should unhand her brother. My men laughed and let go of her brother, who collapsed to the floor. And that was when she attacked me."

"Weren't your men armed?" demanded the judge president.

"They were," replied the soldier. "We carried muskets and sabers."

The judge president appeared to ponder this for a moment.

Citizen Fouquier-Tinville continued with his questioning. "And what injuries did you sustain before you were able to restrain Citizeness Doucette?"

The soldier looked somewhat sheepish. "She lodged the dagger into my shoulder before I could strike her to the ground. And when I grabbed my shoulder to stop the bleeding, she got up and knocked out two of my teeth." He looked at the jury and wiggled his tongue through the ugly black gap in his mouth. The jury gasped in sympathy.

"Did she strike you with her fist?" asked the judge president, evidently amazed.

"No," replied the soldier. He shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

"With what then?" persisted the judge president.

The soldier scowled. "She hit me with Monsieur le Marquis's chamber pot."

The jury and the audience laughed.

The judge president rang his bell to silence the room, but Jacqueline could see even he was smiling.

"After Citizeness Doucette was restrained, you and your men made a thorough search of the château, did you not?" asked the public prosecutor.

"We did," confirmed the soldier. "We found several incriminating documents in the form of letters to Citizeness Doucette's sisters, who have either illegally emigrated or are in hiding. These letters denounced the Republic of France and called for a return of the monarchy. We also found that all of the former Duchesse de Lambert's jewels were missing, as were many valuables from the château. These undoubtedly have been transferred out of France to finance a royalist plot." This last statement was said with grave authority, as if merely making the accusation was proof enough that it was true.

"She's a spy!" screeched a woman in the audience.

"The whole family must be found and made to pay for its crimes!"

"Take her head as the first payment!"

The judge president rang his bell to silence the room. Citizen Fouquier-Tinville dismissed the soldier from the witness box and turned his attention to the prisoner.

"Jacqueline Doucette, is it true you attacked Citizen Barbot while he was performing his duties as a captain of the National Guard?"

Like many prisoners, Jacqueline had chosen to represent her own defense. When her father had been arrested earlier that year, he had engaged a lawyer to prepare his case. The man had charged a fortune and done virtually nothing to help him in his fight for his life. Jacqueline knew many lawyers were becoming rich on the assets of their unfortunate clients. Even though the Château de Lambert and its contents would be seized by the state after she was condemned, she had no desire to pay someone for the charade of a defense.

"I was trying to help my brother," she replied.

"Your brother was being arrested. You were interfering with an official act of the Republic of France," Fouquier-Tinville informed her.

"Was it an official act of this Republic that he be savagely kicked after he collapsed to the floor?" she demanded furiously.

"You noblesse have been kicking us for years," shouted a voice.

"Maybe he needed a good kick to get him up again," added another.

Fouquier-Tinville smiled and faced the jury. "Citizeness Doucette, the measures which the National Guard is forced to take as they bravely struggle to protect our Republic are not at issue here. What is at issue are your actions, which clearly demonstrate that you are a traitor to your country." He paused and turned to look at her. "Where are your two younger sisters, Suzanne and Séraphine?"

"They are staying with friends," Jacqueline replied.

"Are these friends in France?" demanded the prosecutor.

"No."

"You realize, of course, that makes your sisters émigrés, and therefore traitors to this Republic?"

"I realize that makes them far away, and therefore safe from bloodthirsty murderers like you and the members of this tribunal," Jacqueline calmly told him.

The audience and the jury gasped. Even the weary judges straightened up in their chairs. The prosecutor looked slightly disconcerted. He was obviously not accustomed to being called a murderer. He cleared his throat.

"So you admit that you arranged the escape of your sisters across the border of France?" he persisted.

"That's exactly what it was," agreed Jacqueline. "An escape."

Fouquier-Tinville smiled. "Where are the jewels that belonged to your mother, the former Duchesse de Lambert?"

"I sold them earlier this year."

"Then where is the money?" he persisted.

"I spent it."

The prosecutor looked at her in disbelief. "All of it?" he asked incredulously. He shook his head. "The De Lambert jewel collection was worth a fortune. Do you expect us to believe you could go through so much money in such a short period of time?"

Jacqueline looked at him with contempt. "In a country where the currency is not worth the paper it is printed on? Where the maximum prices fixed on grain and flour mean you have to pay ten times the legal amount to get someone to sell you what they are hoarding?"

Disgruntled murmurs of agreement could be heard from the audience.

Fouquier-Tinville interrupted them. "You cannot expect the members of this court to believe you went through what must have been an extraordinary amount of money over a period of just a few months. You transferred the money out of France, didn't you?" he demanded.

"Either way, I don't have it anymore," she replied indifferently. She knew the revolutionary government was in appalling debt, and relied heavily on the money and properties confiscated from émigrés, condemned criminals, and the church to help finance its massive war effort and ailing economy. She would not leave them one more livre than necessary.

"Did you write these letters Citizen Barbot found in your home when he was arresting your brother?" the prosecutor asked as he waved several sheets of paper in her face.

"No."

"Come, come, you have not even looked at them," he protested. He held one up for her to see. "In this one, which is to your sister Suzanne, you lament the loss of your father and pray for the death of the revolutionary government. In this one, to your sister Séraphine, you call France "a great scaffold which is sustaining itself on the blood of the weak and the powerless, all in the name of the law.' You speak longingly of the day when the royal family will be restored to the throne. Do you deny that you wrote these?"

Jacqueline reached out and took the letters. They appeared to be documents in progress and were not signed. She examined the writing. She was relieved to see it was not Antoine's. She handed the letters back to the prosecutor.

"I would never be so stupid as to put such comments into writing for your esteemed National Guard to find," she told him. "Also, I do not find the subject matter suitable for correspondence with eight- and ten-year-old children. Do you?" she asked sarcastically.

Fouquier-Tinville was not disturbed by her denial. "If they are not yours, Citizeness, then they must be your brother's. Thank you for confirming this." He turned to place the documents back on his table.

"Antoine would never write something like that!" she burst out furiously. "And he has been too ill these past weeks to hold a quill to paper!"

"Citizeness Doucette, these letters were found in your home. If neither you nor your brother wrote them, pray tell us who did?" asked the prosecutor with mock curiosity.


Jacqueline glared at him. She did not know who had drafted those letters and planted them for the National Guard to find. As former aristos and the family of a condemned traitor, she and her brother had many enemies. And the Château de Lambert with all its holdings was a fine prize for the state, so anyone who sought to improve their status with the revolutionary government might be only too willing to denounce them. That was all it took to make an arrest. There was no need for any proof. Just someone else's word against your own. But the arrest warrant had only been for Antoine, not her. If she had not attacked that odious captain, who tramped through her home giving orders for his men to tear the place apart as they searched for Antoine, and then laughed as his soldiers each took a turn kicking her poor brother on the floor, she might never have been arrested. These letters were meant to be found as evidence against Antoine, and the fact that someone had taken the trouble to write them meant they wanted to be sure he would not return.

"Any ideas?" prodded Fouquier-Tinville.

Jacqueline hesitated. There were several possibilities, but without proof she would not denounce anyone. The action could not save her life anyway, but it would undoubtedly extinguish another. She shook her head.

"Send her to the national razor!" cried out a woman over her knitting. "She is an enemy to the Republic!"

The public prosecutor nodded with satisfaction. "Perhaps the jury has heard enough to render a verdict. I could continue with my questioning, but in light of the evidence already presented against the defendant--"

"Has the jury heard enough?" demanded the judge president.

The weary members of the jury nodded that they had, and were quickly removed to an adjoining room to discuss their verdict. Normally the prisoner would also be removed from the courtroom so the Tribunal could continue with its session, but as the last prisoner of the day, Jacqueline was permitted to remain standing in the dock.

She scanned the audience as she waited for the jury to return. It was getting late, and the men and women who had enjoyed the painful ordeal of the prisoners who faced the dreaded Revolutionary Tribunal that day were packing up their belongings to head home. She searched the crowd for someone she knew. She suspected that Henriette was there somewhere, for her loyal maid would not be able to stay away, even though Jacqueline had expressly forbidden her to come. She did not see François-Louis anywhere, and he would surely stick out in such a rough-looking crowd. His absence did not surprise her. Her betrothed was not a man who took unnecessary risks, and he undoubtedly feared his association with her would soon be called into question. She was sorry for that, and despite her disappointment that no one was there to offer support through their presence, she could not fault him for his desire to be cautious.

For the most part the members of the audience ignored her as they gathered up their food and drink and discussed her fate among themselves. Her eyes came to rest upon an old man who was sitting at the back of the courtroom. He did not speak to anyone around him, apparently uninterested in sharing their harsh enthusiasm over what was certain to be a guilty verdict. He was dressed entirely in black, and his head was covered with a battered, low crowned hat that bore a revolutionary cockade. The scraggly hair spilling out from underneath his head dress was snowy white, the sallow skin that sagged upon his face spotted and lined with age. He hunched forward on the bench, his pale hands gripping the top of a cane that was evidently very much needed to give his ancient, fragile body support. He stared vacantly into space, apparently oblivious to the coarse remarks about "the aristo whore" who would soon find herself lying down for Sanson, the executioner. Someone jostled him and laughingly asked him a question while pointing at her, and the old man smiled and nodded. He turned his eyes to her and appeared surprised to find her looking at him. They locked gazes for the briefest of seconds, and Jacqueline found herself transfixed by the intensity of his stare. Then he turned abruptly and made some remark to the burly man seated beside him, which caused the lout to shake with booming laughter before wiping his nose on his sleeve. Jacqueline looked away.

The jury returned after a few minutes with a verdict of guilty. The audience cheered.

"Citizeness Doucette, you have been found guilty by this court of committing crimes against the Republic of France. Do you have anything you wish to say in your defense before you are sentenced?" asked the judge president.

Jacqueline gripped the bar of the dock as she looked at the judges and jury with contempt. "You have found me guilty of trying to protect my family from the cruelty and corruption that has hooked its claws into France," she began, her voice tight and frigid. "You have already murdered my father, and undoubtedly you will soon do the same to my brother. Do you think I believe you would have stopped there? By attacking the scum who invaded my home, I merely saved you the time and expense of sending another party to the Château de Lambert to arrest me later." She paused and stared hard at them. "My advice to you, my fellow citizens, is that you enjoy today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, because your days are sadly numbered. By murdering the noblesse, and the wealthy bourgeois, and anyone who has the courage to speak out against you, you cannot solve the enormous problems that are choking the breath out of France." She gestured to the men and women in the audience, who had settled back into their seats to listen to her. "It is only a matter of time before these people to whom you have promised so much grow weary of your fancy rhetoric," she continued. "Ceremonies of liberty and reason and the constant chop of the guillotine do not put food on a table or clothing on a body." She looked at Fouquier-Tinville and smiled. "Even you, fellow citizen, will not be exempt," she told him with certainty. "But my sisters will be safe. And when reason and justice have been restored to France, they will return."

"Citizeness Doucette, the hour grows late and your political opinions are no longer of interest to this court," interrupted the judge president impatiently. "Since you do not seem to have anything to say which would alter the verdict of this jury, I find you guilty of the charges laid against you, and hereby sentence you to death by the guillotine. This execution will take place immediately," he added as he began to shuffle together the papers on his bench.

The audience, which had been relatively quiet during Jacqueline's speech, began to cheer and applaud the court's decision. One of the court clerks laid down his pen and pulled out his watch to examine the time. He motioned to Fouquier-Tinville to come over to him. After exchanging a few words, the public prosecutor shrugged and turned to face the bench.

"It would appear the last tumbril departed for the Place de la Revolution some half hour ago," he informed the judge president.

"Then Citizeness Doucette may be returned to her cell in the Conciergerie until tomorrow," amended the judge. "But the sentence is to be carried out within twenty-four hours."

Four members of the National Guard stepped up to the dock to escort Jacqueline out of the courtroom. They surrounded her as she walked down the aisle. The crowd around them began to surge in, cursing and trying to grab at her clothes and her hair.

"Pretty hair--too bad Sanson will have to cut it so the blade can find your neck--" sang out one toothless hag who shot her hand in between the guards and gave Jacqueline's hair a yank. The pins came loose and the rough coiffure she had managed to fashion before she left her cell sagged down around her shoulders.

"See how proudly the bitch walks," commented a man with a face reddened by too much cheap wine. He spat at her. "Take that, bitch."

"Let's see how proud she is tomorrow when she lies down and puts her head through the republican window," said a skinny youth whose bony shoulders slumped forward at an unnatural angle as he laughed.

"Or when the tart's body is tossed headless into the pit," added another with a sneer.

Jacqueline kept her eyes straight ahead and used the comments to fuel her sudden hatred of these people. The soldiers closed ranks around her so no one else could touch her, and she was grateful for that. She had heard stories of atrocities committed against arrested people who never made it as far as the court, or even the prison, for that matter, and she supposed she was grateful that she had not been openly butchered by an angry mob. At least the guillotine was quick and, she hoped, painless.

The new Republic of France, birthplace of Liberty, Equality, and Reason, was a world gone mad. The men who had wrested power from their king, insisting that even a monarch who ruled with divine right was answerable to his people, had quickly discovered they were no better equipped to feed or clothe millions of angry, starving peasants than Louis XVI had been. It was a sobering realization. They blamed the soaring inflation and lack of food on a royalist conspiracy, and removed Louis's head. But then the wars against Great Britain, Holland, and Spain began, spiraling the national debt out of control, and the crops continued to fail. The people, now proudly called citizens, continued to starve. And so they removed the head of their former queen, Marie-Antoinette. And still they were freezing and miserable. Surely someone was to blame?

The former noblesse, who for centuries had made their fortunes on the sweat and misery of others, were undoubtedly the cause of so much want. They were leeches, traitors, enemies of the revolution. True, they had already been stripped of their titles and their privileges. But now they must pay for their crimes with their blood. France must be purged of her enemies. And thanks to the new Law of Suspects, any loyal citizen could denounce another and cause their arrest without the slightest trace of evidence. The fifty-odd prisons of Paris swelled with elegant inmates who had no hope of escaping the razor-sharp justice of the guillotine. Their deaths did not feed the population, but somehow the constant river of blood that flowed out of the Place de la Revolution made the people feel something was being done.



The prison called La Conciergerie adjoined the Palais de Justice in which the Revolutionary Tribunal held its sessions. The severe, imposing castle dated back to the end of the thirteenth century and had served as a prison since the 1500s. Dark, cold, damp, and evil smelling, the Conciergerie was widely recognized as the worst prison in Paris. As Jacqueline walked with the guards along twisting corridors and up narrow staircases, their way lit only by the faint glow of an occasional torch mounted on the thick stone walls, she could hear the scratches and squeals of rats scurrying out of the way of their feet. She had grown used to those sounds and was no longer terrified by them. The one time a rat had decided to invade her small cell she had consolidated fear with fury and smashed the loathsome creature over the head with her soup bowl until it lay dead. She decided if she was to die in prison, it would not be from the plague.

The fumes that assaulted her as they reached the floor of her cell made her stomach wrench and her throat constrict. The hallway was thick with the stench of sewage and sickness, of unwashed bodies and fouled floors. She lifted her hand to her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth, but the fetid air was so bad it threatened to choke her. She pressed her lips together and forced herself to take small, shallow breaths. It had taken her days to grow used to the stink when she first arrived here. Her short trip to the Palais de Justice had been an almost welcome reprieve from her miserable surroundings, and her nose had quickly grown used to inhaling cleaner air. As she was only staying here one more night, she doubted she would be able to adjust to the stench again.

"What's she doing back here?" demanded Citizen Gagnon, the jailer of the wing they had come to.

"She is sentenced to death, but it was too late to take her to meet Sanson," commented one of the guards indifferently.

"Missed the last cart, did you?" asked Gagnon, his voice heavy with sarcasm. He lifted a torch from the wall and stood before Jacqueline. He was a huge bear of a man, with enormous shoulders and thick, strong arms straining beneath the dirty, ragged clothes he wore. His skin was black with years of grime, and when he smiled he exposed an uneven set of brown, rotting teeth. Unlike most of the prisoners, who tried to wash themselves and their clothes as best they could in the icy water of a fountain located in an open courtyard below, the jailers were quite accustomed to their own filth.

"Well, my beauty, you're in luck, because your room is still available," he joked as he led them down a hall while sorting through an enormous iron ring of keys.

He stopped in front of a wooden door with a tiny grille window and inserted a key into the heavy lock. The door swung open with a groan to expose a small cell, perhaps nine feet square, accommodating a trestle bed with a coarse woolen blanket, a table, and a chair. Jacqueline raised her chin, drew her shawl up around her shoulders, and calmly stepped into the room. She could hear the hasty footsteps of the soldiers retreating down the hall. Undoubtedly they were as anxious to leave the foulness of the place as she was. She examined her surroundings for a moment and then turned to face her keeper.

"My candle is gone," she pointed out. "I would like it back."

"Certainly, certainly," replied Gagnon agreeably. "You remember the fee?"

"I paid for the one that was in here," Jacqueline stated flatly.

"Ah, but I was not expecting you to return, so I sold it to another," he told her with a shrug. He slowly looked her up and down, causing Jacqueline to draw her shawl even tighter around her shoulders. "Have you any money?"

"I will write my maid and instruct her to bring some tomorrow," she replied.

The jailer shook his head. "Tomorrow you will expose your pretty little neck to the hot blade of the guillotine. How do I know your maid will come and pay me?" he demanded.

"Because she is a woman of honor and she will see to it that the debts I acknowledge are paid," answered Jacqueline impatiently. The cell had no window and was oppressively dark. If she had to spend her last night in blackness, unable to write a letter to Antoine or make out the shape of a rat that may have invaded her tiny space, she felt sure she would go mad.

Citizen Gagnon appeared unconvinced. "She might pay me," he agreed, "and she might not." He scratched h