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“If I behave, I get books. The reward for not trying to escape.”

The truth hung between us. That he had tried to escape. That he had failed.

“Are the guards always here?” I asked.

My brother-in-law bowed his head.

“Almost always. Or if they aren’t, the gates are always locked and barred. But sleep now. I’ll show you around in the morning. It will help you not to be so frightened. I promise the guards won’t bother you.”

“Why do you believe me?” I asked impulsively, my eyes feeling red and raw with crying. “You are the only one who has.”

Hugo turned around, one hand on the doorknob, the other on his cane.

“Because I know the Bastides. I know what they’re capable of.”

In horror, I had to realize that I, on the other hand, knew very little about the family I had married into. . .

CHAPTER 5

Léonie

Exhausted and shattered, I slept.

And I dreamed.

I dreamed about my wedding night.

My cousin Margot had so frightened me with dire-sounding warnings.

That men were hard. Men were cruel. That I must hold my tongue and let him do what he wanted to me. It was the way of things.

Nothing or no one on earth could have talked me out of marrying Étienne, but I was still very nervous when he brought me into the Bastide home, so high and so far from anyone else.

But he hadn’t been terrifying at all.

He had been gentle, so gentle, stroking my hair and touching my body so carefully with his big, rough hands.

And then there had been a pinch of pain, sharp and bright, powerful enough to bring big plump tears to my eyes.

But he was there, his low, gravelly voice rumbling in my ear. And then it was only a dull ache. And then the ache had turned into a pleasurable throbbing. And then it didn’t hurt at all.

No wife in the world could have spread her legs for her husband as eagerly as I did.

I knew he was a hard man. But he had always been gentle with me.

How had it all gone so wrong?

How had he gone from a man laughingly crooning old French folk songs and lullabies to my belly to this man who wouldn’t even acknowledge our baby as his?

When I woke up, waddling as fast as I could to the bathroom because I had slept a long time, the pain of his rejection threatened to swamp me, but somehow I had to figure out what had happened and how it could be untangled.

The main question I had to figure out was who did this? Who had turned Étienne against me?

It could not just be an innocent mistake. Mano hadn’t ended up half-naked in my room on accident. Someone had set me up on purpose.

My restless energy had to go somewhere, and I babbled it all to Hugo as he listened quietly, a book beside his plate.

I had never known someone who was interested in things like reading and study, who was a scholar, and I told him everything. All my longing and my fears.