Claiming Joanna Read online

  Claiming Joanna

  The Refugee’s Song

  Renee Peters

  Rae Stilwell

  Claiming Joanna by Renee Peters and Rae Stilwell

  www.theaegeans.com

  Copyright © 2020 Renee Peters and Rae Stilwell

  Cover Design © Rae Stilwell | raestilwell.com

  Ebook ISBN: B0852G1JCB

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For

  Courtney Rae, my writing partner and forever friend. Without you, my dream of being a published author would still be on my bucket list; my very long bucket list. Thank you!

  -Renee

  Ladybug for joining me on this adventure.

  My mom for being our number one supporter.

  My family for their constant support.

  And to Charlie and Rico, who I would be an emotional wreck without.

  Thank you!

  -Rae

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  Saving Eden: The Urchin’s Song

  Do you think

  The Phoenix wishes

  To be reborn —

  When all the world

  And all it loves

  Are ash beneath its wings?

  There is no greater cruelty

  Than life after death.

  The World of the Aegean

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  Thank you!

  Join the World of the Aegeans

  More from the Aegean Immortals Series

  Free Excerpt: Songs of Blood

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Chapter 1

  1648, Canterbury, England

  The lingering heat of smoke and ash was as gentle as a lover’s touch when it brushed Joanna LeClair Holt’s face. She recoiled and doubled over in the forest, gagging as her stomach heaved. There was nothing there to vomit — only the sharp taste of bile and spit as it crossed her lips. Her scarred fingers jumped to shield her nose from the scent as she turned to squint toward its source.

  Toward her shelter.

  Pulling the tattered remains of her dress over her mouth, the woman swallowed back on the panic that threatened to rise with another heave and ran. Joanna stumbled through the sun-dappled underbrush with thorns grabbing at her clothing as if to stop her. The basket of woven reeds she wore at her back for gathering herbs smacked against a tree trunk, and she heard a crack.

  She whispered a plea in her native French, all but choking as the smoke grew thicker.

  The woman crashed through the undergrowth, tumbling out of the tree line to fall to the ground of the clearing where she had made her second home.

  “Maman!” The voice of her daughter, her Marjolaine, wailed from the cloud of smoke.

  “J’arrive!” She called in answer. Digging into the mud, she clawed her way to a stand.

  The child’s wails became a fit of coughing muffled by debris and ash.

  But her daughter’s cries were made of the same spirits as the scorching fires of Joanna’s memories. This was not the farm. There were no timbers to pull aside and scald her hands on, and no limp body to carry from Marjolaine’s room out into the fields.

  There was only the home she had built after the first had burned to the ground — only ghosts that haunted her in the face of her shelter’s ruins. Only a charred skeleton remained of the fallen tree she had used for her roof. Beneath it, the old pot she had found in the rubbish of Canterbury laid amidst the ashes. Soot covered the vegetable garden she had been tending since the early days of spring and torn roots laid amid the freshly disturbed earth.

  She stared at the boot prints that had replaced her promised crop.

  Thoughtlessly, the woman stepped forward, only for the scorched scent to roll across the clearing again. Biting down on the threat of illness, she turned from the scene to stumble back toward the depths of the forest.

  Gone. Gone again. Alone again.

  Joanna fell three times before she made it to the stream, and gasping, she reached her fingers into the waters to splash it into her face and mouth. She hadn’t left a fire burning. She never left a fire. But then, she hadn’t stomped her garden, either.

  Joanna straightened and winced. Someone had found her shelter. Not the Watch, who would have waited to take her to a workhouse, or prison for squatting in the King’s forest, or to deport her to France. Someone else. She eased to a sit and drew her damaged basket from over her shoulders. Reaching inside, the French woman dug uselessly through the roots and herbs she had gathered.

  It wouldn’t make a meal. The meager coin she had earned from begging in the streets was hidden away in the remnants of the fire — if someone had not stolen it. Laying back on the muddy bank, she breathed a shuddering exhale and pressed her hand atop her bonnet.

  “Oh, je t’en prie. Pardonne-moi…” She whispered the words as soft as a prayer and closed her eyes against the sunlight. A selfish part of her wanted to just lay and the let the mud swallow her — the more selfish part knew that she could not. Giving up was forbidden. If she wanted to see Marjolaine and Jakob again, she could not choose the escape that beckoned. She needed to survive.

  It meant going to town and begging again. Her hand slipped from her bonnet to pluck at the tattered ribbon she wore around her throat — Marjolaine’s ribbon. The only thing that survived of the girl. The ribbon, and the scars. Lifting her hand away from her neck, the woman stared at the mottled, seared markings across her skin and fingers.

  “Je suis si désolée.” The apology passed her lips. Whether it was to her daughter or to God, she did not know. It did not feel genuine enough, and in silence, she eased herself back into a stand.

  Survive.

  Chapter 2

  Within the hour, Joanna arrived at the great, stone wall that bordered the town of Canterbury. The warmth of the sun had dried the mud on her clothes into cracked debris. It fell in clumps from her dress as she walked, and aware of the filth, the woman did not approach the town right away. Instead, she found the shade of a large oak tree and sat between its knotted roots to wait.

  Time passed and a peppering of men crossed through the gated entrance. It was not until the sun had nearly reached the horizon and the farmers began to shuffle from the fields to their homes that Joanna rose to move again. Bowing her head and folding her hands before her as if in prayer, she shuffled down the packed dirt path and past the Watchman.

  The warmth of the dusk sunlight was nothing compared to the burn of the man’s eyes.

  Joanna ignored him the way they ignored her within the walls of
Canterbury. She had done nothing wrong. Nothing to warrant his attention or another visit to the stocks. The burn crept up her neck and face, and the woman fought down the anxious knot that formed in her throat.

  As she drifted beneath the shadows of the timber and daub houses that lined the winding paths, the sweet smells of meats and baked bread made her stomach ache. The danker odor of sweat and filth sent it turning again, and with a touch to her throat, Joanna moved toward the towering spires of the cathedral. For her heritage and beliefs, she was not welcome there, but she had discovered the deeper, more generous pockets could be found nearer to the holy grounds.

  She was not the only one who knew that truth.

  The whores who traded rotations on the street before the cathedral were not present tonight. Tension settled into the back of her neck and she lifted a hand to rub it away. Her fingers lingered on Marjolaine’s ribbon, and with a final look down the lane, Joanna kneeled on the side of the pathway. Lowering her head, the woman extended her hands before her and waited.

  The bells on the steeple had chimed twice before the first press of coin warmed her palms. From beneath lowered lids, she saw the beringed length of a man’s pale, slender fingers hover before he withdrew them. She did not lift her gaze, but the full cuff at the wrist of her benefactor was recognizable as that of a nobleman. To make eye contact would seem an invitation — an invitation Joanna could ill afford to imply. The Frenchwoman only dipped her head in acknowledgment of the offering and whispered a hoarse, “Merci à vous…”

  The crunch of well-polished shoes against the dirt betrayed his departure and Joanna released a breath she had not realized she was holding. Only then did she risk a closer examination of the coin he had given her. She repressed the flicker of disappointment that rose for the glint of copper in the growing darkness.

  “Not much of a profit for broken knees is it, girl?” The cold amusement of a familiar voice reached out of the shadows behind her. “The gentleman would have been willin’ to grant you shinier had you shown him those green eyes — even sunken as they are. Have you given my offer any more of a turn in that head of yours?”

  Joanna curled her fingers around the coin and drew it against her chest. She could understand far more English than she could speak, just as she could understand the patience the Madame had displayed in tolerating her presence on the streets that paid for hers and her whores’ livelihoods. The Madame had been more than generous in her offer to take Joanna beneath her wing.

  The Frenchwoman felt her stomach twist, and she bowed her head lower, before shuffling to her feet. “Excusez-moi, Madame,” she murmured. The time would come when she was hungry enough to give her body for coin. But it was not yet. Not when she had only just buried her daughter and her husband in shallow graves the winter before.

  She turned quickly on her heel and felt the straps that held one of her wood and cloth shoes together snap and break for the movement. Warm air and dirt hit her bared toes as she hobbled toward the cathedral — toward the sanctuary and peace it offered. Even if His Catholic children did not love the Huguenots, He was the Father of them all. He would shelter her, if only for the night, from the strangeness of the Madame who had approached her on the street and the absence of the other whores. And from the boot prints and fire that had destroyed her refuge.

  A broad hand reached out of the shadows and looped around her wrist. It pulled Joanna back against the solid chest of a man and she squawked, sucking in a gasp of breath as she wrenched forward to get away.

  The man held her fast and caught her other hand to drag both of her wrists behind her.

  “Easy there,” he breathed with a laugh. “You pull too much and you’ll snap your arms for as much like twigs as they be, little Frog.”

  It did not stop her from pulling and kicking wildly, even when he reeled her into a firmer hold against his chest.

  The man addressed the Madame, who was closing the distance between them.

  “She’d have been pretty enough for one of your girls. Not even pocked or missing teeth. You lose your sweet charm for the convincing, Madame? Or the Froggie just ain’t smart enough to speak English?”

  The Madame’s voice was tart when she answered, and one brow arched high into her curls. “As if I would take in toothless or scarred hags.” Her arms folded across a buxom chest, pressing her breasts so tightly that they nearly spilled over the low cut of her gown.

  “Je vous en prie!” Joanna cried out. “Madame —”

  “It’s a little late for findin’ your tongue Missy,” the Madame bit back. “You’ve had your time to do your choosin’. Me and my girls have been more than willin’ to share this corner while you did your thinkin’. But there’s not enough of wickedness in the world as will give a copper to a maid and a silver piece to a whore on the same walk. It’s our bellies or yours.”

  “Non! Non, non. Asile! La cathédrale!”

  “Now, a Huguenot Frog is not welcome in the cathedral,” the man said. Joanna turned her head to see his face, but the man, the Watchman, did not look at her. “You’ve your own places t’worship. You might have been better suited to findin’ one tonight.”

  The Madame had no sympathy in her expression. She lifted her hand to wave Joanna and her captor off, “You’ll be fed well enough in the workhouse if it’s your pride you’re tendin’ under all that soot.” Her eyes raised to the Watchman. “I’ll leave you to your duty, Watch, and I’ll thank you to leave me to mine.”

  Joanna had stopped listening. The workhouse. It would be the death of her. Sickness and starvation — a slow death, but an assured one.

  Survive.

  Jakob. Marjolaine.

  The Frenchwoman’s pleas became feral screams and she tore wildly against her restraints. The Watchman only tightened his hold and forced her into a walk. When they rounded the corner, away from the shadow of the cathedral, he delivered a quick punch to her side that took the wind from her.

  Joanna did not resist after that.

  Chapter 3

  The holding cell stunk of merde.

  For as gently as she was ushered into the darkness of the cell, Joanna avoided stepping through a pile of it; although she tripped over a sleeping body on the floor. Sharp gravel dug into her foot as she sloshed through mud that reeked of piss to find a space among the other prisoners who crowded the floor.

  “Tomorrow it will be the cart to London, Froggie,” the Watchman said, drawing the door closed. “You’ll only have to endure the night.”

  Endure.

  Her throat tightened and her eyes stung with more than just the stench. But, the tears did not escape past her lashes. Her scarred hands folded before her face and exhaling a shuddering breath, the woman lowered to her knees and began to pray in a hoarse whisper. Strength, deliverance, the words spilled out across her tongue rapidly, and Joanna had the sense to know shame for the impropriety of the prayers.

  Nearby one of her cellmates stirred and slung the stinking mud at her, splashing her in the face.

  “Be quiet,” he hissed groggily. “Yeh French bicce.”

  Spitting out the foulness of the taste, Joanna left her prayers to the silence of her mind.

  Sleep did not arrive. With the dawn, she was filed into an iron-barred cart with three others. None of the prisoners spoke; not when the vehicle lurched forward, knocking them against one another, and not for the rough pits in the road that bounced them painfully against the bars.

  Joanna gripped the iron for support; though it did little to keep her thin frame from jarring against her companions. She closed her eyes. It would be two days before they arrived in London. Perhaps the Lord would be merciful enough to claim her before she reached the workhouse.

  “You’ll want to keep along the path, sirs,” the driver of the prison transport spoke in a deferential tone.

  Wearily, Joanna lifted her head from the pillow she had made of her knees and curled them more tightly to her chest. A few hours remained yet of travel to their night�
��s stop in Rochester, but the cart had come to a standstill.

  The reason lay just ahead. In the golden light of the afternoon, two well-polished coaches gleamed like black oil. The drivers of the coaches, one older and the other a younger man with similar enough features to be related were as finely dressed as any gentleman.

  They were not as elegantly dressed as the man who had stepped out of the vehicle and onto the road to block the cart’s path. He appeared an angelic figure in his blue satin-doublet and silver short cloak. His gold hair curled in gentle waves, just brushing the laced collar that settled over his shoulders. The Lord was pale and terribly tall and staring at her strangely.

  Joanna lowered her head and closed her eyes, willing his attention away. She could still feel him watching her, and more eyes than his own if she thought to let her imagination run wild.

  “Unlock the door.” The voice that spoke now was dark velvet and lifeless. It did not belong to the driver.

  “M’lord, these are vagrants and paupers to be delivered to the workhouse in —” the driver began, only to cut himself off with a croaked syllable.

  She heard the heaviness of boots hit the path, and the metallic clunk of the key as it slid clumsily into the lock. Her eyes squeezed closed as the iron swung open with a low moan. The soft sound of footsteps approached then faded as someone — as the Lord, surely — rounded the cart to the rear where the door was open.