Devour the Moon

Trigger warnings: murder/(non-spousal) violence, brief talk of a deceased child, descriptions of burning

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I wrote this as a historical romance novel for a friend. It took me about two and a half years, but I finished it, and that makes this a miraculous endeavour. Now that she has it, though, I didn't really know what to do with it, so I thought I would just share it.

It's set in France in 1724, when Rochelle, a judge's daughter, is kidnapped by a nefarious highwayman seeking her father's assistance. By Literotica standards, it's quite long, with a slow build-up for only a couple of ~spicy~ scenes. It's kind of enemies-to-lovers, but there's more lovers than enemies.

If even one person enjoys it, then I'm glad.

Thank you most gratefully to Kaitlyn and Harmony for their generous thoughts and feedback, and overall kindness.

Enjoy!

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For Ashley--

The littlest, the mightiest, the finest of friends

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CHAPTER 1

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Rochelle's father insisted she be given water before they departed the dusty inn. The pock-faced young porter wrung his hands, explaining that it was impossible. The well recharged from the same source as the empty river and, in the middle of a drought, that could take a full day.

Her father wouldn't hear it. "You had enough water for the horse trough."

"Monsieur... there is no more water."

"Lower the bucket," her father sneered.

"Monsieur, I cannot draw water from the mud. The well--it does not work so."

"Listen to me, you cumberground." Her father's voice sizzled to a point. "Draw the damn bucket."

"Papa, please," Rochelle soothed. "I can drink from the trough."

Her father ignored her and instead stabbed his finger at the boy. "Lower the bucket. Let it be what it is."

The porter sighed. He redrew the bucket from the well, its side coated in muddy grime, and he poured a half-cup of clear water from it. Rochelle offered it to her father, but he drank from the trough instead.

The water rejuvenated her, but only an hour later her throat was parched once more from the itchy dust that bloomed amid trundling wheels and stepping horse hooves.

Ahead, hazy blue hills drew them forth, and still Dijon seemed no closer than the pale bowl of moon that hung over the world's edge. It had been seven days they'd lurched along on the highroad, and though at first their journey had taken them over gentle green hills and past thin creeks of clear water, here drought had seized the land, and all around them the flat fields and orchards stretched on for leagues like the dry scapula of the earth.

Since that first day, Rochelle's complaining had quieted, and so had her father's snippy remarks about unladylike scowls. She would have rather ridden in a saddle than be swept onwards by the pull of a carriage, but her father had told her it would be unseemly for him, a man of newly appointed station, to ride in to Dijon by carriage while his daughter saddled a horse. There were expectations, after all, and women of some newfound privilege should not discard that privilege because it became momentarily inconvenient.

The fields stretched on as they drove. The grain was stunted. Orchard leaves drooped in mangled patterns over lanes of brittle grass. Ahead, a white windmill hunched on a fold of ground, the organ of its sails limp and unstirred, and as they passed under its shadow Rochelle looked to the fields of dark blue sky above, which laid as hopeless and dry as the land itself.

That whole hot morning she expected not to see another living soul, but all along the road peasants tilled the fields in their dirty dress, wiping their filthy brows and leaning on the long handles of their hoes. The carriage jostled by, and Rochelle watched them with admiration as it did. When the rivers ran so bare and the dry land showed no more care for them than the landlords for whom they worked it, their toil seemed pointless, but still they worked.

In the carriage opposite her, her father managed a stack of papers with empty care. Things would have been so much more comfortable if, for the entire trip, he had not insisted she wear her gown and petticoat and corset and all those other silks. Scarcely anyone would see her until the day they arrived, and it seemed cruel to be made to be so hot when a lighter dress would do just as well.

When he'd given the dress, he'd called it a gift--a celebration of his appointment as Provost Marshal of Dijon--and when she'd first seen it, she had been overjoyed. Its intricate stitching was beautiful, and the feel of the soft silk in her fingers was like a rich wax. By necessity, her father's gifts were rare and modest, but with her dress he'd spared no expense. After seven days of bouncing in the choking dust and heat, though, it seemed more a gift for him than her.

Her small chin tilted back as he shuffled papers from one leather case to another. He stopped. He read one word here, another there. The complacency on his wrinkling brow annoyed her, and her own eyebrows knitted together in frustration. He would have her play the role of beatified daughter so that his subordinates may look well upon him, yet here he was, free to dress as comfortably as he pleased.

They passed into woods which sprung up thin and green around them. They would not arrive in Dijon even by nightfall, and tomorrow there would be another day of heavy petticoats and a confusion of sweaty silk stuck to her legs. That thought pressed on the bone atop her spine with an indelicate weight. And so, delicately, she folded her hand fan, placed it in her lap between her fingers, and she looked with a sigh to the virgin woods around them.

"I will consider Monsieur Toussaint's proposal," she said.

Like the laying of a cannon, her father raised his head. "Wonderful." His voice was solid oak. "Shall we stop the carriage here, that you may begin the walk back to Strasbourg?"

She scoffed. "Even that would hardly worsen my day." The hand fan snapped open, and she cooled herself once more.

Her father pulled off his thin, round glasses and set them on the papers in his hands. "How long would it take, do you think?"

Her fanning stopped. "To what?"

"To walk back to Strasbourg."

She made an annoyed sound and looked away.

Harrumphing, he fit the glasses back to the bridge of his nose, their hooks latching around his wobbly ears, and he looked back to his papers. Her father's face was weathered and tanned, wrinkles breaking out along the folds of his face. Under his right eye were the same three beauty marks that she had on her left cheek--what he'd sometimes called the cascade of their family history.

"Monsieur Toussaint will likely have already made a half-dozen more proposals by the time we arrive in Dijon." He peeked over the top of his glasses. "If it's a rise you want out of me, you're better off threatening to renew your vows."

"I would not wish to make you so hopeful to be rid of me."

A smile grew beneath his downwardly pointed nose. "But, now that it has been mentioned..."

"Oh stop!" She huffed. The fan snapped shut. "I hate this carriage. This dress. This heat! I am tired of everything so violently shaking." She leaned to the window, calling to Monsieur Batton, the coachman. "Do you not know how to avoid any of these craters?"

Only the wheels creaked on, unconcerned.

"Yet you would have me believe you would do all of this again to be returned to Strasbourg and Monsieur Toussaint?"

Rochelle eeped, hands folding in her lap. "Well... perhaps not right away."

Her father looked down and chuckled.

She laid her head back on the leather seat cushion and loosed a more pointed sigh. At the back of her head, the thin feathers of her dark brown hair tickled her damp neck. She strained to ignore them, fidgeting with her fan once more.

Monsieur Toussaint was not a good match. He lacked charm, and the way his eyes raked over other women had always made her uncomfortable. One could do far worse than marrying a man with a wandering eye, though, and she knew him well--the way she'd known the city of Strasbourg. Even for his faults, and the faults of that city she'd so long called home, it filled her with dread to leave behind the familiar for something so unknowable.

"There will be other offers," her father consoled. "My position here will afford me greater opportunities than Strasbourg. I will not be without cordial inventions on our new friends, and, in meeting new people, you will find better opportunities for yourself as well. Though not without some social grace, Monsieur Toussaint is not the kind of man I would hope for you."

"No," she said, "you would hope for princes that they might benefit you."

He didn't deign to look up. "Which, again, of the cardinal sins is ambition?"

"Are those now the only sins?"

"Go then," he snorted, waving the back of his hand towards her. "Marry your weaver. Live in a house of wool, and wear wool, and eat wool, and sew yourself into a bed of wool each night until you have wool children, and all you dream of is--"

"Wool?"

He eyed her suspiciously.

"Sheep."

Her head tilted from him, and she fanned even harder. A strand of hair fluttered over her left ear with each gust, and that annoyed her even more.

The carriage lurched between the trees of a small wood, long shadows silently bumping and stretching over the carriage top as it rolled. She hoped there might be some relief among the shade, but soon they pulled on through and the landscape fell again to fields and distant hills. Even under the sun, though, there was no comfortable difference between it or shade. Perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad had there been relief from the commotions of the carriage, but the violent jarring made her unwell.

She let a breath out.

That her father hadn't resisted her threat to marry Monsieur Toussaint had brought upon her a light concern. "You would truly let me marry him?"

Her father looked over the rims of his glasses. "I would not hold you so tight, not when the years run on so fast." He turned over a stack of papers. "You are not a child. If Monsieur Toussaint's courtship is what you desire, then have it. You are already nearing spinsterhood, and I would not deprive you of your life based only on my misgivings of a man."

She frowned.

"And besides," he continued, "who knows the shape of a man's heart, but the man himself? He might, in some way, grand or small, be more well-suited to you than I could imagine."

Her frown only grew as the papers flapped, and restlessly, he tucked them into the leather case at his side.

"But then," he sighed, "perhaps I only offer my blessing because I know you do not want it."

She had never felt the need to accept any proposal. Yet, in her twenty-fifth year, she couldn't deny that few of her friends remained unmarried. Perhaps there was less time to find the right husband than she would have liked.

Her father--though he had done well for himself as a soldier and now to be named Provost Marshal of Dijon--was not a noble of the sword. He was a noble of the robes, ennobled so that he could take the very position to which he'd been appointed, and the recency of his nobility and his wealth scarcely elevated him above a well-off peasant. She herself had not been raised among riches, and nor could she claim a lavish dowry. To the men her father served, she would always be a peasant, and no writ of the crown would change that. To them, she would always be good only for working rainless fields, and already those good men whom she might find relatable had paired off with better matches--and then who was to be left for her?

She had wasted a year as a postulant nun in the foolish cause to heal the sick and dying, but her bearing had always been too coarse, and she had found herself not well suited to that life. Nervously, she thought of the distance between her and thirty and again more seriously considered Monsieur Toussaint's proposal. He may not have been a perfect prize, but was it not better to find poor shelter than none at all?

She swallowed, imagining the shame her mother might have felt had she lived to see her daughter still unmarried, and the weight of that thought settled on her chest along with the heat and the dust.

After noon they came to a small creek, where water trickled down flat stained stones. The horses drank and rested in the shade, and her father spoke with Monsieur Batton in hushed voices. Beside the carriage, she wandered to the edge of the road where a tangle of blueberry bushes lurked under a pair of tall oaks. Kneeling, she picked off one berry and tasted it. The leaves were yellowed, the berries over-ripened, but they were still tarty and delicious, and she ate a handful.

As she returned to the carriage, Monsieur Batton brushed back his light hair and offered both her and her father his tinkling canteen. Rochelle took it and drank down a gulp of the cool water. Tall with a square jaw, she watched as he joked with her father in an easy way and felt a lightness at his good nature. He was a gentle man, graceful for someone so tall, and he laughed so mirthfully as he spoke to her father that it set her at ease about the leg of the journey still before them.

Monsieur Batton clapped her father on the back. "Well, best get on with it. We'll be at an inn tonight, but we should be in Dijon before noon tomorrow."

"Another inn?" Rochelle sighed. "Can't we just ride on in the dark a little longer? I should like to be done with all this."

"These roads are dangerous at night," Monsieur Batton said.

"The roads will be the least of your dangers if I must ride again tomorrow."

"Rochelle," her father scolded.

Monsieur Batton laughed, but she did not, and when he saw her seriousness, he rubbed the back of his neck. "Ah, you don't enjoy it, eh?"

Farther down the road, small holes and the ruts of wagon wheels laid in ambush, waiting to be jostled over.

She grimaced. "These roads are unfit for me."

"They're rough," he admitted. "And not well kept. But you won't find a smoother ride than my carriage. I assure you."

Rochelle turned to her father. "Please, let's ride on tonight. I won't survive one more day."

"It is too dangerous. In the morning, we will make for Dijon."

"Papa, please--I can't."

"Rochelle."

She huffed.

"Please," he said, "this--"

"No! I have suffered in miserable heat for seven days. I have been hot and sticky and feeling as if I am wrapped in fever--

for seven days.

No more." She pointed to her father. "If you extend our carriage ride into tomorrow, I will not be wearing this dress. I will not be wearing anything. I would sooner come into Dijon naked than wear this any longer in such a wet heat."

Monsieur Batton looked away.

Her father looked between them, then he shook his head. "Very well. We will ride on to Dijon tonight."

"I must urge against it," the coachman said. "These roads are rough in more than only their tread. It would not be wise to use them after dusk."

"It would be even more unwise not to take serious my daughter's threat."

Monsieur Batton shrugged and took a swig from his canteen before throwing the strap over his shoulder. "It will cost more. For my troubles."

Her father nodded. "Of course."

The coachman shrugged again. "As you like it, then."

Her father offered Rochelle his hand and assisted her back into the carriage.

At once, they set off. The creek disappeared behind them, and so did the blueberry bushes. After a few minutes, her father cleared his throat.

"I know you're eager to be done with this," he said. "But consider an inn tonight."

She took a deep breath. "I am so uncomfortable I could scream." She tightened her small hands into fists on her lap, then snatched the fan from beside her. More intensely than ever before, she fanned herself.

"You prefer riding to being a passenger, I know."

The carriage struck an ugly bump. Her teeth gritted. "I would prefer anything to this."

"Then tell me a story."

She looked at him, caught off-guard. "A story?"

"That is something different."

Out the window, they'd begun to climb a hill over the dry fields below, where lines of stones and trees crisscrossed over the open land like a quilt of green and yellow stitched together with blue rock.

"I hardly feel like our game now," she said.

"Well then, let me tell you a story. About the time you were little, when your mother and I brought you and your brothers to Stuttgart. Do you remember?"

She had been young then and now remembered little about the trip. The carriage ride had only seemed half as long then, and she had slept through most of it, but each time her brother Tomas had been let out of the carriage, he had become wild and unhinged, and she smiled at the happy memory.

"I remember some." Her chin tilted in thought. She smiled more widely. "And I remember you saying you weren't half so brave to try it again. So where did this brave new father come from, hm?"

He reached for her, smiling, and she took his hand. "Should you like to hear my story or not?"

She nodded sympathetically.

"Your uncle Elias had asked us to visit, to meet your brothers. You were young--seven, eight maybe--and you were captivated by his wheat fields. Do you remember?"

She shrugged lightly. "Only a little perhaps."

"We visited not long before harvest. The fields were ready for reaping and you would run through them, yelling and whooping. 'Papa! Papa!' you'd cry until finally you'd go quiet, and I would come and look for you. Then you would giggle and run deeper in."

Out the window, they neared the top of their climb, but the trees obstructed the view of the fields below.

"The day we left--oh! I've never heard a child cry so. You were despondent to say your goodbyes to those fields."

Rochelle made a face.

"You didn't like things changing when you were little. You still don't, I think. But your mother set you down on her lap, and she said--do you remember? She said, 'Everything changes. You can't live in a wheat field, because the wheat gets swept away. And people that don't change along with everything else get swept away too.'"

Rochelle looked at the dress that laid over her knees. She could picture her mother's beautiful blue eyes staring down at her. "Did it help when she spoke to me?"

Her father lifted his head to the side, smiling even more brightly. "It always helped."

In the wooded scene around them, the memory came back to her half-formed, and as she watched it play out in her mind, she wasn't sure if it was even real. She'd sat in her mother's lap many times and listened, and who now could be sure if she were remembering or imagining?

The carriage bounced on, and for some time, they rode in silence. The only sounds were the slippage of the wheels as they found the ruts of the highroad, and the faint panting of horses. In the woods, thin rabbits and sleek ermines crept through the underbrush, shaking bushes as they skulked in and out of the leaves.

By the time the shadows were lengthened, the carriage rolled up to a weathered wayside inn. It was two floors and stood just off the dusty road next to a half-crooked stable that laid under a purpling shadow. A large apple tree lumbered in its front courtyard, a short wall of round stones stacked around it. The tree had the wisdom of years and the thick branches to prove it, but no apples had flowered there.

Monsieur Batton jumped from the pilot's seat and walked next to the carriage door. He held his hand up to his eyes, blocking the low-angled sun. "I must say again, I recommend we rest here for the night."

"How far on is Dijon?" she asked.

"Another couple of hours."