Marguerite’s thin, sallow face flushed in distress. “I do my best. She’s not the sweet girl you were as a child,” she mumbled. “It was those paints. She was like a wild thing when I tried to take them away from her.”
“Well, now you must let her keep them until the queen loses interest in her. If you’d done your duty well, I would not have been put to this embarrassment.”
“The queen didn’t appear angry. I could not—”
“I want no excuses. Punish the child,” Celeste ordered as she whirled on her heel in a fury of violet brocade. “And keep her away from the queen. It’s fortunate Count Fersen was here tonight to put Her Majesty in a felicitous mood. I’ll not have Juliette with her bold ways spoil my chances of becoming the queen’s favorite. I have enough to contend with. That mewling Princess de Lambelle preys on the queen’s sympathy at every turn.” She paused, glaring at Juliette. “You’re staring at me again. Why do you always stare at me?”
Juliette averted her gaze. She had displeased her mother again. Usually that knowledge brought an aching sense of loss, but tonight the hurt was less. The queen had not found Juliette either ugly or displeasing.
A brilliant smile lit Celeste’s exquisite face as she swept back down the hall toward the queen. “All is well, Your Majesty. How can I thank you for making my little girl so happy?”
Marguerite propelled Juliette forward, her clasp cruelly tight. “Are you satisfied now, you imp from hell? Making your sweet mother unhappy and disturbing the queen of France.”
“I didn’t disturb her. She liked me. She’s my friend.”
“She’s not your friend. She’s the queen.”
Juliette was silent, still in a warm, cozy haze of delight. No matter what Marguerite said, the queen was her friend. Hadn’t she held Juliette in her arms and dried her tears? Hadn’t she said she was pretty and sweet? Wasn’t she going to have her taught to paint beautiful pictures?
“And do you think your mother will really let you have those nasty paints after you’ve been so naughty?” Marguerite’s lips tightened until they formed a thin line. “You don’t deserve gifts.”
“She’ll let me have the paints whether I deserve them or not. She won’t want to displease the queen.” Juliette gave a hop and skip to keep up with Marguerite’s long stride as they moved quickly down the Hall of Mirrors. Juliette’s fascinated gaze clung to their images moving from one of the seventeen mirrors to the next as they walked along the gleaming hall. It surprised her to see how small and unimportant she looked. She certainly did not feel small inside now. She felt every bit as big and important as her mother and Marguerite. How unfair that the mirror did not reflect the change. Marguerite looked much more interesting, Juliette decided. Her black-gowned body was lean and angled’ like one of the stone gargoyles Juliette had seen on a column of the grand cathedral of Notre Dame. How fortunate she had felt when her mother had instructed the coachman to detour to the cathedral on his way through Paris to Versailles. Perhaps, she could persuade Madame Vigée Le Brun to show her how to paint Marguerite as a gargoyle.
“Your arms are going to be black and blue for a fortnight,” Marguerite muttered with satisfaction. “I’ll show you that you can’t shame me in front of your mother.”
Juliette looked down at the long, strong fingers of Marguerite’s hand holding her own and felt an instant of fear. She drew a deep breath and quickly suppressed the terror before it overcame her. The pain of the pinching would be over quickly, and all the time she was undergoing it she would be thinking of her paints and canvas and the lessons to come.
But in her very first painting she would most definitely paint Marguerite as a gargoyle.
Ile du Lion, France
June 10, 1787
Jean Marc Andreas strode around the pedestal, studying the statue from every angle. The jewel-encrusted Pegasus was superb.
From its flying mane to the exquisite detail of the gold filigree clouds on which the horse danced, it was a masterful piece of work.
“You’ve done well, Desedero,” Andreas said. “It’s perfect.”
The sculptor whom some called a mere goldsmith shook his head. “You’re wrong, Monsieur. I’ve failed.”
“Nonsense. This copy is identical to the Wind Dancer, is it not?”
“It is as close a copy as could be made, even to the peculiar cut of the facets of the jewels,” Desedero said. “I had to journey to India to locate emeralds large and perfect enough to use as the eyes of the Wind Dancer and spent over a year crafting the body of the statue.”
“And the inscription engraved on the base?”
Desedero shrugged. “I reproduced the markings with great precision, but since the script is indecipherable that is a minor point, I believe.”
“Nothing is minor. My father knows the Wind Dancer in its every detail,” Andreas said dryly. “I paid you four million livres to duplicate the Wind Dancer—and I always get my money’s worth.”
Desedero knew those words to be true. Jean Marc Andreas was a young man, no more than twenty and five, but he had established himself as a formidable force in the world of finance since taking over the reins of the Andreas shipping and banking empire three years before from his ailing father. He was reputed to be both brilliant and ruthless. Desedero had found him exceptionally demanding, yet he did not resent Andreas. Perhaps it was because the young man’s commission challenged the artist in him. Certainly Andreas’s desperation to please his father was touching. Desedero had loved his own father very much and understood such deep and profound affection. He was much impressed by Jean Marc Andreas’s wholehearted zeal for replicating the Wind Dancer to please his ill and aging father.
“I regret to say I do not believe you have gotten your money’s worth this time, Monsieur Andreas.”
“Don’t say such a thing, sir.” A muscle jerked in Andreas’s jaw. “You have succeeded. We’ve succeeded. My father will never know the difference between this Wind Dancer and the one at Versailles.”
Desedero shook his head. “Tell me, have you ever seen the real Wind Dancer?”
“No, I’ve never visited Versailles.”
Desedero’s gaze returned to the statue on the pedestal. “I remember vividly the first time I saw it some forty-two years ago. I was only a lad of ten and my father took me to Versailles to see the treasures that were dazzling the world. I saw the Hall of Mirrors.” He paused. “And I saw the Wind Dancer. What an experience. When you walked into my studio some year and a half ago with your offer of a commission to create a copy of the Wind Dancer, I could not pass it by. To replicate the Wind Dancer would have been sublime.”
“And you’ve done it.”
“You don’t understand. Had you ever seen the original, you would know the difference instantly. The Wind Dancer has …” He searched for a word. “Presence. One cannot look away from it. It captures, it holds”—he smiled crookedly—“as it’s held me for these forty-two years.”
“And my father,” Andreas whispered. “He saw it once as a young man and has wanted it ever since.” He turned away. “And by God, he’ll have it. She took everything from him—but he shall have the Wind Dancer.”
Desedero discreetly ignored the last remark, though he was well aware of the lady to whom Andreas referred. Charlotte, Denis Andreas’s wife, Jean Marc’s stepmother, had been dead over five years. Still the stories of her greed and treachery were much passed about.
Sighing, Desedero shook his head. “You have only a copy of the Wind Dancer to give to your father.”
“There’s no difference.” A hint of desperation colored Andreas’s voice. “My father will never see the two statues side by side. He’ll think he has the Wind Dancer until the day he—” He broke off, his lips suddenly pinched.
“Your father is worse?” Desedero asked gently.
“Yes, the physicians think he has no more than six months to live. He’s begun to cough blood.” He tried to smile. “So it’s fortunate you have finished the statue
and could bring it now to the Ile du Lion. Yes?”
Desedero had an impulse to reach out and touch him in comfort, but he knew Andreas was not a man who could accept such a gesture, so he merely said, “Very fortunate.”
“Sit down.” Andreas picked up the statue and started toward the door of the salon. “I’ll take this to my father in his study. That’s where he keeps all the things he treasures most. Then I’ll return and tell you how wrong you were about your work.”
“I hope I’m wrong,” Desedero said with a shrug. “Perhaps only the eye of an artist can perceive the difference.” He sat down in the straight chair his patron had indicated and stretched out his short legs. “Don’t hurry, Monsieur. You have many beautiful objects here for me to study. Is that a Botticelli on the far wall?”
“Yes. My father purchased it several years ago. He much admires the Italian masters.” Andreas moved toward the door, carefully cradling the statue in his arms. “I’ll send a servant with wine, Signor Desedero.”
The door closed behind him and Desedero leaned back in his chair, gazing blindly at the Botticelli. Perhaps the old man was too ill to detect the fraud being thrust upon him. Whole and well, he would have seen it instantly, Desedero realized, because everything in this house revealed Denis Andreas’s exquisite sensitivity and love of beauty. Such a man would have been as helplessly entranced with the Wind Dancer as Desedero always had been. Sometimes his own memories of his first visit to Versailles were bathed in mist from which only the Wind Dancer emerged clearly.
He hoped for Jean Marc Andreas’s sake that his father’s memories had dimmed along with his sight.
Jean Marc opened the door of the library, and beauty and serenity flowed over him. This room was both haven and treasure house for his father. A fine Savonnerie carpet in delicate shades of rose, ivory, and beige stretched across the highly polished parquet floor, and a Gobelin tapestry depicting the four seasons covered one wall. Splendid furniture crafted by Jacobs and Boulard was placed for beauty—and comfort—in the room. A fragile crystal swan rested on a cupboard of rosewood and Chinese lacquer marquetry. The desk, wrought in mahogany, ebony, and gilded bronze with mother-of-pearl inserts, might have been the focal point of the room if it had not been for the portrait of Charlotte Andreas. It was dramatically framed and placed over a fireplace whose mantel of Pyrenees marble drew the eye.
Denis Andreas always complained of the cold these days and, although it was the end of June, a fire burned in the hearth. He sat in a huge crimson brocade-cushioned armchair, reading before the fire, his slippered feet resting on a matching footstool.
Jean Marc braced himself, then stepped into the room and closed the door. “I’ve brought you a gift.”
His father looked up with a smile that froze on his lips as he looked at the statue in Jean Marc’s arms. “I see you have.”
Jean Marc strode over to the table beside his father’s chair and set the statue carefully on the malachite surface. He could feel tension coiling painfully in his every muscle as his father gazed at the Pegasus. He forced a smile. “Well, do say something, sir. Aren’t you pleased with me? It was far from easy to persuade King Louis to part with the statue. Bardot has virtually lived at court this past year waiting for the opportunity to pounce.”
“You must have paid a good deal for it.” Denis Andreas reached out and touched a filigree wing with a gentle finger.
His father’s hands had always been delicate-looking, the hands of an artist, Jean Marc thought. But now they were nearly transparent, the protruding veins poignantly emphasizing their frailty. He quickly looked from those scrawny hands to his father’s face. His face was also thin, the cheeks hollowed, but his eyes still held the gentleness and wonder they always had.
“I paid no more than we could afford.” Jean Marc sat down on the chair across from his father. “And Louis needed the livres to pay the American war debt.” At least, that was true enough. Louis’s aid to the American revolutionaries along with his other extravagant expenditures had set France tottering on the edge of bankruptcy. “Where should we put it? I thought a white Carrara marble pedestal by the window. The sunlight shining on the gold and emeralds would make it come alive.”
“The Wind Dancer is alive,” his father said gently. “All beauty lives, Jean Marc.”
“By the window then?”
“No.”
“Where?”
His father’s gaze shifted to Jean Marc’s face. “You didn’t have to do this.” He smiled. “But it fills me with joy that you did.”
“What’s a few million livres?” Jean Marc asked lightly. “You wanted it.”
“No, I have it.” Denis Andreas tapped the center of his forehead with his index finger. “Here. I didn’t need this splendid imitation, my son.”
Jean Marc went still. “Imitation?”
His father looked again at the statue. “A glorious imitation. Who did it? Balzar?”
Jean Marc was silent a moment before he said hoarsely, “Desedero.”
“Ah, a magnificent sculptor when working in gold. I’m surprised he accepted the commission.”
Frustration and despair rose in Jean Marc until he could scarcely bear it. “He was afraid you would recognize the difference but I felt I had no choice. I offered the king enough to buy a thousand statues, but Bardot reported that Louis wouldn’t consider selling the Wind Dancer at any price. According to His Majesty, the queen has a particular fondness for it.” His hands closed tightly on the arms of the chair. “But, dammit, it’s the same.”
Denis Andreas shook his head. “It’s a very good copy. But, my son, the Wind Dancer is …” He shrugged. “I think it has a soul.”
“Mother of God, it’s only a statue!”
“I can’t explain. The Wind Dancer has seen so many centuries pass, seen so many members of our family born into the world, live out their lives … and die. Perhaps it has come to be much more than an object, Jean Marc. Perhaps it has become … a dream.”
“I failed you.”
“No.” His father shook his head. “It was a splendid gesture, a loving gesture.”
“I failed you. It hurt me to know you couldn’t have the one thing you so wished—” Jean Marc broke off and attempted to steady his voice. “I wanted to give something to you, something that you’d always wanted.”
“You have given me something. Don’t you see?”
“I’ve given you disappointment and chicanery and God knows you’ve had enough of both in your life.” Denis flinched and Jean Marc’s lips twisted. “You see, even I hurt you.”
“You’ve always demanded too much of yourself. You’ve been a good and loyal son.” He looked Jean Marc in the eye. “And I’ve had a good life. I’ve been fortunate enough to have the means to surround myself with treasures, and I have a son who loves me enough to try to deceive me ever so sweetly.” He nodded at the statue. “And now why don’t you take that lovely thing out to the salon and find a place to show it to advantage?”
“You don’t want it in here?”
Denis slowly shook his head. “Looking at it would disturb the fine and fragile fabric of the dream.” His gaze drifted to the portrait of Charlotte Andreas over the fireplace. “You never understood why I did it, did you? You never understood about dreams.”
Looking intently at his father, Jean Marc felt pain and sorrow roll over him in a relentless tide. “No, I suppose I didn’t.”
“That hurt you. It shouldn’t.” He once again opened the leather-bound volume he had closed when Jean Marc came into the study. “There must always be a balance between the dreamers and the realists. In this world strength may serve a man far better than dreams.”
Jean Marc stood up and moved toward the table on which he had set the statue. “I’ll just get this out of your way. It’s almost time for your medicine. You’ll be sure to remember to take it?”
Denis nodded, his gaze on the page of his book. “You must do something about Catherine, Jean Marc.”
> “Catherine?”
“She’s been a joy to me but she’s only a child of three and ten. She shouldn’t be here when it happens.”
Jean Marc opened his mouth to speak, then closed it abruptly. It was the first time his father had indicated he knew the end was near.
“Please do something about our Catherine, Jean Marc.”
“I will. I promise you,” Jean Marc said thickly.
“Good.” Denis looked up. “I’m reading Sanchia’s journal, about old Lorenzo Vasaro and his Caterina.”
“Again?” Jean Marc picked up the statue and carried it toward the door. “You must have read those old family journals a hundred times.”
“More. I never tire of them.” His father paused and smiled. “Ah, our ancestor believed in dreams, my son.”
With effort Jean Marc smiled. “Like you.” He opened the door. “I don’t have to return to Marseilles until evening. Would you like to have dinner on the terrace? The fresh air and sunshine will be good for you.”
But Denis was once more deeply absorbed in the journal and didn’t answer.
Jean Marc closed the door and stood a moment, fighting the agony he felt. His father’s last remarks shouldn’t have hurt him, for they were true. He was no dreamer; he was a man of action.
His hand clenched on the base of the statue. Then he squared his shoulders. The pain was fading. Just as he had known it would. Just as it had so many times before. He strode across the wide foyer and threw open the door to the salon.
Desedero’s gaze was searching. “He knew?”
“Yes.” Jean Marc set the statue back on the pedestal. “I’ll have my agent in Marseilles give you a letter of credit to our bank in Venice for the remainder of the money I owe you.”
“I don’t wish any more money,” Desedero said. “I cheated you.”
“Nonsense. You did what you were paid to do.” Jean Marc’s smile was filled with irony. “You were given my livres to create a statue, not a dream.”