He flipped her over on the carpet and she saw his expression for the first time. Torment, pleasure, frustration, resignation.
He thrust hard, again, then a flurry of heated power.
She cried out, her fingernails digging into the carpet, not caring whether Simon’s men heard her or not.
He crushed her to him, burying his face in her shoulder while the spasms of release shuddered through both of them.
“Why?” Jean Marc’s voice was low as he adjusted his clothing and then moved to help her with the fastening of her gown. “Why did you say yes?”
“I don’t know.” Juliette didn’t look at him. “It seemed a good idea at the time.”
“To let me treat you like a tart I’d picked up on the docks of Marseilles?” Jean Marc’s tone was suddenly savage.
“Is that how they’re treated? It must not be such a terrible life. I really found it quite exhilarating.”
Jean Marc put his fingers beneath her chin and turned her face up to look in her eyes. “Why?”
“Because you were kind to me in Andorra,” she said simply. “And kindness should be returned. I wasn’t sure at first why you needed to do this but I knew the need was there.”
His expression was suddenly wary. “But you think you know now?”
“You were losing sight of the woman you were fighting and seeing me as myself.” She gazed up at the woman in the picture. “You wanted to see me as the enemy again. You thought you might be able to do that here.” Her gaze shifted to his face. “But you were wrong, weren’t you? You found you couldn’t see me in that way any longer.”
“Yes.” He released her chin and his hands dropped away from her. “Yes, I was wrong. It didn’t work.”
She rose to her feet. “You don’t like me to understand you, do you?” She smoothed her curls with trembling hands. “I don’t like it either. It disturbs me. You disturb me. I find myself thinking about you when I should be thinking of my work. I will no longer let you do this to me, Jean Marc.”
“No?” His gaze narrowed on her face. “And what will you do to prevent it?”
“Once we’re back in Paris there’s no reason for us to have … a close association. We shall follow our own paths.” She met his gaze. “And I shall no longer let you have my body. There will be no child and you will not be allowed in my bed.”
“You intend to occupy my house but not my bed?”
“That was our agreement. The shelter of your house and protection as long as I wanted it and two million livres for the Wind Dancer. You have the Wind Dancer. As soon as we return to Paris I’ll go to the Café du Chat and give them the money. I’m sure they can arrange for your writ of sale from Marie Antoinette. Then you can attend to your business and I’ll attend to mine.”
“Painting?”
Her lashes quickly lowered to veil her eyes. “Yes.”
“And we’re to live together, pure of all carnal thought?” He shook his head and the wicked smile she knew so well lit his face. “It won’t do, Juliette. Your temperament is too hot and the desire between us too strong. You’ll yield before a week has gone by.”
“No. And you won’t attempt me, for to do so would sever our bargain.”
“We shall just have to test the strength of your resolve.” Jean Marc stood up and moved toward the desk. “I gave you a choice once. I’ll not do so again.” His voice was almost casual as he added, “I believe we shall wed in time.”
She stared at him, stunned. “Wed?”
“As you pointed out, the child must have the Andreas name.” He smiled. “And I fully intend to get you with child, Juliette. I’ve just come to that decision.”
“But I told you I have no intention—” She moved toward the door. “You’re quite mad.”
“You give me no choice. It may be the only way I can win the game.”
She unlocked the door.
“Juliette.”
She glanced back at him.
The mockery was gone from his expression. “I … I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
“I would not let you hurt me.” She turned away from him. “I’ll be in the garden when you’re ready to go back to the ship. When do we set sail for Cannes?”
“We don’t.”
She turned back to face him. “We’re not going back to Vasaro?”
“We’ll leave from Marseilles to Paris. If we go back to Cannes, there’s every chance François will have persuaded the representatives to impound the Bonne Chance and seize the cargo.” He grimaced. “I won’t take that risk. I’ve already lost eight ships to the republic.”
“Won’t the ship be impounded in Marseilles?”
“The ship won’t dock at Marseilles. We’ll anchor off the coast and go ashore by longboat with our baggage and the statue.”
“You’re taking the Wind Dancer to Paris?”
“I want it with me. No one would suspect I would keep the statue with me.”
“And where does the Bonne Chance go from here?”
“To Charleston harbor in America to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet.”
She stared at him thoughtfully. “You planned all of this before you left Paris.”
“One must think ahead.” He smiled. “And speaking of planning ahead, what name shall we choose for my son?”
She gazed at him in bewilderment and, for the first time, uncertainty. Jean Marc was clever, relentless, and had decided on a plan of action that could sweep her from the course she had set if she weren’t equally clever and determined. “Impossible.”
“A strange name, but if you insist, I shan’t raise any objection to your—”
The closing of the door behind her cut off the rest of his words.
The broom had been harvested and now the fields of Vasaro burst into bloom with hyacinths, cassias, and narcissus. Violets, too, came into flower but not in the fields. The deep purple blossoms loved the shade, and the beds lay beneath the trees of the orange and olive groves, where the picking had to be done many hours before dawn when the scent was the strongest.
On the second morning of the harvesting of the violets François stood by the cart watching the pickers move with their lanterns through the grove. The flames of dozens of torches lit the shadows and black smoke curled upward to wind around the green leaves of the sheltering trees.
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
He turned to see Catherine coming toward him, mounted on the chestnut mare.
“Why didn’t you stay in bed? Both of us needn’t be here this early.”
“I was too excited. I had to be in the enfleurage shed yesterday and didn’t get to watch the violets being picked.” Catherine’s gaze searched the grove and found Michel, who waved at her. She waved back and turned to François. “Isn’t it beautiful? The lanterns and the darkness and the flowers.”
He smiled indulgently. “Beautiful. Enfleurage?”
“Michel didn’t show you? You’ve been spending so much time together I thought he would have taken you there.” Her face lit with eagerness. “Good. I’m glad he didn’t. Now I’ll get to show you. Come with me.”
She kicked her horse and sent it at a gallop toward the stone sheds behind the manor house. The cool night wind tore at her hair and she felt a wild exhilaration soaring through her. She heard the sound of hooves behind her and François’s low laugh. She reached the stone building behind the maceration shed, slipped from the horse, and turned to face François as he reined in. “Light the lantern,” she said breathlessly as she tied her horse to the rail before the door.
François dismounted and lit the lantern hooked to his saddle. A broad smile creased his square face and his eyes were alight with an exhilaration matching hers. “What next?”
She threw open the heavy door of the long shed and preceded him into the darkened work room. The shutters of the windows were shut, the air close, and the scent of violets immediately enveloped them with heavy clouds of fragrance. The shed was empty; it was too early for any of the worker
s to be sitting at the tables where wooden frames of glass plates were stacked.
“I like this way much better than maceration. It’s gentler somehow.” Catherine moved to the first long table. “They smear these glass plates with oil and then scatter the petals over them. Then they leave them in the cool darkness for two or three days to give up their souls and then—”
“Souls?” François asked, amused.
“That’s what Michel calls the scent.” She tapped the frame. “Then the wilted petals are taken off and new ones are put on the glass. It happens fifteen or twenty times before the pomade is ready to store away in crocks. The yield is very small but the scent is terribly intense. Much more powerful than the souls taken by maceration or distillation.”
“You said it again.” François smiled. “I think it’s not only Michel who thinks of scent as a soul.”
She smiled back at him. “It’s not such a farfetched notion. Why shouldn’t the earth and the plants have souls?” She picked up the lantern and moved toward the door. “Don’t you believe in souls, François?”
“Yes.” François held the door open. “I believe the revolution has a soul.”
She stiffened. “I can’t agree with you. I had a taste of your fine revolutionaries at the abbey.”
“Those men weren’t the soul. They were the thorns and the weeds that invade any garden if not plucked out.” François held her gaze steadily. “The Rights of Man is the soul. But we have to make sure it’s not drowned in a sea of blood.”
“You make sure,” Catherine said curtly as she closed the door and went to her horse. “I want no more to do with your fine revolution. I’ll stay here at Vasaro.”
“Good.” He lifted her onto her horse and then mounted his own. “I don’t want you anywhere near Paris. Your place is here now.”
She tilted her head to look at him curiously. “Yet at one time you condemned me for clinging to my little garden in Paris. Vasaro is a huge garden.”
“That seems a long time ago.” François regarded her soberly. “There’s nothing wrong in not wanting to venture back among the thorns. God knows, I’m tempted to find a garden of my own.”
“Stay here,” she said impulsively. “You like it here. Michel says you understand the flowers. There’s no need for you to leave and—”
“I have to go back. I’ve stayed too long as it is.” He smiled ruefully. “I meant to remain only a few days and it’s stretched into weeks. Your Vasaro is like a drug on the senses.”
Catherine felt a sudden wrenching pang. He was leaving. No longer would there be the companionable presence working beside her or in the next field, no more laughter and discussion of the day’s tasks over supper, no more walks with François as well as Michel beside her. “When do you plan on leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“So soon?” Catherine tried to smile. “I suppose it has something to do with that message you received yesterday. Danton cannot do without you? You told me he was very likely out of the city anyway.”
“He’s returned to Paris but the message wasn’t from Danton.” His gaze slid away. “You don’t need me here any longer. You have the reins of Vasaro fully in your control.” François turned his horse and started to trot toward the olive groves. “And I am needed in Paris.”
“No, I don’t need you.” Catherine followed him, her horse picking its way through the tufts of grass on the hillside. She didn’t need him but she suddenly knew she desperately wanted him there. In the past weeks he had become as much a part of Vasaro as Michel or the flowers, and she felt as fiercely possessive of him as she did of them. Why couldn’t he stay there, where he was safe? Paris was a city of madness, inhabited by men like the Marseilles.
They had reached the crest of the hill and François reined in his horse to wait for her.
Dawn was just beginning to break over the olive grove, lighting only the tops of the trees, leaving the lower branches and the soft drift of pickers gathering the fragrant violets beneath them in half darkness.
“After the sun rises I’ll oversee the picking in the hyacinth field,” François said quietly. “Do you go with me or have you business with Monsieur Augustine this morning?”
“The hyacinth field is large.” She didn’t look at him but at the grove below. “I’ll go with you.”
They sat in silence as the golden bands of sunlight slowly unfolded over the groves and fields of Vasaro.
She found herself dressing with particular care for supper that evening in a lemon-yellow gown trimmed at the neck with a border of pearls. She was not dressing for François, she assured herself. Still, one always wanted to be remembered with a certain pleasure.
When she came into the salon she saw that François, too, had taken pains with his attire. He wore a dark blue coat and a white brocade vest, his cravat tied with exquisite intricacy. She stopped just inside the door of the salon as she met his gaze across the room, where he stood at the sideboard pouring wine into crystal goblets. “Have you said good-bye to Michel?”
“Yes.” He handed her a glass of wine. “He didn’t seem surprised.”
She lowered her gaze to her glass. “He knew you’d have to go back sometime, but I’m sure he was disappointed. He likes you.”
“I like him.”
They were both silent again and she didn’t know how to break the charged stillness in the room. He was different tonight. The easy camaraderie they had known in the past weeks was gone and the tingling awareness of that first evening had returned.
The silence between them lengthened.
“Where is Michel?” he asked.
“There’s a wedding at the workers’ village. He decided to stay there this evening.” She ruefully shook her head. “I can’t persuade him to come here more than a few times a week. Sometimes I think I’m wrong to push him.”
“Let him go his own way and he’ll come back to you.”
“You think so?”
He met her gaze. “Only a fool wouldn’t come to you if you wanted him.”
Hot color scorched her cheeks and her chest suddenly tightened. She found her hand was trembling as she hastily set the wineglass down on the table beside her. “Shall we go in to supper?”
“No.”
“What?”
His lips lifted at one corner in a lopsided smile. “I thought I could go through with this, but I find I can’t. In the past I’ve played many roles, but I won’t play the gracious departing guest. I believe I’ll say my good-bye now.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’ll miss you, Catherine of Vasaro.”
She gazed at him wordlessly as he turned her hand over and lingeringly pressed his warm lips to her palm.
Intimacy. Warmth. Tenderness.
She couldn’t breathe; being close to him was like being in the enfleurage room too long, intoxicating, heady, sweet.
He raised his gaze to her face as he slowly lifted her palm to his cheek. “And I want you.” He felt her stiffen and shook his head. “Oh, I know I can’t have you. I’ve always known that since that first night at the abbey. But, if I stay here, someday I’m going to forget and try to make love to you.” He held her gaze as he kissed her palm again. “And it would be love, Catherine.”
He didn’t allow her to answer but turned and left the salon.
She stared after him in bewilderment. Love?
She realized now that she had firmly kept herself from thinking of love as well as lust in connection with François in these past weeks. All through the years love had always meant her blind worship of Philippe. Could what she was feeling for François be love too?
And what of lust? She had never felt this deep, primitive awareness when she was with Philippe. She did not flinch from François’s touch. In truth, she seemed drawn to him in a physical manner.
The tomb.
But François was different from those men. Perhaps the act that had so defiled her would be different too.
She turned and slowly walked
from the salon and up the stairs. She couldn’t countenance the thought of food either. She was bewildered and saddened and yet there was a tiny ember of hope burning in the darkness. She must think and sort out her emotions before morning.
Before François left Vasaro.
An early morning fog lay over Vasaro, swathing the lushness of the blooming fields in a vaporous white veil.
“François!”
François turned as Catherine hurried toward him across the stable yard. She still wore the yellow satin gown she had worn last in the salon, and wisps of brown hair escaped the confines of her braid.
She stopped before him, out of breath. “Don’t go.”
He went still, his gaze on her face.
She took a step nearer. “Please. I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay here with Michel and me. I thought about what you said all night.” She moistened her lips. “I don’t know if I love you, but I do feel something … extraordinary when I’m with you. I want you to stay with me and we can see.… Would it be so terrible to give me time to get accustomed to the idea?”
“No, it wouldn’t be terrible at all,” he said gently. “It would be sweet and warm and all that’s wonderful. But nothing could come of it, Catherine.”
“Will you … embrace me?”
“Catherine …”
“It’s not much of a favor to ask.” She took a step nearer until she was only inches away. “I don’t think I’ll be afraid. I believe it will be different with you. But I won’t know unless you hold me.”
He pulled her gently into his arms and she lay quietly against him. His body was warm and strong and yet the strength brought not fear but a sense of security. “It’s really quite nice, isn’t it?” Her voice was trembling as she pressed closer to him. “Rather … sweet.”
“Yes.” His voice was muffled against her hair. “Yes, love. Sweet.”
Her arms went around him and she held him tightly. “Oh, I do love you, François,” she whispered. “Don’t go back to Paris. There’s nothing for you there. Will you stay with me for a little while and be patient? I’ll try not to be too long about—”