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Juliette’s lashes quickly lowered to veil her eyes. “The nuns say Catherine is their best pupil. It would be a pity if she couldn’t stay and learn all she could from them.”

“And what of you? Aren’t you also a fine pupil?”

“Not like Catherine.”

“Because you don’t apply yourself.” Catherine made a face. “If you’d listen to the sisters instead of studying them to see how you’d like to paint them, you’d be much better off.”

“I listen.” Juliette grinned. “Sometimes.” Her smile faded as she stepped back to permit Jean Marc to get out of the carriage. “You’re taking her back to the Ile du Lion?”

“The chateau on the Ile du Lion is closed. When my father died I found it inconvenient to keep it open.” Jean Marc helped Catherine from the carriage. “I spend most of my time in Marseilles and Paris now.”

“Then where will Catherine—”

“He’s only teasing you,” Catherine said quickly. “Jean Marc says I’m to stay here at the abbey until I reach my eighteenth year.…”

Relief surged through Juliette. “That’s good.” She caught Jean Marc’s gaze narrowed on her face and continued quickly. “For Catherine, of course.”

“Of course,” Jean Marc echoed softly.

“Your hair’s becoming damp.” Juliette stepped nearer and gently pulled up the hood of Catherine’s cloak to cover her hair. “Have you supped? They’re all in the hall eating now. You could still join them.”

“We had an enormous dinner before we left Paris.” Catherine smiled. “Why are you out here in the courtyard instead of at supper? I suppose you were painting and forgot to eat again?”

Juliette nodded. “I wasn’t hungry.”

“If you were so absorbed in your artistic endeavors, how is it you were in the courtyard when we arrived?” Jean Marc asked with a quizzical smile. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, have been waiting for Catherine?”

“No, of course not.” Juliette lifted her chin and gazed at him defiantly. “I wouldn’t be so foolish as to linger in this cold. I was merely passing by when I saw the coach approaching.”

“How fortunate for us.” Jean Marc motioned to the footman. “Get the basket of fruit from the carriage. Even though the mademoiselle has no hunger, perhaps she’ll be able to force down an apple or pear later.”

“Perhaps.” Juliette turned to Catherine. “Say goodbye and come along. It’s too cold out here for you.”

Catherine nodded and tentatively addressed Jean Marc. “It was very kind of you to have me for Christmas, Jean Marc. I enjoyed myself tremendously.”

“You’re easily pleased. I thought it time I paid some attention to you. I’ve not been an overly attentive guardian these last years.”

“Oh, no, you’re always so kind to me. I knew you were busy.” Catherine’s gentle smile was radiant. “And I’ve been very happy here at the abbey.”

“I doubt if you’d tell me even if you weren’t” Jean Marc took the large covered straw basket from the footman. “But I’m sure the Reverend Mother will be less concerned for my feelings. She’ll scold me for lack of attention but will give me honesty regarding your contentment here.”

“Catherine’s not dishonest,” Juliette said fiercely. “She would say nothing at all rather than lie to you.”

“I’m not maligning her.” A curious expression on his face, Jean Marc gazed into Juliette’s blazing eyes.

“And if she’s happy here, I imagine her contentment has much to do with you.

” He handed the basket to Catherine. “If I’m still in Paris, I’ll send for you again at Easter.

Now, run along. Juliette’s right. There is bitter cold in this wind. ”

“Au revoir , Jean Marc.” Catherine whirled and hurried across the courtyard toward the shelter of the arcade, calling over her shoulder, “Hurry, Juliette, I have so much to tell you. Jean Marc let me act as hostess at supper one evening and bought me a wonderful blue satin gown.”

“I’m coming.” Juliette started after her.

“Wait.”

Juliette stiffened when Jean Marc touched her arm. “Catherine is waiting for me.”

“I’ll keep you only a moment.” The snow fell heavily, cocooning and veiling them from Catherine’s view.

Star-shaped flakes caught in Jean Marc’s thick dark hair and shimmered on his black cloak.

He gazed intently at Juliette. “As usual, you’ve piqued my curiosity.

You see, I don’t believe in this particular coincidence. ”

She moistened her lips with her tongue. “No?”

“I think you’ve been standing here for most of the afternoon waiting for Catherine to come.” His hands slipped down her arms and he took her slim hands in his. His lips tightened. “Your hands are like blocks of ice. Where are your gloves? Have you no sense?”

His warm, hard grasp spread a disquieting heat through her wrists and forearms. Heat should have brought only comfort, but this sensation was somehow…different. She tried to pull her hands away. “I’m not cold. I…like the snow. I’m studying it to paint.”

“Juliette,” Catherine called from beyond the spiraling curtain of snowflakes.

“I have to go now.”

“Presently.” Jean Marc’s hands tightened on hers. “Are you as happy as Catherine here at the abbey?”

“One place is as good as another. I think that—” She met his compelling gaze and nodded jerkily. “Yes.”

“Was that so difficult to confess?” Jean Marc’s sudden smile flashed in his dark face. “I think it must have been. Happiness doesn’t necessarily go away if you admit to possessing it.”

“Doesn’t it?” She smiled with an effort. “Of course it doesn’t. I know that.”

“Catherine tells me you’ve not heard from the queen since you came here.”

“I didn’t think I’d hear from her,” she said quickly. “She’s always too busy to—”

“And a butterfly has a very short memory.” He smiled faintly.

“It doesn’t matter if she’s forgotten me. I expected nothing else.” She tugged again and this time he let her go. She backed away from him. “I have been happy at the abbey and I thank you for persuading her to send me here.”

He lifted a black brow. “I see you don’t make the mistake of lauding my kindness as Catherine did.”

“No, I know you wanted me here to protect Catherine.”

“Indeed?”

She nodded gravely. “I’ve not failed you. I’ve done what you wished.”

“Then Catherine and I are both fortunate. Did it never occur to you that I might have another reason?”

She glanced away. “No.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me if I did?”

“I must go.” Yet she suddenly realized she did not want to go.

She wanted to stand there and look at him, try to glimpse and interpret the expressions flickering across his magnificent face.

His dark features were still, intent; his tall, lean body absolutely motionless.

His immobility should have given the impression of forbidding coldness, but instead she had a sense of smoldering intensity.

She half expected the drifting snowflakes to melt as they touched him.

“Shall I tell you?” He drew even closer. “A man of business must sometimes wait for his investment to mature so he may reap a profit.”

“But I told you I was protecting Catherine. You are reaping the profit.”

He lifted the hood of Juliette’s cloak to cover her hair with the same gentleness with which Juliette had covered Catherine’s a short time before. “Am I?” He gazed into her eyes. “How old are you, Juliette?”

She felt suddenly breathless and swallowed to ease the tightness of her throat. “I’ll have my sixteenth natal day soon.”

He gazed at her for a long moment before abruptly turning away.

“Go and get out of this cold. I must seek out the Reverend Mother and pay my respects as a dutiful guardian.” His voice roughened.

“And, Mother of God, eat some of Catherine’s fruit.

I won’t have you starving as well as freezing for her sake. ”

“I told you I didn’t stand here all—” She broke off as he glanced over his shoulder and then said simply, “She’s my friend. I missed her.”

“Ah, the truth at last.” Jean Marc’s lips twisted. “Excellent. I thought you’d never stop hiding beyond those prickly barriers. Perhaps I won’t have to be as patient as I thought.”

Juliette looked at him in bewilderment, but in another moment Jean Marc had disappeared into the swirling snow. She could hear the crunch of his boots on the ice-encrusted cobblestones as he moved quickly across the courtyard. She felt suddenly hollow, as if he had taken some part of her with him.

What an idiotic thought, she told herself impatiently. Nothing had been taken from her. Jean Marc Andreas was a man whose powerful personality colored everything around him, and it was natural she should feel a little drained and flat at his departure.

“Juliette, you’ll freeze in that wind,” Catherine called in exasperated concern.

Juliette was abruptly jarred from her bemusement and turned to hurry to Catherine’s side.

She ducked beneath the arcade and shook her head, deliberately letting the hood of the cape Jean Marc had drawn over her head fall once again to her shoulders.

She and Catherine moved down the walkway toward the ancient stone building housing the students’ cells.

“Now tell me all about your supper party. Who were the guests at the table the night you were Jean Marc’s hostess? ”

Jean Marc gazed out the window of the coach, noticing ruefully that the snow was no longer a gentle fall but near blizzard. He knew very well he should have given in to the Reverend Mother’s urgings and sheltered at the abbey instead of attempting to return to Paris.

But he had found the thought of a hard pallet in an austere cell intolerable this night.

Instead, he would go straight to the house on the Place Royale occupied by his current mistress, Jeanne Louise.

She would greet him with the usual challenge which would melt into surrender and desire before the night waned.

The challenge was always as important to him as the surrender, and tonight he needed a sensual struggle with an intensity that startled him.

He gazed blindly out at the falling snow, seeing not the lush beauty of Jeanne Louise he would enjoy in a few hours but the innocent appeal of Juliette de Clement.

He had been expecting to see the girl when he had accompanied Catherine back to the abbey, but the actual encounter had still come as a shock.

Her slim body, even cloaked in that hideous gray garment, betrayed womanhood on the brink.

He felt a stir of arousal at the memory of Juliette standing in the courtyard facing him, bold, defiant, yet touchingly vulnerable, her cheeks flushed plum bright with cold and her eyes blazing with a will that could be yielded but never subdued.

He had avoided examining his complex emotions and actions involving the girl in the past and he found himself doing the same thing now.

He did not want to know why she stirred him and touched him at the same time.

But, at least, he had not committed the ultimate folly. For a moment, as she had looked up at him, he had the insane impulse to take her back with him to Paris.

Why not? Perhaps it was not so insane a thought after all.

She had no money and he could provide handsomely for her.

According to Catherine, both Juliette’s mother and the queen evidently had forgotten her existence since she had left Versailles.

She was more vulnerable to him than she dreamed and could be made to realize the seductive nature of the bond forged between them those two years earlier.

He knew the skills to make a woman want him, and she would be a superb mistress and a challenge extraordinaire .

He had seen a foreshadowing of the woman Juliette would become, but now that flowering had almost come to pass.

Almost.

Merde , and he was not such a libertine that he seduced an innocent from her nunnery, he thought with self-disgust. Whatever lay ahead for the two of them must wait until she was an adversary worthy of his steel.

Until that time he would be content with the challenges offered by the Jeanne Louises of the world.

Yet, for the first time, he had the odd feeling the victory he would wrest from Jeanne Louise would provide neither contentment nor satisfaction.