Page 31

To her amazement, she had forgotten Philippe was there the moment Jean Marc had appeared in the foyer. The knowledge sent a tingle of uneasiness through her. Jean Marc had been there only one day and he was already overshadowing everyone and everything around her.

Philippe took a step forward. “I’d still like to express my shame for my—”

“Shame? Let me tell you about shame.” Juliette’s hand tightened on the oak banister as she looked down at him.

“Catherine is so full of shame she can’t look you in the face.

I can’t make her understand the shame belongs to the guilty, not to the victim.

For some reason she thinks you’re a gentleman of such nicety of character you’ll find her abhorrent. ”

“Then let me tell her differently.” Philippe took another step forward. “Let me tell her I’m the one to blame.”

“She wouldn’t believe you. Do you know her so little? She would see your shame and think it a reflection of her own.”

“Tell her—Never mind. There’s nothing I can say, is there?”

“No.” Juliette hesitated. To her surprise the desolation in his expression moved her. Everyone mentioned that Philippe had a way with women, but she had not thought herself vulnerable to his charm. “Perhaps you may try in a few days.”

His expression brightened. “And you’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do for either of you? It would be my great pleasure to serve you in any way.”

“If there is, I shall tell you.” As Juliette climbed the stairs she could feel his wistful gaze on her back.

Peacock and panther, she mused. And dominating both of them was the darkly glittering, enigmatic mirror who was Jean Marc Andreas.

She abruptly stopped and looked down as she reached the head of the stairs. “Paints and canvas.”

Philippe was startled. “What?”

“If I’m to be imprisoned here in this house for any time, I must have paints and canvas. Will you see to it?”

She didn’t wait for an answer but turned on her heel and moved down the hall toward Catherine’s chamber.

“Monsieur Jean Marc is not at home. Will you wait in the salon while I tell Mademoiselle Juliette you’ve arrived?” Robert asked as he took Francois’s hat and gloves and laid them on the table in the center of the foyer. “I believe she’s upstairs in the—”

“No.” Francois certainly didn’t need Juliette de Clement lashing out at him today.

He had come directly from the assembly and was already raw enough with the talk of Dupree’s latest massacre.

He didn’t know why he called now. He’d had no intention of obeying Juliette’s command to appear at frequent intervals at the Place Royale, and it had been only two days since he had slammed this very door and stalked out of the house.

Still, now that he was there, he might just as well stay for a brief time. “Show me to the garden.”

Robert blinked and then nodded. “Oh, you wish to see Mademoiselle Catherine? Certainly, Monsieur. This way.”

Francois hesitated as Robert started across the foyer. He had no desire to see Catherine Vasaro either. He had thought he was too hardened for either pity or regret to touch him, but looking at Catherine filled him with a strange poignant desire to soothe and protect.

Robert was looking at him inquiringly over his shoulder.

Francois slowly followed him across the foyer toward the glass-paned double doors leading to the garden.

Catherine Vasaro sat on a marble bench by the fountain in the center of the garden, her hands folded on her lap. He was vaguely aware she was dressed in something blue and soft and that the sunlight threaded glints of gold through her light brown hair.

“It’s Monsieur Etchelet,” Robert said gently as he paused before Catherine. “He’s come to see you, Mademoiselle Catherine.”

“Has he?” Catherine lifted her gaze from her folded hands to look beyond Robert’s shoulder at Etchelet. Her brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Francois. Your name is Francois, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He stood looking at her as Robert turned and walked back toward the house. She appeared even more fragile than when he had last seen her. Dark shadows underscored her eyes, and she appeared thinner, the bones of her wrists breakable. “You’ve not been eating.”

“I’ve been eating a little. I don’t seem to be very hungry.” She looked down at her hands again. “I remember now. You were angry with me. Why were you angry?”

“I wasn’t angry.” He dropped down on the marble bench across the path from her. “Well, perhaps a little.”

“Why?”

“You gave up. You can’t ever give up. No matter how much it hurts, you have to endure. That’s the only way to survive to avenge yourself.”

She looked up at him. “But I don’t want revenge.”

“Of course you do,” he said harshly. “It’s only human to want it.

Anyone would—” He stopped as he realized she was staring at him as if he were speaking in a language foreign to her.

The comparison was apt, for she looked like some serene, gentle being from a land alien to any he knew.

A land where there were no Duprees, no compromises, no jostling for power, no bloody massacres.

He glanced away from her, filled with the sense of sick premonition that she would be destroyed. This world had no tolerance for gentleness. Forgiveness was a weakness. And he was helpless to change any of it.

“I’m…sorry.” Her voice was hesitant. “I’ve made you angry again, haven’t I?”

“Why should you care if I’m angry? For the love of God, worry about yourself.”

Her hands were opening and closing nervously on her lap. “It’s more than anger. You have…pain.”

“Nonsense.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “This garden helps. For the past few days I’ve come here to sit for hours.

The feel of the sunlight on my face and the sound of the birds in the trees…

Sometimes you can wrap the silence around you and close the pain out.

” A gentle smile turned her face luminous. “Perhaps the garden will help you too.”

Dieu , she was going through an inward agony and yet she was still trying to help him banish the unrest she sensed in him.

Francois suddenly realized Catherine was like the garden she had just described—beautiful, serene, lit by sun and yet vulnerable to every cruel wind.

He could feel her serenity flow over him, soothing the rawness he had brought with him.

He sat silently, gazing at her with the same expression of bewilderment and wonder with which she’d looked at him.

He suddenly knew he wanted to stay there.

He wanted to sit in that garden and look at Catherine Vasaro and let peace and silence replace the turbulence of the outside world.

Yet how could he do so when he had chosen his battleground?

He stood up abruptly. “No, merci . I won’t stay in your garden. You can sit here and close yourself away from the world, but I have things to do with my life.”

Some untranslatable emotion flickered across her face before she once more lowered her gaze to the hands folded on her lap.

He stared at her for a moment, an inexplicable frustration aching in him. He left her then without a word.

It didn’t improve his temper to encounter Juliette de Clement in the foyer.

“I was wondering when you would see fit to visit us,” Juliette said. “We could have been—”

“Blue.”

Juliette blinked. “What?”

Francois picked up his hat and gloves from the table and turned toward the front door. “Etienne Malpan’s eyes were blue.”

“Oh, you did go to the graveyard.” Juliette paused on the bottom step, her gaze narrowed on his face. “What about the other man? Can you find out who he was?”

“Are you never satisfied? There were over two hundred men at the massacre at the abbey.”

“Catherine has nightmares every single night. She’s obsessed that those two men have no faces for her.” Her lips tightened. “Besides, I want to know.”

“I’ve given you one face. You’ll have to be content with Malpan.” Francois opened the door. “I’ve better things to do with my time than conduct an inquiry that not only could take months but also arouse suspicion among Dupree’s men.”

The door was swinging shut as she called, “Francois.”

“I told you I won’t—”

“Thank you.”

He looked at her warily but could detect no mockery in her expression.

“I know you didn’t have to do that for Catherine,” she said simply. “I suppose I can wait to find out about the other man.”

“I’m glad I did something to please you.”

“Oh, you did.” Her eyes were suddenly twinkling with mischief. “But you didn’t do everything I asked. Your hat has no cockade and—”

The slam of the door cut off Juliette’s final words.