Page 57

SIXTEEN

G reen eyes, glittering fiercely.

Catherine knew those eyes, she knew that fierceness, knew the arms holding her.

She stirred and a fiery pain jolted through her head.

“Lie still,” Francois said, looking down at her.

“You’re angry with me again.”

“Not with you,” he said thickly. “Not this time. Try to rest. Jean Marc’s ridden to Grasse for a physician.”

“Jean Marc…” But Jean Marc was in Paris, wasn’t he? He was in Paris protecting Juliette. He mustn’t leave Juliette.

“No, Francois, he mustn’t—”

The thought slipped away from her as blackness returned.

Catherine’s lids slowly rose to see sparkling brown eyes, blessedly familiar.

“Juliette?” she whispered.

“Of course.” Juliette smiled down at Catherine as she dipped a cloth in a basin resting on the table beside the bed and gently bathed Catherine’s temple with cool water. “It’s about time you woke up. It’s been two days and we were beginning to worry.”

“You’re here.” Catherine reached out to clasp Juliette’s hand. She frowned in puzzlement as she looked up at her. “Something’s different. Your hair…have you had the fever?”

“No, it just got in my way so I cut it off. You’re the one who has been ill.”

“Have I? I’m so glad you’re here. It’s beautiful here. You can paint the sea.…”

“Presently. First, I have to get you well.”

“That’s right, you said I’d been ill.” Catherine was suddenly aware of an excruciating soreness in the small of her back and shoulders and memory flooded back to her. “I was bleeding.…”

Juliette’s lips tightened. “You slipped on the stones and rolled down the hill.” She paused. “You lost the child.”

Catherine froze. “Child?”

“You hadn’t realized yet?” Juliette paused. “You were with child, Catherine.”

Catherine closed her eyes as shock rolled over her.

The tomb. A child from that tomb tearing itself from her body as those men had torn into it.

“I…suppose I should have guessed. I didn’t think about it,” she whispered.

“Or perhaps I didn’t want to acknowledge it could happen to me.

” Her eyes opened. “You knew, Juliette? That’s why you made me marry Francois? ”

Juliette nodded.

“You all knew. I should have been told.”

“You were ill. We did what we thought was best for you.”

“It was my body, my life. I should have had a choice.” She paused. “Philippe knew too…”

Juliette muttered an oath. “I wanted to kill Philippe when we saw you on that wagon.”

“Wagon?”

“Philippe was afraid to move you on his horse so he came back to the manor and got a wagon to carry you back to the house. Jean Marc, Francois, and I had arrived only moments before he drove the wagon up to the front door of the house.”

Green eyes glittering with anger staring down at her.

“I remember Francois.”

“He carried you upstairs while Jean Marc and Philippe rode for the doctor.”

“But why is Francois here?”

“It’s a long tale.” Juliette grimaced. “And one with which Jean Marc isn’t at all pleased. We’ll discuss it later.”

“Very well.” Anything that displeased Jean Marc was too much for Catherine to cope with at the moment. Her strength seemed to be ebbing away with each word. “Where’s Jean Marc now?”

“He and Francois went to Cannes to see if Jean Marc’s ship had arrived from Marseilles.

He sent a message to his shipping agent before we left Paris telling him to send…

” Juliette trailed off and shook her head.

“You’re falling asleep again. The doctor said you might want to sleep a great deal in the next few days.

I’ll go and let you rest.” She hesitated. “Philippe wants to see you, Catherine.

Catherine stiffened. “Not now.”

Juliette nodded with satisfaction. “Good, the rutting idiot doesn’t deserve to see you anyway.”

“You know?”

“Oh, yes, Philippe was blubbering like a child when he brought you back to the house. He may be a womanizing peacock, but he’s an honest one.

” Juliette squeezed her hand. “But there’s a child you’d best see as soon as you wake.

He’s been curled up outside in the hall and Philippe seems upset about tripping over him all the time. ”

“Michel.” A surge of warmth chased out a bit of the cold from within Catherine. “Yes, I do want to see Michel.”

Her eyes fluttered closed and she fell deeply asleep again.

She slept unstirring until the pearl-gray hour before dawn, but as soon as she woke she was aware that someone was in the room. She tensed, her gaze searching the darkness. “Juliette?”

“Me.” Michel was sitting cross-legged on the Aubusson carpet in the middle of the room. “She let me come in to wait when I told her I wouldn’t go away.” He stared at her accusingly. “You frightened me. I thought you were dying.”

“I’m sorry. I have no intention of dying.” She smiled. “I’m very glad to see you, but you should be sleeping now.”

He crept closer to the bed, folded his arms on the counterpane, and laid his chin on top of them. “I shouldn’t have taken you there. I just wanted you to see the sea when it was beautiful.”

“And it was beautiful.” Her hand reached out to stroke his black curls. “It wasn’t your fault I had the accident. I saw something that—” She paused. “That upset me.”

“Monsieur Philippe and Lenore fornicating.”

Catherine’s gaze flew to his face. “You knew they’d be doing…” She shivered with distaste. “That?”

“Monsieur always takes the women to the Maisonette des Fleurs when he wishes to fornicate.”

“This isn’t the first time? He forces the women pickers to let him—”

“No,” Michel said quickly. “The women want to go with him. He pleases them and they let him use their bodies with great joy.”

“Joy.” Catherine swallowed. “That’s not joy.”

Michel frowned in puzzlement. “Most of the men and women in the fields find it so.” His small hand closed over hers. “It makes me sad that you lost the babe. I know you would have loved your child.”

Would she have loved a child born of that horror? She would never know now, and that realization brought a strange hollow sadness. Any child coming into the world deserved to be loved.

“My mother didn’t love me,” Michel whispered. “She wanted me to die.”

“No,” Catherine protested softly. “Perhaps she was only frightened and didn’t know what was best to do.”

Michel shook his head. “She didn’t want me. She never came back. I think she was afraid Monsieur Philippe would be angry.”

“Because she left you in the fields?”

He shook his head, his sweeping black lashes lowered, veiling his eyes. “Because she didn’t take me with her. All the women have to take their babes with them. He pays them a fat sum but everyone knows they have to take the babes. My mother cheated him.”

Catherine’s hand tightened on the child’s. “I don’t understand, Michel.”

He looked at her in surprise. “My mother was one of the women who went with Monsieur Philippe to the Maisonette des Fleurs.”

“Dear God,” she whispered. Philippe’s child. Michel was Philippe’s child. “How do you know?”

Michel shrugged. “Everyone in the field knows. Many of the women were here before I was born. They know my mother cheated Monsieur Philippe.”

“Cheated? What about you? She left a newborn child in the field to die and he didn’t even acknowledge—” She broke off as she realized Michel was staring at her in bewilderment. “It wasn’t your father who was cheated.”

“My father.” He repeated the word as if it were totally foreign to him. “You mean Monsieur Philippe.”

“He’s your father.”

Michel shook his head. “He’s Monsieur Philippe.”

How could she fault him for his attitude?

From infancy he had been raised with people who had told him Philippe was the master who had every right to impregnate a woman and then be praised for sending her on her way with money in her pocket.

A man who could let his child become a worker in the fields and give him no more affection than he did any other worker’s child.

A man who could let that priest call Michel a child of sin and his mother a whore and never admit his own guilt.

She began to feel a ferocious anger kindle within her and she leaned forward and brushed her lips over Michel’s dark curls. “Yes, you’re right, he’s Monsieur Philippe. He’s not your father. You don’t need him.”

“I know. I have the flowers.”

She felt the tears sting her eyes. Michel had his flowers. She had Vasaro. Juliette had her painting. Passions to comfort and heal the pain and loneliness of life, but shouldn’t there be something else? “And you’ll continue to have them and more besides.”

“I don’t need more.”

“Well, you’re going to have more.” She ruffled his hair. “Now go to your bed and let me sleep. I have things to do tomorrow.”

He frowned. “I heard the doctor tell Mademoiselle that you should rest in bed for a fortnight.”

“I’m tired of people telling me what’s best for me to do. I’m sure it’s meant with the utmost kindness, but it must end. Will you come back this afternoon?”

He nodded. “After I finish in the fields.”

“No, don’t go to the fields. You needn’t—” She stopped.

Michel loved the picking of the blossoms as he did everything else to do with the flowers.

Because she was indignant, for his sake she mustn’t impose her will on him.

After all, she had chosen to go to work in the fields herself.

But, by all that was holy, it had been her own choice.

Michel had never had a choice. “Come after you finish then.”

He smiled and rose to his feet. “I’ll bring you flowers for this room. Every room should have flowers.”

“Yes, please.”

She watched him move across the room toward the door, small, jaunty, vulnerable, and yet with a strength unusual in such a young child. He would have been a son any father would have been proud to claim, and Philippe had rejected and thrown him away as had his own mother.