Page 71

On the second morning of the harvesting of the violets Francois 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 Francois. “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 Francois’s low laugh.

She reached the stone building behind the maceration shed, slipped from the horse, and turned to face Francois as he reined in.

“Light the lantern,” she said breathlessly as she tied her horse to the rail before the door.

Francois 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 workers 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?” Francois 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.” Francois 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, Francois?”

“Yes.” Francois 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.” Francois 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.” Francois 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 Francois 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.” Francois 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 Francois 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,” Francois 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 Francois, she assured herself. Still, one always wanted to be remembered with a certain pleasure.

When she came into the salon she saw that Francois, 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 Francois in these past weeks. All through the years love had always meant her blind worship of Philippe. Could what she was feeling for Francois 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 Francois’s touch. In truth, she seemed drawn to him in a physical manner.

The tomb.

But Francois was different from those men. Perhaps the act that had so defiled her would be different too.