Storm Winds (63 page)

Dupree critically scanned the signature. “Very good.
She’s really quite gifted. I couldn’t tell the difference myself.”

“Shall I put on the gown?”

“What?” He glanced at her impatiently. “No, I have no time for it tonight. I have to see Pirard and arrange a few matters. You may go.”

Nana looked at him in surprise.

“Go.” Dupree turned away. “I told you, I have some arrangements to make with Pirard.”

“I cannot help?”

“They don’t concern you.” He was limping toward the desk across the room “Come back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is the seventeenth of January. We should be preparing for—”

“You dare try to tell me what I should do? Perhaps you
should
put on the gown.”

“No.” She hurried to the door. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

The hammering assaulted Juliette’s ears as she came down the stairs.

“What’s going on here?” Juliette hurried into the Gold Salon. “Dear heaven! What on earth are you doing, Robert?”

“Packing.”

“So I see.” She looked around the room in bewilderment. All the paintings had been stripped from the walls and several boxes and trunks set around the room.

Robert looked up from the painting he was boxing. “Monsieur Andreas said we must pack all of these for travel.” He went back to his work.

Juliette wandered around the room, looking at the vacant walls. All the Fragonards, Bouchers, even the portrait of the Wind Dancer were gone. “Where is Monsieur Andreas now?” she shouted above the hammering.

“He went to see Monsieur Bardot,” Robert said. “He left directly after breakfast.”

Juliette paused beside a familiar brass-bound oak
chest. The Wind Dancer itself. “He had you bring this up from the cellar?”

Robert nodded. “He asked particularly for that chest. Everything of value must be readied to leave. You’re going on a journey, Mademoiselle?”

“I … don’t know.” For an instant she felt panic surge through her. Perhaps Jean Marc was tired of her and sending her away. No, he wouldn’t pack up the entire household just to rid himself of a mistress.

“Make sure you pack all of Mademoiselle’s paintings in her room, Robert.” Jean Marc stood in the doorway of the salon. “And tell Marie she’d better start packing Mademoiselle’s clothing as well.”

Her clothes. No mention of his. The panic came again and Juliette tried desperately to keep it from showing. “We’re going somewhere?”

“Yes.” He turned to Robert. “We’ll be in my study, sorting out the papers in my desk.” He pulled Juliette along by the wrist.

She hurried to keep up with him as he crossed the foyer.

“I’m sending Robert and Marie to Vasaro tomorrow with the paintings and the statue. I’m not sure they’ll be safe in Paris after we’ve gone. If everything goes well, Catherine and François’s part in this may not be discovered and Vasaro will be a safe haven for all of them.”

“Them? We’re not going to Vasaro, Jean Marc?”

He shook his head. “Charleston. I’ve just come from Bardot’s offices to make final arrangements for the channeling of money to François to help free some of those poor devils headed for the guillotine and to pick up the Andreas jewels. I hadn’t seen some of them for years. I think you’ll look quite fetching in the rubies.” He pulled her into the study and slammed the door behind them. “Do you wish to see them?”

“No.” She gazed at him in bewilderment “Charleston? Is that what all the packing is about? Why Charleston?”

“It seemed a good idea. America has hordes of savages, but their government doesn’t cut heads off and has the greatest respect for bourgeois businessmen such
as myself.” He released her wrist and crossed the study to the desk stacked high with ledgers and papers.
“Merde
, I don’t know where to start.” He frowned down at the ledger on top of the stack. “And the boy will be safe there.”

She went still. “Boy?”

He looked up and smiled at her. “Vasaro’s hardly a safe place for Louis Charles. If we stayed anywhere on the Continent, they’d find him eventually. He’ll be much safer in Charleston with us.”

“You’re going to … keep him?”

“My dear Juliette, I have no intention of undergoing any more of these tiresome plots ever again. I know very well that if the boy were recaptured, you’d insist on going to his rescue. I’ll be much more comfortable having him under my eye.”

“And under your protection.” Juliette added huskily, “You know that as soon as you leave the country, the National Convention will seize everything you own.”

“Everything they can lay hands on,” he agreed. “I’ve tried to modify their seizures in the past few weeks by discreetly liquidating and sending everything I could to my agents in Switzerland. But the losses will still be enormous.”

“Yet you’re willing to accept them?”

“Oh, I fully intend to be recompensed.” His dark eyes were suddenly twinkling. “After all, I wouldn’t be a good man of business if I didn’t demand my price.” He paused. “I want a son, Juliette.”

She stared at him silently.

“And a wife. Do you think you can bring yourself to oblige me?”

“Why?” she whispered.

The laughter disappeared from his face. “Because I’m not at all sure I could live without you. You should be happy. You’ve won the game, Juliette.”

“There is no game.” She took a step toward him, her gaze desperately searching his face. “Don’t hide from me. I need you to say it.”

“I don’t want to say the words. They will strip me naked.”

“I enjoy you very much without clothing.” Juliette took another step. “And I’ve been naked for months.”

“To my infinite delight. You won’t spare me?”

“No, I
can’t
spare you.”

He gazed at her silently for a moment. “I … love you.” He paused. “I love you as completely and foolishly as my father did Charlotte d’Abois.”

Joy surged through her, filling her with light. “Not foolishly.” Juliette smiled radiantly. “We’re quite different. She was not a nice woman and I’m well worth loving.” She launched herself into his arms and hugged him with all her strength. “And I’ll give you so much love that you won’t—When did you know? It was very wicked of you not to tell me before this.”

His arms went around her and his dark eyes glittered with a suspicious moisture as he looked down at her. “That shouldn’t surprise you. I’ve never been overly kind to you.”

“Yes, you have.” Her smile faded and her expression became grave. “Even when you didn’t want to be kind, you couldn’t stop yourself. You have a great heart, Jean Marc. You gave me understanding and compassion and—Now, tell me when.”

He cradled her cheeks in his hands. “You never give up, do you? It didn’t come with a crash of thunder. It just … came. I suppose I always knew. Since the time you cared for me at the inn at Versailles. You walked into a room and it became your room. You left a room and it became … empty. You moved me and tormented me yet gave me peace.” He kissed her tenderly on the lips. “And if I had the great heart you mistakenly think I have, I would have been able to force myself to say these words long before this.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’ve said them now.” She slipped back into his arms and laid her head contentedly on his shoulder. “I can’t believe it. You truly care for me? You’re not toying with me? Truly, Jean Marc?”

His arms tightened around her and he didn’t answer for a moment. When he did, the words were soft and muffled in her hair.

“Tutto a te mi guida.”

“You’re a very enigmatic man, you know. It’s just like you not to tell me we’re going to America until the day before we leave.” Juliette glanced at him as they strolled through the garden a few hours later. “I wonder if I’m ever going to learn all your secrets.”

“Do you want to know all my secrets?”

Juliette had a sudden memory of the vulnerability of his expression when he’d looked down at the revealing sketch she’d made on the
Bonne Chance
. Let him keep his secrets. She had no desire to learn anything that would hurt him to disclose. “Only if you wish to tell them. I imagine I’ll find out everything about you in the next fifty years or so. It might even make life more interesting if you surprised me occasionally.”

Jean Marc threaded his fingers through her own. “I shall endeavor to do so. I’d hate you to become bored with me.”

“I don’t mind your secretiveness as much as I do your stubbornness. I don’t know how I could come to love such a stubborn man. You made me very unhappy with all your dawdling.”

“You didn’t show it.”

“I have pride. I gave you my love, and I had no intention of letting you know I wasn’t happy with the little you gave me.” She walked in silence for a moment. “I’ve been thinking about it and I think perhaps you should have shot Charlotte d’Abois instead of her lover. We would all have been much happier if you hadn’t let her scar you.”

Jean Marc chuckled. “Could I challenge the woman to a duel?”

“Why not? If you hadn’t been so honorable, I’m sure your father would—”

“I wasn’t honorable.” The laughter had disappeared from Jean Marc’s face. “I betrayed him.”

Juliette stopped and turned to look at him.

“Secrets? Here’s one I’ve never told anyone.” Jean Marc’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. “Charlotte d’Abois
came to my bed when I was fourteen. I didn’t turn her away.”

Juliette’s eyes widened in shock. “You loved her?”

“Mother of God, no!” he said violently. “By that time I knew what she was and I didn’t even like her. It didn’t matter. I knew she didn’t really want me. She was amused by my antagonism and wanted to show me how helpless I was. She knew exactly what to do to me to make it not matter. During that summer she came to me several times and I couldn’t send her away.” His expression was tormented. “She belonged to my father and I cuckolded him.”

“Did he know?”

“No, but I knew. I loved him, I respected him, and still I betrayed him.”

“You said she was very beautiful.”

“What difference does that make?” he said fiercely. “I should have sent her away. I tried, but she was too strong for me. She was like a fever.”

Strength. He had been defeated by Charlotte d’Abois and suffered the most painful torment possible. Was it any wonder he had been fighting to prove over and over he could never be so subdued again?

“You were only a boy.” Juliette frowned. “And I think she must have been even worse than I thought. Is that why you wanted to leave your home and go away on a voyage?”

“Partly. I couldn’t look at my father without wanting to go out and jump into the sea. I finally told her no more.” One corner of his lips rose in a twisted smile. “She wasn’t pleased.”

“And she arranged to send you away on the slave ship.”

“The fault wasn’t entirely hers. I betrayed him.”

She gazed at him in astonishment. “Mother of God, your father was a grown man and he was helpless before her and you were only a boy. Your father brought his mistress into your home and let her hurt you. If anyone was to blame, besides that pig of a woman, it was your father. Where is your good sense?”

He looked at her in surprise. “I never thought
of—” A slow smile lit his face. “You’re so angry you’re trembling. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Well, I am upset. I don’t like what that woman did to you and I don’t like the idea of her in your bed. It makes me angry and frightened.”

“Frightened? Why should you be frightened?”

Juliette tried to control her voice. “Because she had the power to hurt you and I’m afraid you cared more for her than you’ve told me.”

“You have nothing to be frightened about.” His hands gently encircled her throat, his thumbs rubbing the hollow where she pulsed with life. “She was only a boy’s first passion. I’ve never loved any woman but you.”

“Nor shall you ever,” she said with sudden fierceness. “I think I’d be very angry if you decided to play that stupid game with another woman.”

He kissed her gently. “You’ve forgotten. The game is over and you’ve won it.”

“No.” She met his gaze directly. “If there ever was a game,
we’ve
won it.”

He smiled and the last shadow vanished from his expression. “I would never dare to disagree with you in your present uncivilized mood. Very well, we’ve won it,
ma petite.”

T
he morning dawned cold, bright, and clear. Juliette slipped out of bed and padded barefoot across the bedchamber to throw open the casement window. Her face was alight with eagerness as she called back over her shoulder. “There’s a strong west wind, Jean Marc. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

“It’s a sign you’ll catch a chill if you don’t come back to bed.”

“It’s blowing toward Charleston.” Juliette stood there another moment, looking down into the garden and then beyond the wall to the steep slate rooftops of Paris. “It’s blowing toward America.”

“Come to bed,
ma petite.”

Juliette reluctantly closed the window, turned, and walked across the room toward him. “I still think it’s a good sign.”