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 thehall 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 menand 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.”
