“One place is as good as another. I think that—” She met his compelling gaze and nodded jerkily. “Yes.”
“Was that so difficult to confess?” Jean Marc’s sudden smile flashed in his dark face. “I think it must have been. Happiness doesn’t necessarily go away if you admit to possessing it.”
“Doesn’t it?” She smiled with an effort. “Of course it doesn’t. I know that.”
“Catherine tells me you’ve not heard from the queen since you came here.”
“I didn’t think I’d hear from her,” she said quickly. “She’s always too busy to—”
“And a butterfly has a very short memory.” He smiled faintly.
“It doesn’t matter if she’s forgotten me. I expected nothing else.” She tugged again and this time he let her go. She backed away from him. “I have been happy at the abbey and I thank you for persuading her to send me here.”
He lifted a black brow. “I see you don’t make the mistake of lauding my kindness as Catherine did.”
“No, I know you wanted me here to protect Catherine.”
“Indeed?”
She nodded gravely. “I’ve not failed you. I’ve done what you wished.”
“Then Catherine and I are both fortunate. Did it never occur to you that I might have another reason?”
She glanced away. “No.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I did?”
“I must go.” Yet she suddenly realized she did not want to go. She wanted to stand there and look at him, try to glimpse and interpret the expressions flickering across his magnificent face. His dark features were still, intent; his tall, lean body absolutely motionless. His immobility should have given the impression of forbidding coldness, but instead she had a sense of smoldering intensity. She half expected the drifting snowflakes to melt as they touched him.
“Shall I tell you?” He drew even closer. “A man of business must sometimes wait for his investment to mature so he may reap a profit.”
“But I told you I was protecting Catherine. You are reaping the profit.”
He lifted the hood of Juliette’s cloak to cover her hair with the same gentleness with which Juliette hadcovered Catherine’s a short time before. “Am I?” He gazed into her eyes. “How old are you, Juliette?”
She felt suddenly breathless and swallowed to ease the tightness of her throat. “I’ll have my sixteenth natal day soon.”
He gazed at her for a long moment before abruptly turning away. “Go and get out of this cold. I must seek out the Reverend Mother and pay my respects as a dutiful guardian.” His voice roughened. “And, Mother of God, eat some of Catherine’s fruit. I won’t have you starving as well as freezing for her sake.”
“I told you I didn’t stand here all—” She broke off as he glanced over his shoulder and then said simply, “She’s my friend. I missed her.”
“Ah, the truth at last.” Jean Marc’s lips twisted. “Excellent. I thought you’d never stop hiding beyond those prickly barriers. Perhaps I won’t have to be as patient as I thought.”
Juliette looked at him in bewilderment, but in another moment Jean Marc had disappeared into the swirling snow. She could hear the crunch of his boots on the ice-encrusted cobblestones as he moved quickly across the courtyard. She felt suddenly hollow, as if he had taken some part of her with him.
What an idiotic thought, she told herself impatiently. Nothing had been taken from her. Jean Marc Andreas was a man whose powerful personality colored everything around him, and it was natural she should feel a little drained and flat at his departure.
“Juliette, you’ll freeze in that wind,” Catherine called in exasperated concern.
Juliette was abruptly jarred from her bemusement and turned to hurry to Catherine’s side. She ducked beneath the arcade and shook her head, deliberately letting the hood of the cape Jean Marc had drawn over her head fall once again to her shoulders. She and Catherine moved down the walkway toward the ancient stone building housing the students’ cells. “Now tell me all about your supper party. Who were the guests at the table the night you were Jean Marc’s hostess?”
Jean Marc gazed out the window of the coach, noticing ruefully that the snow was no longer a gentle fall but near blizzard. He knew very well he should have given in to the Reverend Mother’s urgings and sheltered at the abbey instead of attempting to return to Paris.
But he had found the thought of a hard pallet in an austere cell intolerable this night. Instead, he would go straight to the house on the Place Royale occupied by his current mistress, Jeanne Louise. She would greet him with the usual challenge which would melt into surrender and desire before the night waned. The challenge was always as important to him as the surrender, and tonight he needed a sensual struggle with an intensity that startled him.
He gazed blindly out at the falling snow, seeing not the lush beauty of Jeanne Louise he would enjoy in a few hours but the innocent appeal of Juliette de Clement. He had been expecting to see the girl when he had accompanied Catherine back to the abbey, but the actual encounter had still come as a shock. Her slim body, even cloaked in that hideous gray garment, betrayed womanhood on the brink.
He felt a stir of arousal at the memory of Juliette standing in the courtyard facing him, bold, defiant, yet touchingly vulnerable, her cheeks flushed plum bright with cold and her eyes blazing with a will that could be yielded but never subdued. He had avoided examining his complex emotions and actions involving the girl in the past and he found himself doing the same thing now. He did not want to know why she stirred him and touched him at the same time.
