Kitabı oku: «Regency High Society Vol 4», sayfa 16

Josh sighed again, his frustration growing. The last thing he wanted was to return to his father empty-handed. Miller was his last hope. But where the devil could Rusa be?

“Is there no one else, Miller?” he asked. “A sister or brother, a widow or mistress?”

From the corner of his eye he saw how Ceci stiffened, and he promised himself to apologize to her later. He wouldn’t have asked the question before her if he hadn’t been so desperate.

“Mistresses? Cap’n Deveaux?” Miller laughed uneasily, glancing at Ceci and his wife. “Ah, Cap’n, surely you’ve heard about him and the women. He was as fine a sailor as any afloat, and the coolest man you’ve ever seen in a fight, but with women things were never right, if you con my meaning.”

But Josh wasn’t sure he did. “There were that many?”

“Nay, Cap’n, it weren’t the numbers of ladies, though there were a sight more’n I ever had in my bed, to be sure. It was how he treated them that wasn’t decent. He had strange ways of taking his pleasure, Cap’n, and—well, there were plenty of stories that don’t bear repeating now. But there weren’t no love in it, and no kindness, neither. I wouldn’t guess there’s any of them ladies now who’d think too kind of that Frenchman’s memory.”

“But that could be reason enough for them to act in his name,” said Josh slowly. “Can you recall any of their names, and if they still live on the island?”

Miller chuckled nervously. “Oh, Cap’n, it’s been almost thirty years now, and most of them ladies never was with him long enough for us to learn their names. I expect most of them are dead now, too, or wish they were. One of the last was like that, a pretty little thing when he first brung her to the house, but mad as a hare by the time he’d tired of her, right before the end.”

Josh saw how Ceci was sitting on the very edge of her chair, her hand twisting anxiously in her lap and her eyes enormous, and he wished now he’d spoken to Miller alone.

“S’il vous plaît, monsieur,” she said in a tiny, nervous voice. “If you please, do you recall that lady’s name?”

“Oh, aye, that one I do, on account of having her pointed out to me in her carriage. We thought she’d died in the fire, but up she popped years later, living grand in a house her son bought her. Still mad as they come, she is, and the son’s too much like his pa for comfort, but then, there’s all sorts in this world and likely the next, as well.”

“Her name, monsieur?” begged Ceci again. “The lady’s name?”

“Antoinette Géricault,” Miller said promptly. “Lives in a house in the Rue Roseau.”

Ceci leapt to her feet, her eyes shining. “Merci, monsieur, a thousand thanks!” she cried as she turned to Josh. “Is this not wonderful news, mon cher? My aunt still lives, and I have a cousin, too!”

“It may be more wonderful still, if you can wait a moment longer.” Lightly he rested a restraining hand across her shoulders. “You said the lady’s son is too much like the father. Do you know the man?”

“I thought I’d made that clear enough.” Miller looked sheepish. “He’s Deveaux’s bastard, of course. Michel Géricault. You’ve only to look him in the face to see it, and to hear the gossip, too.”

Michel Géricault. Josh nodded, certain this was one name he wouldn’t forget. He’d stake his life that Géricault was the man who had his sister. No, more than that: he was staking Jerusa’s life, too.

And he’d pray to God he was right.

“Such wonderful news!” sighed Ceci happily yet again as they left the boat at the wharf. “Such wonderful news for us both, Josh!”

More realistic, Josh merely patted her hand. As useful as it was, learning Géricault’s name was only the beginning of what he and his father must still do to find Jerusa.

“And consider, Josh, how proud your father will be of you!” She sighed blissfully, looping her arm through his, and he thought of how impossibly dear her little face had become to him.

“Then will you come with me when I tell him?” he asked, and as soon as he’d said it the idea seemed perfect. “Come with me now, Ceci, back to the Tiger. Father wants to meet you, and this would be as good a time as any.”

Her eyes widened and she stopped walking. “To meet your father?” she squeaked. “Now? Oh, Josh, I am not ready for that! Look at me, my clothes, my hair—”

“You look beautiful,” he said warmly, and he meant it. Gently he guided her into an arched doorway, out of the street. “Come with me now, Ceci. Please.”

“Oh, Josh,” she murmured as she searched his face. “I do not know.”

But when he kissed her, he knew everything. He knew that he loved her, and that somehow, miraculously, she loved him in return, and that when he sailed from St-Pierre, she would be with him in the captain’s cabin of the Tiger, and that Newport would never be quite the same dull place once she was there with him.

“I love you, Ceci,” he said softly, his voice rough with emotion as he cradled her face in his hands. “I love you, mon chère.”

Her cheeks were pink and her eyes now were wide with wonder and joy. “It’s ma chère, Josh, not mon,” she whispered. “But, oh, I did not dare to dream!”

“Then don’t.” Gently he pulled away her scarf so he could tangle his fingers in her soft curls. “Just say you love me.”

“Oh, Josh, I do, oh, so much!” She reached up to slip her arms around his neck and pulled him lower to kiss him herself.

“Then say you’ll come back to Newport with me, Ceci. Say you’ll marry me.”

She gasped, stunned. “But this is so rapid, Josh, I do not know what to say!”

“Say yes.” He chuckled, delighted that he’d surprised her this way. Hell, he’d surprised himself.

“But that a man like you should wish to marry Ceci Noire, la! You are an English shipmaster, a fine gentleman, and so very handsome and clever!”

And not a word about being a Sparhawk, he thought happily. Lord, she loved him for who he was, not his father’s name, and he loved her all the more for it.

“It doesn’t matter who or what I am, Ceci,” he said softly, “except that I’m someone who loves you dearly and will do his best to make you happy.”

“Oh, Josh, how could you not?” With a little sigh of contentment, she wriggled closer into his arms.

“Then you’ll say yes?”

She tipped her head, suddenly prim. “My answer’s in my heart, and you know it already. But before I can tell you, you must speak to Papa.”

“Hang it all, Ceci, I’ll speak to a hundred papas—a thousand!—if it means I’ll have you!”

“One is quite enough,” she said mischievously. “I don’t want to wait the time it would take you to ask all those others.”

“Then you will come with me to meet my father?”

“I cannot, Josh, not now,” she said sadly. “Oh, I know your news is most grand, but mine is very wonderful, too. Think what my father will say when I tell him my aunt still lives!”

“She lives, true enough, but you heard what Miller said,” he cautioned gently. “She’s a madwoman, Ceci, kept by her son in a house away from town. Surely they know where you and your father live. If they had wished to find you, don’t you think they would have done so before this?”

Ceci hesitated, reluctant to abandon her dream. “If my aunt is unwell, she may have forgotten. Or she may have believed my parents would not forgive her shame.”

“She may still feel that way.”

She shook her head fiercely. “But you don’t understand, Josh! Antoinette is my dear maman’s only sister. Whether she is ill or not, that does not change. Maman loved her, I know, and now I will, too.”

“But, Ceci—”

“Non, Josh, you shall see that I’m right!” She kissed him again, and slipped free of his embrace, dancing away from him in the street. “I will come meet your papa tomorrow, I swear to it! And I love you, Josh Sparhawk! I love you!”

Antoinette sat in the chair by the window, laying out the silk threads she would need this day for her embroidery. At first the doctor had forbidden it. The needles were a danger, he said, and because of him they had taken away her beautiful colored threads and her hoops and her needles, and she had wept with frustration and shame.

But Michel had made them give them back, because Michel remembered. In all the years when she had worked for the dressmakers, those years when they had been so poor after Christian was murdered and her family, her sister and her husband, had refused to help her from the shame she’d brought to them. In all those years, she had never once pricked her finger and spoiled a length of silk or linen.

Never once, never once… Mother of God, where did the words go? She pressed her hands to her forehead, scrubbing away at the skin, as if she could wash away the blackness, too.

A length of silk or linen. She took a deep, shuddering breath before she opened her eyes. For now the blackness had receded like the tide, and the words were hers again.

Her fingers still trembled as she held the needle up to the light to thread it. Danger, fah! How could a woman be dangerous with only a needle for a weapon?

But then, she had Michel.

Her handsome son was her weapon, and she thought with grim satisfaction of how the doctors and the others grew pale whenever Michel came to see her. He terrified them all, her gold-haired hero of a son who was so much like his father. A word from him, and they had taken away the chains from her bed. A frown, another word, and she was freed from the dark attic room they’d tried to make her prison. He made certain that she was treated with respect, as both a lady and the mistress of this house.

Her gaze drifted to the little portrait over the bed. Her Christian would have done the same for her; he would have done anything she wished, for he’d loved her that much. Hadn’t he even sworn it to her, his fingers on the jeweled cross of his sword? He’d been so certain of it that he would punish her if she forgot herself and did something, anything, that he claimed a true lover wouldn’t.

Her needle paused over the linen as she remembered. She had not liked Christian’s punishments. She carried the scars still, on her back and her legs and breasts. But his reasons had been as pure as his love, noble and fine, like the gentleman he was. He had done what he had because he loved her, and she bowed before his punishments because she loved him so much and wished to be worthy of him.

No more, oh, please, no more!

She gasped as her fingers flew to her forehead again, the needlework in her hand falling to the carpet. She would fight back. She would not let the blackness take her again.

Dear holy Mother, if only Christian had lived, spared to become her husband and with his love guide her through the perils of life! The time they’d had together had been so short, and then he had been torn away from her and murdered. God rest his precious soul, he had not even been able to say farewell to her. The Englishman had come, and then it was too late.

The Englishman, the Englishman! She jabbed her needle furiously through the linen, remembering all that the man had stolen from her. Her darling Christian, her life, her love, all destroyed by his cruelty. She had seen Gabriel Sparhawk only twice—once when he’d been Christian’s prisoner, and years later, with his little whore of a wife and their litter of brats—but she’d never forgotten his arrogance and his bragging self-confidence, the marks of a man who thought he was invincible.

But soon that would change. She would never forgive what he had done to her, and soon he would never forget the pain she would bring to him in return. Soon he would meet her Michel, and justice, at last, would be served.

“Excuse me, ma’am, there is a lady to see you. She said it was most urgent.”

Antoinette frowned. This serving girl was the stupid one. Ladies did not receive at this hour. Christian had always been most strict about that.

“The lady, ma’am? Should I show her in or send her away?”

Antoinette nodded and set aside the neat piles of silk threads. Even Christian would forgive her if the matter were truly urgent.

“Oh, madame,” cried the girl as she rushed into the room. “I have waited so long for this moment!”

She was no one that Antoinette recognized. She was small and young and pretty and there were gold hoops in her ears and tears on her cheeks, and when she held her hands out to Antoinette, Antoinette took them. What else could she do?

The girl was kneeling on the carpet before her, her black curls quivering as she wept. “Oh, madame,” she said. “You can never know what it means to be here finally with you! You must forgive my father’s silence over all these years. He—we never meant to be cruel. But how could I know you still lived?”

Forgiveness? Antoinette frowned. Her father’s silence? What did any of it mean to her?

Unless, of course, she was Jerusa Sparhawk.

Magically her frown vanished. Yes, of course, the Sparhawk bride. That was who she was. The black curls, the small, lovely face. She had only seen the girl once before, with her parents, but Antoinette could still remember Gabriel’s little daughter, the favorite of all his children, here now to do with what she pleased.

Once she had been like this, too, full of hope and love and joy for her future. Once her cheeks had been this rosy and her eyes bright. But now this girl would learn sorrow and pain, grief and suffering, just as her father had taught them to Antoinette.

Oh, Michel was such a good son to remember his promise!

Antoinette stood, and the girl stood with her. “Oh, madame, you cannot know how I feel!”

“Then you shall tell me. We’ll have such a splendid time together, won’t we?” There was the little room upstairs with the tiny windows and the lock on the outside of the door. No one would find them there, because no one would think to look.

Slowly, though she thought she had forgotten how, Antoinette smiled. “Come, little one. I myself will show you to a place where at last we can be alone.”

Chapter Twenty

The sun was high in the afternoon sky when the little fishing boat made its way into the curving arms of the bay of St-Pierre.

Despite Michel’s fears, these fishermen who had been the first to spot their fire on the beach were both friendly and honest. For a single gold piece they’d put aside their nets for the day and brought the two castaways directly here to St-Pierre.

Alone at the rail, Jerusa stood in the shade of the boat’s sail and tried to make herself look at the city before her. It was pretty enough as cities went, nestled on the side of the green-covered mountain with all the houses painted yellow and blue beneath red-tiled roofs, the largest city in all the islands. Prettier than Newport, really, with the winding cobbled streets and immense nodding palms dropped in among the houses like radish stems in a garden. But lovely as it was, St-Pierre alone wasn’t enough to make Jerusa forget the weight that hung like iron from her heart.

She had loved Michel, and it wasn’t enough. She had given him everything she had to give, from her love to her body to her very soul, and it still wasn’t enough to save him.

“Welcome to my home, ma chère,” he said, coming to stand beside her. “I can’t promise you waterfalls here on Martinique, but you shall find a vast improvement in the food and lodgings.”

“Indeed.” She looked down at her fingers on the rough wooden rail, away from the city and away from him. She didn’t need to see Michel’s face to picture the way his blue eyes were narrowed in the sun, how his hair was blowing back like a golden pennant, how his smile was charmingly crooked, admitting openly that what he’d said was the kind of empty advertisement favored by innkeepers. “I’d rather enjoyed what we shared these last two days.”

His pause as he remembered, too, said more than any words could. “I didn’t say it would end, Rusa,” he said softly, sliding his hand along the rail to cover hers. “I meant only that it would be different.”

She wished she were strong enough to pull her hand away, but miserably she knew she wasn’t. She hadn’t been able to turn away from him last night when they’d made love on the beach beneath the stars. Why did she think she could now?

“Oh, Michel,” she said sorrowfully. “Whatever will become of us?”

Again the long pause, the hesitation that said so much from a man who was ordinarily so glib. “I don’t know any more than you do, chérie,” he said with a longing that equaled her own. “I wish to God I did.”

“Will we stay with your mother?” Perhaps if she kept to the practical, this conversation wouldn’t hurt as much as it did now.

“Her health is too fragile to bear visitors,” he said with sympathy that didn’t fool her at all. “I seldom stay with her myself.”

Jerusa raised her chin stubbornly. If his mother had declared herself the enemy, then she wanted to begin the battle as soon as possible. “I thought she was in such a dreadful rush to meet me.”

“Later, ma mie, later,” he said evasively. He’d said no more to her about his mother, and clearly he wasn’t going to now, either. “But there’s an inn I favor with a splendid view of the harbor and a cook trained in Paris.”

An inn with a view and a cook and doubtless a single large bed like the one in Seabrook, only this bed was one she’d be all too willing to share with Michel. She smiled wistfully. “Shall we be Mr. and Mrs. Geary again?”

“Monsieur et Madame, this time, I think.”

She studied his hand, a hand she’d come to know so well, broad and brown as a working man’s and covered with old scars and new scratches. “How can I be a madame when I don’t speak French?”

“But I do, ma bonne femme. You can be my English wife. Though this innkeeper knows me as well as his own son, he’ll accept whatever I say.”

She had posed as his wife since the beginning. So why, then, did it hurt so much now to hear how casually he could continue to pretend what, in so many ways, was already real?

“I’ll take you there and see you settled,” he continued, “and then I must go to my mother. But I shall be back for supper, chérie, if you’ll wait for me.”

“The way I did in Seabrook?” Mutinous, she couldn’t resist glancing up to see his reaction.

But though she’d hoped to crack the veneer of civility that he’d assumed ever since they’d been picked up by the fishing boat, his expression didn’t change. The heartbreaking openness he’d let her see on the beach was only a memory, and one he wasn’t going to share again. Now he wasn’t even looking at her, but gazed instead at the city.

“No surprises this time, Rusa, I beg you,” he said evenly. “You’ll find the waterfront here is a good deal more, shall we say, challenging than Seabrook’s.”

His smile was warm and cheerfully empty, and if she needed one more reminder that Mr. Geary—or Monsieur Geary—had joined her again, Michel critically studied the tatters of her green gown and shook his head. “I’ll arrange for a mantua maker to call on you with a selection of gowns. If you must surprise me, chérie, do it that way.”

Before she could answer, the boat’s captain called to Michel in his lilting Pierrotin dialect. Michel turned toward the man with an eagerness that wounded Jerusa all the more.

“Excuse me, ma mie,” he said, already halfway across the little deck, “but I must go see what that rascal wants before he somehow contrives to toss us all in the bay.”

But suddenly she forgot the gowns and the mantua maker, and even Michel.

There were a half-dozen deep-water vessels in the harbor, but it was the sloop tied far to the west that riveted her attention. She’d recognize the rake of that mast anywhere, and even if she hadn’t, there was the bright orange figurehead of a charging tiger tucked under the sloop’s bowsprit.

Sweet Almighty, Josh was here, here in St-Pierre! She felt a great wave of homesickness sweep over her as she stared longingly at the painted tiger and tried to make out familiar faces among the tiny moving figures on the sloop’s deck. Hundreds of miles from home, and here her twin brother was so near she could almost shout his name.

But she wouldn’t. Swiftly she glanced over her shoulder to where Michel still stood talking and jesting with the fishermen, his back to her and the sloop across the bay. He hadn’t noticed the Tiger, and she prayed he wouldn’t, at least not yet.

For if Josh had followed her here to St-Pierre, then Father would have, too. Later, while Michel was with his mother, she must find a way to get a message to Josh. Her father could be a hot-tempered man, and if he and Michel’s father had fought each other through two wars all across the Caribbean, then he’d likely jump at the chance to meet Michel, too. She shuddered to think of the consequences to them both. If only she and Josh could somehow find a way to stop their fighting before it started!

The fishing captain changed his boat’s tack, and the Tiger was once again obscured by a larger ship. All that Jerusa could see of her now was the scarlet pennant fluttering from the topgallant mast, the house flag of Sparhawk and Sons, and she stared at the little strip of red until she could see it no more.

Sparhawk and Sons, she thought forlornly, Sparhawk and Sons, and one lost, desperate daughter….

Michel stood at the window of his mother’s sitting room, pretending to look at the garden below as he waited for her to join him. Like all the houses in St-Pierre, there were no glass panes to impede the breezes from the water, only shutters to keep out the rare rain and narrow iron bars to keep thieves out. Or, in his mother’s case, to keep her within.

He sighed, absently tapping his fingers against the window-sill. Before he’d come he had washed and shaved and dressed like the gentleman she believed him to be, but even as he heard her footsteps on the stairs, he still hadn’t decided what he was going to tell her about Jerusa.

“Michel, my own son!” she cried happily as she swept across the room to greet him. “I did not expect you for another week at least!”

He bent to kiss each of her cheeks in turn, finally raising her hand to his lips with the show of gallantry she adored. “You’re looking very well, Maman. Perhaps I should always surprise you.”

But he was the one, really, who was surprised. Only two months had passed since he’d last said farewell, but the difference in Antoinette was staggering. It wasn’t just that today she was dressed as correctly as any woman in St-Pierre, instead of in the nightgowns she usually favored. Her hair was combed and dressed, her stockings tied with garters, and shoes, not slippers, were on her feet, and when she’d walked to him there’d been no trace of her past halting, hesitant walk. Her eyes seemed clear and her greeting genuine, and immediately Michel was on his guard.

She sat in an armchair near the window, waving at the chair beside her for Michel to sit. He didn’t; whatever was happening, he’d do better not to let himself become too comfortable.

“You seem very well, Maman,” he began cautiously. “What has Dr. Benoit to say?”

“I haven’t seen Dr. Benoit in a fortnight,” she said in the breathy, little-girl voice she’d never outgrown. “He came, but I sent him away, so you should be sure that he doesn’t ask for a fee for the visit.”

“Thank you.” Cynically he wondered if she’d somehow contrived to find a lover. Was his father’s picture still hanging over her bed, or had Christian Deveaux at last been replaced by another?

He looked past her, out the window again, and prayed that the right words would come to him. “Do you recall the purpose of my last journey, Maman? Where I have been?”

“Of course I do, Michel! How could I possibly forget?” Languidly she leaned back in her chair, crossing her ankles on the footstool before her. “At last, after so many years, you’ve begun to answer my dearest prayers.”

Her reproach was slight but unmistakable, just enough of a flick to Michel’s conscience to make him inwardly flinch. “We agreed long ago, Maman, that the time had to be right. Gabriel Sparhawk is not some backcountry plantation wastrel who can be disposed of with a knife in his back.”

She tipped her head against the back of the chair, her eyelids heavy. “There’s no need for excuses, my dear Michel. I am only your mother, after all. I understand completely.”

Oh, she understood, all right, thought Michel grimly, and so did he. “Then you’ll recall, Maman, that it was your idea to draw Sparhawk away from his home. You wanted him to die on Martinique, not in Rhode Island. You wanted it that way, for Father’s sake.”

“Of course I remember, my dear. I remember it all better, perhaps, than you do yourself. But then, how could you, without knowing your father?”

She made a graceful little tent of her fingers, and as the white lawn cuffs of her sleeves slipped back, Michel could see the pale scars that had always marked her wrists like bracelets. She had never told him what they were from, and he had never wanted to ask, leaving the scars to be one more mystery among the many.

“What I know is that I have always tried to honor my father’s memory by obeying your wishes,” he said slowly. “And now, soon, you’ll have all that you’ve ever wanted.”

“You’ve done very well, Michel.” She almost purred her satisfaction. “Why else would I have prospered so since you left, eh? Knowing that at last justice will be done has cleared my head wonderfully. You’ve gone to Rhode Island, and you’ve captured Sparhawk’s daughter right from under his nose. Of course he will follow, just as we planned.”

Michel frowned, startled. How could she have learned already about Jerusa? He’d left her in their room at the inn not two hours before, the center of a mass of ribbons and swatches as a dressmaker and her assistants flew to answer Madame Geary’s whims. “You know about Miss Sparhawk?”

“I know that you have done precisely what I asked of you, Michel. I’m most grateful, too, and proud, the same as your dear father would have been.”

Michel shifted his shoulders uneasily. For the first time in his life he found he didn’t want her approval, at least not for this.

“I’ve done what you’ve asked, Maman, true enough,” he began, choosing his words with infinite care. “But I would like to speak to you of your plans for Miss Sparhawk. Things have changed since I was here with you last.”

“Oh, yes, they have, haven’t they?” Her dark eyes were almost merry, glittering against the dustiness of her powdered cheeks. “The little bitch will never see Newport again. She will never be any man’s wife now, and she will go to her grave knowing she brought about her father’s death.”

“No, Maman,” he said softly. He’d never once denied her anything, but this at last was more than he would give. “It will not happen like that.”

“Fah, and why not? Sparhawk won’t get her back now, nor will he want her, when I’ve done!”

He stared at her, appalled by her glee. So this was the strain her madness had taken now, made all the more disturbing by her new well-mannered appearance. With terrifying clarity he remembered the countless beatings and punishments he’d endured as a child, the endless ways she’d known how to make him suffer whenever he’d erred, all the tears of loneliness and failure, so much worse than the pain itself, that he’d tried to hide from her.

God help him, how had he ever agreed to such a fate for Jerusa? Why hadn’t he understood what his mother wanted to do before this?

“Listen to me, Maman,” he said urgently. “Whatever happens between Sparhawk and me, I’m keeping the girl out of it.”

She rolled her gaze toward the ceiling and shrugged. “Such concern for the little chit, Michel, such concern for a deed that is already done! You with your ‘Remember this, Maman’ and ‘You don’t recall that, Maman.’ Have you forgotten you yourself sent the girl to me this very morning?”

“This morning?” he repeated, baffled. This morning he and Jerusa had still been on their way from the other island, and this afternoon, now, he knew she was safe at the inn.

“Yes, yes, yes, and a pretty show she made of it, too, kneeling on the carpet to beg my forgiveness for her family’s sins.” She put her forefinger to her mouth, gnawing delicately at the tip. “You would have delighted in it, Michel. She’s a small little thing, to be sure, scarce worth the effort she’ll take from me if her name weren’t Sparhawk.”

So she hadn’t changed, after all, he thought with a strange mixture of relief and regret. The clothes, the hair, the eyes that had seemed so clear, all were meaningless compared to the illness that poisoned her mind and her soul. He would call the doctor to come first thing in the morning and insist that she see him.

“She is pretty, true, but obstinate, Michel,” continued Antoinette. “Even though I have your word that you’ve brought her, after her first confession she changed her song and denied it all. As if such lies would make me pity her!”

Gently Michel took her hand. He should never have left her so long. He had always tried so hard to be the son she wanted, but even now, when he’d done the one thing she’d wanted most, he’d failed and fallen in love with his enemy’s daughter.

“She’ll listen, Maman,” he said gently. He knew from long experience that she’d do better if he agreed with the fantasies; she’d only suffer more if he tried to convince her of the truth. “If anyone can tame her, it will be you. But you be sure to rest now. I don’t want you tiring yourself over this silly girl.”

“You’re a good son, Michel, so much like your father.” She lifted his hand to her cheek, rubbing her face like a cat across the backs of his fingers. “And you’ll always love me, won’t you, Michel?”

Before he could answer, her voice sank low and her gaze faded as her thoughts turned inward. “Just like you, Christian,” she murmured, “your son will always love me.”