“Isn’t it a splendid room?” Dupree nudged her toward the doors at the far end of the room. “I’ve spent many happy hours here.” He set the lantern on the table and threw open the doors. “Come. Let’s look at this magnificent view of the town.” He pulled her out to stand before the low stone balustrade and Juliette stared down the steep, stony hill at the lights of Andorra some two hundred feet below.
“Where is my mother?”
He smiled at her. “Don’t you hear her? I do. Listen.”
She heard nothing but the rustle of the wind through the pine trees marching down the hill.
No, the rustle wasn’t coming from the trees but from the dining salon.
She slowly turned her head and looked back toward the French doors.
“Yes,” Dupree said softly. “She’s waiting for you.” His hand closed on her arm and he pushed her back toward the dining salon, stopping inside the doors. “Now, let your ears guide you.”
The rustle came again, louder, closer.
From the elaborately carved chest to the left of the veranda doors.
The mahogany chest measured five feet long by four feet high and gleamed with dark beauty in the flickering light of the candle.
The rustle came again, like autumn leaves blown by the wind.
“Open it.” Dupree’s eyes fixed eagerly on her face. “She’s waiting.”
Juliette swallowed and moved leadenly to stand before the chest.
The rustle came again.
Dupree motioned with the pistol.
She slowly reached down and raised the lid.
She screamed.
She slammed the lid down.
“What the—” Dupree’s strangled shout behind her jarred her out of the stupor of horror into which she had been hurled by what she had just seen. She whirled as Jean Marc, his arm around Dupree’s neck, dragged the man through the open doorway out onto the veranda.
Dupree’s eyes bulged from his head as he attempted to get his breath. He tried to lift the pistol, but Jean Marc’s hand tightened around him and then jerked the pistol from his hand as he dragged him toward the stone balustrade.
Dupree turned his head and glared at Jean Marc. “I’ve seen you before at the convention. You’re Andreas. I’ll remember you. I won’t forget—”
“Remember me in hell.” Jean Marc pressed the gun to Dupree’s side and pulled the trigger.
Dupree howled.
Juliette shuddered. She had never heard anything like that cry, high, keening, an animalistic mixture of rage, fury, and frustration.
Jean Marc lifted Dupree’s slight body onto the balustrade and rolled him over the edge.
Juliette walked slowly to the balustrade and looked over the side. Dupree lay still and silent on the rocky hillside some thirty feet below.
“Is he dead?” she asked haltingly.
“If he’s not, he soon will be. He was bleeding like a slaughtered pig and that fall is enough to kill a man.”
“He’s not a man, he’s a monster.” She closed her eyes. “I knew it at the abbey …”
“The abbey?”
“It was Dupree.”
Jean Marc nodded jerkily. “I thought I recognized him. Marat must have sent him.”
She nodded and opened her eyes. “My mother’s in that chest.”
“I was afraid she was. I was on the veranda when I heard the two of you come into the salon and hid on the walk beside the house when he dragged you here.” His arms suddenly enfolded her and held her tightly. “I was afraid to try to overpower him while he had the gun pressed to your side. I had to wait until he was distracted.”
Juliette’s arms hung limply at her sides, but they suddenly slid around Jean Marc to cling fiercely. “He wanted me to see her.”
Jean Marc’s hands gently caressed her back. “Shh.”
“She was always so beautiful. She’s not beautiful now …” Juliette shivered uncontrollably. “She’s lying there in that chest. She’s naked and there are snakes and roaches crawling all over her. In her hair, in her mouth …”
“Mother of God!” Jean Marc held her tightly, then gently pushed her away. “Will you be all right if I leave you for a little while?”
Juliette’s eyes opened. “Where are you going?”
“Your mother.” He turned and left the veranda.
Juliette’s palms clutched at the rough stone balustrade as she heard the chest open again. She heard Jean Marc’s muttered oath and then the sound of movement.
Ten minutes later Jean Marc came back to the veranda. “Come with me.”
She gazed at him numbly for a moment and then let him lead her through the house and up the stairs. “Where are we going?”
He opened the door at the head of the stairs. “I want you to look at your mother.”
“No!” She tried to pull away. “Not again. I don’t—”
“Look at her!” He jerked her into the room and grasped her shoulders from behind. “Dammit, I don’t want you remembering her the other way for the rest of your life. You have enough hellish memories now.”
Her mother lay on the bed covered by a white silk sheet. Her lids and mouth were closed and though her face was gaunt it held a peaceful expression. She must certainly have yearned for death these last days, Juliette thought dully.
“How did she die? The snakes?”
“The snakes were harmless,” Jean Marc said. “He stabbed her.”
“Oh.” She should do something but she couldn’t think what it was. “Burial. I’ll have to go to the priest and arrange for—”
“No.” Jean Marc shook his head. “We can’t be found here. Just the fact that we’re French would encourage them to use any excuse to throw us into prison. We’ll stop at the church and leave a note and money for the priest with full instructions.”
Juliette cast one more glance at her mother before turning away. “Whatever you think best. Can we go now?”
Jean Marc hesitated. “In a little while. Just give me time to look for the statue.”
“It’s in a chest in the courtyard,” Juliette said. “He was about to leave when we came. I think he’d just finished …” She had to stop and steady her voice. “I’d really like to go now, please.”
Jean Marc took her arm and led her from the room, down the stairs, and out of the casa. “Go to the horses,” he said gently. “I’ll just check to make sure the statue’s in the chest and join you in a moment.”
She nodded and crossed the courtyard, careful to avoid glancing at the fountain. Jean Marc joined her only a few minutes later and tied the chest containing the Wind Dancer on the back of the stallion.
His gaze was concerned as he lifted her on the back of the mare.
“Dupree’s dead.”
Juliette shuddered. “Can evil like that ever die?”
“Don’t think about him.” Jean Marc slapped her mare’s haunches with his reins and kicked his own stallion into a trot. “Don’t think about anything.”
They rode half the night toward the coast.
“We’ll rest here until daybreak.” Jean Marc lifted her down from her horse. “Merde, you’re cold. Why didn’t you tell me?” He wrapped her cloak more closely about her and then enfolded her in a blanket. “Sit here while I find wood for a fire.”
“I didn’t feel cold.” Juliette huddled in the blanket still only vaguely aware of the cold wind cutting through her. It was nothing compared to her inward chill.
The ground was stony, barren of vegetation, the night starless and bitter. She could hear the howling of the wind through the passes of the jagged blue-black mountains to the north.
Dupree had howled like that when Jean Marc had shot him.
“Come here.”
She looked up to see Jean Marc standing before her. He opened his cloak and, for an instant, the wind caught it, forming flaring, hawklike wings.
Black Velvet.
He had looked like this the first time she saw him, she thought hazily. Then he was
kneeling, taking her in his arms and enfolding her in the security of those wings.
A little of the ice clawing at her eased and then melted away. “The fire …”
“I’ll make the fire after you go to sleep. I think you need this now.”
She buried her face in his shoulder. “She didn’t love me, you know. I was always in her way. When I was very tiny, every night before I’d go to sleep I’d say to myself ‘Tomorrow she’ll love me. Tomorrow …’ ” She shook her head. “The only reason she bore me was that she hoped to give my father a son.”
Jean Marc tightened his arms about her.
“I didn’t think she mattered to me any longer.” She fell silent, thinking about it. “But she must have meant something or I wouldn’t feel so … empty. I can remember her at court. She was so beautiful that everyone wanted to reach out and touch her. The queen kissed her hand and called her enchanting. I used to stare at her and wonder …”
“Wonder what?”
“Why they couldn’t see that there was nothing inside her.” She frowned. “But perhaps there was something there for everyone else. Maybe she just couldn’t feel anything for me. I was never a sweet child.”
“You were her child.” Jean Marc rocked her back and forth with rough tenderness. “That should have been enough.”
“I used to be so certain about everything. I used to think I didn’t need anything or anyone but my painting. I used to think I could close everyone out and live in my own world. I’m not sure of anything any longer.”
“Tomorrow you’ll be yourself again.”
“Will I? I feel very strange. Alone. I have no one now but Catherine, and she’s growing away from me.”
“Nonsense. She still loves you.”
“She’s found something …” She closed her eyes.
Jean Marc gently pressed her cheek into the curve of his shoulder. “I should never have taken you there. Dupree could have killed you.”
“You couldn’t have stopped me. She was my mother and I couldn’t let her steal from the queen. The queen was the only person at Versailles who was kind to me. She was all I had during those years. I … think I must love her, Jean Marc.” She laughed shakily. “I’ve never admitted I loved anyone before. I was always too frightened.”
“Frightened?”
“Love hurts …” She wished the wind would stop its howling. The sound made her feel hollow inside. “I don’t want to love her. Isn’t it queer you can love someone who doesn’t really love you? You’d think life would be more fair than to let that happen. And it’s all my fault. Even as a little girl I knew I shouldn’t love a butterfly.”
“Sometimes you can’t help loving the wrong people.”
She scarcely heard him. “And you said a butterfly shouldn’t be allowed to rule the greatest country in Europe. Well, she’s not ruling it now, is she?” The tears were running down her cheeks again and she impatiently wiped them on his shirt. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I suppose I keep getting my mother and the queen mixed up in my thoughts. It’s foolish to weep. There’s no reason. I couldn’t expect the queen to love me, and my mother didn’t even like me. Don’t you see how stupid I’m being?”
Jean Marc didn’t answer, he merely held her and gently stroked her curls until she finally drifted off to sleep.
Dupree heard a scurrying among the rocks, and panic shook him wide awake. The roaches. The roaches would get him.
He turned over on the rock and then screamed with agony.
Bone jutted out of his shoulder, gleaming white in the moonlight.
Blood gushed from the wound in his side.
He was dying.
He heard the scurrying again.
No, he couldn’t die. If he was still, they’d be all over him. In his mouth, in his Hair …
He wadded the tail of his shirt and stuck it in the wound.
Pain again.
He opened his mouth and howled.
Agony shot through his face, something was smashed in his jaw.
He began to crawl toward the softer earth beneath the trees, away from the roaches beneath the rocks.
His left leg was broken; dragging it over the rough ground made him dizzy with pain.
He couldn’t stop.
He reached the trees and lay whimpering with anger and pain. Why had his mother done this to him when he had wanted only to please her?
No, it wasn’t his mother this time. It was the others. He heard the scurrying again. Were they really there or was it his imagination? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t take the chance. He started to inch up the hill. Light. He had to get to the light. They wouldn’t follow him into the light.
He couldn’t die there in the darkness.
He knew well the creatures of the night.
If he lay still, they would seek him out and devour him.
NINETEEN
I thought we were going back to Cannes, Jean Marc.” Juliette’s hands closed on the rail as she gazed at the tall, round turrets of the splendid château set like a jewel on the island off the Bonne Chance’s bow. “I told Catherine we’d come back to Vasaro before we went to Paris. Why are we here at the Ile du Lion?”
Jean Marc turned to watch the sailors lower the longboat into the turbulent sea. “There are things I must have packed and taken away from here. The furnishings, the journals, my father’s paintings.”
“Why?”
“Because I won’t risk leaving them to the looters when they decide to take the château away from me.”
Her gaze shifted to his face. “You’re so sure it will happen?”
He nodded. “It will come. There’s a madness in the land and it’s growing worse every day.”
“Then why do you remain?”
“It’s the country of my birth. I keep hoping …” He shook his head. “But I won’t blind myself to realities because I want to remain here. The family must survive if all else perishes.”
She studied his expression. “The family. That’s why you would like a child by me. You want a child to help the Andreas family survive.”
“Perhaps.”
“It wouldn’t help. The child wouldn’t have the Andreas name.”
Jean Marc’s gaze met her own. “That’s true. Certain adjustments would have to be made.”
“And, besides, we both know I’m not with child.”
He smiled faintly. “Yes, we do. However, one can never know what tomorrow will bring.” He gazed once more at the château. “Do you wish to go ashore with me? The château has been closed since my father died and there are no servants to make you comfortable.”
She was surprised at the abrupt change of subject. “How long will we be anchored here?”
“Several hours. I want to supervise the loading to make sure they’ve missed nothing of importance to me.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I do want to go ashore.”
The rose garden they passed through on the way to the chateau in which Jean Marc had grown up was a wild tangle of thorn-laden shrubbery.
Juliette asked, “Why did you close the house after your father died?”
“I was seldom here. It was more convenient for me to buy a house in Marseilles and conduct my business from there.”
“But it’s so beautiful here.” She gazed out over the myriad paths and graceful fountains of the garden that stretched as far as the shimmering blue-green waters of the Golfe du Lion. “This garden must have been lovely at one time.”
He nodded. “One of the most beautiful in France. The garden’s actually older than the château. It was designed by Sanchia Andreas in 1511 when the island was first purchased. The château was built later.” He climbed the stone steps and inserted the large brass key he carried into the lock before calling back to Captain De Laux over his shoulder. “The Jade Salon, first, Simon. It’s on your right. Have the men pack everything very carefully.”
“You want the furniture loaded on the ship too?” Simon asked.
“Everyth
ing. Nothing’s to be left behind that can be transported.”
“So that’s why you wouldn’t let me negotiate a return cargo at La Escala. The furniture will fill the entire hold.” Simon turned and began giving the orders to the sailors straggling through the garden behind him.
Juliette followed Jean Marc into the château, gazing curiously around the huge foyer.
Dust and cobwebs had claimed the hall. Sheer lacy webs surrounded the candles in the chandelier and clouded the Venetian mirror on the wall. Grime dimmed the glory of the stained glass windows that formed an arched cupola over the entire foyer and cast rainbow prisms of color on the teak tiles of the floor.
Jean Marc opened a handsomely carved oak door. “This was my father’s study. There are a few journals I want to pack myself.”
Juliette followed him into the room and closed the door. Dust and cobwebs again, though all the cushioned pieces of furniture in the room were covered with sheets of linen.
Jean Marc was gazing at the painting over the fireplace.
The woman in the portrait wore a blue satin gown with wide skirts. Her classical features were flawless, her form slim yet voluptuous. Long dark lashes veiled deep blue eyes and her long golden hair was styled in a coiffure that had been popular when Juliette’s mother had first taken her to Versailles. “She couldn’t be that beautiful,” Juliette stated positively. “The artist flattered her. My teacher, Madame Vigée Le Brun did that all the time with her subjects. Did she paint this portrait?”
“No.”
“Who is she?”
“Charlotte.” Jean Marc’s gaze never left the painting. “It was painted by one of her lovers, a man named Pierre Kevoir.”
“No wonder he flattered her.”
“It was no flattery. She was far more beautiful than this.”
“Truly?” She moved forward to stand before the painting. “Then she was even more lovely than my mother. Your father didn’t know this artist was her lover?”
“He knew. He knew about all of them. She made little attempt to hide her affairs.” Jean Marc finally tore his gaze away from the painting and walked to the desk across the room. “The journals are in this drawer …”
The Wind Dancer/Storm Winds Page 77