“Never in a month of Sundays would I have believed you’d fall prey to a man’s sweet talk. Or that you’d agree to an impulsive marriage.”
Juliette waved a hand at the gnats that pestered her now. Usually a cooling ocean breeze flowed down the slopes of the Klamath Mountains and carried away the insects, but today the summer air hung still and shimmered with heat.
“Is it so hard for you to believe that a man could love me?” She twisted her wedding ring on her finger, the ring that had first belonged to Jean Jacques’s grandmother and then to his mother. He wouldn’t have given her an heirloom if he hadn’t intended to return.
“Oh, Juliette!” Distress widened Aunt Kibble’s eyes. “You have many, many fine qualities. But you didn’t know Mr. Villette long enough for him to discover your qualities. Therefore, his insistence on rushing to the altar must have been motivated by a reason less noble than love.”
Juliette noticed that her aunt did not define those many, many fine qualities. And far from being reassuring, Aunt Kibble seemed to underscore the notion that any man who proposed a swift marriage must be in love with Juliette’s inheritance.
Despite a determined resistance on Juliette’s part, her aunt’s oft-stated condemnation had begun to carve small inroads on her mind. Was it really possible that Jean Jacques had been more interested in her money than in Juliette herself? Could she have been a victim rather than an angel as he had claimed?
She let the questions torment her all afternoon, as she had done so often of late. It seemed that all she did anymore was perform the stupid rituals that she hoped would bring Jean Jacques back to her—and think about every minute they had spent together.
The thing was, Jean Jacques couldn’t have known about her inheritance. He had been in Linda Vista for only two days when Juliette collided with him in the doorway of the post office. Meeting him had been the result of serendipity, not of calculation.
All right, hemighthave somehow learned about Linda Vista’s wealthiest spinster, but she couldn’t imagine how that would have happened. And yes, hemighthave lain in wait for her at the post office—as Aunt Kibble believed—but Juliette had no regular time when she called for the mail. Moreover, Mr. Albertson, the postmaster, would have noticed a man loitering for any length of time and would have ordered him to leave.
It wasn’t the money.
Jean Jacques claimed that he fell in love with her the minute he steadied her after the collision, and Juliette believed him. She had gazed up and observed an expression she had never before seen on a man’s face. He looked dazed, confounded. His dark eyes had glowed with desire and—dare she say it?—love. As astonishing as it seemed, already he had begun to love her.
She had to believe it was love at first sight exactly as Jean Jacques claimed. The alternative was to accept that she had been tricked and manipulated, lied to and used.
After tidying her hair for dinner, she studied her pale face in the vanity mirror.
Jean Jacques had whispered that her gray eyes reminded him of shining pewter. He had made her feel pretty. Now, as she looked into the glass, she remembered herself as she had become in the glow of her husband’s admiration.
During the brief period of their marriage, a constant smile had curved her lips—lips made rosy by kissing. He’d made her laugh. And oh, how he had teased her, poking fun at the ladylike restrictions that defined her life. In bed, he had swept away all modesty and inhibitions and made her forget they had ever been important. In bed she had been anything but a lady.
A rush of heat scalded her throat, and she pressed her palms to her cheeks.
It couldn’t have been just the money.
Following dinner, Aunt Kibble resumed the afternoon’s conversation. “How long are you going to pretend that Mr. Villette will return? A year? Five years? The rest of your life?”
Juliette placed her hands in her lap and turned her wedding ring around her finger. “Maybe he was struck on the head. I read a book in which that happened. When the man regained consciousness, he had no memory of the heroine.”
“Amnesia occurs very rarely in real life, Juliette. I sincerely doubt that Mr. Villette is off spending your money with no memory of how he got it.”
“But itcouldhave happened,” she insisted, leaning forward and wanting Aunt Kibble to agree.
“He’s a confidence man. That explains his absence and his silence.” Aunt Kibble waited until after Howard had served coffee and withdrawn from the dining room before she continued. “For the sake of discussion, let us suppose there are three possibilities. Mr. Villette may be dead. He may be wandering about with amnesia. Or he may have abandoned you and is now wooing his next victim.” She lowered a lump of sugar into her coffee. “Where does that leave you?”
“I don’t know,” Juliette whispered, twisting her hands.
Aunt Kibble leaned back in her chair. “The truth is, you don’t know much about this man.”
“But I do! First, he’s second-generation French.” When he whispered her name his soft accent made the word sound like a thrilling endearment. “He has no surviving family. He’s a successful businessman who owns an import-export company.” When Aunt Kibble’s expressive eyebrows soared, Juliette waved her hand in an exasperated gesture. “Large amounts of his fortune are tied up in inventory. That’s the nature of the import-export business.”
“Is it really?”
Juliette ignored her aunt’s raised eyebrow. “Jean Jacques owns two companies, one in San Francisco and one in Seattle. He felt we should locate our home in Oregon, midway between his business interests.”
“And how did you feel about that decision? To my knowledge, you’ve never stepped foot beyond the county lines. But you were willing to pack up and move to Oregon? Frankly, Juliette, this astonishes me.”
The notion of leaving everything safe and familiar had alarmed and frightened her. A great deal of persuasion had been required for Jean Jacques to overcome her resistance.
But Jean Jacques possessed a gift for persuasion. “Darling, there is a big world out there, and you have seen none of it. You haven’t walked on a beach and felt the sand between your toes. You’ve never caught a snow-flake on your tongue. You have never listened to the noisy heartbeat of a large city or ridden in a streetcar.” He had placed his hands on her shoulders and gazed into her eyes. “I want you to experience all these things and more. Seeing a bit of the wide world will change you in ways you cannot now imagine.”