Page 62 of Ravishing Camille
Corinne looked as if she saw angels. “Real ghosts! For you, Rand!”
“Guillotined!” he declared with resounding approval in his tone. “Oh,oui!”
Camille considered the idea sold. “I think we take a picnic each day and after our explorations, we’ll look for the best shop for orange ices.”
“I agree,” Remy said with pursed lips. “Everything is better with orange ice.”
“Andtarte au chocolat!” said Corinne with a firm nod.
“We can invite Garrett and Artie and Beth!” Rand cited his cousins, the children of Julian and Lily, who were much the same ages as Corinne and Rand.
“Liam and Dylan, too!” Corinne chimed in with Killian and Olivia’s two.
“A good idea,” Remy said but his gaze landed on Camille, full of concern. “But that’s a lot of children. We don’t want to run you over!”
“Perhaps you’ll give me a nanny and a maid?”
“Done,” Remy agreed.
“And the big traveling coach, Papa,” Rand added.
“Perhaps we give their parents a holiday and have all of them stay here.” Camille offered.
Marianne sat forward. “That’s such a passel of children. Camille can you handle all of them?”
“Well, I—”
“We’ll invite Pierce,” Remy said. “He should come here to stay, and we’ll give all the adults a respite from orange ices and tarts!” He rolled his eyes.
“A good idea!” Marianne said with a note of finality. “I’d like it too.”
“Of course!” Camille agreed. Pierce each day. With seven children. She could do that. Why not? She’d not have a second to consider the lure of his eyes or the charm of his laughter. She shivered and shook her head. “We’ll have a marvelous time.”
“And be on your best behavior,” said Marianne. “Now. No more of this. I see you are both finished. It is time for you to change for bed.”
Both children slid from their tall chairs and curtsied to their parents, each one in turn, then to Camille.
“You will come upstairs for stories?” Corinne turned on Camille the raptured look of expectation only a child can produce.
“Within the half hour! I promise!” As they scampered from the room in a hail of ‘yay and ‘huzzah’, she grinned and said, “They are wonderful.”
“You see them at their most amused and with their best manners,” Marianne said.
“It is the end of summer and we have worn them through working at the chateau with the crops. They are active. Very much so.” Remy put his serviette aside his plate, pride in his children mixed with concern. “Rand refuses to return to his school in Reims. They bore him, he tells us. I agree. I see the signs. He needs more than the average boy his age. And as for ourMademoiselleCorinne, she will have a new governess in two weeks. She wore out the first one.” He chuckled.
“What do you think would bring out Rand’s interests?” Camille wanted to know.
“Your stories, he likes,” Marianne added. “I think he writes his own, though he will not share them with us.”
“He has an eye for color and movement, too,” Remy said. “He comes to my shop and will sit for hours drawing my models, but in different poses. He is beginning to understand the body. How it moves.”
“And if he does not return to school,” Camille asked, “he will not miss his friends?”
“It seems not. He is sociable enough, I think,” Marianne told her. “He has two friends who live in the Place des Vosges. Neither of them will return to boarding school either but are precocious and need tutors. Both are a year older than Rand.”
“Let us not forget his two other older friends,” added Remy with a hint of sarcasm. “The barman and the garçon at thePurple Cowat the top of the Butte!”
“Older friends,” Camille mused. “Always the way to learn about life quickly.”
