Jade Star - Catherine Coulter [43]
Saint didn’t apologize. He said furiously, “Don’t you ever say such a stupid thing again! Listen to me, Jules. Even if you had been raped by a dozen men, it wouldn’t have been your fault, and I wouldn’t feel any less respect for you. For God’s sake, if a woman dies in childbirth, is she to blame?”
“But it’s true, Michael. All of them, except for Thomas, wish I were truly dead.”
“You are not to die. I won’t allow you to die until you’re well over eighty. You will forget your damned father, your weak, silly mother, and that mean-spirited sister of yours.”
She pulled away from him and he let her go. She said over her shoulder, her voice utterly without emotion, “It isn’t fair that you feel constrained to make me your wife. I will go to Canada.”
“No, you will go nowhere, save back to San Francisco with me.” He paused a moment, then asked thoughtfully, “Did you guess that your father would treat you as he has? Is that the reason you wanted to stay in San Francisco?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I can’t see that it’s particularly important now. I do know that my father was closeted with John Bleecher last evening. Michael, how could John lie like that?”
“Forget the little bastard,” Saint said sharply, uncomfortable with the renewed rage he felt. “Jules, will you marry me? Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? Will you come home with me to San Francisco?”
She said, in an attempt at humor, “Wouldn’t you prefer me as your mistress? Isn’t a wife more expensive?”
“No, I wouldn’t, and frankly, I don’t remember how expensive a wife is.”
Jules blinked at that, distracted. “You’ve already had a wife, Michael?”
“Yes, in Boston. Her name was Kathleen and she was an Irish girl. Only seventeen, but I was a wordly twenty-year-old. She left me to return to Dublin to fetch her mother. She died there of cholera, as did her mother.” Saint paused, aware that he’d spoken emotionlessly. He was also aware that he felt nothing but a faint regret now. Indeed, he could no longer see Kathleen’s face in his mind’s eye.
“I’m sorry,” Jules said, and quickly lowered her eyes. She felt guilty suddenly because she was glad Kathleen was dead and out of Michael’s life.
“It was many years ago, and there’s no reason for you to be sorry. She wasn’t part of your life.” Saint’s voice was natural now, and he was in firm control again. “Now, Jules, your answer, please.”
It wasn’t really a question, she knew, but she didn’t say that aloud. She wanted to ask him if he loved her, but she didn’t ask that either. He didn’t. She also knew, in that moment, that she had enough love for both of them. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, she thought blankly.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Michael, I would be honored to marry you.”
He felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. His friends had teased him many times about taking a wife. They would doubtless be delighted. And she wasn’t a stranger to him. He had watched his own wife grow up—at least he’d known Jules in her most formative years. And liked her and enjoyed her company.
“Come here,” he said, “and let me kiss you.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt another, equally heavy weight descend. He couldn’t and wouldn’t force her to be a wife in more than name, not after what she had been through.
To his surprise, Jules walked back to him, stood quietly in front of him, and raised her face. He quickly placed a chaste kiss on her pursed lips. They had been friends, and they would continue to be friends. Nothing would change that. He would never hurt her.
Jules opened her eyes. “Thank you, Michael,” she said.
“Certainly,” he said abruptly, misunderstanding her words. What did she think, he wondered—that he would ravish her here on the beach, like John Bleecher?
He caught her hand in his and they walked from the beach together.
Dwight Baldwin wished he’d been present at the church that morning. Certainly he’d been appalled to hear that Saint had physically assaulted a man of God, but he was willing to make allowances when he heard what Etienne DuPres had said. He smiled at Saint