“Luc, are you going away already? Why can’t you stay longer?” With a lightning-quick glance at Joey she added, “And are you going to bring that strange mademoiselle back with you next time? Is she going to be your…?”
Luke quieted her with a hand on her shoulder. She understood instantly, falling silent and gazing up at him with wide, suddenly solemn eyes. He dropped to his knees and held her tightly. “Claire, there are some things it isn’t polite to ask about. You don’t want to make Joelle feel embarrassed, do you?”
Claire considered that with a cocked head. “But she doesn’t even speak French!” she protested at last. Luke suppressed a chuckle, confining himself to brushing one of the tangled curls out of her face.
“You know that words aren’t everything, Claire .There are some things you’ll have to wait until you’re older to understand, but I promise I’ll explain to you one day. When I can.”
With a somewhat belligerent outthrust of her lower lip, Claire nodded slowly. “Okay. But you better come back soon!”
Luke accepted her vigorous little girl’s embrace, taking great care as he hugged her in return “Be good, Claire.”
“I’m always good!” the little girl declared. In a flash she dashed off, brushing by Joey without another word.
“I wish I had that much energy,” Joey said fondly. The last of the villagers were departing now with final good-byes, last-minute offerings of advice and occasional smirks that Joey, fortunately, seemed not to notice.
For an instant Luke tried to imagine what Joey must have been like at that age. Even now she seemed almost carefree, with something approaching a child’s innocence. He knew she was not an innocent, far—very far—from being a child. He had only to remember and the blood stirred in him, had only to allow his full awareness to acknowledge her and be lost to her seductive power.
He set those thoughts carefully aside, knowing it would never become any easier, not until she had left his territory and his life. The ache of the thought was consigned to that same cold place.
His grandmother appeared suddenly to interrupt the disorder of his thoughts, breaking in, for once, at an opportune moment. She spoke in French, momentarily ignoring Joey. “I forgot to tell you, Luc—the doctor is coming later today. Sure you don’t want to hang around and wait for him?”
Luke glanced quickly at Joey, noting with relief that she didn’t seem to pick that one word—docteur—out of the others. “We have to be going, Grandmother—now, in fact.” He bent down to pay the expected tribute of a peck on each cheek, which she accepted as her due before turning to Joey. The expression on Joey’s face was almost comical when Bertrande gave her a loud, smacking kiss in similar but much more dramatic fashion, Joey peered up helplessly at Luke until the old woman released her.
Bertrande beamed impartially at both of them for a long moment, and then raised her head to sniff at the ai.r “The season is changing,” she announced in English. “I smell something strange on the wind.” Abruptly her mobile, weathered face grew serious. “Maybe you’d better stay here after all, Luc.”
For an instant Luke registered her words and dismissed them before doubt could mar his resolve. Stay here another night—and listen to the suggestive comments, see the shrewd nods and insinuating smiles of the villagers, knowing what they expected and what could never be—stay here another night and find himself pushed to the edge, pushed so far that he would have no hope of recovering his balance—no. It was out of the question.
He gathered up his pack and hitched it over his shoulders. Joey donned her own pack before he could help, she grinned at him in total incomprehension of his inner struggle, and he forced his muscles to relax.
With a final nod to his grandmother—who pierced him with a final, narrow-eyed stare bereft of the usual humor—he touched Joey’s arm and said, “Shall we go?”
“Allons-y!” Joey matched his steps so buoyantly that her enthusiasm, her sheer joy, reached the dark heart of his deepest fears and illuminated it for an instant, so that he was able to forget everything but her happiness. As they settled into a ground-eating, steady stride across the valley floor, the cold morning seemed brilliant with promise. It was her hope he felt, and for the moment it seemed enough.