Glass Slipper Read Free Page B

in what someone else will pay for them.”
    She pursed her lips and tried to hold back her tears.
    “Your father cares only what someone else will pay for you, which is why he has given you over to me. He has invested next to nothing in you, personally. If I were a woman, I would not wish to be a pearl.”
    Joséphine choked back her sobs and turned her face to the window so that he would not see how deeply his words had wounded her.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
     
    After a long night confined to the coach with the most sullen girl he’d ever encountered, Julien was glad to see the spires of Chateau Perrault illuminated against the dawn sky.
    He stretched his legs as much as the space in the coach would allow and grimaced. Across from him, Joséphine slumped against the window, snuggled under his coat, which he’d draped over her as she slept. It had been a long ride, made longer by her disposition, but he did not expect that would improve if she froze nearly to death.
    They rolled to a stop before the front doors, and the cessation of motion woke her. “Where are we?” she mumbled, shielding her eyes from the light.
    “Our destination, my lady,” he replied, and heard the relief in his own words. He’d been too long at court. While Prince Philipe was a gracious host, throwing lavish parties and orgies for the delight of his guests, Julien feared he might be growing too old for that lifestyle. A month ago, he would not have admitted so. A year ago, he would have recoiled from the very thought. He would have protested vehemently the idea that a man with silver in his hair and a few handsome lines on his face was of an age to give up a life of pleasure. Then, he’d met Sybil. Young, firm and comely, she’d nearly exhausted Julien with her carnal demands, and nearly bankrupted him with others. She’d been looking to snag herself a rich, old husband, or so the gossips said, and when Julien had heard the rumor he’d wondered who the old fool was. When it had occurred to him that they’d been speaking of him, he’d been mortified. Some men his age were old—Henrí, for example—but he’d filled his fifty-two years with decadence and indulgence, and that life had suited him. Physically, he appeared as youthful as men ten years younger. In spirit, well, he’d never grown up, and found he had more in common with himself at twenty than he did with men of his own age.
    Still, the incident with Sybil had made him more cautious. He’d been aware for years that his wealth and his station at court attracted women who were hunting for a groom. He’d deftly avoided them. The trouble lay in the way women now perceived him. Thirty years ago, if a young woman caught his eye he knew her passion was genuine. It had never crossed his mind that she might be viewing him as a short, convenient marriage that would end with him in the grave and his money in her pockets.
    Joséphine scrubbed at her eyes and blinked as she peered through the glass. “This is your country house?”
    “It is.” When he’d formulated his plan, he had forgotten one very important detail. He had never, in all of his years of debauchery, brought a woman to the chateau. How unsettling it was now to invite the fairer sex into his sanctuary.
    His housekeeper, Madame Brujon, stood in the doorway, her thin lips set in their customary grimace. Though female, she hardly counted as the fairer anything. Above her gargoyle’s face, her black hair scraped back into a bun that pulled her wrinkled skin tight at her temples. A flesh-colored mole decorated her prominent nose, the nostrils of which flared with in-drawn breath the moment he set foot outside the carriage.
    “A bit of warning would have been nice,” Madame Brujon snapped by way of greeting.
    It would do no good to remind the old woman who the master of the house was. She simply did not care. Julien offered his hand to Joséphine, who eyed him warily before taking it. As she alighted from the