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the door, unable to meet his ravaged eyes. She knew what his words had cost him, and the fact that he had spoken them was more than she could bear on top of everything else.
"Oh, Ronnie."
She paused with her hand on the door, not looking back.
"I... uh ... missed you. Is it good to be home?" For Pieter, it was quite a speech.
"Wonderful." She strove for enthusiasm in her tone, but the word still came out as a whisper. Forcing herself to composure until she could sedately open and close the door, Ronnie then tore down the hall to her own room and locked herself in, a cascade of tears finally falling in torrents of silent misery as she was at last able to throw herself into the peaceful, private depths of her huge fur-covered four-poster bed.
A bed she had never shared with her "husband."
Ronnie had met Pieter von Hurst in Paris. She was just twenty-two, in love with spring, in love with Paris, and in love with Jamie Howell, one of Pieter's specially selected students. Few were so honored, few were lucky enough to study with the man, the artist, who was already considered a master though still in his early forties.
Von Hurst was rich and famous; he moved in the elite circles of society, from the Continent to the States. But Ronnie knew he had a fondness for her from the moment he met her. He had told her she was charming, eager, and brilliantly attuned to life, and had hosted the young couple to many a dance and dinner, reveling in their youth and enthusiasm.
And he was there when her talented fiancé fell prey to one of the oldest hazards of youth and the artistic community—heroin. Jamie was dead before Ronnie ever discovered the demon that had hounded him.
Ronnie was aware also that Pieter found her desirable, but he did not take advantage of her fresh innocence and beauty. He had made it very clear that he simply wanted to care for her. And she had let him. She was an American orphan, alone in Paris, grieved and bewildered, but already forming that shell of poised reserve that would hide her emotions from the world. She had been working as an interpreter for English-speaking tourists, but Pieter's artistic eye discovered a way to care for her and benefit them both. She would become his model, he reasoned, and the world also would benefit because her unearthly beauty would be forever captured in marble.
Although rumor ran rampant, she never did become his mistress. It was apparent that his love for her grew, as hers did for him. But she always knew her love for him was different. He was her friend, her mentor, a paternal figure. The difference in their ages was vast. But he wanted to marry her anyway. He had argued that he could make her love change.
And then three weeks before the wedding that was to be one of the grandest in Europe, Pieter found out about the disease that would rob him of his manhood—and eventually his life. Disbelieving and astounded, he railed against fate and cursed all who came near, never admitting the cause of his horrendous rages.
Except to Ronnie. He had told her, feebly offering her the release he couldn't bear, but she wouldn't go. And then it was he who turned to her for strength, she who salvaged the artist, Pieter von Hurst, she who gave him back to the world—at the cost of her own happiness and life.
But she did love him. When her own world had fallen to pieces, he had been there to pick her up. He had given her himself. She could give no less.
After a very quiet wedding—recently proved too quiet!—they quit Paris society and retired to the small island Pieter owned off the coast of South Carolina. Ronnie knew he could not bear for the public that idolized him to see him dissipate into a shrunken old man, long before his time.
She accepted interviews. She gave the papers the story of a perfect, complete marriage, of a one-to-one commitment that sent them scurrying into privacy to devote themselves to one another and to his art, And because of her, he did keep creating; he did find a