page_430 < previous page page_430 next page > Page 430 "We are friends, Charles." "He wants to be more than friends with you." "Charles, my occupation suggests that kind of intimacy." "Not anymore it doesn't." "What are you saying?" Neither of them noticed that Pierre had quietly walked out of the office and closed the door behind him. Charles continued with a new heat. "Camille, I promised myself that if the Count wanted you to marry him, I would leave without seeing you." "But Pierre has been married for many years, Charles." "I know that now, and I also know I could never have left without seeing you. I must ask you to reconsider leaving Tombstone. I want you to stay here, with me." "Charles . . ." Camille raised a trembling hand to her temple, pressed her fingertips against the light skin there where her pulse throbbed visibly. "Charles, we have said our good-byes. We have recognized that the feelings that flow between us" "No, Camille, we have recognized nothing of the sort. I have been fool enough to allow circumstances to color my feelings toward you, circumstances that came about long before I ever met you. I've had some time to think, and I realize that had it not been for those circumstances, you would not be here in Tombstone, I would not have met you and loved you. I would have spent the rest of my life searching for the woman who would bring my heart alive as you've brought it alive. I would have searched long and hard for the woman whose spirit would touch me, warm me, as much as the sweet consolation of her body. I would have been as empty as I have been this past month, thinking that another man was about to take the step I should have taken, that another man was bringing you from this house to his own house, where he could keep you as his own for the rest of his life." "Charles . . ." Camille shook her head, her warm brown eyes searching his. "Charles, do you realize what you are saying, mon cher? You are asking me to leave this place and come with you. You are asking that the world see you, Charles Carter, the educated son of a wealthy man, a man with a bright future ahead of him, taking to live in his home a French courtesan, a common woman." "No, you're wrong, Camille." Charles's broad hand stroked  < previous page page_430 next page >