Chapter 16
Colette stood at the window unable to sleep. She turned back to look at her husband. He lay in the large guestroom bed, snoring lightly. Sometimes, he kept her up, but tonight that wasn’t the case.
She turned back to the window and focused on their little tiny spot where they were supposed to build their even smaller manor. She shook her head. Why did she even listen to him? Better yet, why did she even marry him?
Well, she would put a stop to this marriage quickly. All she wanted from that mud pit was what she buried underneath the ground right after Nicole’s death.
Those things belonged to her, not Auguste. Well, everything but the portrait. That was Auguste’s, but it wasn’t the portrait she was after. It was what was in the back of it that she wanted. Colette had placed some of Auguste’s ten gold coins at various places by. She had placed them in the portrait so that Auguste wouldn’t find out that they were stolen. Yes, stolen from Auguste. She was entitled to half the inheritance. It was hers, not Nicole’s. They were to be married, she thought trying not to cry.
The minute that she brought him to see Nicole, that was minute that ended their friendship. It was love at first sight. Nicole and Auguste ran off and married, never giving a second thought to her feelings.
And so she thought she finally had her chance when Nicole died in childbirth. What goes around comes around, she thought and waited for Auguste to confide in her as he had always done before his marriage.
But he never came. So she had found peace with his brother, Antoine. He was engaged to be married and Nicole’s sister, Dominique and the affair was over before it began. She did marry eventually, a loveless marriage to one Count Emil du Lac, an elderly man twice her age. The marriage produced a son, Jean Claude du Lac.
She ran into Antoine last year in Paris. Her late husband left her wealthy, but she lost it all in bad investments and gambling. Antoine had remembered her and confided in her that she had passed away the same way Nicole had, in childbirth.
That marriage produced a daughter, Monique, who was growing every day to look like her cousin, Danielle.
He needed a mother for her daughter and she needed money and father for her son and so they agreed to marry under those conditions. And besides, Antoine told her, he loved her, had always loved her.
Well, what did that lovesick fool know? He wanted to patch things up and become friends with Auguste again, but she couldn’t do it. She had gone through too much pain and suffering at his hands. Tomorrow night she would rip open the painting and by morning she would be long gone and Antoine would have to fend for himself.
And his brother Antoine always willing to put the past behind him.
Well, she wasn’t about to. She was going to get whatever belonged to her. She would pay him back for the way he treated her.