Max released her fingers and sat back in his seat. “I am. You’re right.Dammit,I don’t know it sometimes, but it’s important. It’s important to talk about and to know. I can’t stand by and watch people who have billions of dollars swindle other people who work hard for their money. Alfonso is still out there, looking for places to build his NICU micro-clinics and overcharge impoverished people for the drugs to keep them running. He’ll make Nepal poorer, not richer.”
Isaak shook his head. His expression looked pained. “He surprised me. We were friends in school. I didn’t think he’d do something like that.”
Max nodded. “I didn’t, either. It surprised me when this project was approved, and then it shocked me when he admitted that it was all to turn a profit for his company. This is a charitable organization we’re working with. Everything is supposed to be not-for-profit, and there shouldn’t be forced-sales gimmicks hidden inside charitable donations. We have to get billionaires out of charities because they use them to strip regular people of their money.”
“But you’ve been working with charities ever since I’ve known you,” Isaak said. “You and Flicka put together that extravaganza for her wedding to your brother. You did amazing things with that money.”
Maxence shook his head. “For every amazing thing we did, some other psychopath used the charity system to suck more money out of the poor and people who work for a living. This is why Ineedto become a Jesuit,” Maxence said. “I want to work from inside the Church and change everything. The Catholic Church can make ourpracticeof Christianity line up with what wesayabout Christianity. Instead of saying that some people, somewhere, should help and then absolving them when they don’t, we canmakeit happen. Everything we do should take the poorest people and the condition of the world into consideration when we decide what to do with missions and during sermons.”
Isaak sat back. “The guys on the yachts will destroy you if you tell them that they cannot suck even more wealth from the working and lower classes. We both know people who will do it. We grew up with them at Le Rosey, and we’ve met them through our connections from there. They’ll fight back. They’ll fightyou.They’ll make sure you can’t become a priest if that’s what you want to do.”
Maxence shook his head and frowned. “My uncle isn’t long for this world. I sat by his bedside for a month. As soon as my brother Pierre takes over, he’ll give the Vatican permission to give me the sacrament of Holy Orders, and I won’t be stuck in this limbo of waiting and wanting. He’ll do it because he wants me out of the picture. I will disappear into the Church, and then I’ll change the world from within it.”
Maxence was going to disappear into the Church.
Dree needed to remember that, even when his cologne wafted through the air like the musk of desire in front of a fire built from cinnamon and vanilla.
She asked him, “Why does your brother control your life that way? That’s weird.”
Maxence nodded. “Yes. Yes, it is. But it’s the way my life works. But after I take Holy Orders, I will belong to the Church.”
He wouldbelongto the Church.
Not toher.
She’d never thought he belonged to her.
Really,she hadn’t.
The screwing around in Paris meant nothing.
They’d bothagreedto that. That was theplan.That washerplan.
And yet—
And yet the whole world was falling down around her.
“Right,” Isaak said to Max, sitting back in his seat. “Then you’ll be a Jesuit and you’ll belong to the Church.”
Isaak looked straight at Dree.
Dree was sitting beside a man she was falling in love with, but whose heart already belonged to the Church.
Oh.
The rest of the supper passed in a blur. There was more food. A dessert made of milk, rose water, sugar, and something round and white was on the table, and she ate one. The sweetness was cloying in her mouth because she just wanted to leave.
Her room was the same one as before, with a wooden, double-sized bed. Last time she’d slept at this inn, she’d slept alone and dreamed of a man named Augustine, a man who’d given himself to her utterly for four beautiful days, and she’d thought she was miserable because she couldn’t have him again.
This time, she was in love with a man who had given his heart to the world, and the world wouldn’t give him back.
Even though exhaustion weighed on her body with every step, Dree paced.
She shouldn’t go to Max’s room. The time when they’d shared a pup tent in the Nepali countryside had been a fantasy, and she was stupid to have believed it.
Maybe he would come to her. Father Booker wasn’t around to narc to whomever priests narced to about ordained deacons who screwed around.
Maybe there would be a knock on her door, and maybe it would be Maxence.
