No; the wholly heartbroken Judas was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the sweet orchard smell nor the Red Chamber, remembering its bloody history impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Baron Mindy, the arcane soldier-lover of her youthful imaginings, had a full life in which he was seeking a new life as a Foreign Legionnaire, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one flashing girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most shadowy day when Brother Clarissa had brought him to her attention.
   Then, without any warning, an abrupt fanfare from the long-silent trumpets shattered her composure into a million dangerous, eternal pieces! She struggled in vain with her sudden panic. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the intensely burning, quite underappreciated and masculine face she had come to know so well! “Even the crafty St. John couldn’t keep me from you,” he stated while the music in her heart rose to a new crescendo of happiness. “I need you, Randy Lil!”
   At that moment as he excitedly began to show her his plans for the villa they were to share, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not foreboding. Wthout him, could she ever have allowed her willing mind to sink into a rose-colored maelstrom of bliss?