The Frenchman's Love-Child

guy and she had to make allowances for that.

When Tabby woke up, she was lying fully dressed on top of her bed with a bedspread pulled over her. After she’d fallen into a doze, Christien must have carried her through to her own room. It was already after nine in the morning and she scrambled out of bed. Jake’s tumbled bed was empty, his pyjamas lying on the floor. Frowning, she sped down the stairs and discovered that she was alone in the cottage. Panic tugging at her as she recalled how Christien had accused her of being no better than a kidnapper in keeping him and his son apart, she was almost afraid to read the note that she saw lying on the hearth. Christien’s abominable scrawl informed her that he had taken Jake out for a drive in the Ferrari. Slowly, she breathed again. What could be more natural than Jake getting a run in his father’s boy-toy car? Christien doing something so predictable and male made her feel a little more secure.

It was a beautiful hot sunny day and she took a green sun-dress from the wardrobe and went for a shower. Christien was so angry with her, so bitter. Would he ever get over that? Would he ever look at events from her point of view and appreciate that she had done what she believed was best? Was Jake to be their only link now? Well, at least Christien seemed keen to form a relationship with Jake, she told herself bracingly. Really that was what was most important. But her eyes ached and burned with unshed tears.

When she heard a car outside, she hurried straight to the door and was surprised to see Manette Bonnard walking up her path with a gaily wrapped parcel clasped in one hand. ‘I wanted to thank you for your kindness and understanding yesterday. I hope you have no objection but I have brought a small gift for your son,’ the older woman said tautly. ‘May I talk to you, mademoiselle?’

In bewilderment, Tabby tensed and then, with a rather uneasy smile of acquiescence, she invited her visitor in.

‘I’m afraid that I concealed my true identity from you yesterday. I was too embarrassed to admit who I was,’ the blonde woman confessed in a troubled rush. ‘My name is not Manette Bonnard. I lied about that. I am Christien’s mother, Matilde Laroche.’

Tabby was betrayed into a startled exclamation.

‘I drove over here to spy on you,’ Matilde admitted tightly, discomfited colour mantling her cheeks. ‘I thought you had no right to be in this house. I thought you had no right to be with my son.’

As Tabby wondered if the older woman was aware that Christien had spent the night with her that weekend that she had first visited her inheritance, never mind passed the night before under the same roof as well, she could no longer look her visitor in the eye. Worst of all, she could not think of a single thing to say to her either.

‘Although I knew nothing about you and had never met you, I told myself four years ago that I hated you because…well, because of who you are-’

As Matilde’s eyes filled with tears Tabby took her trembling hand into a sympathetic hold. ‘I understand…I really do understand-’

‘I was mad with grief and it twisted me. But perhaps I was also afraid that I was on the brink of losing my son to a young woman when I was least willing to part with him,’ Matilde breathed shakily. ‘But that is not an excuse. When I saw how very young you were yesterday, I was surprised, but I was shocked when I met your little boy.’

Christien’s mother removed a photograph from her bag and extended it. Tabby studied the snap of Christien as a child of about five or six with a fascination she could not hide.

‘Jake is the living image of his father,’ Matilde commented.

Thinking of the gift that Matilde Laroche had brought and the acceptance of Jake that that telling gesture conveyed, Tabby just smiled. ‘Yes, he is.’

‘I am so ashamed of the way I have behaved. I felt my punishment when I recognised my grandson, who is a stranger to me,’ Matilde admitted with deep regret. ‘For how long has Christien known about Jake?’

Tabby winced. ‘I’m afraid that I only told him last night.’

‘A long time ago, my aunt, Solange, tried to talk to me about you and Christien and how accidents happen and how we must forgive and go on with our lives, but I was too stubborn and full of self-pity to listen.’ Matilde Laroche’s guilt was etched in her troubled face.

Tabby urged the older woman to sit down.

‘Henri always drove very fast,’ she confided. ‘Far too fast to stop in the event of an accident.’

As the silence stretched Tabby gathered her courage and began talking too. ‘That night my father had a dreadful argument with my stepmother over dinner. She stormed out of the restaurant and caught a taxi back to the farmhouse.’

‘So that was why your father’s wife wasn’t in his car when it crashed.’ Slowly, Matilde shook her head. ‘I always wondered about that.’

‘I’m not making any excuses for Dad but I would like you to know that, until that holiday, I had never seen him drinking to excess,’ Tabby said in a quiet voice. ‘Dad had remarried very soon after my own mother’s death. That summer he was very unhappy. He and my stepmother weren’t getting on and I think he turned to alcohol because he realised that his second marriage had been a terrible mistake.’

‘Was he happy with your mother?’

‘Very…’ Tabby’s eyes watered. ‘They were always talking and teasing each other. He went to pieces when she died. I think he rushed into marriage with Lisa because he was lonely and he couldn’t cope-’

‘I was like that after Henri went,’ Matilde muttered unsteadily and she patted Tabby’s hand as if in gratitude for her honesty. ‘I couldn’t cope either, and since then my grief has been my life. When I saw Jake, I understood that life had gone on without me and that I had caused those closest to me a lot of unhappiness that they did not deserve.’

‘You really don’t mind about Jake, do you?’

Matilde Laroche studied her in amazement. ‘Why would I mind? He is a wonderful child and I am overjoyed that he has been born.’

‘Christien has taken Jake out this morning,’ Tabby revealed.

The older woman stood up. ‘I would not like to intrude by being here when they return. But I am sure you have already guessed that, if you are generous enough to allow it, I would be very happy to have the opportunity to become better acquainted with you and my grandson.’

Tabby grinned. ‘We’d be happy too.’

‘Will you tell my son about what happened yesterday?’

‘No. I think it’s bad for Christien to know absolutely everything,’ Tabby heard herself admitting, before it occurred to her that such facetiousness might not go down well with his parent.

But Matilde’s gaze had taken on a surprised but appreciative gleam of answering amusement and she chuckled as she took her leave of Tabby.

As the morning wore on, and there was still no sign of Christien and Jake reappearing, Tabby became more and more jumpy. She told herself that it was a nonsense to imagine that Christien would have taken off with their son just to teach her a hard lesson, but her imagination was lively and her conscience too uneasy to give her peace. It was noon before she heard a car pulling up and she rushed to the door.

Sheathed in black denim jeans that fitted him like a second skin and a trendy shirt, Christien swung out of a scarlet Aston Martin V8 and scooped Jake out of the car seat fixed in the rear. Tabby’s jaw dropped. Last seen, her three-year-old son had been the possessor of a cute mop of black curls. Since then he had had a severe run-in with a barber and not a curl was to be seen.

‘What have you done to him?’ Tabby heard herself yelp accusingly.

Christien angled a look of pure challenge at her. ‘I trashed the girlie hairstyle…you might not have noticed but boys aren’t wearing pretty curls this season.’

‘It looked girlie,’ Jake told his mother slowly but carefully, and he even pronounced it just as his father must have done complete with French accent. Her little boy then carefully arranged himself in the exact same posture as his unrepentant father.

‘Girlie is in the eye of the beholder,’ Tabby remarked.

‘Girlie is girlie,’ Christien contradicted.

Christien, she understood, was staking possession on his son and ready, even eager, to fight any attempt to suggest that he might have overreached his new parental boundaries. But, grateful for their return and blessed with