Given her history, it was no surprise she found Durand’s attention a bit...disconcerting.
But the good news was she didn’t know him and she never had to meet him—so this weird heady feeling would pass. Eventually.
Before too much longer Durand was probably going to own the two-hundred-year-old de la Mare vines that produced the best vintage in the region and the beautiful old stone farmhouse that had become the first real home she had ever known.
But tonight the vines and La Maison de la Lune were hers. And she did not need to get Durand’s permission—or anyone else’s permission—to enjoy them.
‘How long before the estate goes on the market?’ Maxim Durand asked Pierre de la Mare’s lawyer in French as he watched the girl—de la Mare’s housekeeper, or nursemaid, or whatever the hell she was—walk past him without making eye contact.
Her curves moved sinuously in the vintage dress, the black silk shimmering gold in the sunset, the reddening dusk turning her mass of blonde hair, pinned in a haphazard chignon, to a rich gold. His pulse beat a lusty tattoo in his crotch. Infuriatingly.
Someone had said the old man had got himself a new housekeeper a while ago. He’d expected her to be young and pretty, but not young enough to be de la Mare’s granddaughter. How old was she? Early twenties at the most. Which would make her up to a decade younger than his own thirty-one years. And as much as forty years younger than de la Mare.
Did the old bastard have no shame whatsoever?
Despite her apparent youth, though, he would guess the girl had supplied more than just pastoral care for the old roué. De la Mare would have charmed her into his bed the way he’d charmed so many other women. She looked like just his type too. Hot and available.
But still the pulse of desire and a grudging respect, rather than the distaste he wanted to feel, persisted as she strode into the shadow of the trees with her head held high.
What was it about the woman that had captivated him as soon as he had arrived? Perhaps it was the flush that hit her cheeks as he checked out her impressive breasts—provocatively displayed for every man here to enjoy in the revealing dress—or the flicker of surprise in her cornflower blue eyes as they met his. Or maybe it was just that he hadn’t slept with a woman in close to three months and he was fatigued after getting up before dawn this morning to assess the new yield. But whatever the reason, he didn’t like it.
Now de la Mare was finally dead, Maxim intended to claim what was rightfully his—not get distracted by the old man’s leftovers.
‘Your haste is quite unseemly, Monsieur Durand,’ the lawyer murmured. ‘Monsieur de la Mare only died a few days ago.’
‘This is business, not personal,’ he lied easily. ‘I wish to be informed as soon as the estate is on the market.’
He’d waited long enough to get hold of the de la Mare Estate. He’d refused to deal with the old bastard, but had ensured that no one else would offer for the land while the man was alive. Now de la Mare was dead, the vineyard was his for the taking.
‘It is not as simple as that; we must meet tonight at La Maison de la Lune,’ Marcel Caron said, ‘for the reading of the will. Actually, it is good you are here. It will save me sending for you, as Monsieur de la Mare requested you attend.’
‘What?’ Maxim’s attention switched to the lawyer—the girl had already disappeared anyway—as he struggled to hide his shock. He ruthlessly quashed the foolish kernel of hope. He knew there would be nothing for him in the man’s will.
‘Monsieur de la Mare requested you attend two days before he died when he made his will.’
‘Why did he even make a will?’ Maxim said, his voice hoarse with anger. ‘He had nothing but debts to pass on and no heirs to pass it to as I understand it.’
Or none he was prepared to claim.
Bitterness rose in his throat like bile.
He swallowed it down as he had so many times before. Ever since he was a small boy and his mother had tied him to his bed to stop him from running through the woods to La Maison de la Lune in a desperate bid to see the man who did not want to see him.
‘You have not heard?’ The lawyer looked sheepish.
‘Heard what? I only returned from my business in Italy yesterday and I’ve been in the fields all day,’ Maxim demanded as the sick dread—which had been a large part of his childhood—churned in his gut.
‘Mademoiselle Evans, La Maison’s housekeeper, and Monsieur de la Mare were married three days ago, and she is now his widow.’
Bitterness knifed through his gut as his mother’s face seared his memory—fragile and drawn and exhausted—the way he remembered her, the last time he’d seen her, on the morning he’d left Burgundy as an outraged and humiliated fifteen-year-old.
‘Merde,’ he murmured as his anger became icily cold.
The little English whore hadn’t just been screwing de la Mare, she’d managed to seduce the old bastard into doing something no other woman ever had—putting his wedding ring on her finger.
Copyright © 2020 by Heidi Rice
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ISBN-13: 9781488059681
Claiming His Unknown Son
Copyright © 2020 by Kim Lawrence
All rights
