Accidental Heiress (11 page)

He unzipped them and pushed her jeans and her panties to the floor in one swift move. She stepped out of them and uttered a soft groan as he kissed her stomach and moved his hands around to the back of her, burying his face in the damp, warm, ready center of her. His penis nudged at the imprisonment of his pants, responding to the primal aphrodisiac of her.

He urged her legs apart and tasted her until
she arched back, crying out in pleasure as tremors made her whole body quake at his touch.

She urged him up and helped him out of his pants, which he caught before they hit the ground. Since she'd returned, he was sure to keep at least one condom on him always. He felt his way to it in the dark.

By the time he'd readied himself, his eyesight had adjusted ever so slightly to the darkness. He led her to that place in the corner where they'd made love so many years ago. Though they'd made love often while they were in Avignon, tonight it felt brand-new all over again. He entered her with such a sense of desire, he couldn't remember wanting her this much or…ever feeling so much love.

“I love you,” he said.

“Henri,” she whispered, his name, but it was half-strangled on a moan, as he filled her slowly, savoring how right she felt, how the two of them fit together in perfect oneness.

They began to move together. Finding their pace, they reached a new height of ecstasy. After they climaxed, and they stood sweaty and spent, she finally found her voice.

“I love you, too.”

 

The flurry that surrounded Henri's political approval was nearly as overwhelming. Once word leaked out that he was the heir apparent—no one seemed to know exactly where that leak started—Henri became the toast of the town.

If all went according to plan, he would be the youngest Crown Council member in the history of St. Michel.

He'd wanted this, yet never dreamed that he would get it so soon. With Margeaux here to share it with him, everything he wanted seemed to be lining up perfectly.

Until he found himself at the center of a tabloid scandal that could ruin everything good in his life.

R
ory Malone had struck again.

The headline that darkened the front page of the
Daily Mail
read: Heiress and Future Crown Council Member Reunite With Son They Gave Away as Teen Parents.

Underneath the tabloid headline, on the left side of the page, was a grainy photo of Margeaux and Henri with Matieu at St. Mary's Orphanage. On the right side was a copy of a page from a hospital chart bearing her name and the medical complaint: pregnancy-related complications.

The gist of the story was that Margeaux and Henri had a baby, but the child was put up for adoption and the boy still lived at St. Mary's. He had been a hindrance to this politically hungry family's plan. They'd left him there to free themselves to further their own causes.

Malone took the opportunity to trot out a retrospective of various other scandalous photos of Margeaux over the ages, including the one of Henri and her skinny dipping—the one that started the tear in her relationship with her father.

Now it was coming back full-circle to tear apart her relationship with Henri, as well.

Henri had found out about the article first. When he did, he'd called Margeaux to warn her about the “bogus story.” She'd managed to make noises she hoped were convincing enough to lead him to believe that she, too, thought the story was a bunch of rubbish.

“Of course, it's caused some concern,” he said, sounding only mildly bothered by it. “It will delay the process. More than anything, St. Michel wants its Council member to be above personal reproach. They'll investigate and when they discover it's all a bold-faced lie,
proceedings will continue and our attorneys will deal with the paper.”

“I am going to make sure they suffer big for this one.”

The only problem was, only half of the story was a bold-faced lie—as Henri had put it. The other half—the part about the pregnancy complication—was one hundred percent factual.

Margeaux had no idea how the slimeball Malone had gotten his hands on her medical records, or if exposing it to the world was even legal, that was a matter for the lawyers.

But if he was able to publish the medical information, the photograph of the page from her chart would contain everything the Council needed to discover that she had indeed been pregnant when she left here sixteen years ago.

Not only would the embarrassment be a possible blemish on Henri's record, but it would reflect badly on her father.

Because he was gone and not able to defend himself, Margeaux felt all the more protective of him. He'd worked hard his entire life to protect his name and to keep his private life private. Who knew what Rory Malone would
dig up and expose next? Evidently humiliating Margeaux seemed to have become his life's work.

Margeaux knew she needed to figure out what she would say to Henri. How she would explain to him why she'd chosen to keep the pregnancy a secret when she'd been sent away and why she hadn't trusted him enough to tell him about the miscarriage.

 

Henri's day seemed to be going from great to horrible. This morning, he'd awoken in the arms of the woman he loved. Now he was sitting across from her listening to her tell him that half the tabloid story was true?

She had indeed been pregnant when she left St. Michel for the boarding school in France all those years ago.

He felt something akin to fury rising in his throat, but he swallowed it. At least he had the foresight to know that if he indulged in losing his temper he would regret it later.

Much in the same way Margeaux was saying she regretted not telling him she had been carrying his child when she'd left and shut him out of her life.

“Is Matieu our son?” he asked cautiously, bracing himself for the answer.

Margeaux stared at her hands for a moment. “No, he's not. I had a miscarriage after I ran away from the school in France.”

Henri didn't know whether to get up and hold her or get up and leave.

She'd left with his child. Who knows if he would have ever found out if unfortunate circumstances hadn't brought her back?

“Did your father know?”

She shook her head. “Nobody knew, except for the people at the hospital.”

“And obviously the reporter. Why did he wait until now to share the news?”

“How am I supposed to know that, Henri? All I know is I tried to tell you I was pregnant the night before I left. Do you remember that? Do you remember what you told me before I could?”

She paused and in the silence, memories of that night flooded back to him.

When she'd started talking what he thought was nonsense about them running away together, he'd broken up with her. He'd told her since she was going away, it was time that they
needed to be free. He was coming at it from the angle that they needed to spread their wings and grow up a little. After all, they'd always been each other's everything. They didn't know anything else.

Another thing Margeaux didn't know was that her father had gotten to him before she had. It was almost as if Colbert had been able to read his daughter like a book. He'd warned Henri that she would ask him to help her run away. He'd threatened Henri, saying that if he got in the way of his plans for Margeaux, not only would Henri suffer serious consequences, but Colbert would see to it that his entire family was ruined.

“Now the whole world knows about the antics of your skinny dipping with my daughter,” he'd said. “This has the potential to ruin her and me and if that happens, not only will I make sure you never see my daughter again, I will make sure you and your family suffer ten times worse than we do.”

Henri Lejardin had never been a coward. He had, however, been a smart kid. Colbert Broussard was a powerful man. He was not someone to be trifled with.

Henri had let Margeaux go.

“I didn't tell you because you broke up with me and then I miscarried and what good would it have done for you to know?”

He started to protest, to tell her everything he should've said to her that night, but she silenced him with a wave of her hand.

“I've always felt guilty about the miscarriage. I felt like it was my fault since I was so bent on running away, that I put too much stress on my body and I didn't get proper prenatal care. But most of all, Henri, telling you wouldn't have changed anything since the damage was already done.”

 

They agreed they needed to think about things. To process everything. After Henri left, for a long time Margeaux sat alone in the quiet kitchen of the house that had quit feeling like her home after her mother died.

She'd lost her family and a piece of herself when her mother died. And when she'd gotten pregnant, she'd felt as if through the miracle of having her own child—as unconventional and unexpected as the pregnancy was—she could finally be whole again.

She and Henri would be a family and there would be so much love. Everything would be all right again.

But it hadn't worked out the way she'd planned it.

Her father had sent her away. He hadn't even known she was pregnant, yet he still didn't want her.

He was better off without her and had proved as much by being successful all the years she was out of his life.

But since her recent visits to the orphanage and the convent, all she'd learned about her family had made her feel that they were with her once more. That she was finally home once more. And now, as the sun set and cold, gray darkness crept into the kitchen, it dawned on Margeaux what she needed to do.

 

Henri spent the better part of the night pacing.

Pacing and thinking.

Though a lowlife tabloid reporter had chosen to twist facts, stretching them out of proportion, there really was no scandal.

Matieu was not his and Margeaux's son.

Yes, there had been an out-of-wedlock teen age pregnancy sixteen years ago, but they hadn't broken any laws. The pregnancy was a private matter that had no bearing on the government of St. Michel.

Last night he had been shocked to learn about the child he and Margeaux had conceived. He'd been angry that she hadn't trusted him enough to share the secret, to allow him to shoulder some of the pain with her, or that she hadn't at least wanted to lean on him through the hard part.

But he had chosen his team when he'd followed Colbert's orders of letting Margeaux go without a fight.

As the sun rose on a new day, one of the first things he decided was that he wouldn't tell Margeaux he'd stayed away because of her father's mandate.

Sure, it might be looked upon as one more secret between them. As him doing something similar to what she had done. But after she'd made such positive strides toward feeling good about her relationship with her father, he decided he would take that secret to his grave—and unlike Colbert, he wouldn't
someday share it posthumously with his and Margeaux's children.

That was the second realization he'd come to: he wanted another chance to have a future, and children, with Margeaux. Even if it meant giving up his chance for a seat on the Crown Council.

Margeaux Broussard was the love of his life, and there was no way he would lose her again. He put on his coat to walk next door to tell her so, but when he opened his door, an ivory linen envelope fell from the doorjamb and landed at his feet.

When he picked it up, he recognized Margeaux's handwriting. He tore it open and read:

The St. Michel Airport was quiet when the taxi dropped off Margeaux at 6:00 a.m. Even though the ticketing booths didn't open until eight, the place never closed. Sure, it would be mostly uninhabited at that hour, but she would be the first in line to get her ticket—not that there would be long lines, of course.

Ticket lines mean nothing.
Truthfully, Margeaux simply didn't want to take the chance of Henri seeing her leave, of her looking into his disappointed eyes and saying goodbye again. Or even worse—if by some miracle he'd found it in his heart to forgive her for not trusting him with the news of the pregnancy and for ruining
his career—she didn't want to give him the opportunity to talk her out of leaving.

Because it would only take one word to convince her:
Stay.

The airport's main building was located on a slight hill that allowed a perfect view of the water running like a dark, lacy ribbon along the coast of St. Michel. Dawn wouldn't break for at least an hour, and the lights of the early risers were beginning to click on, dotting the coast with a subtle golden shine. If she squinted her eyes at the glowing houses and the stars twinkling in the inky, indigo sky reflecting off the water, the tableau offered an impresson of Van Gogh's “Starry Night Over the Rhone.”

Normally, Margeaux would have whipped out her camera to capture such a picturesque scene, to preserve it, possibly even sell it for personal gain. But this moment seemed sacred, too precious to share. It was a memory she wanted to keep for herself, so that anytime she felt as if she were losing herself she could retreat into her mind's eye and remember St.

Michel exactly the way it looked right now—sleepy and peaceful, somehow unchanged and
resistant to the ugliness of the tabloids and the misunderstandings of the past.

She sighed and gazed up into the hills that overlooked the city, in the general direction of her father's house. Henri was right next door—where he'd always been…where he was right now. Though after the recent turn of events, he probably wasn't waiting for her anymore.

Now that she'd failed him, he could finally move on.

If only she could do the same. But that seemed unfathomable right now.

Pressing a hand to her aching heart, she turned away from the picture-perfect landscape, committing it to memory before the harsh light of reality marred it even more, robbing her of this keepsake.

She started at the man standing behind her, gasping and flinching at the unexpected surprise.

He was dressed in a khaki uniform, with the St. Michel crest emblazoned on one breast pocket and the word
Sécurité
boldly spelled out on the other.

“Excusez-moi, Mademoiselle,”
he said. “May I please see your ticket?”

Margeaux's grip tightened on the handle of her suitcase. She mustered a smile she didn't quite feel. “I don't have a ticket yet,” she offered. “I was waiting for the counter to open.”

The guard, a beefy fellow who looked to be in his late thirties, did not smile. He shook his head and regarded her sternly as if she were a small child caught in the act of doing something naughty.

“In that case, I must see some identification.”

 

They had no right!

Margeaux stewed as she sat in the locked airport security room, held prisoner without reason. Or at least no one seemed to be able to give her a reason.

Since when had waiting to buy a ticket become a crime? The guard had informed her that national security forbade “loitering in the airport common areas.”

Huh? What about the legions of passengers who would be waiting for flights once the sun was higher in the sky?

Then he'd escorted her to the small, stark
office with a desk and three plastic-and-metal chairs. The place looked eerily like a detention room.

“I assure you, I mean no harm,” she said. “I just arrived a little early. I can leave and come back, if that would make you feel better.”