Accidental Heiress

by Nancy Robards Thompson

  Henri and Margeaux had been home two days when he received a phone call from Pascal Moreau, Colbert Broussard’s attorney.

  Pascal invited Henri to join him for lunch in a private room in the University Club to discuss what Pascal deemed “urgent business.”

  They made small talk over a lunch of lamb chops and herbed green beans—a little heavier than Henri was used to for the noon meal, since he usually grabbed lunch on the fly. After being away for two weeks and having mountains of catch-up work to do, he really should have had a quick sandwich at his desk today. But according to Pascal, the issue could not wait.

  Once the server had cleared the lunch dishes and brought the coffee, Pascal pulled out an official-looking file and opened it on the table.

  “This is an addendum to Colbert Broussard’s last will and testaments,” he said. “If you’ll remember, in the initial reading of the will, Colbert said that if you completed the task he asked of you there would be something in it for you.”

  Task? Was the man serious? Spending two weeks in Avignon was no task. It was heaven.

  “Look,” he said, pushing back from the table. “I don’t want any part of Colbert’s estate. It should all go to his daughter.”

  Pascal looked perplexed. “I’m afraid this particular…err…gift is nontransferable.”

  “Then give it to charity,” Henri insisted. “I will not accept anything from him for simply accompanying his daughter on the fact-finding mission he sent her on, even one as worthwhile as the trip turned out to be. Thank you for lunch. I need to get back to work.”

  Henri stood. The trip was worthwhile to both Margeaux and him. It helped him realize how he’d never stopped loving her, and suddenly, sitting there alone with her father’s attorney, he realized that if he didn’t want to lose her all over again, he’d better make sure she knew darn good and well how he felt.

  As soon as he got out of there, he’d call her and ask to see her that night.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Lejardin,” Pascal said. “I’m afraid this is something completely different than what you’re thinking.”

  Henri lowered himself into the chair. “What is it?”

  “There’s a letter.” Pascal held up an envelope. It was the same ivory linen stationery that Colbert had used for the letters he had written to Margeaux.

  While they were in Avignon, she had offered to let him read them, but he’d declined.

  She’d shared a little bit about their contents, about her father living at St. Mary’s and her mother being a novice at Saint James. And, of course, Sister Jeanne had provided some of the information.

  However, instinct had warned him that what the letters contained that hadn’t been spoken aloud was intensely personal and when Margeaux wanted him to know the rest, she would share it.

  For now, Henri was giving her time to come to terms with everything that had been unveiled.

  Pascal pushed the envelope across the table to him. Henri picked it up tentatively, held the crisp weightiness of the fine stationery in his hand, looked at the florid penmanship that spelled out his name—Henri Lejardin—across the front.

  Tentatively he broke the seal that held the flap in place.

  Dear Henri,

  Years ago, you were like a son to me. I regret the time that we have not been on good terms, but for reasons I do not wish to divulge, it was necessary. You must trust me.

  However, I have watched you grow into a capable, reliable businessman who has earned my respect and it is my honor to give you my endorsement for my vacant seat on the Crown Council. Proper notifications have been sent to those involved in the nominating process.

  I wish you only the best for your future and believe that you will serve your country well.

  Deepest Regards,

  Colbert Broussard

  Henri was astounded and elated to have secured Colbert’s nod. That evening, he read the letter aloud to Margeaux. She was the only person who would understand the magnitude of how much this meant to him.

  “Your father…I just can’t believe he could go from barely speaking to me to this. This is the Crown Council. I certainly never expected it this soon, and without his official endorsement, who knows when I would have had another shot at it.”

  “You’ll make a wonderful Councilman,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I need to slow down. I don’t have it in the bag. This is simply the beginning. Now they have to do their due diligence and make sure—”

  She put a finger to his lip. “Shhhh…tonight we celebrate. Come with me down to the wine cellar and help me pick out something to celebrate your imminent victory.”

  She grabbed his hand and led him to the door just inside the kitchen. Everything seemed electric—a sultry note in her voice, the earthy smell of the air as she opened the wine cellar door, the feel of her hand in his. They descended the dim, narrow passageway that led to the dank, dark room below. Henri glimpsed the way their bare hands were laced together—skin on skin—the contrast of his big, rough hand on her smooth flesh. There was something agonizingly intimate and familiar about it.

  His mind raced back to a night long ago. Colbert was entertaining…some head of state from a country Henri couldn’t recall at the moment. Margeaux had led him down to the cellar because they were going to sneak a bottle of her father’s wine out and drink it down by the lake.

  But once they were down there and they’d flipped the switch to turn on the light, the bulb blew with a quick pop and hiss.

  Margeaux had giggled and the sound of her laugh had echoed in the small, earthen cavern, only to be snuffed out as Henri pressed his lips over hers and then claimed her body, backing her up against a far wall, making love to her as muted sounds of the party played like a radio off in the distance.

  The memory made Henri suck in a deep breath to quell the rush of need that flooded his body. His fingertips twitched against Margeaux’s skin as the wave of desire overtook him. In the dark cellar, they were teenagers again—young and wild and free.

  “Don’t turn on the light,” he said. His voice sounded husky and hungry. And he was ravenous for her.

  With the hand that was holding hers, he drew her into him without a word. His lips instinctively found their way to hers. He knew those lips—even in the dark. He smelled the scent of her that intoxicated him, and another surge of need coursed through him.

  She did things to him—wonderful, stupefying, mind-blowing things that turned him inside out with need. Margeaux Broussard had had that affect on him since the first day they both were old enough to understand that a man and a woman could be oh, so much more than friends.

  He loved these lips. He’s kissed them in his dreams over the years she was away—now that he had her here again, the thought of losing her again was almost too much to bear.

  She tasted of the cinnamon gum she favored and another, honeyed sweetness that was hers alone. It was a familiar taste, a timeless taste, because her lips belonged to him.

  She was the yearning he’d felt, the scent he’d desired, the taste he’d craved in his soul of souls.

  Groaning with need, his hands roamed her body with a greed he’d never experienced—not even years ago when they were so familiar, so comfortable with each other.

  She was hot and greedy, too. Her hands traveled over his body, tracing his face, his shoulders, his arms, as if memorizing the shape of him.

  They kissed in the shadows, shutting out Crown Councils and orphanages and convents—putting on hold the past and the future to live in the very heady present.

  The now.

  He wanted her. Now.

  Their ragged breaths were the only sound in this dark, sheltered world. Dim light filtering down from the top of the stairs was the only illumination. He kissed her with his eyes open, seeing only her in his mind’s eye.

  He tugged her sweater over her head, driven by the need to feel the intimacy of her breasts in his palms.

  She unbuttoned his shirt and he shrugge
d out of it, pulling her close as he let it fall to the floor. He wrapped his arms around her tighter, unable to get close enough to her, relishing the warmth of skin on skin. He kissed her lips, her neck, her collarbone, her breasts, sinking to his knees as he worked his way down to the waistband of her jeans.

  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.

  Chapter Ten

  Rory 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, how
ever, 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.