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.
CHAPTER TWO
‘MADAME DE LA MARE, THANK YOU for receiving us at this difficult time.’
Us?
Cara nodded as Pierre’s debonair lawyer Marcel stood in the farmhouse’s doorway an hour after the funeral. ‘It’s good to see you, Marcel. Is...is someone else coming?’ she asked. Marcel’s English was usually flawless. But then the SUV she’d seen at the cemetery drove into the farmyard. And Maxim Durand stepped out of the car.
He’d changed out of the grubby T-shirt and jeans he’d worn at the graveside into a pair of designer trousers and a white linen shirt rolled up at the sleeves. His dark hair was damp and slicked back from his face as if he’d recently showered and his jaw clean-shaven. But he still looked untamed and intimidating as he strode across the yard.
He’d also lost the sunglasses, the piercing gaze even more devastating than it had been at the cemetery when it raked over her figure. Thankfully, she’d changed out of the too-revealing dress, but she wished she had dressed in something more formal than the pair of shorts and the thin cotton camisole and shirt she was wearing. Marcel had visited the house often, especially in the last few weeks, to see Pierre and she’d stopped standing on ceremony with him months ago. But Durand wasn’t a friend or even an acquaintance.
‘Bon soir, Madame de la Mare. Marcel asked me to attend at your husband’s request,’ Durand said with a perfunctory nod of greeting. His perfect yet heavily accented English though, like his gaze, was ripe with thinly veiled contempt.
Cara ruthlessly quashed the shiver of distress, and the heady ripple of sensation which hadn’t died as she had hoped.
She hadn’t realised quite how large he was at the cemetery, his shoulders wide enough to block out the glow of twilight as he stood in the doorway. The top of her head barely reached his collarbone.