Synopsis:She despises him on principle.
New York heiress Jeanne Delancy chooses the wrong time to escape her troubled past and begin anew in Paris. After her friend disappears amid the political upheaval of 1871, the idealistic artist vows to protect the abandoned child she’s come to love until her friend returns. When a handsome, charismatic, and suspiciously inquisitive count offers her an absurdly lucrative commission several months later, Jeanne can only assume he is the same loathsome “comte de Chaumenay” who seduced and deserted her friend long ago. As much as she’d like to refuse his offer, her conscience compels her to give the war hero the opportunity to prove he’s worthy of knowing his son, a test she knows he’ll fail. But the independent woman who thinks herself immune to temptation underestimates the gallant Frenchman in many ways.
He’ll stop at nothing to win her over.
Haunted by battle and the death of his brother, aristocratic cavalry officer Olivier Valencourt is elated to discover the existence of a child who could only be his brother’s illegitimate son. Unfortunately, he has no proof, and the beguiling American beauty caring for the boy in her Montmartre hovel offers only lies and evasions. While he admires her courage and probable good intentions, Olivier is not about to entrust his nephew’s welfare to a woman who frequents dance halls to earn a living. To gain custody, he plots to win her confidence and cooperation through patronage, patience, and his never-before-tested powers of persuasion. But it doesn’t take long for the bohemian’s unconventional wisdom and innocent sensuality to obliterate his self-control and avert his agenda entirely. While the strong-willed opposites struggle to reconcile their deepest longings, dangerous alliances and scandalous secrets threaten a tragic repetition of history.
He stared at the picture. Then he looked at her and grinned in a manner unlike anyone she’d ever met. The expression involved little more than a slight pucker of the lips and a minimal rise of his pronounced cheekbones as if a full smile would take too much effort. The effect was hypnotic. He probably had women falling all over him everywhere he went. “How much?” he demanded.
His intent gaze warmed her despite the tension between them. “Do you see it now?”
“No, but I like your perspective.”
The warmth disappeared at once. “If you can’t feel it, I don’t want you to have it.” She was being foolish, she knew. She desperately needed to make a sale. But she acted with her heart just as she painted with her heart, and she could not bring herself to change her mind. That thwarted look on his face gratified her perhaps even more than his money would have.
“You’re joking.”
“What would make you assume that?” she asked in a deadly serious tone. He didn’t need to explain. Her surroundings made her desperation self-evident. Food had been astronomically expensive due to shortages during the war, and even now the high cost of living quickly absorbed her modest earnings. Madame Pécault had threatened to evict them, and this time Jeanne feared she would take steps.
The man watched her gravely, and she could see from his expression he knew exactly how low she’d fallen. She could endure being poor, but she couldn’t endure pity from one such as he. “I regret that I must ask you to leave now, monsieur. I must return to my work.” With every intention of ending further communication in the most definitive way possible, she marched across the room and stood by the door, which was still ajar.
He didn’t move, unless she counted the slight flaring of his nostrils. “I can’t place your accent. Where are you from?”
Chaumenay was the response she normally gave to this question. Claudine had supplied enough details about her village to make the lie a credible one, but if this man was the comte de Chaumenay, she’d have to be from somewhere else. “Normandy.”
“Is there a Normandy in America?”
Her breath caught with surprise and alarm. Her fictitious French identity stood at the foundation of the stack of lies and omissions her new life was built upon. When Claudine disappeared, she’d vowed to stay with Alex until his mother returned. His grandparents, respectable bourgeoisie who owned a stationery shop, had cut all ties with their daughter because of her mistake, and Jeanne couldn’t put Alex in an orphanage. But as a foreigner, unrelated to the child, she doubted she had any legal right to act as his guardian so she’d invented a new background for herself. She weighted her duty to her friend and her concern for an abandoned child as higher authority than any law.
She couldn’t fathom how this awful man guessed her secret. Years of lessons with a private tutor had given her an impressive command of the language. Her father had hoped her bilingualism might convince potential suitors to overlook certain flaws. It didn’t. “What makes you think I’m American?”
He smiled at her in that way again, and she didn’t find it nearly so enchanting this time.
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