The French Count's Pregnant Bride. Catherine Spencer

I’ll be ready and waiting.”

      Yesterday, when the chambermaid had shown her to her room, Diana had considered it barely acceptable. At little more than twelve feet square, with its old, mismatched furnishings, it was, without question, the least sophisticated space she’d ever occupied, and certainly not one in which she planned to spend much time. Now, leaning against the closed door, she surveyed the narrow, iron-framed bed, hand-painted night table, carved armoire and three-drawer chest, with fond gratitude for the haven they represented.

      Even the age-spotted mirror hanging above the old-fashioned washstand held a certain charm. Its most grievous sin lay in distorting her reflection on its wavy surface so that one half of her face looked as if it didn’t quite belong to the other. Unlike Comte Anton de Valois, who possessed an unnerving talent for seeing clear through to her brain and detecting every nuance of hesitation, every carefully phrased falsehood.

      She doubted he’d swallowed her excuse that hunger had left her light-headed, but it had been the best she could come up with on short notice, most especially since she really had been thrown for a loop at learning that Henri was a Molyneux.

      “You are alone?” he’d inquired, when she’d shown up last night and requested a room.

      She’d nodded and murmured assent, so captivated by everything she saw that it simply hadn’t occurred to her to ask his full name. It had been enough that everyone called him Henri.

      Bathing her in a welcoming smile, he’d pushed an old-fashioned ledger across the counter for her to sign. “Then you’re in luck. It so happens a single room just became available.”

      L’Auberge d’Olivier was a picturesque building with the date, 1712, stamped above the open front door. Its thick plaster walls were painted a soft creamy-yellow. Flowers tumbled from baskets perched on the sills of its sparkling, deep-set windows. Outside, under a huge plane tree, candles flickered on wrought-iron tables where old men hunched over glasses of dark wine and smoked pungent cigarettes.

      Charmed, she’d seen it as a fortuitous start to her search. Because Bellevue-sur-Lac was so small, she’d thought it would be easy to unearth clues that would lead her to her birth mother. Had spent this entire day combing the narrow streets, convinced success was around the next corner. Behind the protection of her sunglasses, she’d scrutinized every woman she came across, searching for a physical resemblance, a visceral intuition, that would tell her she’d found the right one. But the very smallness of the village turned out to be a serious drawback.

      “How do you plan to tackle this harebrained scheme of yours?” Carol had asked, just before she’d dropped her off at SeaTac airport.

      “Very discreetly,” Diana had replied smugly. “I’ll be so smooth and subtle, no one will even notice me, let alone guess what I’m after.”

      In fact, she’d been an object of suspicious curiosity everywhere she went. Although they’d been polite enough, people had closed ranks against her, not trusting a lone American wandering the area, and she’d come back to the inn that evening, no farther ahead than she had been when she’d left there that morning.

      Was she really so naive that she’d expected all she had to do was show up, and her mother would instinctively know her? So foolish as to think that, in the unlikely event such a miracle occurred, a woman who’d kept her baby’s birth a secret for over twenty-eight years would willingly reveal it now?

      “You’re rushing into this, Diana,” Carol had warned. “You need to take a step back and consider the pitfalls, the most obvious being that you’re the world’s worst liar. What makes you think you can pull off such a monumental deception?”

      She should have listened to her friend. Perhaps then, she wouldn’t have made a spectacle of herself with a man smart enough to recognize something fishy when it was staring him in the face.

      And so accustomed to having his own way that he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

      What had he threatened, before she fled to the sanctuary of her room? Be down here by the time the bouillabaisse is ready, or I’m coming up to get you, or words to that effect?

      That he meant it was enough to have her changed into fresh clothes and on her way downstairs again in record time. If there was to be a confrontation, better it take place in public, than here in a room that was barely large enough for one. He was too pushy, too sure of himself—and, she admitted reluctantly, altogether too attractive for her to deal with him at close quarters.

      She needed to keep her wits about her because, just when she’d been ready to concede defeat and admit Carol had been right all along, the one lead she’d hoped to find had fallen almost literally into her lap. Henri Molyneux, her host, might very well be the key to the mystery of who her birth mother was, and whether or not he knew it, Anton de Valois was going to help Diana unlock it.

      Falling under his charming spell would undermine her resolve and might very well turn out to be a fatal mistake, because he struck her as a man of many layers; a classic example of the old saying that still waters run deep.

      She must resist him at all costs.

      CHAPTER THREE

      A MAN likes to be seen with a woman who knows how to dress, Harvey used to say. That she cares enough about his opinion to want to make him proud when he takes her out in public, tells him he made the right choice in marrying her.

      A belittling definition of a wife’s worth, Diana thought now, although she hadn’t said so at the time, and she was pretty sure Anton de Valois would see past such superficiality. Even so, she dressed with care, and from the way his glance swept over her in frank approval when she joined him again, knew she’d chosen well. Her sleeveless navy dress, deceptively simple but superbly cut, was enhanced only by a silver bracelet, lending just the right touch of low-key elegance for what, to all apparent intents and purposes, was supposed to be a low-key dinner.

      “You took rather longer to return than you were supposed to, but it was well worth the wait,” he remarked, pulling out her chair. “You look quite lovely, Diana, and very much better than you did half an hour ago.”

      “Thank you. I’m feeling better.” She took her seat, outwardly poised, but when his hand brushed against her bare skin, a shock of sensual heat flashed through her, and briefly—very briefly indeed!—she longed to lean into his touch and soak in his warmth.

      This was a man put on earth to tempt a woman to stray from her intended course. He turned her thoughts to such nonsense as love at first sight, to happy-ever-after, when any person with a grain of sense knew there was no such thing. Yet for all that she tried to distance herself from him, his magnetism tugged at her, drawing her ever deeper into its aura.

      Simply put, she found him both irresistible and intriguing. The cast of his mouth, the slow-burning fire in his eyes, spoke of a passion which, once aroused, be it from anger, pride or sexual desire, would not easily be quenched. The lean strength of his body betrayed a working familiarity with manual labor, yet cashmere, silk and fine leather were created with his particular brand of natural elegance in mind.

      Why hadn’t she met him sooner, before she’d learned to be so wary, so disillusioned? she lamented. Before she’d married the wrong man and had all her womanly dreams turned to ashes?

      Annoyed by her wandering thoughts, she stiffened her spine, both physically and mentally. She was here on a mission, and the handsome French Count resuming his seat across from her, merely the means to an end.

      Blithely ignorant of her thoughts, the handsome French Count smiled winningly and said, “Enough to tolerate a glass of wine before we eat?”

      “Perhaps not quite that much,” she said, deciding she needed to keep a clear head. So what if his voice was dark as midnight, his smile enough to melt the polar ice cap, and his face the envy of angels? She’d learned the hard way how easily sexual awareness could cloud other important issues between a man and a woman, and she wasn’t about to let it lead her astray again. “At