A Forbidden Night with the Housekeeper

by Heidi Rice

  She had hoped against hope to make a life for them both, but the last embers of that hope flickered and guttered out as she watched his blank expression harden.

  ‘This marriage can never be real.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, desperation setting in.

  ‘Because I will never love you back.’

  ‘You don’t have to love me, Maxim. Not yet,’ she said, still trying to rescue a dream she knew had already died. ‘All you have to do is open yourself to love.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said.

  She nodded slowly, carefully, scared she was about to shatter into a million pieces at the finality in his statement. Not shatter, crumble into dust, feeling so insignificant, inconvenient, the way she’d been her whole life.

  She hadn’t asked him to love her, all she had asked for was the hope that one day he might. But he didn’t even want to try. Anything she had to offer him would never be enough.

  The little girl inside her who had watched her father walk away without a backward glance was screaming in pain. But the woman she had become simply nodded. ‘Okay.’

  She needed to leave before he saw her crumble, before he saw how much his rejection hurt. Or she would be nothing again.

  It had taken her a lifetime to become somebody. And she couldn’t let any man take that away from her. Not even him.

  ‘You must not be upset,’ he said stiffly. ‘This is for the best.’

  No, it’s not.

  ‘I need to be alone for a while,’ she murmured.

  He caught her wrist as she tried to leave. ‘Cara, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I thought you understood I can’t offer you that.’

  A spark of anger fired in her chest, and she clung to it. Anything to disguise the pain. ‘You said to me once, Maxim, that you didn’t need my pity,’ she managed. ‘I don’t need yours either.’

  She’d exposed herself to these feelings by accepting so little from him. And if this pain could teach her one thing, it was never to accept so little again.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he said from behind her as she walked away from him.

  ‘To my rooms. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t disturb me tonight,’ she said, her voice coming from far away, as it occurred to her for the first time ever that she was glad they had separate bedrooms.

  She couldn’t make him love her. And she didn’t want to. He’d seduced her with sex, but she had let him, revelling in the physical and wanting it to mean more when it never had. At least to him. All she could do now was repair her broken, foolishly misguided heart.

  ‘Don’t do anything foolish, Cara,’ he said. ‘We can talk more about this in the morning.’

  She pressed her hand to her stomach, imagining the life inside her. And acknowledged how pathetically eager she would have been to take him up on the offer to talk about their relationship only minutes before. Why had she been prepared to accept whatever scraps of affection he was prepared to offer her?

  She didn’t feel tired as she headed up the stairs to her rooms, she felt exhausted, her feet like lumps of lead as she trudged up each step.

  But one thing she did know: there was nothing left to talk about.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘MONSIEUR DURAND, MADAME asked me to give you this.’

  Maxim glanced up from his breakfast—the breakfast he hadn’t been able to eat—to find the young maid he had fired the day before, and then reinstated because none of this was her fault, holding an envelope in her hand.

  It was ten o’clock and he’d barely slept last night. He’d wanted to go to Cara’s rooms a dozen times during the night, to soothe her and beg her to forgive him for his harsh words. To hold her in his arms and take the shattered pain in her eyes away the only way he knew how, by bringing her to the peak of ecstasy and watching her revel in her own pleasure. A pleasure only he could give her.

  But he knew he couldn’t, because that would only give her more false hope.

  When she had told him last night of her childhood, the home she had been denied, all he’d been able to think about was her as a little girl, shunted from family to family without anywhere to belong. He’d wanted to hurt every single person who had rejected that little girl, had made her believe she wasn’t enough.

  But how could he punish them when he’d hurt her more? And made her believe she was the one who wasn’t enough when it had always, always been him.

  ‘Merci, Antoinette,’ he said, remembering the girl’s name and taking the envelope. ‘Is my wife awake then?’ he asked as he sliced open the envelope with his knife.

  ‘The mistress woke hours ago, sir,’ she said. ‘She left at about nine o’clock.’

  ‘She...left?’ His fingers paused on the letter. ‘Where did she go?’ The hollow weight in his stomach turned into a sharp slice of panic.

  ‘I do not know,’ Antoinette said. ‘She told me not to give you this letter, though, until ten o’clock. I think she took a car; she said she was going for a drive.’

  No. No. No. No.

  He flicked open the letter the girl had handed to him and read the words written in black ink.

  Maxim,

  I’m sorry I can’t be the wife you need. I think it is best in the circumstances if we divorce now.

  I cannot bear to live with you and know you feel nothing for me, when I feel so much for you.

  I hope you understand.

  Cara x

  His fingers shook, making the paper tremble.

  She had run. He leapt out of his chair, the fear turning to terror—and the unbearable pain of longing. He forced his mind to engage. If she’d taken one of the estate’s cars it would have a GPS tracker. He stormed out of the château towards the garage, praying each step of the way that she had not managed to get to the station already.

  He couldn’t lose her. Not again. Not like this. What had he done?

  * * *

  Cara took the turning into the short lane through the woods that led to La Maison de la Lune. She’d been driving aimlessly for over an hour, trying to get her thoughts in order before she went home. Not home, she thought miserably.

  Back to Château Durand to talk to Maxim about the divorce.

  He would have received her letter by now. She’d left her phone at home precisely so he couldn’t contact her. But she would have to go back soon. She didn’t want him to worry unnecessarily.

  She wasn’t even sure how she had ended up here. She knew Maxim would have knocked down La Maison last September when she’d run away from him, but even so she hoped that just being in this place, where everything had begun, might help her get some perspective on her pain—and her grief—at the end of their marriage.

  Despite everything, she was still struggling to accept that everything she’d believed about her and Maxim’s relationship—the intimacy she had believed had been growing between them—had been wrong.

  The car took the short bend in the road through the woods but, as she steeled herself for the empty plot that awaited her, she spotted a shape through the trees that had her heart—her bruised and battered heart—bouncing into her throat.

  The house—the house she had once loved so dearly—still stood. The shutters were closed, the door boarded up, the flowers she’d planted in the boxes on the windowsills wilted. But the structure itself—the stone walls, the wooden gables, the red slates of the roof—were all still there, just as she’d left them that morning, when she’d run away from Maxim—and, she now realised, feelings that even then had terrified her.

  She drove into the yard in the SUV she’d borrowed and braked, then rubbed her tired eyes. Was she dreaming, imagining this?

  Why would Maxim not have destroyed the house? He’d been so determined to do it all those months ago—she now knew because of the cruel way his father had treated him and his mother—and, after discovering the ful
l extent of Pierre’s cruelty, she didn’t blame him.

  So why was it still here, whole and solid and, from the way the yard had been brushed free of autumn leaves, also cared for in the months since her departure?

  She got out of the car, walked to the door and laid her cheek against the worn wood. After all the months she’d lived here with Pierre, all she could remember about her life inside these walls was that one forbidden night with Maxim. The hunger, the panic, the joy and then the pain. But most of all the tenderness that she’d failed to acknowledge then, but couldn’t help but acknowledge now.

  The tears that she’d shed during the night returned. God, it hurt to know that even though he’d rejected her, she loved him still. And she knew she always would—that was why she’d asked him for a divorce. She couldn’t go on living with him, sleeping with him, knowing that he would never be able to love her back.

  She heard the purr of an engine, getting louder, cutting through the chirping cheerfulness of a goldfinch’s song. As she turned Maxim’s car drove into the yard. The squeal of brakes was followed by the slam of the car door as he jumped out.

  ‘Cara...you’re here...you didn’t run?’ he said. His eyes were wild, as wild as they had been yesterday in the moments before he had told her he didn’t love her, when he’d saved her from falling.

  She wiped the tears off her cheeks. ‘Of course not,’ she said, shocked when he ran across the yard towards her. ‘I just needed some space.’

  Suddenly she was in his arms and he was hugging her so tightly her heart was hammering against her ribs like a jackhammer.

  ‘Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte jamais,’ he murmured against her hair, his tone urgent, desperate.

  Don’t leave me, don’t ever leave me.

  ‘Maxim?’ She pulled back, her heart swelling in her chest and clattering against her ribs. ‘I wouldn’t have run away. Not again. Not now.’

  He sunk to his knees, clasped her thighs, pressing his head into the mound of her belly. ‘I thought... I thought you had left me.’

  She sunk her fingers into his hair, drew his face up, and saw something in his eyes that had her swollen heart bursting in her chest. She glanced back at the house—the first home she had known. But that home had meant nothing until she had welcomed him into it.

  ‘Maxim, why didn’t you destroy La Maison?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t,’ he said, his expression stark, naked with the longing he had never allowed her to see, until this moment. ‘After you left it was the only thing I had that reminded me of you.’ He swore softly and dropped his head. ‘My revenge against him seemed unimportant once I had lost you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to lose you again. I can’t.’

  Her heart did a giddy leap, despite the hopelessness in his voice.

  Had she been wrong to give up so easily, to believe what he’d told her instead of following her own instincts, her own emotions?

  Gripping his cheeks, she forced his gaze back to hers. ‘Maxim, you don’t have to lose me. I love you,’ she said again, but she refused to bask in the fierce emotion in his eyes. She couldn’t settle for less, the way she had settled so often before. ‘But you made it very clear yesterday you can never love me back. Is that really the truth?’

  He shook his head, but his expression became bleak. ‘I lied,’ he said, his voice full of emotion as he covered her hands with his and stood up. ‘Because I’m a coward,’ he said, dragging her hands from his cheeks. ‘Because I’m afraid of what I feel for you.’ He placed their joined hands over her belly. ‘And for our child. Because I am scared I can never be enough. And that I will fail you, the way I failed my mother.’

  * * *

  Cara looked stunned, Maxim realised, but so beautiful his heart broke just looking at her. She still loved him, but how could he take comfort from that until she knew the truth—until she knew what he’d done all those years ago? How could he ever hope to deserve her love if he did not tell her what he had done to his own mother?

  ‘How did you fail your mother, Maxim?’ she said, the sweet compassion in her eyes wrenching the truth he had never wanted to reveal out of his mouth.

  ‘She was frail, fragile, as I told you, ever since I was a young boy. My birth and the miscarriages she had suffered had hurt her, both physically and mentally. She had dark moods, days when she could barely function, and when that happened she needed me to cook for her, to talk to her, to get her out of bed. The day I came here...’ he looked at the house he had always hated, until he had found his salvation inside it ‘...to tell my father I knew I was his son. I was so excited. It was my birthday. I was fifteen and I believed myself a man. I thought he would want me. But he didn’t. And I was so devastated, so hurt and angry, I took it out on her. I left Burgundy, even though she begged me not to. Even though I knew she would struggle on her own. She needed me and I left anyway. Five months later, she was dead.’

  Once the words were out, he waited to see the love in Cara’s eyes curdle and die, to turn into the disgust with himself he had felt for so many years. But the warmth in his wife’s deep blue eyes didn’t falter or fade, it didn’t even flicker, she simply absorbed his confession and then wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him away from the darkness—and back into the light.

  ‘Maxim, that’s madness. You weren’t responsible for her death. You were her son, not her parent. Whatever you did or didn’t do for her, you weren’t responsible for her pain or her fragility, or her depression.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the house he’d saved because he couldn’t bear to lose the one thing he had that would remind him of their one night together. ‘If anyone was responsible,’ she added as she turned back to him, ‘it was your father. He didn’t deserve a son like you.’

  Her faith in him seemed to seep into his bones as they stood in the sunlight together. He held her too tightly. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to loosen his grip. Not for a while.

  ‘Can you give me another chance?’ he asked. ‘To make this marriage a real marriage. To become a real father to our son. To figure out how to love you.’

  It was the hardest but also the easiest question he’d ever asked of anyone.

  The bright smile she sent him reached into his soul and lightened his heart, until it bobbed into his throat.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But first I want something from you.’

  ‘Whatever it is, it is yours,’ he said, knowing he would be willing to give her anything she desired. If she wanted a palace—if she wanted two—he would buy it for her. She was worth every penny he had, every second of his time it took to earn those pennies. Whatever he had to do to be worthy of her love, he would do it.

  ‘I want you to promise that you will stay in my bed until morning,’ she said.

  ‘That is all?’ He blinked, baffled not just by the simplicity of her request but by the strength of the wonder that barrelled through him at the thought of waking up with her soft body in his arms and never having to let go of her again. Ever.

  She nodded.

  He threw back his head and laughed, the joy—that he had found her and would never ever have to lose her—almost too much to bear.

  ‘Do I have your promise?’ she asked, her voice stern but her eyes sparkling with the same joy exploding in his chest.

  ‘My beautiful wife,’ he murmured as he lowered his head to hers, ready to kiss them both into oblivion then kick in the door of the old farmhouse and carry her upstairs to the bedroom they had shared all those months ago, ‘I promise I will hold you until morning, every day for the rest of our lives.’

  EPILOGUE

  ‘LET ME TAKE le bébé. You must sleep.’

  ‘Go for it, Papa.’ Cara smiled as her husband leant across the wide double bed they had shared all night, every night, for the first time three months ago—the day their marriage had become a real marriage—and scooped their week-old son into his ar
ms.

  Tucking the tiny body against his naked chest, he placed a firm hand against the baby’s back and crooned in a deep, gentle voice, ‘Shh, mon petit garçon, it is time to sleep. Your mother has fed you enough for one night.’

  The baby stopped fidgeting on hearing his father’s voice, and gave a loud burp.

  Cara chuckled wearily.

  ‘Our son is very greedy,’ Maxim murmured, but she could hear the fierce pride in his voice. ‘Hopefully, he will give us both some rest now.’

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ Cara said around a huge yawn. Tucking her now empty breast back into her maternity bra, she snuggled back under the bed’s summer quilt, contentment rolling through on a wave of fatigue as Maxim whispered instructions to his son and the baby’s eyes drifted shut. At last.

  The fatigue was joined by a wave of love—for both the guys in her life—which crested as her heart beat a strong, steady tattoo against her ribs.

  Seriously, was there anything more wonderful than watching this man become the father he was always meant to be? How could Maxim ever have believed he wasn’t capable of loving her, or their child?

  Her husband climbed out of the bed and carried their baby in strong arms to the bassinet, then laid him down gently on his back. She forced herself to stay awake so she could watch the familiar ritual.

  She couldn’t help noticing the muscles in his backside flexing beneath the pyjama bottoms he had started wearing a few weeks ago—when she’d been so huge that sex had become impossible. She felt the familiar flutter of appreciation. It would be quite a while yet before she’d want to act on it—hello, ten hours of labour!—but she could still enjoy the show as Maxim concentrated on stroking his son’s cheek to lull him into a deeper sleep.