by Serena Janes
Pride and impatience and newlyweds—a dangerous combination!
Joanna finally gets her French lover—and marries him, too—but relocating to a foreign country proves harder than she thought. So does getting pregnant, when a new stepson, accidents and a haunted house conspire against her happiness.
Luc easily fits his new American wife into his world, until he learns she comes with strings attached. She’s an heiress with money to burn. Can he accept that he no longer holds the purse strings?
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Gift of the Black Virgin
Copyright © 2013 Serena Janes
ISBN: 978-1-77111-676-3
Cover art by Carmen Waters
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Smashwords Edition
Gift of the Black Virgin
The Black Virgin Trilogy, Number Three
By
Serena Janes
Chapter One
Joanna Clifford glared at the chip on her perfectly-manicured fingernail. It was the best polish and topcoat money could buy, guaranteed to last at least a week, the beautician on Vancouver’s Robson Street had told her. She was counting on it to hold up the entire time she and Luc were in Paris—she didn’t intend to worry about her nails while she was being wined, dined and screwed senseless by the most wonderful man in the world. The man who was going to show her his Paris, then marry her and bring her home to live with him in the southwest of France.
But the chip was the least of her problems.
It’s not supposed to be like this. I’ve atoned for my mistakes, and the revenge should stop. It isn’t fair!
Jo knew she was being irrational and selfish, but she didn’t care. She was numb with fatigue and shock, and the rocking motion of the train was making her feel slightly queasy.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him,” Lucien LaPlante repeated in a broken voice, sitting beside her in the crowded railway car. They were just pulling out of the Gare d’Austerlitz in Paris, beginning their five-hour journey to Cahors. She watched her handsome lover lean forward in his seat and lower his head into his hands. He didn’t look particularly handsome now—face drawn, long dark hair all over the place, his beautiful dark eyes looking right past her into his worst nightmare.
“Shh, shh. He’ll pull through. The doctors were able to get to him right away, and that’s the important thing,” Jo said, unsure if she knew what she was talking about. Rubbing Luc’s big shoulder abstractedly, she thought it probably didn’t matter what she said, as long as she listened. And held onto him.
“Putain de merde. It’s all my fault,” he insisted.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s my fault that he played today.”
“How could it be your fault?”
“I told him he had to play. It was a tournament game. Merde.”
“I don’t understand.”
Luc shifted uncomfortably in his seat and turned to look out at the receding Parisian suburbs. She saw the tension in his jaw and knew he’d been grinding his teeth again.
“Last week I sat him down for a father-to-son. And I told him about you.” He glanced at the people sitting nearby and lowered his voice. “About your arrival.”
He held out his left hand, fingers splayed. The fourth finger didn’t show a trace of the wedding ring he’d worn for nine years. He’d had it cut off in Rocamadour, last spring, to prove to Jo he was no longer married. The only reason he still wore it, he’d explained, was to protect his son from reality.
“I told him he was going to have a step-mother, soon. From the United States.”
Jo felt twitchy all of a sudden. She tried to keep her voice calm. “Wasn’t it a little soon? He hasn’t had a lot of time to adjust to the fact that his parents aren’t married to each other anymore.”
She knew that, despite finalizing their divorce a few years ago, Luc and his ex-wife Anna pretended it was perfectly normal for mama and papa to each live in their own house. Daniel, only eight, flitted back and forth between the two homes, which shared an acreage, as easily as a butterfly.
Until Jo forced Luc’s hand, so to speak. She didn’t actually force him to tell his son the truth, but it was her appearance in Luc’s life that necessitated it. Once the ring was gone, Daniel had to know why.
“Yes. Anna told me it was too soon. But there was the party.”
Jo tensed. “What party?”
Through his teary eyes Luc managed to look a little sheepish. “Our engagement party,” he whispered.
“Oh?” She didn’t know whether to feel flattered or annoyed. “And when were you going to tell me?”
“Earlier today. As soon as you arrived,” he said, lowering his head back into his hands.
Landing at Charles de Gaulle only a few hours earlier, Jo was exhausted from her flight from Seattle, but buoyed with the anticipation of two glorious weeks with her French lover. They had been separated for two weeks—two agonizingly long weeks—and she ached for him body and soul.
Her suitcases bulged with her prettiest clothes, her sexiest lingerie and her most ridiculous high-heeled shoes. But when she disembarked, instead of an amorous fiancé with an armload of roses, she was greeted by a tearful, disheveled wreck of a man who couldn’t wait to drag her onto a train back to Cahors.
“A party’s the last thing on my mind now. I have to cancel everything,” he said.
“When was this party supposed to be held?” Jo asked carefully. Despite losing her romantic week in Paris, she decided she should be pleased about this one small thing. The idea of an engagement party, where she would meet Luc’s family and friends, was touching. But now, of course, it was unthinkable.
“Next Sunday. At the family house in Nice,” Luc said into his hands. “My father and brother were going to come down from Lyon. I’ll have to call them tonight and tell them what’s happened.”
Jo could hear the uncharacteristic tremor in his voice, she could see his shoulders shake, and her heart swelled in response. She had to be brave and face the facts. Daniel was Luc’s only child, and he had been injured in a soccer match. Maybe seriously.
And she, along with her sexy underwear, had fallen into the background.
Casting a longing glance at her suitcases, which were stacked on the racks over their heads, she put her arms around her beloved as best she could in the awkward seats, ignoring the curious glances of their fellow travelers.
“Never mind the party. Although it was very sweet of you to have thought of it. How did Daniel react when you told him about me?”
“Not well.”
“Oh?” She hadn’t anticipated this, and couldn’t think of anything else to say. The back of her throat burned with a bitter bile. Motion sickness—her perenni
al friend whenever she traveled—was threatening to make her retch. She leaned down to her bag, fumbled for a chewable Gravol and popped it into her mouth.
Luc, watching her, continued. “First he became quiet, retreating like I do when I’m upset.”
He squirmed in his seat, rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and then looked again at Jo. His dark blue eyes were bloodshot and puffy, his lips white with the effort of clenching his jaw.
“He wouldn’t leave his room, and then he said he wasn’t going to play in the cup final this weekend.”
“Do you know why?” she asked as she sucked hard on the cherry-flavored tablet.
He sighed. “Not really. He loves soccer. Maybe it was his way of punishing me. He knows how proud I am of him and how well he plays.”
“And probably because I wasn’t going to be there to watch him,” he added.
Jo began to piece it all together. It wasn’t sounding good. “Because you had to meet me?”
He nodded. “When you and I made our plans I’d forgotten about his game. Of course it’s the biggest one of the season. I feel like such a shit.”
He turned back to the window and the autumn scenery flashing past. “It was too late to change anything,” he continued. “You’d already booked your flights. I’d booked our Paris hotel. So I just told him to stop being silly. I said he had to play. He owed it to his team. And to himself. I guess I shamed him into it.”
“And then what happened?” Jo asked, although she guessed what was coming.
“He played very badly, I’m told. And then he went for a shot and must have misjudged his position because he tripped and fell head-first into the goal post.”
Jo felt her heart contract when she saw the anguish on her lover’s face. “Luc, whatever you think, it’s not your fault. You did what you thought was best,” she said, squeezing his arm gently and swallowing the last of the vile little pill. “Don’t blame yourself. If anything, it’s my fault.”
Platitudes weren’t good for much, Jo thought.
But what else can I do?
“It is my fault. I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him!” was all he would say for the next four hours.
C’est la vie! Jo kept telling herself as the train sped away from the City of Lights. I can’t pout. I have to be cool with this. Mature. Of course a child is going to complicate our lives. But I accept that. I’ll adapt.
She felt her lover squirming in the seat beside her and reached out a hand to grasp his. Her vacation might have been ruined, but when it came to being with Luc, she didn’t want to push her luck. It was a miracle they’d even met. By some quirk of fate, they’d found themselves on the same walking tour of the Dordogne Valley last spring—Luc as a substitute guide, Jo as a last-minute guest. But theirs was a short-lived affair. Whenever Jo thought about it, it seemed another miracle that they found each other again after the terrible separation that almost wrecked them both.
She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
It’s not supposed to turn out like this, she repeated to herself. I’ve accepted my fate. The Black Virgin needs to let me get on with our life together. Not throw obstacles at us.
Blaming the Black Virgin might have been silly, but it made Jo feel a little less responsible for everything she’d done since she first set eyes on Luc. The Gravol had kicked in and she was feeling calmer. Sleepy, even. Her mind drifted and she began to think about the first time she met the Black Virgin of Rocamadour.
She and Luc had been panting over each other for the first three days of their walking tour. But she was practically engaged to James, and knew it was wrong to cheat. Especially with a virtual stranger, no matter how attractive.
Then Luc took her to the Chapelle Notre Dame at the top of the exquisitely beautiful pilgrimage site of Rocamadour. Inside the church, he showed her the small wooden figure of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour.
The figure was supposed to represent a pre-Christian, archetypal mother, an eternal life-giver. She was a Christianized pagan goddess, symbolizing the dark, dangerous, subversive female force that, until meeting Luc, Jo didn’t even know existed within her.
Jo could accept the idea that the mind-destroying desire she felt for her French guide was as natural as life itself. And should be embraced…
But when she found out that the Cult of the Virgin became wildly popular during the Middle Ages because people believed the Virgin would forgive their sins, Jo became even more excited. Some followers thought she helped women by lessening the pain of childbirth, and even took their place in bed so their husbands wouldn’t discover their adultery.
It was all pretty amazing stuff, Jo thought, as a smiling Luc explained that Black Virgins might be depictions of Mary Magdalene. And despite being called virgins, because they represented female sexual power, they were considered the antitheses of the Virgin Mary.
Jo was instantly sold. She joined the Cult of the Black Virgin, vowing to celebrate her dark goddess. She would open her heart—and her legs—to the man she desired more than any man she’d ever met. Luc—a virtual stranger.
That was the beginning of their affair. But after a week of indulging their lust, something very strange happened.
She fell in love.
And so, apparently, did Luc. But she didn’t understand that until much later.
A tragic loss caused her to leave him without a word. Too late, she realized how much he meant to her. Too late, she tried to reconnect.
But all attempts to find him failed. He was in France, she was in Seattle and Vancouver. Her anguish crippled her, and she couldn’t help but think that the Black Virgin was punishing her for rejecting the Cult. For rejecting her best self—the passionate sexual goddess within.
But, somehow, the universe conspired to bring the lovers back together.
Their reunion, after three months of pain and guilt, was worthy of a romance novel. Luc found Jo and proposed marriage, and she accepted, agreeing to move to France. The compromises would be mostly hers, but she made them willingly, with an open heart. She would do anything for him. She loved him.
Love gave her the courage to quit her magazine editor’s job, pack up her belongings, and prepare to change everything in her life. This trip was supposed to be a prelude to their life together. After a decadent stint in Paris, she would get a feel for Luc’s hometown of Cahors, which, he promised, would be lovely in October.
Then she was going to return to Vancouver, move her belongings to her mother’s house in Seattle, and wait for Luc to join her there. He wanted to meet her family.
The two of them, along with Sammy, her Jack Russell terrier, would fly back to France for good in November. There they would rent a house, shop for real estate, and pick a wedding date.
That had been the plan, anyway. Until an eight-year-old she’d never met ran head-first into a solid piece of steel.
The train arrived at the Cahors station in the late afternoon. Jet-lagged, disappointed, faintly nauseous, Jo spent the rest of the day and half the night in the waiting room of the Centre Hospitalier. After hurriedly introducing her to Anna, Luc more or less disappeared. She couldn’t help feeling as abandoned as her luggage, sitting forlornly in a corner of the room. She sucked it up as best she could, but still…
This was no way to start the next phase of her life.
At least I can brush my teeth and change my clothes. I suppose it could be worse.
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she felt ashamed of her pettiness. Daniel could be in serious trouble. Her small problems were not really problems at all.
A harried nurse told her in broken English that doctors had induced a coma in the boy to control further damage. No one would know the extent of the damage until he was brought out of it, but his parents refused to leave his bedside. Jo passed the time by reading one of the novels she’d downloaded onto her tablet, but she found it hard to keep her eyes open. She tried to eat the hospital cafeteria food, but decent as
it was, most of it stuck in her throat. Instead of eating, she drank black coffee.
Finally, at one AM, Luc allowed the doctors to order him home. There was nothing he could do, they told him, and Anna promised to sit with Daniel while he took Jo home and tried to get some sleep.
Numb with exhaustion and bitter disappointment, Jo was barely aware of the taxi ride along the dark country roads that lead to Luc’s house, was hardly conscious of climbing into bed with her grieving lover and then falling into a sleep so heavy that she didn’t know where she was when she woke up the next day.
She was surprised, and not very happy, to find herself alone in a small farm house in the middle of nowhere. A whimpering dog was scratching at the back door, but she saw no other signs of life. She opened the door and watched the dog run from room to room, looking for someone who wasn’t her. It was a medium-sized spaniel with longish brown and white fur. He seemed friendly enough, but not really interested in her until she cut him a chunk of cheese from a block she found in the fridge.
Luc had left a scrawled note on the kitchen table, asking her to call when she was able. When she did, she was taken to voice mail automatically, and it wasn’t until noon that he called her back.
“No, nothing’s changed,” he said.
“Do you know when you’ll be home?” she asked in a small voice, not wanting to put any more pressure on him
“Non. The specialist promised to come around after he finishes his surgeries, but we don’t know when that will be.”
She could hear the fatigue and fear in his voice, and her small concerns felt weightless in comparison. How dare she even voice them?
“Okay. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m sorry, Joanna. Please make yourself at home.”
