Marie Donovan – Royally Seduced (страница 2)

He rounded the corner to the house and took the steps before knocking on the wide wooden door. He hadn’t bothered to take his key ring on his trip to the Southeast Asian typhoon disaster area. As a relief-work physician, he’d had plenty of important medical supplies to carry with him. It was typical to bring one backpack of personal items and a couple of large suitcases filled with medicine, bandages and emergency surgical instruments. In fact, he was wearing his trusty backpack right now. He couldn’t wait to drop it in his suite of rooms, take a shower and grab something to eat in the large kitchen. A quick knock, the door opened and he was officially in hell.

“Surprise!” A crowd full of people he didn’t know greeted him, slapping him on the back and shaking his hand.

His mother, her hair an exact color match for his thanks to the hairdresser, fought her way to him, kissing him on both cheeks twice and crying prettily, though not enough to either ruin her mascara or redden her eyes. “Jacques! Mon petit Jacques is finally home!” she announced. His mother’s guests cheered again.

He was a rich lady’s prize poodle being trotted out for admiration. And for his next trick, he will administer oral rehydration salts and give measles vaccinations!

He felt like turning around and leaving. But the crowd filled in behind him and Bellamy was taking his beat-up backpack from him.

His mother clutched his shoulders. “Ah, Jacques, your hair. Why so long?” She fingered his long ponytail of chestnut-brown hair. “And la barbe that hides your handsome face?” She tapped his beard. “You look like one of those scruffy men who live in the subway.” She, of course, was impeccably turned out in a flowing silk peach-colored lounge suit, the perfect outfit for an evening party at home.

“Maman, please.” He took her hand away from his face but kissed the back of it so she wouldn’t fuss.

She dimpled at him. “Someone else is waiting to kiss you,” she said coyly.

He had no idea who. “Bellamy?” He was their ancient butler and the idea of being kissed by the old English fossil made him crack the first smile of the evening.

Unfortunately his mother misunderstood. “Oh, you funny boy. But that smile tells me you know who I mean.”

“Actually, Maman, I don’t…” he began, and then his teeth clicked together in shock at the person she intended him to kiss.

He’d rather have dysentery again.

“Nadine.” It was difficult to pronounce his ex-fiancée’s name from a clenched jaw, but he did just fine.

She took that as an invitation instead of an expression of dismay. “Oh, mon amour!” She flung her expensively dressed arms around his neck and tried to kiss him, but he turned his head and was happy to see her spitting out strands of his hair instead.

He took her by the upper arms and tried to set her away from him, but her grip reminded him of a gecko he’d watched while lying in a hospital bed in Thailand. That sticky-footed lizard could walk upside down on the ceiling and even across glass without falling. Of course it could also lick its eyes with its tongue, something that Nadine had not mastered—as far as he knew. What she did with her tongue was none of his business anymore. It was what she had done with it while it had been his business that had caused their breakup.

So why was she here, reenacting The Hero’s Welcome from a black-and-white postwar movie? Jacques looked around at his proud mother and her well-lubricated guests eyeing him and beautiful blonde Nadine fondly. Nadine wisely decided not to kiss him again and instead threaded her arm through his, snuggling into his side. A hired waiter pressed a glass of champagne into his hand that wasn’t suctioned to Nadine, and his mother raised her own glass. “To my son, Jacques Charles Olivier Fortanier Montford, Comte de Brissard.” As usual, she forgot the title he valued the most—doctor.

But the guests cheered anyway. Perhaps his beard hid what had to be a sour expression. Huzzah, huzzah. All that was needed was a rousing orchestral version of “La Marseillaise” as the weary warrior came limping back to Paris. He started to sing under his breath. “Allons, enfants de la Patrie…”

Nadine gave him a strange look and he remembered his precarious situation. She wanted nothing better than to be Madame la Comtesse de Brissard, and Jacques’s paltry wishes were the only impediment to her desire to enter the noblesse.

He detached himself from Nadine and raised his glass in fake cheer when he caught his mother staring at them. “Come with me, Nadine.”

He hurried her into the small hallway leading to the back stairs. Nadine looked at him apprehensively but reached out her arms to him.

Jacques folded his. “Nadine, what the hell are you doing here?” She started to pout, but he ignored it. “Were you hoping I’d developed amnesia along with dysentery?”

“Jacques!”

He was too tired to be kind anymore. “Go away, Nadine. I don’t know what you’ve been telling my mother all these months, but it doesn’t seem to have been the truth.”

“But, mon cher, we just had a little misunderstanding before you left. If you had stayed instead of going to that dreadful typhoon, we would have smoothed things over in no time.”

His jaw fell. “Nadine, I caught you having sex with your personal trainer. In our bed.”

“I know, I know.” She pasted an anguished expression on her face. “And I feel terrible about that. I made a mistake.”

I, I, I. Or as his Portuguese friend Francisco would say, Ay, ay, ay. It was all still about her.

“No, Nadine. We were through as soon as you undressed for that hairless, muscle-bound refugee from the tanning salon.”

Her lips tightened, and he realized the Neckless Wonder might still be her “workout partner.” She scoffed, apparently deciding to take the offensive. “Jacques, you know marriages among our class are not necessarily exclusive. Don’t be so bourgeois.”

“Genetically impossible, chérie. As you well know, I am the Count de Brissard,” he taunted her.

The look in her eye made him glad the guillotine had been retired two hundred years ago. “You have the soul of a peasant.” And she meant it to sting.

Too bad for her he spoiled it by laughing. “I take that as a grand compliment. As a rule, peasants do not cheat and then have the gall to mock the person they cheat on.” Although he had had a few months to come to terms with her infidelity, it still angered him and he started to raise his voice.

“You are the most selfish man I ever met!” she shouted at him.

“Selfish? Because I do not care to share my fiancée sexually?”

“Pah! If you would have stayed in France for more than two weeks, perhaps I wouldn’t have needed to find companionship elsewhere.”

“Bien, so I am selfish for leaving this mansion and going to the absolute hellholes of the world to help people who have nothing? Sick people? Dying people? Et toi, how do you help anyone but yourself?”

“Eh, oui, Saint Jacques of Paris. Any more of your ‘good works’ and they will be carving a statue of you for the Cathedral de Notre Dame. Make sure they get your sweaty hippie hair and beard correct. Cochon!” Her face reddened.

He didn’t know if she was calling him a pig because of his hair or his personality, and he didn’t care. “You are unbelievable. I am grateful I saw your true character before marrying you. I’m sure you would have cost me plenty to divorce you once I found out.”

Her mouth twisted, about to fire more insults at him, but he couldn’t take it—couldn’t take her—any longer. He rounded the corner leading back to the party and stopped short.

His mother stood stricken in the hall, her hand covering her mouth—like he wished he had done to himself. The guests stood behind her, their expressions ranging from shocked to sly to amused.

Even Bellamy was shaking his dignified gray head. If Bellamy heard them yelling, they must have been loud indeed.

“Maman.” He lowered his head to hers. “I am so sorry to ruin…” Out of the corner of his eye he caught a young man with disheveled blond hair surreptitiously taking his photo with his phone.

Was nothing private anymore? He couldn’t even talk to his mother in their own home without some idiot and his camera phone?

“Eh, you!” he shouted at the man. “No photos. Give me that phone.”

The guy clutched his phone to his chest but Jacques easily wrestled it from him and deleted the picture.

But that first man was not the only one. A larger camera took his picture—several times. Had his mother hired a photographer for the party? No, he noticed a polished brunette standing next to the photographer, taking copious notes.

“Reporters, Maman?”

Her stricken expression confirmed it. “Just the society page. They asked to come when we got news of your return.”

“I don’t want to be on the society page.” That was a big reason he didn’t stay in France for very long.

“I’m so sorry, Jacques.” Her big blue eyes started to tear. “I missed you so much and wanted to welcome you back.”

The large room started pressing in on him. “No, Maman, I’m sorry for embarrassing you. But I can’t stay.”

“What?” Her forehead creased. “But, Jacques, you just got home.”