The Frenchman's Captive Wife. Chantelle Shaw

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      She must have been the only member of the Dyer household who had forgotten the dinner party planned to honour the potential saviour of Heston Grange, Emily recalled as memories of her first meeting with Luc filled her mind. Rushing in from the stables in her muddy jodhpurs, she had stumbled to a halt, her embarrassment excruciating when she’d viewed her elegant sisters and silently seething mother, but everything had faded to insignificance when she’d caught sight of Jean-Luc Vaillon for the first time.

      The world really could tilt on its axis, she thought with a rueful smile, remembering the way she had literally grabbed hold of the back of a chair for support when he’d surveyed her with his cool grey stare. With his amazing facial bone structure and lean, hard body, he had been the sexiest man she had ever met and she had been unable to repress a shiver when he’d trapped her startled gaze with his, the gleam of amusement in those silvery depths warning her that he was aware of the effect he’d had on her.

      Conscious of her mother’s impatience, she fled upstairs to change into her serviceable navy-blue dress and spent the evening peeping at Luc from beneath her lashes, leaving her sisters to impress him with their sparkling conversation. The head of Vaillon Developments was irresistible with his suave good looks and seductive charm, but despite her sisters’ frantic efforts to capture his attention, Emily glanced up several times during dinner to find him watching her. Embarrassment saw her quickly drop her gaze, but throughout the evening he continued to regard her with a mixture of amusement and another, indefinable emotion in his dark grey eyes.

      ‘I have a feeling you are happier in the company of horses than humans,’ he remarked a few days later, when he suddenly appeared in the stables. He had accepted her parents’ suggestion to stay at Heston and discuss plans for its possible acquisition, but Emily was too shy to respond to his friendly charm and went out of her way to avoid him.

      His husky French accent caused a delicious shiver to run all the way down to her toes, and she blushed and half hid her face against the mane of her darling Arab stallion, Kasim.

      ‘I find horses are generally less complicated,’ she agreed huskily, and his slow smile took her breath away. He remained chatting for several minutes, displaying an impressive knowledge of horsemanship, although she had been too tongue-tied to respond and afterwards had been furious with herself. She must have appeared a halfwit, but surprisingly he came again the next day, and the next, requesting that she ride out with him, and it was during those blissful excursions through the New Forest that she found herself falling in love with him.

      What a fool she’d been, she now thought bitterly, to believe that the charismatic multimillionaire Frenchman would really be interested in a plain little nobody like her. Common sense should have warned her that he must have a hidden agenda, especially when he’d proposed to her so soon after they’d first met. She had ignored her doubts, swept away by his passionate kisses when he’d followed her into the stables and pulled her down into the hay. He’d overwhelmed her senses. She’d loved the way he’d made her feel, loved him and amazingly he’d seemed to want her, too.

      Their wedding, in the magnificent grounds of Heston Grange, had been like a fairy-tale, a dream come true, and the dream had lasted for the whole of that first weekend when he had whisked her off to Paris. She had been a virgin on her wedding night, due only to his iron self-control. The memory of the way he had made love to her for the first time still brought tears to her eyes. He had been so tender, so gentle, treating her reverently as if she were made of the finest porcelain. Her untutored body had been eager to learn and his tenderness had given way to a fierce passion that should have shocked her but had only made her love him more.

      Unfortunately their arrival back in London had signalled the end of the fantasy. Luc was always busy and always with Robyn, and Emily had resented the elegant American’s close relationship with her husband as she’d struggled to fit in to her new life. As her insecurity grew so did the rows, but six months after the wedding Luc suddenly announced he had a break in his busy work schedule and was taking her on a belated honeymoon. It should have been an ideal time to repair the holes in their marriage, but instead the queasiness she had been suffering from for the past few weeks increased and on arrival at their remote island destination, she fainted. A result of dehydration and hormones, the doctor cheerfully informed her before he dropped the bombshell that she was expecting a baby and one glance at Luc’s shocked face warned her that the fairy-tale was over. The moment he discovered she was pregnant their marriage died.