LITMIR.BIZ

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them all because you don’t have any jewellery and I wasn’t sure what you’d like best,’ he said with perfect seriousness. ‘I want to give you everything, you see,’ he said roughly. ‘Me—life, love, babies galore…everything that it’s in my power to give you.’ Then he took out one last item, a folded piece of creased tissue paper, and carefully unwrapped it, and she sat up, shedding the expensive baubles, to look at the thin, old-gold band plainly set with a straight row of three extremely modest diamonds.

      ‘It was my mother’s engagement ring, and her mother’s before her,’ he said. ‘Dad kept it for me after Mum died so I could give it in turn to my wife. But Clare thought it was too old-fashioned and the diamonds too small. And I never even considered showing it to Carolyn. For the last fifteen years, although I didn’t know it, I’ve been keeping it for you…’

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Regan shakily, imagining all the emotion invested in the cherished reminder of loves past.

      He slid it on her slender finger. ‘I knew it would suit you…’

      ‘Small, plain and simple?’ she taunted his ruthless pride.

      ‘Dainty, rare and precious.’ He tumbled her back on the bed and carelessly brushed away his lavish offerings in order to get down to the serious business of loving.

      ‘Do you know, I think that you and I together have helped prove an old saying?’ he said, lifting the hand bearing his ring to his lips.

      ‘What’s that?’ she murmured dreamily as he bent his head to give her the most treasured gift of all.

      ‘That revenge is deliciously, irresistibly sweet…’

The Frenchman’s Mistress

      Kathryn Ross was born in Zambia, where her parents happened to live at that time. Educated in Ireland and England, she now lives in a village near Blackpool, Lancashire. Kathryn is a professional beauty therapist, but writing is her first love. As a child she wrote adventure stories and at thirteen was editor of her school magazine. Happily, ten writing years later, Designed With Love was accepted by Mills & Boon. A romantic Sagittarian, she loves travelling to exotic locations.

       Look for Kathryn Ross’s brilliant new Modern™ Romance Italian Marriage: In Name Only. Available now from Mills & Boon!

      Chapter One

      WHEN Caitlin had told people that she was leaving England to start a new life in Provence it had sounded glamorous and exciting. Now, as she peered out through rain that seemed to be slanting in diagonal sheets across the windscreen of her car reality started to set in. Was this it: her dream villa, her escape route from everything that had been wrong in her life?

      In her imagination the villa had been cradled in the lush green warmth of the French countryside, painted deep ochre to blend with the surroundings, green shutters closed to protect the perfectly proportioned rooms from the full glare of the Mediterranean sun. But the reality looked nothing like her dreams. Perhaps once it had been a quaint cottage, but now it looked sad and neglected and frankly rather bleak.

      Maybe she had taken a wrong turning and this was not really her house? She picked up the maps, checking the route she had taken, and then glanced again at the papers she had been given at the solicitor’s office. The directions had been fairly straightforward; she didn’t think she had made a mistake, and there didn’t seem to be another building for miles around.

      Caitlin peered out at the dilapidated building again. Daylight was beginning to fade, before it went dark she was going to have to get out and investigate. Or she could turn her car around and head for the nearest village and book into a hotel. For a moment the thought of a hot shower, fine French food and cool cotton sheets was very tempting. She had set off driving from London at four-thirty this morning; it was now almost seven in the evening and she was exhausted. But she had come this far and, as tired as she was, she would not be able to rest easily until she knew for certain if this was Villa Mirabelle…her inheritance.

      She switched off the car engine and the silence was filled with the rhythmic sound of rain hitting the roof so heavily it sounded like a distant roll of thunder. The world outside was lost in a dark watery haze as the windscreen wipers stopped. Caitlin pulled up the hood of her raincoat and, taking the front door key she had been given and a torch from the glove compartment of the car, she took a deep breath and stepped out of the vehicle.

      Her feet sank straight into the sodden, muddy ground making her progress towards the front door a bit like paddling through thick, syrupy treacle and her jeans beneath the blue raincoat were instantly soaked and splattered with mud. There were two steps up to the front door and she almost fell up them as the raindrops blurred her vision. In case she had the wrong place, she knocked on the wooden door and waited to hear any movement from within, but was aware of nothing except the drumming of the rain against her waterproof coat.

      With slightly shaking hands she tried her key in the enormous lock. It slipped in easily but wouldn’t turn. She almost laughed aloud in relief, but before taking it out tried again, this time turning it in the opposite direction. With a sinking heart she felt the soft click of the lock opening and knew then without a shadow of doubt that she had the right place.

      Disappointment prickled inside her for just a second and then she quickly brushed it away as she reminded herself how kind it had been of Murdo to leave her the cottage. She would be forever grateful to him, especially as the bequest had come at a time in her life when she had most needed it. And it had been totally unexpected. It wasn’t even as if she was related to him, she had merely been his nurse. There was no reason why he should have left her a single penny, let alone a property in France with all its land.

      She pushed the door open and shone her torch into the thick blackness inside. The yellow beam of light played over what looked like a lot of white sheets and it took her a moment to realise that they were dustsheets over furniture. She stepped inside out of the rain and the floorboards creaked in protest as if no one had dared to step on them for a long time. There was a light switch next to the door and she flicked it on but wasn’t surprised when nothing happened. The electricity was probably turned off…that was if the place still had electricity. Leaving the door open she stepped further into the room. It smelt vaguely of lavender mixed with the damp earth smell of somewhere that hadn’t been aired for a long time.

      On a sideboard there were a few silver-framed photographs of people Caitlin didn’t recognise. They made her realise how little she knew about her former employer. He hadn’t been a man given to revealing intimate insights of his life, indeed she had only known about his land in France because from time to time he had been visited by his ex next-door neighbour, a tall dark Frenchman called Ray Pascal.

      As she ran a curious eye over the photographs she suddenly picked out the familiar face of Ray amongst all the strangers. She lifted the photo and blew the dust from it.

      It was obviously his wedding photograph. There was a beautiful woman by his side in a long white dress; she had dark hair and laughing eyes. Caitlin guessed it had been taken about fifteen years ago because Ray looked as if he was in his early twenties. He had been good-looking back then, she thought as she studied the photograph intently, but he had matured into a formidably handsome man—if a somewhat disagreeable one. Her eyes flicked again to the woman he had married; apparently she had died in a car crash and Ray had never got over losing her.

      She had only met Ray a few times but on each occasion there had been an underlying tension between them that had unnerved her completely. She wasn’t used to men looking at her with such disapproval. In fairness she supposed they had got off to a bad start. The first day she had opened the door to him she had been wearing a pair of minuscule shorts and a T-shirt and he had looked at her with a raised eyebrow when she had casually told him she was Murdo’s nurse.

      ‘Aren’t you a little scantily clad for work?’ he had inquired dryly.

      Now, at that point she probably should have explained that in fact it was her day off and she wouldn’t have been there except for an urgent phone call from Murdo telling

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