His Mistress Proposal?: Public Scandal, Private Mistress / His Mistress, His Terms / The Secret Mistress Arrangement. Susan Napier
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direction, she did a U-turn, and came back to park on a rough grass verge beside a large, open acreage of vines stretching away in parallel rows from the roadside with nary a sign of a fence or hedge marking out the edges of the property, very unlike the farms and vineyards of home. She sighed and rested her elbow on the open driver’s window while she sipped at her lukewarm bottle of water, looking towards the church steeple and clock-tower she could see rising above the tops of the venerable plane trees that lined the narrow main street, and had made it such a challenge for her to negotiate. It seemed to still be siesta-time, for there were few people moving about. Heat lay like a blanket over the countryside, the cream and brown houses of plaster and stone in the historic village looking as if they had grown up out of the rocky land itself. It was an idyllic scene, incredibly peaceful—if you discounted the ceaseless chorus of the cicadas, loudly quacking away in the trees like a flock of miniature ducks.
As if to contradict her, the bell-tower chimed the half-hour and two teenagers on motor scooters buzzed past the corner shouting catcalls to each other.
Maybe if she made the five-minute drive around the village one more time she might be able to better orientate herself to the wiggly lines on the map. Or she could buy herself something at one of the little shops or cafés in the main street and lower herself to actually ask for directions. She wasn’t really in any hurry, so it didn’t matter if she took all afternoon to trace her hosts.
She heard a metal creak and turned to see a man coming out of a large, barred double-gate in the high stone wall on the other side of the tar-sealed road.
‘Are you just browsing around the area, or looking to buy that particular vineyard?’ he inquired with a smile as he sauntered up to her open window.
Veronica smiled back. ‘I wish! Just browsing, thanks, Miles—and sitting here trying to make head or tail of this map of Karen’s! I didn’t realise I was right on top of you.’
Miles Reed’s weathered face creased in a chuckle. ‘Hello, Veronica. We weren’t sure it was you at first. We watched you whiz past a few times before Melanie thought she recognised that reddish hair—’
He didn’t notice her flinch as he continued, ‘Don’t blame your sister—everyone gets confused. The roads are very wiggly-waggly around here. If you turn around, I’ll open up the gates for you. Bear left when you come in and you’ll see the parking bay where you can leave your car.’
The paved driveway sloped gently down and curved around a profusion of tall, flowering shrubs and clusters of cherry, apricot and almond trees before splitting into two—one broad section turning right towards the large, two-storeyed stone house overlooking a cobbled courtyard and the other, narrower drive terminating in a vine-covered pergola next to the windowless back wall of a small, rectangular cottage with rough-plastered walls painted the colour of clotted cream and deep-set windows covered by blue shutters.
Miles followed her down on foot and handed her two keys on a small ring. ‘One for the gate, one for the cottage,’ he told her as she opened the boot of her car. ‘Let me help you take these bags around—Melanie should be along in a minute to show you all you need to know about the cottage. She was just trying to drag Sophie out of the pool.
‘I hope you had a good trip from Paris,’ he said, swinging out her larger case as if it weighed no more than a feather and reaching in for the soft roll-bag. For a man in his early sixties he had the vigour and energy of a much younger man, perhaps because of his very physical lifestyle, being very much of a hands-on builder, according to Karen. ‘And you found your way to St Romain with no nasty little surprises on the road from Avignon.’
Just one big one! Veronica bent over to refasten the buckle on the side of her case and when she straightened her face was excusably pink.
‘It was a very interesting drive,’ she admitted with perfect truth.
She followed Miles down the steps and around onto a sunny, paved patio edged with flowering plants at the front of the cottage, where he put down her bags beside a wrought-iron table and chairs.
‘I’m very grateful to you both for allowing me to stay,’ she added shyly, looking around the walled garden with its wonderful profusion of plants and trees, a white, crushed-stone pathway leading off between two stone pillars to join the sweeping curve of the main driveway. Only just, through the tracery of leaves and branches, could she make out an occasional glimpse of the clay-tiled roof of the main house.
Miles ran his stubby, carpenter’s fingers through his healthy thatch of iron-grey hair. ‘We’re the ones who’re grateful, Veronica. After all, your holiday is just as important as ours.’
‘Uh, yes, well … thank you,’ murmured Veronica, not quite sure what he meant. ‘I was sorry to hear about Melanie’s accident …’
‘Aren’t we all!’ he said, pulling a face. ‘It threw a real spanner in the works. She’s been planning this big get-together for so long she was furious at being told she’d have to curtail her activities and wear a sling—particularly the bit about not being able to drive!’
Big get-together? Veronica felt a ripple of dismay. ‘How many are coming? I was sure that Karen said it was only going to be your family …’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean big in terms of numbers, there’s only seven of us,’ he explained, to her relief, ‘but the kids are so rarely all in the same place at the same time any more, that it’s a Very Big Deal for Melanie, especially since it was planned around her mother’s seventy-fifth birthday …’ He gave her a long-suffering roll of his hazel eyes. ‘No family holiday is complete without the old ma-in-law tagging along, right?’
Veronica laughed, because she had seen them together, and knew that he and Zoe Main got on extremely well. She also knew that two of their three offspring were no longer ‘kids’ in the strict sense of the word. The twenty-one-year-old twins might object to being put in the same grade as their much younger sister.
‘And, of course, Melanie’s stepson from her first marriage has agreed to come too, so that makes it even more of a VBD as far as she’s concerned,’ Miles said.
‘Oh, I didn’t even know she’d been married before,’ she murmured in surprise.
‘Long ago and very briefly,’ said Miles, with a brevity of his own that spoke volumes. ‘But it’s good for Melanie that he still considers himself part of the family—’
He broke off as his wife came down the crushed-stone pathway, accompanied by a plump little girl in a blue swimsuit with a thin towel wrapped around her waist, her wet plait dripping down over her shoulder, her round spectacles glinting in the sun.
‘Veronica—how wonderful to see you!’ Melanie’s clear voice rang out across the garden as she approached in a characteristic rush of enthusiasm, her cool, floral dress fashionably smart on a matronly figure that attested to her love of good food. She ruefully flapped her right arm helplessly in its blue sling and threw her left arm wide, going on tiptoes to offer a welcoming half-hug, laughing at the great disparity in their statures that forced Veronica to bend her knees.
‘Oh, but we must do this the French way,’ she said, and gave Veronica a brief kiss on both cheeks, and then another peck on the left. ‘The third one demonstrates that you’re an extra good friend—’ her blue eyes twinkled as she backed off, her ash-blonde hair framing a face whose rounded contours were cheerfully unadorned, and remarkably girlish for a woman of nearly fifty ‘—which you most definitely are, Veronica, to step into the breach like this … poor Karen was terrified I was going to ask her for the ultimate sacrifice! Can you believe my horrendously rotten timing? I tripped over a silly kerb, of all things, when I was running after something I’d left in the bally car, and hit my elbow on a bollard. I’d just met Miles and Mum and Sophie at the airport. Poor Sophie saw me go shooting past her like a speeding bullet, didn’t you, Soph?’
‘A speeding bullet smacking into a wall,’ the girl said with ghoulish accuracy as her mother paused for a breath. ‘Hi, Veronica.’ She held out a slightly damp hand, and Veronica politely