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Money can buy
anything, can't it? Those brash Americans--their dollars and charms work
wonders. Until they learn that money can buy anything...but love.
FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ROMANCE FICTION, CERISE DELAND
Book 2 in THOSE NOTORIOUS AMERICANS series
Andre Claude
Marceau, Duc de Remy and Prince d’Aumale, finds Marianne’s joie de vivre enchanting—and her plan for a temporary affair with
him impossible.
He offers her one
night in his arms, and to his delight, she craves another. But he needs more
from her than a few hours of bliss. So when he shows her how to fill her days
with passions that complement those they enjoy together at night, Marianne must
choose.
Will she insist on a passing fancy? Or will
she abandon the terrors of her past to embrace a brighter future beside a man
who offers her a grand love affair with life?
Excerpt, DARING WIDOW, Copyright 2017, Cerise DeLand.
Marianne stood in
front of Number 10, her destination. A three-story stone structure with grape
leaves carved in relief into the frame, the building had two abnormally large
doorways. They appeared to be proportioned to receive a sculptor’s works. The
one with a large cut glass window seemed to be the entrance. Inside, the
concierge in a somber black suit spied her, hurried out and opened the door for
her.
The address was the
same as on the billboard. The plaque on the door proclaimed it as the “Gallerie
de la Cite.”
“The Duc de Remy’s
exhibit is here?”
“Oui, Madame.
Through the foyer and up the grand staircase.”
“Merci beaucoup.”
She sailed through the lobby and up the steps. Four other patrons casually climbed
the broad steps.
At the top, she
halted her in her tracks. A man and woman passed around her. But she stared at
the sculpture before her. It robbed her of breath.
Here upon a black
granite plinth stood a man of white Carrara marble, eight or nine feet tall.
All muscle and bone, honed by battle and hewn by strife, massively masculine and
robust, he was of such proportions that any other human would fall down in
honor of him. He stood in the center of the oval entry to the rest of the
exhibit, sunlight from a semicircle of windows shining on him, shadowing the
arc of a bicep here and emphasizing the indentation of a deltoid there.
Yet he did not
stand tall, but was hunched. His back was curled, bowed in new defeat. His hair
long and ragged, etched in the pristine marble to invoke its filth, shrouded
him to the waist. Ropes circled his torso and hung from his wrists. His noble
head hung lax from his corded neck as he stared at the nothingness before him.
The beauty of this
body was nothing to the grand agony of his face. She gasped at the sight and
could not look away.
She walked around
him and bent to face him. He looked at her, but beyond her. He was blind, in
torment. She drew back, aghast once more at the brutal honesty of what she saw.
This was a strong
man brought low. By loss. By self-destruction.
She ached with him.
Once proud, dynamic. A man others had once envied and emulated. A man so
capable, so honored and now, abandoned by others and most tragically, by
himself.
She stood for how
long she did not know. The power of him infusing her. And the power that he’d
lost draining her of envy and inspiring pride at Andre’s talent to portray him
so precisely.
Across the room,
beyond the giant, a young man in an apprentice’s smock tipped his head in
question. Not at her. But someone who stood behind her. He tipped his head and,
as if on signal, he departed.
Her skin tingled.
The hunger she’d
felt for months dissipated. She’d be sated now.
“Bonjour, ma
petite,” Andre said in that bass voice she heard in the bleak hours of her
lonely nights. “I dared not hope you would come.”
She closed her
eyes, wishing to hang on to this moment when he was happy to see her and she
was as delighted to see him. In this slice of time, there was none of her inner
conflict, no yearning to find him, see him, laugh with him. There was just
satisfaction. But it could not last.
Why not tell him
the truth? He had asked for honesty and he did not deserve
duplicity. He had only told her how he admired her and she had rebuffed him out
of…what? Not convention, no. But her own fear to allow such a strong man near
her heart or body. Perhaps even her own fear of her outrageous ambitions? She
faced him, and oh, the delight to see him again ran through her like cool water
after a drought. He was as tall, as magnificent as she remembered him. Perhaps
more so, since she had pined for him so badly.
“Bonjour, Andre.”
She gave him that, his given name as he had allowed her use of it. During these
past months, she’d thought of him that way, the sound of his name slipping
through her lips at night as she attempted to draw him. Andre. “I saw a
billboard and I could not stay away.”
He stood against
the white marble wall, the gold veins of the stone highlighting the gilded mien
of his own long waving hair. He had folded his arms and one leg was casually
crossed before the other. He wore a loosely cut black wool suit, a bright
vermilion vest, a white linen shirt open to his strong throat and a purple
kerchief tied at his neck. Every inch of him denoted the artist at his leisure.
“I’m glad I’ve
come. This—” she said and lifted a hand toward the statue, “—this is glorious.
I heard others speak of him but they did him no justice.”
He gazed at her
with hollow eyes.
“No words can,” she
went on, wanting to give him more praise and unequal to the task. “Will you
tell me about him?”
“Him?” he asked, as
if she had insulted him with the question.
She knew why. He
wanted her to ask about himself. And she would. She would.
He stared at her.
“You know who he is.”
She did. “Who could
not? To view him is to know. No pamphlet or placard need declare it.”
A light glimmered
in Andre’s blue eyes. “What do you see?”
“A man torn by his
own desires and ruined by his own misjudgments.”
His marvelous mouth
firmed. Pride lit his face. “And?”
“He will never see
himself again.”
“He did not truly
see himself before he was blinded.”
“A punishment,” she
acknowledged, “to fit his crime.”
Andre shifted, peering
at her with narrowed eyes. “There is another he will not see.”
Oh, yes. “He will never see her again.”
“The one who
betrayed him.”
She nodded. “The
one whose beauty he believed was soul deep.”
Andre pushed away
from the wall and approached the statue. “He must pay for his own failure to
perceive her true nature.”
“She was not equal
to him.”
He whirled to face
her. “That’s not what he believed. He thought she was the most beautiful
creature he’d ever seen.”
“The beauty was
outside. Her core was hollow.”
“He pays for his
miscalculation,” he said.
She dropped her
gaze to the floor, anxiety eating her that they spoke of more than the statue
or the Biblical story of the blind man and the woman he had loved so unwisely.
“Do you think she
pays?” he asked, his deep voice wistful.
She raised her face
to consider the statue’s tortured expression. “Delilah?”
He waited.
“Oh, yes. She
forevermore will hate herself for her own failures and unworthiness.”
Andre took her by
the wrist. “Come with me.”
Her pulse jumped.
He led her down a
hallway and into a room where he shut the heavy wooden door and drew her into a
room crowded with bronzes and plasters, scattered about on tables and shelves.
Two ivory overstuffed chairs stood in one sunlit corner near a sumptuous black
velvet chaise longue.
