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The glorious Provençal light was beginning to fade, softening hard edges with shadow. They drove through rugged hills with deep gorges and fertile valleys. The hilltops were scattered with picturesque fortified villages with narrow meandering streets and sleepy shuttered houses. As the landscape grew increasingly spectacular the land became lusher. Ancient vineyards cloaked the sloping hills with ranks of bright green vines, while orchards of peaches, pears, nectarines and cherries flourished on stone terraces.
‘Did you inherit the chateau from your family?’ Lilah finally asked, unable to stifle her curiosity because Bastien had not offered a shred of further information.
‘I’m not from a rich family,’ Bastien told her drily. ‘My mother was a waitress born in an Athens back street. My father is a small-time property developer who is, admittedly, married to a very wealthy woman. Regrettably, he was never married to my mother.’
‘Oh...’ Lilah responded after an awkward pause. ‘When you mentioned your father giving your mother the sea horse pendant, and you thinking that you and your parents were the perfect family, you gave me a very different impression of your background.’
‘What I meant was that back then I was still young enough to be ignorant of exactly what their relationship entailed.’
‘And what did it entail?’
‘My father, Anatole, is married to another woman. My mother was his mistress. She once admitted to me that she deliberately chose to become pregnant with me because she believed my father would divorce his wife for her if she gave him a child,’ Bastien volunteered in the driest of tones. ‘Unhappily for her, her scheme failed—because my father’s wife had already conceived my half-brother, Leo, who is only a few months older than I am. My mother was extremely bitter about that development.’
‘And she told you that?’ Lilah pressed in consternation.
His beautifully shaped mouth quirked. ‘Athene wasn’t the maternal type, and she never did overcome her resentment at having the responsibility and expense of a child she no longer had any use for.’
Lilah compressed her full lips, the skin around her mouth bloodless from the force of will it took for her to remain silent in the face of what he was telling her. She was shocked, but she didn’t want to admit it, sensing that Bastien would ridicule her revulsion at his mother’s callous candour. But no child should know he was unwanted, she thought painfully. No child should have to live with the demeaning knowledge that he had only been conceived to be used as a piece of emotional blackmail in his mother’s battle to win a wedding ring from his father.
‘No comment? I felt sure you would have several moralising remarks to make.’
‘Then you were wrong. I know that all children don’t grow up in a picturebook-perfect world,’ Lilah breathed tautly. ‘Otherwise my father would have loved my mother and stayed faithful to her...’
‘He wasn’t?’ Bastien shot her a disconcerted look from frowning dark eyes. ‘You’re very close to your father. I naturally assumed...’
‘My parents weren’t happily married. There were always other women in my father’s life, and constant upsetting scenes in my home. He didn’t love my mother. They’d been together since they were teenagers, though, and everyone expected him to marry her—so eventually he did,’ she proffered ruefully. ‘It was a long time before I understood that succumbing to that social pressure had made him feel trapped in their marriage. He’s a different man with my stepmother.’
‘Did your father’s infidelity contribute to your judgemental view of me as a “shameless man whore”?’ Bastien shot at her, throwing her completely off balance.
Lilah flushed to the roots of her hair at having her own insult flung back at her two years after the event and when she’d least expected it. ‘Of course not... However, you are a womaniser, Bastien.’
‘But not a man whore. I have never been unfaithful to a lover,’ Bastien asserted levelly. ‘I have never taken indiscriminate sexual partners either. While my values may not be the same as yours, I do have standards.’
