Gift of the Black Virgin

Pride and impatience and newlyweds—a
dangerous combination!

Joanna finally gets her French lover—and
marries him, too—but relocating to a foreign country proves harder
than she thought. So does getting pregnant, when a new stepson,
accidents and a haunted house conspire against her happiness.

Luc easily fits his new American wife into
his world, until he learns she comes with strings attached. She’s
an heiress with money to burn. Can he accept that he no longer
holds the purse strings?

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Gift of the Black Virgin

Copyright © 2013 Serena Janes

ISBN: 978-1-77111-676-3

Cover art by Carmen Waters

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Smashwords Edition

Gift of the Black Virgin

The Black Virgin Trilogy, Number Three

By

Serena Janes

Chapter One

Joanna Clifford glared at the chip on her
perfectly-manicured fingernail. It was the best polish and topcoat
money could buy, guaranteed to last at least a week, the beautician
on Vancouver’s Robson Street had told her. She was counting on it
to hold up the entire time she and Luc were in Paris—she didn’t
intend to worry about her nails while she was being wined, dined
and screwed senseless by the most wonderful man in the world. The
man who was going to show her
his
Paris, then marry her and
bring her home to live with him in the southwest of France.

But the chip was the least of her
problems.

It’s not supposed to be like this. I’ve
atoned for my mistakes, and the revenge should stop. It isn’t
fair!

Jo knew she was being irrational and selfish,
but she didn’t care. She was numb with fatigue and shock, and the
rocking motion of the train was making her feel slightly
queasy.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him,”
Lucien LaPlante repeated in a broken voice, sitting beside her in
the crowded railway car. They were just pulling out of the
Gare
d’Austerlitz
in Paris, beginning their five-hour journey to
Cahors. She watched her handsome lover lean forward in his seat and
lower his head into his hands. He didn’t look particularly handsome
now—face drawn, long dark hair all over the place, his beautiful
dark eyes looking right past her into his worst nightmare.

“Shh, shh. He’ll pull through. The doctors
were able to get to him right away, and that’s the important
thing,” Jo said, unsure if she knew what she was talking about.
Rubbing Luc’s big shoulder abstractedly, she thought it probably
didn’t matter what she said, as long as she listened. And held onto
him.

“
Putain de merde.
It’s all my fault,”
he insisted.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s my fault that he played today.”

“How could it be your fault?”

“I told him he
had
to play. It was a
tournament game.
Merde.
”

“I don’t understand.”

Luc shifted uncomfortably in his seat and
turned to look out at the receding Parisian suburbs. She saw the
tension in his jaw and knew he’d been grinding his teeth again.

“Last week I sat him down for a
father-to-son. And I told him about you.” He glanced at the people
sitting nearby and lowered his voice. “About your arrival.”

He held out his left hand, fingers splayed.
The fourth finger didn’t show a trace of the wedding ring he’d worn
for nine years. He’d had it cut off in Rocamadour, last spring, to
prove to Jo he was no longer married. The only reason he still wore
it, he’d explained, was to protect his son from reality.

“I told him he was going to have a
step-mother, soon. From the United States.”

Jo felt twitchy all of a sudden. She tried to
keep her voice calm. “Wasn’t it a little soon? He hasn’t had a lot
of time to adjust to the fact that his parents aren’t married to
each other anymore.”

She knew that, despite finalizing their
divorce a few years ago, Luc and his ex-wife Anna pretended it was
perfectly normal for mama and papa to each live in their own house.
Daniel, only eight, flitted back and forth between the two homes,
which shared an acreage, as easily as a butterfly.

Until Jo forced Luc’s hand, so to speak. She
didn’t actually
force
him to tell his son the truth, but it
was her appearance in Luc’s life that necessitated it. Once the
ring was gone, Daniel had to know why.

“Yes. Anna told me it was too soon. But there
was the party.”

Jo tensed. “What party?”

Through his teary eyes Luc managed to look a
little sheepish. “Our engagement party,” he whispered.

“Oh?” She didn’t know whether to feel
flattered or annoyed. “And when were you going to tell me?”

“Earlier today. As soon as you arrived,” he
said, lowering his head back into his hands.

Landing at
Charles de Gaulle
only a
few hours earlier, Jo was exhausted from her flight from Seattle,
but buoyed with the anticipation of two glorious weeks with her
French lover. They had been separated for two weeks—two agonizingly
long weeks—and she ached for him body and soul.

Her suitcases bulged with her prettiest
clothes, her sexiest lingerie and her most ridiculous high-heeled
shoes. But when she disembarked, instead of an amorous fiancé with
an armload of roses, she was greeted by a tearful, disheveled wreck
of a man who couldn’t wait to drag her onto a train back to
Cahors.

“A party’s the last thing on my mind now. I
have to cancel everything,” he said.

“When was this party supposed to be held?” Jo
asked carefully. Despite losing her romantic week in Paris, she
decided she should be pleased about this one small thing. The idea
of an engagement party, where she would meet Luc’s family and
friends, was touching. But now, of course, it was unthinkable.

“Next Sunday. At the family house in Nice,”
Luc said into his hands. “My father and brother were going to come
down from Lyon. I’ll have to call them tonight and tell them what’s
happened.”

Jo could hear the uncharacteristic tremor in
his voice, she could see his shoulders shake, and her heart swelled
in response. She had to be brave and face the facts. Daniel was
Luc’s only child, and he had been injured in a soccer match. Maybe
seriously.

And she, along with her sexy underwear, had
fallen into the background.

Casting a longing glance at her suitcases,
which were stacked on the racks over their heads, she put her arms
around her beloved as best she could in the awkward seats, ignoring
the curious glances of their fellow travelers.

“Never mind the party. Although it was very
sweet of you to have thought of it. How did Daniel react when you
told him about me?”

“Not well.”

“Oh?” She hadn’t anticipated this, and
couldn’t think of anything else to say. The back of her throat
burned with a bitter bile. Motion sickness—her perennial friend
whenever she traveled—was threatening to make her retch. She leaned
down to her bag, fumbled for a chewable Gravol and popped it into
her mouth.

Luc, watching her, continued. “First he
became quiet, retreating like I do when I’m upset.”

He squirmed in his seat, rubbed the back of
his neck with one hand and then looked again at Jo. His dark blue
eyes were bloodshot and puffy, his lips white with the effort of
clenching his jaw.

“He wouldn’t leave his room, and then he said
he wasn’t going to play in the cup final this weekend.”

“Do you know why?” she asked as she sucked
hard on the cherry-flavored tablet.

He sighed. “Not really. He loves soccer.
Maybe it was his way of punishing me. He knows how proud I am of
him and how well he plays.”

“And probably because I wasn’t going to be
there to watch him,” he added.

Jo began to piece it all together. It wasn’t
sounding good. “Because you had to meet me?”

He nodded. “When you and I made our plans I’d
forgotten about his game. Of course it’s the biggest one of the
season. I feel like such a shit.”

He turned back to the window and the autumn
scenery flashing past. “It was too late to change anything,” he
continued. “You’d already booked your flights. I’d booked our Paris
hotel. So I just told him to stop being silly. I said he
had
to play. He owed it to his team. And to himself. I guess I shamed
him into it.”

“And then what happened?” Jo asked, although
she guessed what was coming.

“He played very badly, I’m told. And then he
went for a shot and must have misjudged his position because he
tripped and fell head-first into the goal post.”

Jo felt her heart contract when she saw the
anguish on her lover’s face. “Luc, whatever you think, it’s
not
your fault. You did what you thought was best,” she
said, squeezing his arm gently and swallowing the last of the vile
little pill. “Don’t blame yourself. If anything, it’s
my
fault.”

Platitudes weren’t good for much, Jo
thought.

But what else can I do?

“It
is
my fault
.
I don’t know
what I’ll do if I lose him!” was all he would say for the next four
hours.

C’est la vie! Jo kept telling herself as the
train sped away from the City of Lights. I can’t pout. I have to be
cool with this. Mature. Of course a child is going to complicate
our lives. But I accept that. I’ll adapt.

She felt her lover squirming in the seat
beside her and reached out a hand to grasp his. Her vacation might
have been ruined, but when it came to being with Luc, she didn’t
want to push her luck. It was a miracle they’d even met. By some
quirk of fate, they’d found themselves on the same walking tour of
the Dordogne Valley last spring—Luc as a substitute guide, Jo as a
last-minute guest. But theirs was a short-lived affair. Whenever Jo
thought about it, it seemed another miracle that they found each
other again after the terrible separation that almost wrecked them
both.

She leaned her head back against the seat and
closed her eyes.

It’s not supposed to turn out like this, she
repeated to herself. I’ve accepted my fate. The Black Virgin needs
to let me get on with our life together. Not throw obstacles at
us.

Blaming the Black Virgin might have been
silly, but it made Jo feel a little less responsible for everything
she’d done since she first set eyes on Luc. The Gravol had kicked
in and she was feeling calmer. Sleepy, even. Her mind drifted and
she began to think about the first time she met the Black Virgin of
Rocamadour.

She and Luc had been panting over each other
for the first three days of their walking tour. But she was
practically engaged to James, and knew it was wrong to cheat.
Especially with a virtual stranger, no matter how attractive.

Then Luc took her to the
Chapelle Notre
Dame
at the top of the exquisitely beautiful pilgrimage site of
Rocamadour. Inside the church, he showed her the small wooden
figure of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour.

The figure was supposed to represent a
pre-Christian, archetypal mother, an eternal life-giver. She was a
Christianized pagan goddess, symbolizing the dark, dangerous,
subversive female force that, until meeting Luc, Jo didn’t even
know existed within her.

Jo could accept the idea that the
mind-destroying desire she felt for her French guide was as natural
as life itself. And should be embraced…

But when she found out that the Cult of the
Virgin became wildly popular during the Middle Ages because people
believed the Virgin would forgive their sins, Jo became even more
excited. Some followers thought she helped women by lessening the
pain of childbirth, and even took their place in bed so their
husbands wouldn’t discover their adultery.