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have been a flash of disappointment.
    “There’ll be no thievery at Belle Chêne,” he said as if an edict had been spoken. “Now get in the carriage.”
    With those harsh words, Nicki’s hopes crumbled. She was property, nothing more. He hadn’t remembered her at all.
    She swallowed past the lump in her throat and blinked against the tears so close to the surface. She’d been a fool to think he would care if he did know who she was—and she wasn’t about to remind him. Her father had gone to Belle Chêne for help with his failing plantation and got nothing but a slap in the face. Nicole had been standing outside the door to his study when he had returned.
    “François was just as I remembered him,” her father told her mother. “Selfish and uncaring. He said his father may have been an easy mark, but François du Villier was a businessman. He had his own problems to worry about and his brother felt the same.” She would never forget the look of despair on her father’s handsome face or the tears in her mother’s eyes.
    Steeling herself against the bitter memories, Nicki took a seat opposite the imposing man in the expensive dark-green tailcoat. She was careful to keep her eyes cast down, as she had learned in prison, but couldn’t resist a single surreptitious glance. She found him watching her with as much curiosity as she watched him. She knew she should glance away, but for the life of her she could not.
    He looked as handsome as she remembered, maybe more so. There was an air of maturity about him now that hadn’t been there before. His jaw looked stronger, his features a little harder. The sensuous grooves beside his mouth were gone, and there were tiny lines beside his dark-brown eyes. He looked older, as if the responsibilities he now carried had taken the last of his youth.
    He seemed almost angry, she suddenly realized, and wondered if she could possibly be the cause.When he said nothing more, just kept staring at her as if he wished she would disappear, she felt her own temper beginning to build.
    “I’m not a thief,” she finally told him, certain the words were hovering in his thoughts. She had done nothing to deserve the things that had happened to her in the last three years. Nothing at all!
    “That’s not what your papers say.” He propped one long, muscular leg on the front of her seat. “They say you were caught with your employer’s emerald brooch hidden in a pair of your drawers.”
    Nicki flushed crimson. How could he refer so casually to something so personal? “My employer found the missing brooch, which is not surprising, since she is the one who put it there.”
    “And just why would she do that?” he asked with a mocking note he did not try to hide. He leaned back against the seat, his shoulders so broad they took up most of the tufted red leather.
    “W-why?” she repeated, hating the accusation in his eyes. She wanted to fling the truth at him, but God in heaven, she couldn’t tell him it was because the woman was jealous. He’d never believe a wife would be jealous of a twelve-year-old girl! “I don’t know,” she lied, wishing she could sink lower in her seat, but drawing herself up instead.
    The Frenchman’s eyes turned harder than they already were. “Well, you can be certain that I won’t be stashing any jewelry in your drawers, so you had better not turn up with any.”
    Nicki bit her tongue so hard it hurt. Who the devil did he think he was? “Must you constantly make reference to my underwear?” Her jaw clenched so tight she practically hissed.
    “You mean you own some?”
    Her eyes went wide. “You are … you are …
not
a gentleman.”
    Alexandre grinned at that. The dimples were back. “I’m happy to see they haven’t broken your spirit completely. Tell me … how is it a little gutter rat like you speaks such educated English?”
    Gutter rat!
And to think his father had once been called “friend.” “If I’m such a despicable person, why