Fi Whyms

D’Artagnan left the château, his château…

‘He stood at the bottom of the staircase with his overnight bag in his hand, the expression in his eyes... destroyed. He blinked his beautiful brown eyes as I sat there in the salon, hollow inside, my face soaked with tears.

‘I just... I can’t, Nicole, je ne peux plus – I don’t know any more how to be with you when there is no trust between us. Tu m’as brisé le cœur.’ 

You’ve broken my heart.

And then he left.’

In the two years since D’Artagnan spirited Nicole away to live in the Duchess, his seventeenth-century château in South-West France, Nicole has overcome obstacles and accomplished feats of which she’d never imagined herself capable.  

Now, however, she has torpedoed D’Artagnan’s joint business venture with Satan. She feels no remorse about that; what does concern her is that she might have seriously misjudged the nature of the man she married. And that misjudgement could be the end of their marriage…  

In this, the third and final book in the ‘D’Artagnan’ series, Nicole is forced to realise that her witty, often caustic assumptions about the people in her new life in France might be inaccurate. 

And to wonder: do fairy-tale endings really still exist, even for grown-ups?

The Louboutins are quivering.  They are terrified. Their nemesis – mud – is everywhere.

Ever since D’Artagnan spirited Nicole away from London to become mistress of the Duchess, his seventeenth-century château in rural France, they’ve refused to come out of hiding.

‘If Guy finds out … he’ll do his very best to kill him and, in the process, Guy might get badly hurt, or worse. And then he will go to prison. Or hospital. Or to a cemetery. And I’d rather there wasn’t a risk of that happening.’

In this sequel to Taming D’Artagnan, besides mud, manure and the Duchess’s capricious behaviour, Nicole has a lot on her mind.  But there is something in particular she cannot share with her arrogant but compellingly seductive French husband.  An horrific experience from her past has caught up with her and, while she's determined to get justice, it must be without D'Artagnan's knowledge… 

Meanwhile, there's a wedding to plan, a wedding planner from hell to keep in check, a temperamental châteauto placate – and a couple of spirited horses who have taken up residence. And then there is Nina, the fosterdaughter of neighbours, who stirs up feelings that Nicole cannot ignore...

The Duchess does not like me – she considers me an unworthy, peasant-class harlot.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a divorced investment-banker in possession of a dilapidated 17^thcentury château, must be in want of a new wife. 

Or so Nicole wryly observes after D’Artagnan sashays into her life and she finds herself married to the world’s most arrogant, seductive Frenchman and living in the Duchess, the capricious château he has recently inherited in South West France.  Being the owner of 26 pairs of Louboutin stilettos, she’s sceptical that life in la France profonde is quite her cup of café.

‘I realised that he loved the château and he wanted to live in it, but not on his own.  No, he wanted to bring his naïve, newly captured wife whom he had lured into the trap so very, very cleverly, to live in it with him.’

Nicole’s past is dark; an ex-model, she suffered an abusive childhood, was exploited in her teens and has overcome heroin addiction.  And then there is mercurial Karl from whom she fled after he finally shattered her heart; is she over him? It seems he might not be over her...