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courtyard.

CHAPTER SIX
    M EGAN followed Luc into the attractive flower-bedecked courtyard, her heels clicking loudly on the wet cobbled surface. ‘It used to be the old stables.’
    ‘And now it’s…?’
    ‘A bit of a tourist attraction.’ She saw him lift his hand to his eyes to peer into the darkened window of the forge. ‘That’s Sam’s studio.’
    ‘Sam…?’
    ‘He was a bus driver, now he makes terrific wrought-iron stuff to order.’
    A local potter had approached her father ten years earlier with a view to him renting her workspace. The idea had snowballed…
    ‘And the others…?’ Luc’s expansive gesture took in the rest of the quadrangle.
    ‘There are about ten workshops here now all used by local artists and craftsmen,’ she told him proudly. ‘They double as workspace and a shop front. There’s a really marvellous community feel about the place. People can come and watch them work and, if they like it, buy what they see. There are also occasional workshops where you can learn to throw a pot, that sort of thing. Local schools frequently come. It’s proved rather successful.’
    So much so that the planning authorities were considering an application to extend the operation into the adjoining granary providing tearooms and an art gallery.
    ‘Very enterprising.’
    ‘It’s a non-profit-making operation,’ she added defensively. Wanting to gain his approval just a little too much. ‘We charge a nominal rent and—’
    ‘Hold up,’ he interrupted. ‘I may think the aristocracy is an anachronism in this day and age, but that doesn’t mean I assume that they are all out to subjugate the masses.
    ‘That’s remarkably open-minded of you, L…’
    ‘Luc,’ he prompted, watching with a glimmer of a smile in his deep-set eyes as she bit her lip. ‘It is my name.’
    ‘You don’t have to live the role you—’ She broke off and gave a grimace as a stab of pain shot through her right ankle.
    ‘Are you all right?’
    Megan waved aside his concern and flexed her right foot. ‘Fine, just turned my ankle, that’s all.’ She frowned at the heel that had got jammed in a crevice in the uneven cobbled surface. She pulled but it didn’t budge. She swore softly under her breath. ‘These things are lethal,’ she complained.
    ‘But very sexy.’ His lashes lifted and the glitter she saw reflected in the platinum depths of his eyes made her heart thud.
    Flushing, Megan lowered her gaze and let the skirt she was holding, gathered bunched in her hand, fall with a damp, silken slither to the ground.
    ‘I’m not prepared to cripple myself in the pursuit of wolf-whistles… normally ,’ she added drily.
    Megan had no self-esteem issue, she knew that some men found her attractive, but even while she had been carefully selecting her outfit earlier she had been aware that, no matter what she wore, it wasn’t going to make her look drop-dead gorgeous. It was a fact of life that men who looked like Luc were not generally seen with women who looked the way she did, so tonight she had made an effort.
    ‘I haven’t inherited my mother’s fashion sense or, for that matter, her figure.’ Forgetting for a split second whom she was talking to, she pressed her hands flat to her nicely formed but not impressive bosom.
    Luc’s eyes followed her gesture and his lips twitched. There was no hint of apology in her gesture, just the merest suggestion of wistfulness. ‘You look fine to me.’
    The notion that he might have thought she had been fishing for compliments brought a deep flush to her fair skin and a look of horror to her face.
    ‘I can do without your approval.’ Do without, but wouldn’t it be nice to have it…? Megan’s glance dropped as the thought surfaced unbidden to her mind.
    His heavy sigh—a mixture of resignation and irritation, brought her head up.
    Eyes holding hers, he set his shoulders against the wall behind him. With his weight braced on one leg, he crossed one ankle over the