Forbidden

by Susan Johnson

  "Perhaps you're right." The Duc wasn't about to become embroiled in an argument with Daisy over Charles's note. He'd handle it in his own way. "Charles is dutiful," he added with a bland smile. "You're sure then… the rest of your depositions can wait?"

  Daisy smiled. "I'm sure. There's no point in antagonizing Charles further… over some rather trivial small bits of property."

  "Very well." His lie was accompanied by a sunny smile.

  Etienne was, in fact, furious, the extent of his anger evident when he broke into Charles's meeting after lunch. "A moment of your time, Charles, now!" he said, repressed rage in the intense quiet of his voice.

  Charles's secretary, pressed against the doorjamb where Etienne had shoved him, together with the two men seated across the table from Charles stared wide-eyed at the Duc de Vec, standing perilously close to them all, his quirt swishing dangerously against his jodhpur-clad leg. With the good sense that had brought him to his present position of power, Charles politely said, "If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, for a few moments."

  Etienne remained scowling and silent while the two men were shown out by Charles's secretary, who had mastered his fear enough to pry himself away from the wall. Shutting the door on the Duc de Vec and his employer with trepidation and relief, the young secretary hoped the Minister survived unharmed. The Duc had brushed him aside with no more effort than that needed to sweep away a pesky fly.

  "Relax, Etienne," Charles said, turning back from seeing his guests were out… and out of earshot. "Let's talk about this." Charles was the consummate politician, deft at reconciling divergent viewpoints and warring personalities. And he was operating from the miscomprehension that Daisy was like all the previous women in Etienne's life. "Sit down," he said, offering the Duc a chair with practiced courtesy.

  "You surprise me, Charles," the Duc said, ignoring the invitation to sit, his scowl bordering glowering eyes. "I didn't think you so witless as to renege on your promises to Miss Black."

  "I had no choice, Etienne. You know that." Charles returned to his chair at the table where his coffee cup and custard tart remained unfinished. He was reaching for his coffee when the Duc's quirt intercepted, pushing the cup away.

  "You're not talking to a novice in the ways of the Montignys, Charles. You and I both know what you can and cannot do."

  Charles sat back in his chair, his full attention on the lethal-looking whip, understanding he'd miscalculated the degree of affection Daisy Black engendered. He watched the delicate sweep of Etienne's braided quirt move his custard tart out of reach, wondering whether Etienne's control would survive their conversation. He'd seen him lose his temper only on rare occasions, but the effect had always been detrimental to his opponents. And from his present position, Etienne appeared a towering presence.

  "I'm willing to endure the lengthy persecution Isabelle envisions," Etienne said, his voice so soft Charles had to strain to hear it. "I'm also willing to tolerate uninvited visits from your damnable cousin the Archbishop, and your"—there was the minutest pause in place of his preferred adjective—"mother, giving me ultimatums about church doctrine. I'm even willing to suffer public spectacles like that at the Opéra, but I will not allow Isabelle to interfere with Daisy." Etienne's hands were planted palmdown on the table over his riding whip, his eyes so dark the green was muted, and his shoulders under his white jersey seemed the width of the table to Charles's speculative gaze. "So what you'll do, Charles, if you value your health, is honor your promise to complete the property transfers. Do we understand each other?"

  Charles hesitated, trying to gauge the level of negotiation possible under the circumstances. Miss Black was obviously considerably more important than he'd perceived; Etienne's anger just short of explosive. What Isabelle didn't know wouldn't hurt him, he decided, since he was being seriously threatened. And only a minimum of legal work remained on Miss Black's agenda anyway. This was not, he recognized from a vantage point only inches away from Etienne's quirt, a good time for negotiations. He had to swallow once to insure his voice didn't break when he said, "I understand."

  The Duc stood upright in a swift decisive movement. His scowl disappeared, his fingers on his quirt relaxed. "Thank you, Charles," he said sardonically, "for your good judgment."

  It took a full five minutes after the Duc left before Charles's heartbeat returned to normal, before the color returned to his face. And another five minutes before he felt sufficiently restored to call in his secretary.

  But visions of the men Etienne had shot in duels continued to haunt him throughout the day and he found himself starting at every footfall. No one was safe from Etienne's wrath when his temper was up and he congratulated himself on coming out of their confrontation unscathed.

  Damn Isabelle. He'd almost taken a beating for a few trifling legal procedures. That quirt had been way the hell too close for comfort.

  * * *

  "Charles changed his mind," the Duc said when he returned to the apartment much later that afternoon. "I thought he would."

  Daisy was in the garden, lounging on a chaise, reading, when Etienne entered the small walled enclosure. Her eyebrows rose in query as Etienne dropped onto the grass in a comfortable sprawl.

  "Why? You're asking me, I presume—with that look," he said with a grin, and crossing his arms beneath his head, he looked up at her with a benign expression of innocence. "Because he reconsidered, and after having reconsidered, decided it was damned silly to have sent the note in the first place. Everything is en train once again. Empress's daughter will not be deprived of a single meter of property. You're welcome."

  Had she not been so deeply attached to her own sense of independence, and had she not been so disturbed about the price the Duc was paying for her friendship and love, she would have been pleased he'd coerced his brother-in-law into changing his mind. Because forced he'd been, she was sure. Although the exact manner of extortion was unclear. "Thank you," she said, "although I wish you hadn't. I feel too guilty already for coming between you and your wife… and her family."

  Sitting up, Etienne stared at her for a moment as if his scrutiny would bring some revelation. "You don't mean it," he said then, his expression vaguely perplexed.

  "I do appreciate your efforts, really."

  "No, I mean about feeling guilty."

  "Well, of course I do. Look, I'd have to have the hide of an elephant to ignore the slurs and looks and avid curiosity. Regardless of how you feel, I'm viewed by many as the cause of your divorce. I feel guilty."

  "No!" he said with almost a kind of violence, "don't ever say that. You're twenty years too late to shoulder the burden of guilt. And anyone who knows me, understands. Even those Isabelle considers friends, understand. If there's any assessment of blame, you're the last one touched by it."

  "You're not realistic, Etienne," Daisy softly said. "If I hadn't met you that night at Adelaide's, your life would have proceeded uninterrupted… your marriage would have continued."

  "I'm not looking for a martyr," the Duc said as softly as she. "You needn't be noble on my account. I'm too cynical to embrace either of those concepts as relevant in this world. But if I believe in anything, I believe in the shaman gods who looked down on me with kindness that night." He grinned then, touching the toe of her white kid slipper. "Don't become serious, chou-chou, about the divorce or Charles or anything else Isabelle might orchestrate. I'll take care of you. I'll take care of everything."

  How often, she wondered, would he have to take care of things for her? How many times in the coming years would he have to threaten someone for what they might say about her as the femme fatale who destroyed his twenty-year marriage? At what price could he continue to live in the society of his birth? Would he eventually tire of the burden? Etienne was a man familiar with a life of ease, of adoration and favor. How long would it be before he wearied of championing both his marriage and his foreign wife?

  "I don't really want to be taken care of," Daisy said, her words only a whisp
er of sound.

  It stopped him for a moment—the very novel concept—before he remembered she was an American woman. "I keep forgetting you're not—"

  "Isabelle?"

  "No. Any woman I've ever known. Forgive me." A smile brightened his face. "Since you're so independent, would you like to take care of me?"

  Daisy laughed at his expression and the notion she could shoulder responsibility for the very irresponsible Duc. "I don't have the energy to oversee an incorrigible, audacious man who's been raised to consider himself a golden child of the universe."

  "Would you have the energy to oversee… perhaps a small portion of my life?" he inquired with a wolfish smile.

  "I don't suppose I need inquire which portion?" she replied, her own smile luxurious. He made her feel always as though the sun were shining precisely for her. For them.

  "Probably not," he murmured, his fingertips moving up the pale silk of her stockings. "Aren't you warm with these stockings on?"

  "I wasn't until now…"

  "I can cool you off."

  Her eyebrows rose. "Really. That would be different."

  He grinned. "I mean I'll take these stockings off."

  "How nice of you."

  "I've been told I'm very nice."

  "By?" Her voice was coquettish.

  "My mother, of course."

  "Of course. I should have known. My parents too have often complimented me on my—manners."

  "Just so long as no other man has ever touched you," he murmured, only half in jest. He had no control over his jealousy when it came to Daisy, begrudging with a lethal kind of resentment any man who'd courted her.

  "You can assure me, of course, of a similar monkish existence," she sardonically replied.

  "You're a demanding woman." There was a smile in his voice and in his eyes.

  "Yes," she said and meant it. She never would have allowed him the license Isabelle did within marriage. She would have rather not been married. And while she tried to understand Isabelle's need to maintain a marriage so bereft of love or affection, in her heart she found it incomprehensible.

  "I'm glad," the Duc said, understanding their mutual needs. Pleased perhaps with an innocence alien to his character of late, that after all these years he was truly loved.

  For how long, though, would he be glad, she wondered. She was too aware of his past: when he was back from his habitual polo, and back from his casual influencing of Charles, he would effortlessly seduce her with his charm and beauty. Following the patterns of a lifetime… this day no different from the thousands preceding it.

  So different from her own life.

  "I'm more jealous than Isabelle," she simply said, declaring an element of her feelings, if not the substance. "I could never share you."

  "Good." The single word was a promise. "And speaking of sharing, could I persuade you to join me inside? So we don't run the risk of our making love becoming a shared experience with the servants." His smile was apologetic. "There's no privacy in town." When you love a woman, he thought. Under other circumstances in his past, he'd not been so circumspect.

  The Duc carried Daisy inside, through the ground floor hallways and up the grand staircase past a dozen smiling servants, whose whispers followed them like small tittering birdsong.

  "They know," Daisy whispered, a blush heating her cheeks as they passed an upstairs maid carrying a vase of fresh flowers. Her giggle trilled behind them in the still shadowed hallway.

  "People don't make love in America?"

  "Well… of course—I mean…"

  "Not in front of the servants?"

  "Well—" Daisy thought of her brother Trey who subscribed to the same laissez-faire attitude as Etienne. "Well, I never have." A qualified response.

  "Someone else, then, is as insensitive as I," he teasingly said.

  "My brother—before his marriage," she hastily added. "Oh, dear, I don't mean to be puritanical or censorious…" Her voice trailed off weakly under the Duc's ironic gaze.

  "Since you harbor an unblemished record in terms of fornicating in front of the servants, I'll be sure to lock the door." His grin was outrageous.

  "Have you really?" She suddenly realized how exemplary her life had been.

  "Of course not," he said, perjuring himself with a smile.

  "Fraud." But her voice was affectionate.

  He kissed her then because he'd thought suddenly of Charles and Isabelle at the sound of the single pejorative word and wished to dismiss such images from his mind.

  The kiss was effective in canceling such images. It also spurred the Duc's progress toward his bedroom.

  He undressed Daisy on the daybed near the lace-curtained windows, slipping her white kid slippers and pale stockings and lemon-yellow dimity summer frock off with wordless languor. Charles was forgotten. The sun patterned them in lacy arabesques as the summer breeze stirred the curtains.

  She helped him then tug his shirt over his head and watched him with the admiring eye of a lover as he leaned over to pull off his riding boots. His broad shoulders charmed her and the muscular grace of his torso; his strong biceps swelled with the effort needed to slide the tall leather boots free. And when he sprawled back across her in sportive play, she stroked the taut firm smoothness of his stomach.

  "You're perfect," she murmured, tracing the flowing curve of his powerful pectorals.

  "For what?" His brilliant green eyes gazed up at her in frolic.

  "For everything." She loved being with him, knowing he was close and content and enamored. Her own content was complete.

  "I can't cook—or play bridge with any competence. My manners are appalling, I've been told—actually some have said I have none. And I dance only under duress. Outside of that, I'm available… although we don't have time for everything—speaking in the biblical sense—" he grinned, "because we're promised at Boiselle's play at the Chatelet tonight."

  "Salacious man."

  "Carnal knowledge is actually high up on my list of 'everything.'"

  "How fortunate."

  "I adore an intelligent woman." Reaching up, he touched the tip of her nose with a brushing fingertip.

  "You may kiss me," she said in her best instructive manner but ruined her haughty pose by giggling at the end.

  And he did… along with several other noteworthy additions from his sizable list of "everythings."

  At midafternoon the following day, Daisy returned from Adelaide's. Familiar now with Etienne's polo schedule, she knew precisely when he'd walk in… how he'd look, how he'd be smiling from satisfaction over his game and from his pleasure in seeing her. And she wanted to be there first, waiting for him, welcoming him as though she'd always been there when he came home, as though she always would. She was humming in anticipation when she entered the foyer, her friendly smile for Burns prompted by her blissful daydreams.

  Burns didn't smile back or give his usual friendly greeting; he seemed instead strangely agitated, his brow knotted in a frown.

  "Is the Duc back early?" Daisy asked, thinking perhaps Etienne was waiting for her.

  "No, Mademoiselle, but I've sent for him."

  Clearly something was wrong. A flustered Burns was extraordinary; he was never disconcerted. A figure of cool British reserve and poise, Burns served as the paradigm for haughty stewardship. "Someone's hurt," she quickly said, "Is it Hector?"

  "No… no… Mademoiselle," he assured her, "no one's hurt… but it might be best if you… returned to the Princess de Chantel's until Monsieur le Duc—"

  "I've been waiting for you," a cool familiar voice interjected. Someone else apparently was conscious of Etienne's polo schedule.

  When Daisy swung around to the sound of the same disparaging voice she'd heard at the Opéra, Isabelle was standing in the doorway of the rosewood salon looking as though she owned the Bernini-designed residence. Dressed in Watteau pink chartreuse, silk apple blossoms at her sashed waist, she was a vision of femininity. Even her blonde hair seemed blonder in
the half shadows of the gilded interior. And the de Vec diamonds sparkled in her ears. Above the dictates of fashion requiring lesser jewels for daytime, she wore her diamonds with regal assurance.

  "I'm sorry, Mademoiselle," Burns softly said.

  He'd been powerless to deny his master's wife entrance, Daisy understood, and she touched his arm in silent recognition of his apology. "I'm fine, Burns." She smiled, then turning to Isabelle said in a calm, level voice she frequently used when arguing the finer points of reservation borders to infringing cattlemen in court, "We can talk in the rosewood room. Would you like some refreshments?"

  "This isn't a social visit." Isabelle deliberately neglected addressing her by name.

  "I'll have tea, Burns," Daisy said. "And some of those madeleines, the chocolate ones." It was impossible to publicly intimidate Daisy; Absarokee training taught one self-possession. Walking across the green travertine entrance hall, she passed Isabelle to enter the salon.

  By the time Isabelle followed her in, she'd seated herself. "You may prefer to stand," Daisy said to the woman she both en-vied and despised, "since this isn't a social visit." She wished she might have been the one to share the last twenty years with Etienne instead of this cool disdainful aristocrat. "Please state your business."

  Isabelle bristled noticeably. "Someone should teach you manners. You're speaking to a Duchesse."

  "Then I outrank you, for my father is a King among his people," Daisy quietly replied. "If you've come to see me, kindly state your business," Daisy repeated. "Etienne has been sent for," she added, feeling that information might prompt Isabelle to speak quickly.

  "You won't last, you know." Isabelle's eyes were cold like those of the yellow eyes contemplating the theft of Indian lands. Daisy recognized the hatred.