Forbidden (42 page)

A decision finally.

I'm sorry
, she finally wrote, the two words insufficient for thirty years' affection to her clan.
Tell me you understand
.

Don't understand. Won't understand. Can't understand. You're killing me
, he added at the last, a wrenching admission for a man of his pride.

I'm sorry
. Words of duty, practical words, words that dimmed the sun.

Don't be. I'm not
. Etienne had replied, a prideful man, resentful and frustrated after two hours in the telegraph office at the
Bourse
under the interested scrutiny of the key operator. Affronted at having exposed his private life to the world, he stalked out of the office and strode to the Jockey Club to drink himself into an oblivious state of disregard for all women, friends or otherwise.

Valentin came looking for him late in the afternoon after the Duc hadn't appeared for their scheduled meeting at Tattersalls to look at a new thoroughbred. "The horse was a beauty," Valentin said, approaching Etienne slumped in a chair near the windows. "You missed out. I bought him."

"At least you can trust a horse," the Duc cryptically replied, waving over a footman to serve Valentin.

"In contrast to what or whom?" Valentin asked, aware his friend had consumed nearly the entire bottle of brandy on the table beside him. Etienne rarely overimbibed this early in the day.

"Women." The Duc's voice was heavy with disgust.

"A lovers' quarrel?"

"Remind me never to fall in love again. It's hell on earth."

"You didn't look too unhappy a couple of months ago."

"Lust warped my reason."

"It never did before."

"Daisy Black's style of lust is more powerful."

"Do you want to tell me about it?" Obviously, Etienne wasn't in a reasonable frame of mind… although a bottle of Napoleonic brandy generally occasioned loss of reason.

"Nothing to tell," he muttered. "She wants to be friends. To friends," he resentfully pledged, lifting his glass to Valentin then draining the half-full tumbler.

"Is friends so bad?" Valentin dropped into an adjacent club chair.

"It's worse than bad. It's damned unbelievable," the Duc snarled, refilling his glass. "Can't marry me, she says. Let's be friends, she says. Is that incredible or what? Do I look like I want to be only
friends
with the seductive, hotter-than-hell Daisy Black? What do you want to drink?" he asked with a nod to the footman standing a discreet distance away.

"The same's fine. When did this happen?"

"Another bottle then," Etienne directed, pouring the remains of his bottle into the glass the footman had placed on the table next to Valentin.

The Duc had withdrawn momentarily into a moody silence, his gaze contemplating the bottom of his glass. "When did all this transpire?" Valentin repeated, the Duc's sketchy replies leaving great gaps in his understanding.

"Seven telegrams ago, as a matter of fact, or was it six? Hell, I forget." The crumpled sheets of paper, agents of his inebriation, were on the table beside him.

"You're sure Daisy means it. You're not mistaken somehow."

"No, I'm not mistaken. I can fucking read. Jesus, can you believe this was the woman I was divorcing my damn wife for, the same woman I was spending a fortune to buy off magistrates for, the precisely same woman who drove Isabelle to kill my goddamn record-setting black thoroughbred?"

"Isabelle killed Morocco?" Valentin sat upright so swiftly the brandy sloshed over the rim of his glass.

"Sure as the sun rises in the east."

"How do you know?" His eyes still registered his shock.

"She wrote to tell me and wished me a great deal of misery in my life. She must be prophetic."

"Tell me exactly what Daisy said." Valentin still didn't completely believe Etienne. He and Daisy had been too passionately in love. He'd changed the entire pattern of his life for her.

The Duc sighed, more sober than the amount of liquor consumed would presume. His green eyes were steady and clear. "My divorce isn't going to happen… and that's a major problem of course. I can understand her reluctance in terms of my marital status. But the divorce situation doesn't bother her, she says; what is irreconcilable in her mind is the fact we don't both live in Montana. A staggering concept for me to accept. My love weighed against Montana is insufficient. I told her we would work it out."

"How?" Valentin knew of Etienne's business interests; they were vast and varied, but all European. And Daisy… "Won't she live here in Paris?"

"Apparently not," the Duc dryly said.

"Would you live in Montana?"

"I never thought I had to." He hadn't, of course.

"Would you?"

"No one ever asked me."

"You're not answering."

"I don't know. I don't even know if I was ever in love anymore because I'm so damned furious. And don't ask me why I'm furious because I don't know the answer to that either. But I broke two damned heavy pieces of furniture in the billiard room downstairs and scared the hell out of the steward. After standing there looking at the pieces, like a bloody fool, I apologized of course." He shook his head slowly from side to side, slipping down lower in the leather club chair, his brandy glass balanced on his chest. "If this is love," he muttered, "I hate it."

"Come talk to Adelaide. She understands how women think. Maybe she can help."

"Thanks, but I don't want to." The Duc's smile was affable. "Daisy was quite clear." His smile diminished, his eyes narrowed the slightest fraction. "I've never asked a woman to marry me before. Isabelle was proposed to by the de Vec solicitor. And when I do finally ask a woman to marry me and then try and move heaven and earth to make the marriage possible…" His voice took on a small edge. "I'm not going to beg anyone to marry me."

"Pride?"

"I guess. She wasn't ambiguous, Valentin. She said no."

July turned into August with both Daisy and the Duc consciously filling their clays with activity. Involved in the legalities necessary to open the new Braddock-Black copper mine south of Helena, Daisy was working sixteen hours a day. Dropping into bed each night exhausted, she slept like the dead. Her heavy schedule was deliberate; she couldn't bear dreaming of Etienne night after night.

Bourges continued pursuing the Duc's divorce case because if nothing else came out his unhappiness over losing Daisy, at least, Etienne thought, he might someday have his freedom. The illusion of his marriage to Isabelle had passed the point of even the most benevolent excuses. Why should they share a name when they shared nothing else?

He was seeing a great deal of his cousin Georges, too, helping him plan his next expedition to the East. An undertaking of sizable proportions with every item from stockings to food to pen points having to be itemized and ordered, the organizing palliative to the Duc's more painful thoughts. Georges intended an exploration of the steppes between Turkistan and Mongolia, possibly spending the winter with the Buriats near Lake Baikal. Their language interested him because it contained antecedents of both Syriac and Uighurian.

As the planning progressed and the trip became more imminent, the Duc seriously contemplated joining the trek he was financing—at least for a month or so. The more he considered the possibility, the more intrigued he became. And when Justin returned from Egypt, announced his intention of participating in Georges's journey East, Etienne definitely reviewed what business commitments could be relegated to others.

"Come along, Papa," Justin coaxed one day when the three of them were going over the maps. More than anyone, Justin was aware of his father's new moodiness, for their morning rides had resumed on his return and his father was visibly transformed. "The wind from the steppes will clear your mind," he added with a grin.

"A pleasant prospect… I could go on the first leg perhaps." Unlike his earlier trip years ago, Etienne could no longer contemplate months away from Paris. He hadn't been involved as a major shareholder in the rail lines then nor been active in the
Bourse
trading. Neither business gave him the luxury of being absent for lengthy intervals.

"Come as far as Samarkand. From that point you can return before the cold weather sets in."

"The trains to Samarkand are reliable," Georges added, knowing Etienne needed distractions in his life. Women had always been his entertainment in the past, but since Daisy, he'd not returned to his previous pursuits. He rarely went out and he was noticeably restless. "You could be back in Paris in eight days," his cousin suggested.

Etienne ran his slender finger over the etched railway line connecting Asia to the capital of France, paused for a moment, then, looking up, smiled. "I need a change of scene—why not."

They planned to leave in a month.

The Duc's anger with Daisy had abated over the past weeks, his previous bitterness overlaid with a benign magnanimity. He'd been selfish and unfair to ask Daisy to wait for the lengthy time required for his divorce. She deserved more immediate happiness, not a years-long delay while Isabelle appealed the final appeal with the last magistrate in the highest court of appeal. And she would—that much was patently clear. If he was absent from Daisy's life she'd have the opportunity to find someone else to love.

His benevolence didn't withstand his most vivid dreams of Daisy though or his gloomiest melancholy, and he sat up and drank on those nights, to blur the graphic intensity of her image or dull the corrosive edges of his sorrow.

The days were manageable for Daisy. She arrived at the office early and stayed till late in the evening, the sheer volume of the work she took on consuming every minute. And if she could have worked all night, too, she would have, for at times her dreams wouldn't so conveniently succumb to conscious repression. She'd see Etienne then in the full beauty of his person, smiling and teasing her, holding her, making her laugh. Those mornings when she woke and realized she was alone in her bed were like a small death.

The opening of the new mine was a blessing, the complexity of establishing a mining operation from day one absorbing enormous time. Down two levels now and into the top perimeters of the ore vein, they were scheduled to start shipping in six months. Water had been a problem early on, but after a redesigned pumping system was operational, no further crises occurred.

Daisy had gone upmountain twice during the summer camp, to take part in the games and festivities, but her smiles were less spontaneous, she was noticeably more subdued, and she politely refused to accompany the young couples when they went berrying. On the moonlit nights when the beating drums drew the clans out to dance, Daisy found herself lured by the pulsing rhythm, the throbbing resonance bewitching her senses. She danced those nights, but never twice with the same man—as if she were no longer available for flirtation.

She continued her restraint back in Helena when Hazard and Blaze entertained; more quiet than usual, she'd listen rather than participate in the discussion, and more often than not, directly after dinner, she'd make her excuses or simply disappear.