Forbidden (37 page)

"I won't."

"How can you be so sure? These things happen."

"Not with me they don't."

Leaning on one elbow, he looked down at her, flushed and sated in his bed. She was the epitome of femaleness, lush and opulent and fertile. "Does that mean something?"

She looked directly at him, her dark eyes grave. "It means I'm taking something to assure it doesn't happen."

"You don't want my child." The thought hurt him more than he imagined because lately it was constantly in his mind.

"
Under the circumstances
, I don't want your child."

"And if the circumstances change?"

"They won't."

He shrugged and sighed, a small rueful acknowledgement. She was right… at least now and for the immediate future. Isabelle was relentless in her refusal, in her threats and thwarting. "If they did," he said, very softly, as sensitive as she about the legalities in a country which had only allowed divorce seven years ago, but too deeply in love to care, only wanting her to .share his sentiments.

"If they did," Daisy said, her voice hushed and low, thinking that more than delaying legalities would have to be overcome, "I would love to have your child."

"Our child."

"Our child," she whispered.

They heard the frantic pounding on the service door bordering the quai just as the sun was rising.

"What time is it?" Daisy groggily inquired.

Twisting around to see the clock, the Duc moved away from Daisy's warm body. "Five," he said. "Go back to sleep." He spoke calmly in order not to cause alarm, but the violence of the reverberation rising from the ground floor at an hour in which normal manners dictated quiet instantly roused him. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he shook his head to clear the drowsiness from his brain and with a fortifying inhalation of breath, quickly rose to his feet.

Picking up his robe, he strode out of the room, shrugging into the green China silk as he moved down the hall. Ever since Isabelle's calculating visit yesterday, he'd experienced an uneasy sense of wariness—as though the gauntlet had been thrown down in a fight to the death. Warning himself against alarmist melodrama, he'd dismissed the more lurid analogies of a bloody battlefield, but fully aware of the depths of his wife's malevolence, he'd guardedly been on alert. A sixth sense, a premonition of calamity irrepressibly struck him as the frantic drumming on the door abruptly ceased.

He was on the second landing of the stairway when Louis came racing through the passageway leading to the kitchens. To see Louis at a run was extraordinary. His pulse rate jumped.

Louis stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Etienne, his face ashen. "Your black racer's dead!"

Isabelle, Etienne immediately thought; he knew; he could feel it in his gut. May she burn in hell, he viciously avowed. "Are you sure?" He had to ask although Louis's mournful face was answer enough.

Louis's grave nod conceded the bitter truth.

Arrested on the polished marble landing, Etienne felt a moment of unbearable pain at the loss of his favorite horse. Poor dumb animal—helpless against the machinations of man—an innocent victim. Dead because he had the misfortune to be favored.

"Who found him?" Etienne asked, his voice cheerless.

In somber funereal tones, Louis said, "The Irish groom, Your Grace. He rode over straightway."

"Bring him to me in my study." A crushing sorrow overwhelmed his mind as he walked down the remaining stairs and turned down the corridor to his study. The black had been raised from a colt, a beauty from the day of his birth. He'd trained him himself, taking particular delight in Morocco's playful disposition, an unusual quality in a thoroughbred of his size and breeding. And they'd forged a bond, an affinity based on a mutual love of speed—and kindness.

Morocco had won all the two-year-old races last year and was finishing first without apparent effort in the early meets this season. They'd planned to run him in the English Ascot Gold Cup three weeks from now against the Duke of Beaufort's great horse Ragimunde. Damn Isabelle, he dismally raged. Damn her evil soul.

What a callous waste of a beautiful horse.

For vengeance.

He wanted to cry.

The gloom of his study suited his mood. Standing framed by the threshold, he stood arrested for a moment in the enveloping shadow, wondering if there was indeed a retributive God and he was being punished for all his misdemeanors. Walking to the windows, he lifted aside the heavy drapes to let the morning sun dispel the darkness. He was still standing at the bank of windows behind his desk, his hand on the windowframe, when Louis entered with the groom.

Turning around slowly, Etienne felt for a moment as though he couldn't bear to hear the details and a small silence fell after the two men approached. The room was utterly still, hushed, grief a palpable presence in the high-ceilinged book-lined chamber, the three men so diverse in occupation joined in a common sorrow. With an unreasoning reluctance, only knowing what he was about to hear would devastate him, the Duc finally said, "Please sit down and tell me what you know."

As he sat across from them, slumped low in his leather chair, he listened to the groom's recital of Morocco's death. The thoroughbred had been fed sugar and carrots—a favorite treat—allowing the assailants to approach him. Since the paddock wasn't guarded, their entry had been easily arranged. An artery in the black's foreleg had been cut, a small and precise incision—nothing clumsy, a neat, clean half-inch cut—and the horse had bled to death. The details of his dying were gruesome.

The huge black had tried to rise several times after the loss of blood had brought him down, a testament to his tremendous heart and courage. The stall's walls were splashed with blood, the straw bedding saturated, Morocco's death gaze, the groom tearfully related, directed toward the door. As if beseeching help. "I should have slept with him," the young Irishman finished, his bereavement evident in the redness of his eyes. "I should never have left him alone. If I'd been there, Morocco would still be alive."

"Or you might be dead, since we don't know who did this. And none of us anticipated this. Don't blame yourself. It's not anyone's fault." Or at least neither of theirs, he thought, with heartfelt regret. Could
he
have blocked Isabelle's attack? Was it possible to protect everything he valued? An impossibility, he as quickly decided. But some priorities certainly had to be established, he instinctively realized. He couldn't afford a disaster more grievous than losing a horse.

When he eventually returned to the bedroom, after the necessary decisions had been made for the black's burial—he would be brought home to the Chantilly estate where he'd been raised—Etienne devised a credible story about a seriously ill horse in his racing stable to satisfy Daisy's curiosity. And summarily canceled his polo for the remaining days of Daisy's stay. He simply wished to be with her for their short time remaining, he told her, his fear of Isabelle's twisted sense of revenge unvoiced. But after the particularly grisly manner of Morocco's death, he had no intention of leaving her alone.

If he'd previously had doubts about Daisy leaving Paris, he no longer did. And if he'd had any reservations of his own sense of loss once Daisy sailed, they were now canceled by an ardent relief in knowing she'd be beyond Isabelle's reach in Montana.

They stayed in that day, perhaps both aware of the fleeting hours left to them, enjoying the simple pleasure of each other's company. And protected, Etienne reflected, from the uncertainties of Isabelle's intent.

That afternoon while Daisy napped on the garden chaise, Louis surreptiously slipped a note to the Duc. Since the Duchesse's footman had delivered it, Louis knew better than to announce its arrival in Daisy's hearing.

The pale pink sheet of paper contained two brief sentences:

You didn't mention your black
, Isabelle had written in her favorite lavender ink,
when you gave the fifty-meter warning
.

I hope you miss him.

Etienne crumpled the paper in his fist and handed it to Louis. "Burn it," he said, crisp and low, "and see that my pistols are loaded and placed in the top drawer of my bureau."

Five days later, the Duc and Daisy traveled together to Le Havre for her sailing. He saw her settled in her stateroom, their conversation disjointed and fitful as they exchanged those social banalities required in leave-takings. He'd write—he'd telegram; she should write, too, when she found time; she wished him well with Bourges; he hoped her court
dates
went smoothly; give Hector a hug for me, she said, and he promised he would. The seas looked choppy, a cognac helped, sometimes, to relax, he offered, and she smiled, reminding him after spending years on horseback, she was immune to erratic rhythms. As they held each other, the last warning whistle for departure shrilled.

"You had better go."

"I had better go."

But neither moved.

"Come to Montana with me." Daisy's words were a spontaneous declaration of feeling and need, but she'd realized even before she'd finished speaking, Etienne couldn't or wouldn't and she smiled at the end, as if in bantering whimsy.

He hesitated. "I can't."

"I know."

They both knew the full extent of their commitments to other people and circumstances; they both knew the happiness they'd shared was predicated on adjusting their schedules and lives for a few brief weeks—and an extension right now wasn't a possibility. They were rational adults; they understood.

But beyond rational judgments they were desolate. And while they'd exchanged all the prescribed phrases denoting a future, neither was certain in their hearts such a future existed.

The Duc had Isabelle to deal with and after his thoroughbred's death, Daisy and Hector had become a concern. Daisy's return to Montana would effectively remove her from danger but Hector still remained to be protected. The divorce proceedings were going to be a horrendous stalemate unless Bourges was successful in changing the venue. And since meeting Daisy, Etienne hadn't been actively involved in his business interests. Both his steward and his secretary were waiting for him now in Le Havre with their most pressing affairs on the agenda for this afternoon.

After that, after all the significant problems were solved—then he had a future. He was a realist. But he was also in love. And there weren't any easy answers.

Daisy's concerns were based less on specific problem-solving than on issues of compatibility. Geographical and emotional compatibility. There was no question, she loved Etienne; whether his love was as committed still concerned her. He seemed determined somehow that she leave—and whether danger from Isabelle was indeed real continued to cause her disquiet. Had their relationship instead reached the habitual limits of the Duc's amorous interests? She didn't know anymore what was reasonable doubt and what was excessive sensibility to the patterns of his past behavior. She didn't know anymore if she could think rationally about Etienne Martel. She particularly didn't know if she could survive without him. And her sense of loss was already achingly real.