Forbidden by Susan Johnson (good books to read for teens .TXT) 📕

Nadine would be disastrously misconstrued by Daisy. Hell and damnation, he heatedly thought, there were times when a lodge on the prairies held great appeal. How many times in his life had he been gracious under duress?

After Etienne left with Nadine, Daisy found herself wretchedly dispirited with all the subtle and not so subtle machinations surrounding the Duc. Wherever he went beyond the privacy of his home, women fawned over him, made demands of him, wanted him to entertain them in a thousand individual ways. She was weary of the competition—Isabelle a serious contender, in a class by herself—and she could no longer deal with the universal ardor. She was no better, she realistically admitted, her behavior tonight in his bedchamber as eagerly passionate. "I'm tired," she said, her voice suddenly curt. "Excuse me, but I'm leaving."

So sharply uttered was her declaration and so obvious her dejection, Blaze instantly suggested accompanying her. "I've had quite a long-enough day; it must be after midnight."

"Twelve-thirty," Empress offered, checking the small diamond brooch-watch on her bodice. "I'm tired too." Empress preferred rising in the morning with her children, although they had nannies enough.

"I'm going to stay for a short time more," Hazard gruffly stated, intensely aware of his daughter's unhappiness. "No need to send the carriage back, I'll walk."

"Since I generally sleep until afternoon," Kit said with an amiable smile, "the evening's just beginning for me. Do you want to dance, Valerie?" Half drunk and cheerful, his life held nothing more urgent than an occasional junket off to some distant corner of the globe when the mood struck him and the winds were favorable.

Valerie had even less to concern her; she didn't sail, her junkets pertaining to pleasure of another kind—less lengthy and of the boudoir variety. She was amenable.

Jolie and Henri had excused themselves when the Duc left to dance with Nadine, so after the ladies had their wraps brought to them, Hazard and Trey escorted their wives and Daisy to their carriage.

"Are you sure you're going to be all right?" Blaze asked Daisy as the horses drew away from the brightly lit entrance portico. She was pale beneath the golden bronze of her skin.

"You miss him, don't you?" Empress sympathetically declared, the visible evidence before her eyes conclusive.

"No," Daisy harshly replied, "not with Nadine hanging all over him."

"She can be a problem." Blaze sighed. "Although he doesn't seem smitten," she kindly added.

Daisy snorted in derision. "Etienne's never smitten. It would take too much emotion. It's so much easier to casually play the game—an effortless endeavor for him after all his years of practice," she tersely concluded.

"You're too hard on him," Empress rejoined. "He obviously was only being polite to Nadine."

"And he certainly knows how to be… polite, doesn't he?" Daisy's elaborate sweetness cut like a knife.

"Oh, dear," Blaze murmured, concerned with Daisy's unhappiness. "Can we do anything, darling?" she softly inquired.

"No, nothing really, I'm fine. Absolutely fine," she declared, fixing her gaze on the fog outside. She wasn't though, she was miserable, desperately, unbelievably miserable. During the months away from Etienne, she'd conditioned herself to a measure of equanimity and peace. And in only a few brief moments, he'd completely destroyed all her hard-won tranquility.

"I'll be in the billiard room," Hazard was saying to Trey at the same time Daisy was grieving the loss of her carefully wrought serenity. "When de Vec's finished dancing with Oliver's wife, would you ask him to join me?"

From the tone of his father's voice, Trey understood one dance would be the limit of Hazard's patience. "Are we concerned with Nadine's wishes?"

Hazard's dark brows rose in ironic response. "She can have him back when I'm finished with him."

"He doesn't threaten." Trey recalled his last meeting with the Duc in Empress's Paris home two years ago. When he'd threatened to kill him, the Duc de Vec had only quietly said, "You can try."

"I've no intention of threatening him. I'm simply going to ask him a few pertinent questions concerning his intentions in regard to your sister."

"Daisy won't like you asking."

Hazard glanced at his son as they stood in the loggia near the billiard room, the sound, of the waves breaking on the shore out-side the arched windows distinct, the wind off the sea pelting the dark gleaming glass with spray. "Daisy won't know."

"He might tell her."

"I'll see that he doesn't." In that precise tone, Hazard had told the chiefs of his enemy, the Lakota, years ago, that he'd come for his son.

A short time later, the Duc de Vec walked into the billiard room, stood for a brief moment surveying the large chamber, and on seeing Hazard seated near the fireplace, proceeded toward him. Since the French team was lodged at Nadine's, several of the men at the billiard tables were friends and teammates, occasioning an interrupted progress across the room.

"Hell of a game, Etienne."

"Great lift on your backhanders, de Vec."

"That last shot was a ball-breaker."

He acknowledged their remarks with only a smile or a nod or a brief thank you. Intent on presenting himself to Daisy's father, he didn't wish to be waylaid.

"Are you up to Nadine, de Vec, with your bruised body?"

He silently groaned. The masculine ribbing was expected with Nadine's attention so obvious, but the timing could have been better. He was about to face a wrathful father.

"With Oliver getting up so early in the morning," another man said, sportively, looking at the case clock in the corner, "you'll have to give Nadine an abbreviated version of your skills, de Vec. It's almost one o'clock."

"I'm not interested, Charles," Etienne disavowed, skirting a British player making a bridge shot. "I'm here to play polo."

"Maybe you haven't made that perfectly clear to Nadine," a young man lounging against the table bumper said, his smile wide. "She looks as though she's taken a sincere interest in you."

"Feel free, Abercrombie," the Duc offered. "She's all yours."

Hazard was standing when the Duc reached him, his expression grim, and Etienne felt he should apologize somehow for the comments