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

about Nadine. It wasn't a propitious beginning to what was probably going to be—at best—a difficult conversation.

But he only said, "You wished to see me?" because it was impossible to say he was sorry about Nadine with any simplicity.

Hazard didn't immediately answer, gazing at the Duc in silence for a long moment, as if judging him against some internal assessment scale, before finally saying, "The smoking room will be less busy." Turning, he touched a hidden panel at the side of the fireplace, opening a door concealed in the paneling.

"Oliver has his eccentricities," Hazard explained, shutting the hidden door once they were in the smoking room. "This leads outside past that alcove."

For a fleeting moment Etienne wondered if he was going to conveniently disappear through that outside doorway until he noticed two men seated in the room smoking and enjoying a brandy.

"Could we have some privacy?" Hazard quietly said to the two men comfortably disposed in plush armchairs, and despite the softly spoken request, there was no mistaking Hazard's voice of command. The sight of Hazard's stern expression augmented his dictatorial tone; both men immediately scrambled up, stammered their excuses, and exited through the outside terrace.

"Excuse the excess," Hazard apologized, his voice serene, as though men jumping up and going out into the damp night to accommodate him was normal. "Oliver had this room reproduced from the Alhambra, which isn't the problem so much as the decorator from New York who 'improved' on the original."

The proportions of the room duplicated royal magnificence, the vaulted ceiling rising more than forty feet, its moorish arches and supporting walls covered with exact reproductions of the rare mosaics in the Alhambra. A magnificent glass chandelier hung from the elegant dome, illuminating furniture upholstered in red velvet or tiger skins, glistening above elaborately carved tables, enhancing the subtle lustre of four Yamoud Bokhara carpets specially ordered from Turkestan. As added decor, enough potted palms to shade an oasis punctuated the enormous chamber, lending a shadowy quality of exotic locales.

"This could almost cause one to stop smoking," the Duc said, casting a sardonic eye about the room, his attitude as calm as Hazard's. Too long a de Vec to be intimidated, he only questioned what position Hazard would take.

"A foul habit anyway. Sit down."

For a man who had ordered the world to his perfection for decades and was comfortable with authority, the Duc experienced an odd deference. Hazard Black manifested a quiet unusual strength beyond the physical; a mystical power reminding him potently of the shaman magic he'd seen in his travels withGeorges. An intense and capable force Etienne couldn't help but admire.

"Would you like a drink?" Hazard asked, moving toward an ornately carved ivory table holding various bottles. At the Duc's affirmative, he poured them both a bourbon neat. "Some of Oliver's private stock from his Tennessee farm," he added, handing the Duc his drink. "And smoother than most." Lifting his glass, Hazard smiled for the first time. "So you've become friends with my Daisy."

Etienne choked marginally on his swallow of liquor at Hazard's politic word for the flame-hot passion between himself and his daughter.

"Don't drink it too fast," Hazard cautioned with a grin as he seated himself across from Etienne on one of Oliver's tiger-skin club chairs. "It has more bite than brandy."

Under the charming influence of Hazard's casual grin, the Duc recognized a portion of Daisy's appeal was inherited from her father. He had an astonishing warmth, charismatic and unaffected. And his dramatic physical presence in the overdecorated, flamboyant room brought with it a clean, fresh sense of majestic nature. Maybe his exotic long black hair or the small painted shell-earring hanging from his right earlobe contributed to the image of open-sky wilderness, or perhaps the fine lines evident near his eyes, brought on by years of gazing over the open plains, bespoke a man of the outdoors. He embodied an unmistakable spirit of nature, a tangible essence of forest and mountain and freedom, despite his stylish evening clothes and urbane manners.

"Daisy doesn't like Parisian society," the Duc said, as though the revelation of that fact was suddenly clear after meeting her father.

"She never has." Hazard held his glass lightly between his palms, his slender fingers dark against the sparkling crystal. A gold charm dangled from a delicate gold chain circling his wrist, and Etienne recognized the same cougar design Daisy wore as a locket at times. It was an amulet, she'd told him, crafted from the gold of her father's first mine, an insignia of his Absarokee name and his protective vision. "I think it has something to do with her rearing. In her early years, our tribe still followed the buffalo. It was a time of plenty, our land stretched across hundreds of miles of mountain and prairie. They were good years… when the land was still ours." In a voice betraying none of his poignant memories, Hazard succinctly added, "Paris is an anomaly to her."

Intellectually, Etienne understood the nomadic way of life for he'd lived with many of the Asiatic tribes during the years he traveled with Georges. But coming from his background of aristocratic privilege, he couldn't fully perceive of a childhood entirely related to nature. Or understand completely the dichotomy now between her past and the sophisticated woman she'd become. "Daisy takes strongest issue with the idleness… the frivolity," he said.

"She was always quieter and more serious than most children," Hazard replied, "and after her mother and stepfather were killed—well… she's never been open about her feelings." His voice was hushed suddenly, the old memories vivid and fresh. Daisy's mother had been his companion the last summer he was home with his tribe before the Civil War, in those happy days when the Absarokee were still in possession of the best hunting grounds on the northern plains and the spirits were still looking down on their people with benevolence. Daisy had been born after he'd gone back to Harvard. Then the war had intervened, and he hadn't seen