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

After selecting one of his shirts to wear when he told her she might as well be comfortable in the isolation of his estate, they walked hand in hand down his curved low-ceilinged stairway. Etienne's overlarge shirt reminded Daisy of the Absarokee dresses she wore when she was with the clans at the summer camp. Her bare feet, too, recalled the freedom of those summer days.

He led her out the front entrance to a winding grassy path leading through cool ferns and weeping willows down to the river where a sylvan clearing opened before them, all exquisite shades of green and dappled sunshine. Artistically placed on the verge of the tall willows, a rustic summer pavilion complemented the fairylike glade. A folly built of slender willow saplings with bark and branches still intact, roofed in green, verdant thatch offered cool haven against the summer-day's heat.

"How wonderful," Daisy exclaimed on seeing it. Like an illustration from a fairy tale, the pavilion on the river-bank immediately evoked another reality, a fantasia. "You didn't show me this last time."

"I've five miles on the river," Etienne said in polite evasion. He hadn't intended on seeing her again—last time. "This is one of my toys."

"There are others?" She hadn't thought him a fanciful man, so much of his life was patterned in the predictable aristocratic mold.

"A few," he modestly said, thinking how her eyes would sparkle when he showed her his Mongolian yurt constructed on a rise overlooking a great banking curve of the Seine. But just then François appeared almost noiselessly from the woodland path, carrying a large covered silver tray. Escorting Daisy into the open-air pavilion, the Duc seated her on a wicker settee, elaborate in woven detail, cushioned in pillows of a lush deep-purple woven fabric. He offered her champagne from a bottle on ice in a silver bucket, seated himself on the railing beside Daisy's settee, and oversaw François's arrangement of the luncheon table. Several trips later the last item of food was deposited on the natural linen table cover. With a gracious thank you, the Duc acknowledged François's elegant display. "We won't require your assistance any longer," he added, his voice quietly dismissive.

"Very good, sire. The towels you asked for are on the small jetty near the boathouse."

"And the champagne?"

"In the boathouse."

"Tell Gabriella I'm having some more playthings sent out for your grandchildren. Au Nain Bleu's manager promised me tomorrow."

François bowed with a peasant gesture, his hand over his heart. "Thank you, sire," he said to the man he knew as Baron Fermond. "Gabriella will be pleased."

"How long have you employed them?" Daisy asked after François had disappeared into the dense willow grove.

"They came with the estate. Their family was young then… it must be twenty-some years ago." His answer was more casual than his memory. He remembered precisely to the day, for he'd bought Colsec directly after Isabelle had informed him shortly after the twins' birth that he would no longer be welcome in her bed. That same day, he'd had his steward look into a retreat for himself near Paris. A week later he'd bought Colsec. He'd come here often over the years when society became intolerable and his moodiness needed surcease. "They were afraid they'd be turned out," he went on, "and I'd bring in my own servants. But I was looking for anonymity, no ties to my Paris staff. Their children work for me now, too, either in the village or here. Their youngest boy heads my library in the village."

Daisy raised her brow in silent query. French peasants were rarely librarians, and a small village with a library was exceptional.

"Your clan isn't the only beneficent unit of humanity in the world, darling." His soft irony was teasing.

"You surprise me," Daisy said in genuine admiration. "I thought your charity was confined to gifts of jewelry to fashionable ladies."

"In time, no doubt, I'll astonish you with my… charity."

Her voice when she answered was husky with seductive suggestion. "I certainly hope so."

"You'll have to meet my nuns," the Duc went on, amusement coloring his tone. "I endow a nunnery too."

"A nunnery?" Daisy's eyes had narrowed slightly in licentious suspicion.

"I've never felt the urge," Etienne said with a faint smile, reading her expression correctly. "The Bishop had cut their funds and they were starving, that's all."

"You support a great number of people." She said it almost grudgingly, reluctant to admit she had been almost entirely wrong in her assessment of Etienne.

"Many of them contribute to my wealth. I'd be a fool not to." His simple answer, unique to his class, was delivered with his usual casual logic.

Daisy had been raised in a culture where the individual contributed to the welfare of the tribe and, while she hardly needed another reason to find the Duc de Vec appealing, enamoured as she was already, the fact that he had a social consciousness in a society known for its selfishness was gratifying. No, more—she found it another temptation to love him. Which thought immediately struck her with alarm. Lifting her champagne glass for refilling, she said by way of suppressing disastrous thoughts of love—hopeless and impossible in relation to the Duc de Vec, "Should we sample the extraordinary salmon aspic? And I warn you, considering what I relinquished for Gabriella's serenity, I expect the ambrosia of the gods."

Five minutes later, glancing up from her comfortable half-reclining position on the settee, her portion of aspic devoured, she said to Etienne's knowing look, "Don't look so smug and cut me another serving."

"I think this is where I'm allowed to say something superior."

"Not if you value your life."

He only grinned and served her another sizable portion. In silence, he watched her eat, watched her lick the fork clean, watched her small considering pause before she said, "It's an aphrodisiac, isn't it?"

"I don't think it has to be. Gabriella tells me it's a family recipe ceremoniously cooked for weddings. The ice required for it makes it of course a luxury for peasant households."

"What's in it?"