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

"Food, darling," Daisy said with a tender smile. "That's all."

"Food it is. Are you sure?" Hesitant and conciliatory, he would have given her anything.

"I'm sure."

"Louis!" Etienne shouted. "Get the hell in here!"

Some time later, after Daisy had restored herself with food, they lay on the Duc's bed, watching the setting sun color the sky an in-tense pumpkin-orange, exchanging kisses and endearments. Touching on the subject of Daisy's leaving with a cautious objectivity, Etienne said, "What if you have my child? What then?"

"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,