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

contemplating the new mood of his letter, its brevity, the gloomy use of the words "bleak, numbing, paralyzing." Smoothing out the single sheet of paper on the grass, she touched the curving forms of the words, as if she could feel his presence with her gesture. Almost two weeks had passed since he'd written that day at Colsec, and she tried to imagine what he'd looked like, seated at the small desk in his study on the ground floor. Had he been barefoot as he was so often at Colsec, was his hair wet from swimming in the river, had Gabriella brought him a citrus punch in a tall glass laced with kir, as he liked?

What had he meant when he'd said the divorce wasn't going to succeed? Only the present procedural step—or ultimately?

She knew the answer, of course, to her rhetorical question.

She'd known the answer to that query months ago in Paris.

Only her heart had refused to accept it.

That night she sent Etienne the message she'd been contemplating for weeks, defining her feelings, courteously and rationally acquiescing to his hopeless outlook.

I don't honestly know how to begin, she wrote, struggling for the words to separate herself from the man she loved almost more than duty. Tears glistened in her eyes, her throat ached with suppressed sobs as her pen reluctantly transcribed the unhappy words. Nor am I sure of the wisdom of my actions. But when I read your letter from Colsec, my heartfelt to the ground, she went on, unconsciously expressing her grief in the words of her people. Your despair was my despair, your bitter taste of lost hope—mine. We've never been rational, Etienne, to think we could overcome the powerful age-old prejudices of your class. Although I care less about the actual divorce—you know my feelings on the whitemen's customs—I do care profoundly about the duty we owe to our different cultures. I love you with the same passion we first knew at Colsec, and I miss you every moment, but I can't marry you.

Our allegiances are to different worlds.

Worlds separated by distance and convictions.

Promise me we can be friends at least, so I won't have to lose you completely.

The Duc hurled her letter across the room after reading it, and then swearing, was obliged to go and fetch it to reread the horrendous words. Damn her black eyes! Friends? he fumed. She wanted to be friends? Not likely! he caustically raged. She must have found someone else, was his immediate next thought. Damn her and damn her treacherous faithlessness!

The third time he retrieved the perfidious letter, he ironed out the crumpled paper with the flat of his hand and went over her words slowly, as if some hidden meaning resided beneath the brief repudiating sentences. She was definitely stating she wouldn't marry him, he decided ten readings later, no matter how he interpreted the phrases, regardless of her protestations of love.

Rage filled his mind at her damnable noble-sounding phrases, at the utter practicality of her tone, at the possibility—his more cynical contemplation deciphered—a new suitor amused the beautiful, hot-blooded Miss Black. A furious, impotent anger swelled inside his brain at the thought of another man touching Daisy and with that implacable image in mind, an overwhelming impulse to strike out and hit something gripped his senses. Friends? She wanted to be friends like bridge partners or asexual pairings at the tennis doubles at Trouville each summer. He couldn't imagine being friends with the seductive, sensual Daisy Black. She had to be joking! She'd found someone else, it was plain to see, like she'd fallen into his bed with teasing laughter and wanton eyes, and he said that plain and simple in the telegram he sent off.

You're crazy if you think I want to be friends. Who's your new lover?

He didn't sign it for the clerks in the telegraph office were sure to gossip, but she'd know who the message came from. He paced, cynical and surly and impatient, waiting for her reply—not knowing if she'd reply.

She received the brutal reproach in the company offices in Helena and went cold at the tone. Composing an immediate reply, she stood shivering in the summer heat while the operator keyed the words.

There's no one. Believe me. No one but you. Can we be friends?

He hated that word suddenly—a repugnant spurious word for the intensity of his feelings. Marry me, he dispatched back heatedly. I don't want a friend.

I can't marry you. She almost didn't write those words. She almost decided to become the Duc de Vec's mistress because he wasn't free to marry her even as he asked. The convoluted struggle between belief and disbelief, between trust and misanthropy brought her momentarily to a standstill while the young telegraph clerk waited for her reply. She didn't at base care about Etienne's divorce, but she cared about the repercussions attendant to its omission. And she cared, too, in a spiritual way, for her own peace of mind. Which simple reflection called in all her interior landscapes—predominant with images of her beloved mountains.

A decision finally.

I'm sorry, she finally wrote, the two words insufficient for thirty years' affection to her clan. Tell me you understand.

Don't understand. Won't understand. Can't understand. You're killing me, he added at the last, a wrenching admission for a man of his pride.

I'm sorry. Words of duty, practical words, words that dimmed the sun.

Don't be. I'm not. Etienne had replied, a prideful man, resentful and frustrated after two hours in the telegraph office at theBourse under the interested scrutiny of the key operator. Affronted at having exposed his private life to the world, he stalked out of the office and strode to the Jockey Club to drink himself into an oblivious state of disregard for all women, friends or otherwise.

Valentin came looking for him late in the afternoon after the Duc hadn't appeared for their scheduled meeting at Tattersalls to look at a new thoroughbred. "The horse was a beauty," Valentin said,