Golden Girl dug in as she began the gradual ascent, tossing her head, snorting at the freshening scent of the mountains. Knowing she was on familiar trails, free herself from the confinement of the stable, she danced a few steps in excitement.
Some time later, a few hundred yards short of the limits of the timberline, coming out of a shimmering aspen grove colored the lemon-green of early spring, Golden Girl slowed to a trot, then to a walk. Recognizing the small pasture, she moved toward the rushing stream tumbling down from the snowcapped mountaintop and, lowering her head, drank from the ice-cold water. Daisy sat immobile, her eyes unfocused on the beauties of nature, brooding on her dragooned excursion to Paris, until the mare's head came around in inquiry and she snuffled softly as if to say, "Why haven't you dismounted?"
Smiling at the equine prodding, Daisy slid off. "I may not go back today," she muttered as though her Indian pony could understand. Letting the leather bridle-rope trail on the grass, she patted the muscular hindquarters of her pony. "Go eat your fill, girl."
A spiritual bond existed between them very near at times to a communicative one. Golden Girl responded to her moods with understanding… like Reggie, Daisy thought with a smile. The small Tennessee miner had taken charge of her father's stable years ago when the first stages of pleurisy had driven him above-ground. He'd helped her care for her pony she'd brought with her from her mother's clan and had allowed her license to say what she pleased. He'd treated her like an adult even then in his unpretentious open manner, and their friendship had grown over the years into a reciprocal closeness. He would have tolerated her marrying Martin, Reggie had told her once, although the man wasn't good enough for her; she in turn overlooked his penchant for the young chambermaid they'd just hired who was young enough to be his granddaughter.
Short moments later, lying under the summer lean-to of pine boughs she'd constructed against the sun and rain, Daisy threw her arms over her head, sighing in discontent. Paris. Ugh. For weeks. Ugh. She took pleasure in pouting dramatically now that no one could see. And sighed again, a great heaving exhalation of breath. Lord, it would be suffocating with Adelaide wanting her to dine and dance and visit with her society friends. She'd be obliged to smile for days on end—for interminable nights as well—at soft-spoken women who took care to be ornamental and men whose only strenuous .exercise was in amateur sports.
She wouldn't be able to ride either unless one considered the manicured paths in the Bois de Boulogne suitable for horsemanship—which she didn't. Then of course, she would have to deal with the officious, recalcitrant French bureaucracy in which protocol counted for more than efficiency. There was no mistaking the term "a man's world" had been coined particularly to describe its functioning mechanism. Trey and Empress had too much faith in her abilities. She grimaced in disconsolate ill-humor. She could do what was required, of course, she confidently noted—the process would just be forbiddingly miserable.
Pricey was too mild a term to describe the nature of her reward for this assignment. A king's ransom would better suit her current mood. Her darling baby brother was taking a large, already committed slice out of her life. Damn him to hell. Another great sigh drifted into the clean mountain air.
Her theatrics continued for some time, cleansing her begrudging temper, mitigating the worst of her moroseness. She and Trey both understood their obligation to duty, despite her facetious remonstrance to the contrary. He helped her, she helped him, they both worked for the betterment of their family and clan. As rooted as the mountains of her tribal homeland, as inherent as the pure scent of pine and sweet sage, as wide as the limitless horizons that had once meant freedom for her tribe, the constancy of duty prevailed.
So she would go of course to Paris.
But first, another ten minutes of freedom.
Sitting up, she gazed about her, wanting to memorize the beauty of the land around her against the long weeks of her exile in Paris. Inhaling deeply, she drew in the vital spirit of the mountains through her nostrils and through her eyes and skin and soul. Everything in life was intimately connected to the land, inside each thing a spirit existed, whether it was a leaf or a blade of grass or the awesome splendor of the soaring mountains. Ah-badt-dadt-deah, The-one-who-made-all-things, lived in her and around her and at times her visions raised her above the human experience. But there wasn't time for fasting and purifying her soul now… when Empress and Reggie and Paris were waiting. She shut her eyes for a wilful moment to preserve the fragile measurement of beauty in her mind.
And when she opened her eyes once again, Golden Girl stood before her, as if she knew the time of visions was past.
* * *
Daisy looked very different at teatime, dressed in cafe-au-lait-colored lace adorned simply with two long strands of pearls, her heavy black hair no longer loose but swept up with pearl combs, a Wedgwood cup gracefully raised to her lips. The elegant couturier gown of Valenciennes lace was a dramatic departure from her leather leggings and red wool shirt of the past hour. Only a faint fragrance of pine lingered in her hair as reminder of her afternoon escape into the mountains.
"You don't mind?" Empress was saying, seated across from her in a fauteuil of gently mellowed pastel needlepoint.
"No," Daisy lied, setting her cup down. "Paris is at its best this time of year." It was an obliging statement of good manners to bolster her lie. "With luck the legal changes shouldn't take more than a few weeks."
"I'm so pleased. Trey said you'd go, but I knew you weren't overly fond of—well… the fashionable world." Empress spoke with a delicate touch of her native French underscoring the rhythm of her phrasing. The antithesis of her sister-in-law in coloring, she was all golden tones and peach skin, her beauty one of sunrises or springtime redolent of apple-blossom-laden branches—sweetly pure and lush.
"If I can keep Adelaide in check, I'll survive." Daisy smiled as she spoke, confident of her own abilities to restrain their friend Adelaide's sense of mission as a hostess. A second later her smile broadened as she caught sight of the nursemaid entering the room bringing in her goddaughter Solange.
Fair like her mother, the baby puckered her tiny face into the fretful rosy-pink preliminary to a lusty howl. Reaching up to take her daughter from the young nursemaid, Empress greeted Solange with a smile and a cooing flow of words, calming her long enough to swiftly undo the crystal buttons of her gown. Settling her daughter at her breast immediately quieted the baby's flailing arms and legs, contented little grunts of satisfaction instantly replacing her agitation.
"She nurses all the time," Empress said with motherly pride, gazing at her daughter for a moment to assure herself she was comfortable, "which accounts for her size. Trey says if she sustains this appetite she's going to be as tall as he when she's grown."
A tall woman herself, Daisy thought her brother was probably right, considering the aspects his daughter had inherited. "She can compete with her brother Max then in the outdoor games."
"Did you like that?" While Empress had lived her adolescent years in the mountains, she'd not had the advantage of the Absarokee dedication to riding and outdoor sports.
"Competition is exhilarating; winning more so," Daisy admitted with a grin. "Being raised with three brothers sharpened my athletic abilities and fighting skills. I don't make a very demure wallflower." But that same competitive spirit had made her less vulnerable to those feminine romantic infatuations her friends gossiped and giggled about. Perhaps if she'd been more susceptible to those giddy girlish emotions, the men in her life would have played a more substantive role—and she too would have a baby nestled at her breast. The sight of Empress and her daughter occasioned a small twinge of envy. Would she ever find someone she loved enough to marry? Would Martin have filled the void she suddenly felt gazing at the poignant scene of mother and child?
"Speaking of wallflowers…" Empress casually declared, "brings Sally Newcombe to mind. Martin stopped by your office, I hear. Would you ever have married him?" Empress asked
as if reading Daisy's mind.
"I kept thinking… I would," Daisy slowly replied, aware, even as she uttered the words, of the improbability of that action. Somehow she couldn't picture Martin as the necessary complement to her wishful image of mother and child. And with the exception of a mild irritation at the abruptness of his marriage, she felt no stabbing jealousy or loss. Even the swiftness of his marriage was recognizable in practical terms. Raised in a politically conscious home, Daisy was sensibly aware of pragmatic, expedient behavior.
"But…" Empress prompted with Daisy's sentence left incomplete, curious about the state of her emotions.
Daisy's gaze drifted momentarily to the flower garden visible through the terrace door, as though the answer to her flawed love life lay in the bucolic arrangement of flora. If her life had been more conventional… she mused—immediately recognizing the impossibility considering her circumstances.
Conventionally Indian?
Conventionally white?
Conventionally female?
What constancy was the proper choice?
She didn't conveniently fit any of the categories—an asset at times and at others, a distinct conundrum.
"I never wished to relinquish my freedom for a permanent relationship with Martin," Daisy explained. "I suppose that reluctance must have had something to do with the degree of my feelings for Martin. He's handsome certainly… and a pleasure to discuss political concerns with…"
"Not exactly mad, passionate love though," Empress quietly interjected, aware herself how that overwhelming emotion could forever change the fabric of one's life.
"Maybe everyone doesn't experience the stunning sting of Cupid's arrow." Daisy spoke reflectively, seriously beginning to question the possibility of ever being struck by love in those fanciful terms.
"I'm not sure of the universal nature of love but when it strikes you, you'll know."
"It surely brought Trey to a shockingly swift and blissful state of arrest in his life of excess," Daisy declared, her smile touched with mischief.
"So I'm told," Empress modestly replied, although she was fully aware of her husband's previous reputation as standing stud for scandalous numbers of women.
"He never even looks at another woman… and in that fact alone, I confess… if I had been somewhat skeptical in the past of the possibility of LOVE in capital letters, that larger-than-life scream from the mountaintops, turn-your-life-around sensation, I'm thoroughly convinced of its existence." Daisy was only half teasing. Trey's startling conversion had been on the order of a religious experience.
"Now you just have to find someone who electrifies your senses."
"I haven't exactly been secluded from the world since I left adolescence," Daisy said with a grin. "But no one's—"
"Resplendently desirable."
Daisy shrugged. "Since I'm uninitiated in that miraculous state of rapture, I don't know what I'm looking for—only that I obviously haven't found him. Not that I'd notice, considering my work schedule."
"You do work long hours."
"And unless the perfect man walks into my office…"
"At least in Paris, Adelaide will see that you meet everyone—and dance a little too."
"Adelaide's concept of 'a little' is considerably more than mine, unfortunately."
"Some socializing will do you good."
"Not in Paris. No offense, Empress. Flitting between ballrooms, afternoon musicals, and tedious dinners isn't my idea of pleasant diversion. But what I'm going to miss most," Daisy said with a small sigh, reminded of her last journey upmountain for sometime, "is riding. My daily pilgrimage with Golden Girl maintains my sanity."
"I'll have Adelaide introduce you to Etienne. He'll lend you a horse you'll like as well as Golden Girl. His stable is the best in Paris."
"De Vec, you mean." There was disparagement in Daisy's voice. "The man who's slept with every woman of beauty in Paris?"
"His reputation aside," Empress replied, not disclaiming the gossip, "Etienne's a good man… and kind. He was a friend when I desperately needed one."
"I don't understand men like de Vec," Daisy bluntly declared. She didn't. More austere than Empress—not less sophisticated, because she understood all the intricacies of society and its penchant for pleasurable transgressions—only at base, she'd never understood the brittle dilettante world Empress took for granted. Where people played at love with discretion and grace and very little feeling. Where work was a betrayal of one's class and the seamy concerns of ordinary humanity were beneath one's notice. She didn't feel inclined to strike up an acquaintance�even for the purpose of obtaining prime horseflesh—with a man who most epitomized the modish world she disdained. "I can go without riding for a few weeks," Daisy demurred. "Or ride some of the horses in Adelaide's stables."
"I'll write you a letter of introduction in case you change your mind. Etienne would be happy to lend you any of his horses for riding. You'd appreciate the quality of his polo ponies too since your family's involved in their breeding. Etienne's ponies' have origins in bloodstock from somewhere in northern India. And you needn't talk to him at all." Empress smiled. Daisy was strangely independent, even prickly at times with men if they didn't meet her elusive standards. "His man Louis handles most everything for Etienne."
"Thank you for the offer, Empress, but don't bother with a letter of introduction." Daisy's voice was moderate, detached. "I won't have much time to ride."
* * *
The ocean crossing was unseasonably tempestuous, beset with gale winds that made even a daily walk on deck dangerous. Daisy's arrival time was delayed a full day by the storms. When she landed at Le Havre, Adelaide was waiting for her with an infectiously cheerful smile, her usual retinue of servants sufficient to ease a monarch's progress through a coronation, and a calendar of social events drawn up for Daisy that would exhaust an eighteen-year-old debutante.
With utmost diplomacy Daisy pared away as many events as possible on the train ride to Paris, using her legal mission as excuse. Which pretext turned out to be not only a feigned defense but an actuality, the procedures required to ultimately incorporate Solange into the Jordan estates taking hours of her time each day. French jurisprudence, not yet reconciled to female attorneys, offered obstinacy and delay at each step of the process.
After having passed two underproductive weeks, Daisy had visions of either leaving without accomplishing her tasks or seeing Paris in the autumn. Only today, she'd been denied entrance to the office of the deputy clerk with a rudeness only the French could convey. The vestiges of a headache that had plagued her all day still throbbed at her temples. The combs in her hair hurt, as did her heavy earrings, a rackety din of conversation overwhelming Adelaide's ballroom and Daisy's sensitive ears like a rushing tidal wave of fashionable inanity. Dammit, she hotly reflected, Henry should have come to Paris on this assignment. At least then his delays wouldn't have been predicated on gender bias—only nationality prejudice. And dammit, she'd almost managed to escape from the heated crush of Adelaide's ballroom, a moment ago.
Almost.
Except for the Comtesse Guimond's dulcet greeting and firm detaining grasp on her arm.
So now she stood facing the notorious Duc de Vec, waiting to be introduced, her disinterest barely concealed.
The Duc was patently restless, only held in check, as was Daisy, by the Countess's restraining hand.
It was obvious neither wished to be there.
When the hall clock struck the hour, Daisy and the Duc both took note of it like schoolchildren counting the minutes till dismissal.
With Daisy's inherent dislike of glittering society, were she not Adelaide's houseguest, she would have spent the evening upstairs reading.
The Duc de Vec had come at the last minute, as a favor to Adelaide's husband Valentin, when the seating arrangements for dinner required a hasty replacement for Baron Arras, who'd been injured on the polo field that afternoon. His friendship only extended to dinner, he'd warned Valen
tin; he intended leaving immediately after. And were it not for Isme's deliberate spite, eagle eye, and clutching hand on his arm, he would have been on his way to the Jockey Club. Instead, he was waylaid, impatient, his eyes shuttered against his annoyance.
"Etienne, darling, have you met Mademoiselle Daisy Black? She's sister-in-law to your dear friend Empress from Montana."
Introductions were made in an airy offhand manner underlaid with a sweet malevolence by Isme, the latest casualty of the Duc's amorous boredom. Since the Duc had recently ended their affair, with a woman-scorned resentment the Comtesse Guimond was hoping to embarrass the Duc de Vec with a member of Empress Jordan's family. His unsuccessful pursuit of the beautiful Mademoiselle Jordan the previous year had set tongues wagging; Empress had been the Duc's only known failure in matters of the heart.
"Daisy, may I present the Duc de Vec. I'm sure Empress has spoken highly of him. They were very close last year."
Isme watched like a peevish kitten, all blonde prettiness and malicious speculation to see how both would respond. Would Etienne feel awkward or gauche in Daisy's presence? Talk had it the Duc and Empress's husband met one evening in Empress's boudoir. Had this woman heard the details? How would Daisy Black regard the disreputable Duc de Vec? By reputation, from her family's vantage point, with her own reservations perhaps? She looked extremely cool. But then her splendid dark coloring and the heavy creme satin gown from Worth gave her a regal air. Unconsciously Isme straightened her petite, voluptuous form in emulation.
"Charmed, Mademoiselle," the Duc said with an effortless smile, bowing over Daisy's hand, immune to Isme's pointed innuendo.
The Comtesse Guimond's famed lavender eyes took on a sullen cast as she disgruntledly gazed at her ex-lover. She should have known better. It was impossible to embarrass de Vec.
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