"I'm too old for this," he said lightly, grinning. He'd been fifteen the last time he'd made love in a carriage.
"You're too large for this," Daisy whispered, her own grin replete with contentment.
Maybe that was it, he thought. He'd not quite grown to his present height at fifteen. But more than that, he'd hardly ever since then felt the need to disregard the comforts of a bed. His shoulders were cramped as were his legs, he noticed now that reality had once again intruded. He'd been resting his weight on his elbows, trying at the same time to protect Daisy from the roll of the carriage, and his legs didn't have adequate room. "If you continue to seduce me," he said, his eyes alight with mischief, "I'll have to have a larger carriage designed. I don't know if I can move." His carriage had not been built with lovemaking in mind.
"You at least have the option to move," Daisy pointedly murmured. She was still very much pinned beneath his large body.
An ironic smile lit up his eyes with sunny amusement. "Pardon me, Mademoiselle… for my… regrettable rusticity."
He looked so boyishly charming with his hair in disarray and his green eyes brilliant with jest, Daisy was struck suddenly with a stabbing sense of loss so intense she felt her heart constrict. When she left him, as leave him she must, her world was going to fall into dismal shade. And perhaps because today had already been too passionately charged, or perhaps because she had truly found love for the first time, she found her eyes beginning to brim over with tears.
Too close not to notice, Etienne reacted instantly. "Darling," he said, hushed and bewildered, "what's wrong?" And he moved with a great deal of agility for a man with cramped, numbed legs. A moment later, they were both seated on the crushed velvet seat, his head bent toward hers in concern. "Tell me, sweetheart, and I'll fix it." Unequivocal and determined, he'd see mountains moved for her.
"There's nothing to fix," Daisy whispered, thinking how unfair the gods had been to have placed Etienne in a structured world with a wife and family. "Forgive me. I'm not usually emotional." Her added disclaimer, spoken in a more normal tone, was manifestly true. She was, in fact, never emotional. A disturbing thought, further and disastrously reinforced by tears beginning to spill over and slide down her cheeks.
Lifting Daisy onto his lap in one flashing moment, Etienne straightened the collar of her dress in a small protective gesture that overlooked the disarray of her clothing. Touching her chin gently with his finger, he tipped her face up. "If you don't tell me, I can't help." His voice was the same one he used to soothe Hector.
"I don't know what it is," she lied.
"I don't want to make you unhappy. It's the last thing in the world I want to do."
"I'm not unhappy," she whispered, fresh tears falling.
"You could have fooled me."
Daisy tried to smile.
With pink flushed cheeks, her silky hair tumbled, her lashes wet and spiked, she looked young, childlike. "I can see I'm going to have to change my repertoire," he said, brushing a spill of hair from her brow.
"No." It was the very smallest sound.
"To something less emotional at least." His voice was husky and low, touched with his customary teasing.
"No, don't." Despite her tears, he'd opened the vistas of a promised golden land.
"Will I have to become proficient at kissing away tears then?" Bending lower, he licked a light path up her cheek.
Her smile was less shaken now; she'd had time to compose herself, to reaffirm the distinctions between wishful fantasy and reality. "If you don't mind."
"Kissing you for any reason is distinct delight, Miss Black." Having been adept at giving pleasure to women too long to doubt his abilities, he meant his words to calm Daisy's mood and bring a smile. "Anywhere," he added with a grin.
"You shock me." Her grin matched his now, her sudden rush of vulnerability overcome with her customary, inherent logic.
"I haven't even begun to shock you, darling."
"Is that a promise?" She was self-assured once again, and coquettish. She had today and some weeks more—and with that she'd be content.
"Bona fide," he whispered.
The rest of the journey to Colsec passed in teasing silliness and soft kisses, a lush prelude of anticipation and enchantment. They were both touched by sensations unique to their experience as though they'd entered a private walled estate where joy was suddenly handed over with the key to the gate. And happiness was no longer a tame and inexact word.
* * *
He carried her into his cottage when they arrived in her half undress, wearing only riding breeches himself. Padding barefoot up to the door while Guillaume watched with a smile on his face, the Duc answered Daisy's whispered concern for appearances with a smile, a kiss, and a cavalier, "They won't notice."
And when of course his two servants did, with as little shock showing as they could muster, he only said while Daisy hid her face in his shoulder, "I'd like bathwater brought up and luncheon served in the garden at three." Then he murmured near Daisy's ear, "Is that all right?"
It was the simplest of queries, a courtesy from a courteous man, but his intentions were quite different from the inquiry he would have made with anyone else because her answer mattered. He wished to please her in the most trivial ways; he wanted to give her the sun and the moon, his wealth, his estates, and all his happiness and joy. He was terrified.
But she smiled up, her cheek warm against his shoulder, and offered him everything in her own simple answer.
"I don't care." She meant she didn't care about the entire world spinning away into the blackness of the galaxy as long as he was holding her. "I mean it," she added.
He smiled. "I know," he cryptically said as though they were speaking in a secret language.
François carried up the bathwater in shiny copper buckets while they sat on the balcony in the sun. "Can you stay the night?" Etienne asked after they'd passed judgment on the serenity of the river landscape, the warmth of the spring sun, the extent of their mutual insanity.
When Daisy nodded, he suggested she write a short note to Adelaide making her excuses. As on her previous visit, Guillaume would deliver the message. He rose then to bring her paper and pen, laying a small writing table across her knees on his return.
He didn't ask what she wrote, unconcerned in his habitual way with the strictures of society; he only took the envelope from her when she was finished, went downstairs, and handed it to François with directions for Guillaume.
He was gone for only a short time, but the heat of the sun was soothing. Daisy had slept poorly the previous night, and with a postcoital languor seeping through her senses, she fell asleep.
The Duc let her sleep while he bathed because his bachelor tub was only designed to accommodate one. He found himself whistling like a young boy while he washed. How long had it been since he'd been so unconditionally happy? He began planning some required renovations for his country cottage based on a concept that until recently he would have found anathema to his solitary hermitage. He would need plumbing put in—a larger bathroom and tub so Daisy would be comfortable. The original eighteenth-century cottage design had been adequate for his unsocial occupancy but his requirements had drastically altered. Would she want a telephone? He grimaced slightly at the thought, for Colsec's isolation was its greatest attraction. A moment later he shrugged away his reservations. If she wanted a telephone—he would have one installed. Pleasing her was his fondest wish and pleasure. He began mentally composing a list in his head—a lover's list meant to delight. Did she like diamonds, he wondered.
Dressed a few moments later in a simple shirt and trousers, he supervised the laying out of Daisy's bath, concerned with the exact temperature of the water, dismayed to hear he had no scented soap in his bachelor abode, fussing, François told Cook later, like a concerned mother hen.
Shutting the door behind his servant, he glanced at the bed-side clock, gauging the time until lunch and then went to wake the woman who'd renewed hi
s faith in the possibilities for happiness in life.
Through a lazy contentment she felt his hands untying the ribbons at the waist of her chemise and only murmured a low purring sound.
The Duc kissed the last remnant of her purr while he slid her arms from the bodice sleeves of the teal blue silk, opened to her waist, but never taken off in their haste toward consummation. "I'll buy you a new dress," he murmured, noting with mild astonishment the ripped silk near several of the buttonholes.
"I've plenty more," Daisy casually replied, open-eyed and awake, stretching now she was free of her confining bodice. The styles were snug in the shoulder and sleeves, especially tailored day-gowns like hers, and she felt for a brief moment, basking under the sun, barefoot and bare-armed with her chemise unlaced, as though she were back under a prairie sun. "You'd like our summer camp," she said out of the blue, feeling an affinity very near to magic.
"Show it to me," the Duc said, as if it were not an ocean and half a continent away.
"Yes," she replied because today, this moment, she wouldn't think about his wife or what her family might say should she bring him home for summer camp.
He kissed the tip of her nose then and her mouth and all the warm and scented contours of her body as he slipped her chemise and skirt and petticoats from her. "I need a bath," she apologized, for he was clean and freshly dressed while the odor of their love-making clung to her body.
He could have disagreed, for there was a provocative sense of fertility goddess in the scent of her, like female incitement on the most primordial level. But he agreed instead, to appease her sensibilities, saying, "You'll feel better after a bath." And so saying, he repressed his more fundamental urges, picked her up, carried her to the tub, and slid her into the warm water.
He sat like a circumspect suitor in a drawing room might while she bathed, although his lounging posture was typically de Vec—assured, gently patrician. And he spoke of trivalities, wishing her to be comfortable.
"Have I known you a thousand years?" Daisy asked, sliding down into the water to rise the soap from her shoulders, thinking how familiar Etienne seemed.
"I don't know," he replied, "but certainly you will for the next thousand."
"You're unprincipled."
"Perhaps, but I'm happy." The sting of society's slurs had been bred out of the de Vecs a thousand years before, their motto, "Stand Aside," indicating the precise degree of their unconcern.
"As long as you're happy?" While Daisy's tone was teasing, beneath her casual jest rested her own fundamental resistance to such complacent hedonism.
"Do you mind?" A perceptive man, he'd caught that very small taint of disapproval. "I contribute generously to charity. Does that help?" His grin was beguiling.
Daisy laughed. "This is not precisely the position in which to pass any moral judgments, lying as I am in your bathtub, lusting after your body."
His smile could have brought the dead to life. "I was too polite to mention that. Maman has always cautioned me to avoid conversations having to do with virtue at times like this."
"You like your Mama." His tone had been one of delight.
"Yes. She'll adore you."
A stabbing jealousy struck her. "Do you bring all your lovers to meet your Mama?"
"Never."
She was suspicious of his glib reply, for he'd already answered her similarly on several occasions and for a man of de Vec's expertise, she found it unlikely so many "nevers" were appropriate to their relationship. "You needn't patronize me; I'm quite realistic about life."
"Sometimes, Daisy, mon chou, you're entirely too realistic. When I say never, I mean it. There's no point in lying."
"Don't tell me you're always truthful in your…" Resenting the breadth of his experience with women, she stumbled over the words defining his profligacy.
"… friendships with women?"
She was sunk down in the water still, her dark hair floating on the water's surface, her eyes accusing.
"Yes," he said to her silent accusation, "I am. Not impolite, and omission, I'll admit, becomes a developed skill, but always honest, darling." A great deal of his charm, beside the obvious beauty of his face and person, was the result of his engaging frankness.
She wanted him beyond the dictates of her resentment and conscience, her lustful need stark and strong. He was too hand-some lounging in the simple wooden spindle chair, dressed in an open-throated plain white shirt and buff-colored trousers rolled up above his strong, bronzed ankles, his heavy-lidded eyes seductive, the muscular definition of his tall lean frame on display�stretched out and lightly clothed, his skin very dark in contrast to the pale hues he wore. He was too tantalizing, making himself available as it were, not pressing himself on her. She'd thought he might help her bathe or at least come over to kiss her, and she found herself wanting to feel him inside her more powerfully for his reserve. If keeping his distance were deliberate, how often had he played the game, how many times had he sat and waited for a woman to come to him? Was she any different after all from the others, with the state of her arousal so pronounced? "Come here," she said, testing her power and his casual disregard.
"Are you finished?" he softly inquired, ignoring her remark.
"Yes, finished," she said, thinking instead of the unfinished state of her desire. "Come here and kiss me."
"I'll get a towel." He had his own plans and they didn't include getting wet.
She suddenly rose like Aphrodite born, in sleek lush invitation, water streaming in glistening iridescence down her body, her black hair cascading in a river of silk down the supple curve of her back, the dark triangle of hair between her smooth, gleaming thighs, shiny, damp, and tempting. She touched herself briefly there with a graceful gesture as if in invitation and waited for him. But drawing near, he only offered her his hand to step from the tub and wrapped her in the large white towel he'd taken from the bed. "Can we eat later?" she said very low, her throaty persuasion asking for more. "I mean luncheon," she softly added, letting the towel slide to the floor, watching his eyes drift down her slender form, thinking there were mysteries beyond the explanation of the intellect when she wanted to make love to this man anytime she saw him, anytime she thought of him… anytime at all.
"Come outside with me," he coaxed.
"Don't you want me?" She was more direct than coquettish. And she felt strangely breathless standing nude before him like a slave on the block.
Taking a very deep breath, he slowly exhaled. "Oh, yes."
With Eve-like assurance she reached for the buttons of his shirt. She had the admission she wanted, a response comparable to her own hot-blooded yearning. When he stayed her hand with a gentle pressure before her fingers unfastened the first ivory button, the inquiry in her eyes was mild.
"I hope this won't ruin my libertine image," he said with a grin, "but I promised Gabriella—my cook," he added in the event she didn't recognize the name, "we'd take luncheon at three." Bringing her captured hand to his lips he gently kissed her fingertips before placing her hand carefully within the curve of his palms. "François reminded me when he brought up your water that she was preparing a salmon aspic. The temperature's warm today and well… she and François have taken care of me here at Colsec for a long time."
"Let me get this straight. Gabriella's salmon aspic takes precedence over making love to me?"
If she hadn't been grinning, he would have answered her differently. "Let's just say I've more confidence in your ability to wait than Gabriella's aspic… and," he added, his smile wide, his hands holding hers warmly engulfing, "if you get angry with me, I know one or two ways to curtail your resentment."
They stood very close, their spirits in tremulous rapport�held in check… only barely.
"In other words, Gabriella doesn't succumb to your seductions."
"That's about it."
"So if I were to agree without argument to postpone my libidinous urges, you would no doubt…" Her voice took on a husky contralto res
onance, and the light of mischief shone in her eyes. "… reward me later."
"My word on it, counselor," he said, grinning. "After the aspic's been served, I'm completely at your disposal."
"Completely?" The single word held suggestion rich in imagery.
He smiled. "Absolutely."
* * *
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.
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