Forbidden

by Susan Johnson

  "Do you want an orchestra from Vienna?" Hazard pleasantly inquired, generous to a fault.

  "No, but remind me to tell you what I do want, later."

  Her glance-was significant and her husband smiled teasingly. "My word on it, bia."

  What Blaze had in mind was not precisely what Hazard envisioned; she was, in fact, deadly serious about what she wanted this time. And later, after a slow trip back through congested traffic to Frank Rutherford's mansion on Bellevue Avenue, when she and Hazard were in their bedroom suite relaxing before dinner, she said, "I want to ask you a favor, darling."

  "Not again," he said with a grin from his lounging position on the ornate baroque bed where they'd recently made love.

  She turned from the closet where she stood before a vast array of evening gowns, debating which to wear this evening and grinned back at him. "You're eternally boyish… but I'm not complaining."

  "You keep me young, bia." Hazard was in fact, at fifty, as trim and fit as ever. Muscled and lean, he lay sprawled on the burgundy silk coverlet, his black hair in silky disarray on the lace-trimmed pillow, his arms thrown over his head, his dark eyes dwelling appreciatively on his wife. "Name your favor."

  "I'd like you to try and be pleasant to the Duc de Vec."

  Her words brought him sitting upright on the bed, a scowl prominent over his snapping eyes. "Ask me something else, bia. I can't do it." Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he rose in a swift, restless movement and strode over to the window overlooking the ocean and Cliff Walk. He stood nude before the curtained window, looking through the lace panels, the waves crashing against the rocky shore, analogous to the savage impulses filling his mind. "He doesn't deserve our courtesy," he said low and tense.

  "You didn't see Daisy's face when he rode up to our carriage after the match."

  He whipped around. "He talked to Daisy. How dare he—"

  "You should have seen her face, Jon. She's still desperately in love with him."

  "No, she isn't. She told me she wasn't any longer. She told me it's over."

  "Well, she lied then."

  His black eyes stared at her as if he could decipher the discrepancy between Daisy's words and his wife's. When he spoke, his voice was curt, dry as the dust on the banks of the Powder River. "Say you're right." He stopped her comment with a raised hand. "Just say Daisy still loves him. What then? The man's married. He can't or won't get a divorce."

  "Say it's can't."

  "Say it's won't." He was less romantic than his wife.

  "Would it hurt to give them a chance to talk?"

  "Am I keeping them from talking?" he said with distinct violence in his tone.

  "Your attempt at mortal injury this afternoon on the polo field might have given him the impression you don't like him."

  "He wasn't concerned whether I liked him this summer when he cast his libertine eye at Daisy. Why do I have to like him?"

  "For Daisy."

  Hazard stared at his wife for a lengthy moment and then exhaled in frustration. "Tell me how she looked," he softly said.

  And when Blaze described Daisy's defensive posture so distinct from the poignant hurt in her eyes and the way her gaze had lingered on the Duc as he conversed with Nadine Belmont, Hazard said with grudging reluctance, "You're sure?"

  "I like to think I'm a good judge of people. I married you, didn't I?"

  "Flattery won't get you anywhere tonight, bia. I'm pissed." His scowl while not bristling was one of displeasure.

  "Think of Daisy, Jon," Blaze quietly admonished. "Not yourself."

  She was right, he had to honestly admit. Whether he took issue with the Duc's methods was irrelevant to his daughter's happiness. "Oh, hell," he grumbled, "if she wants him, I suppose I can be pleasant to the damn fellow." He grinned. "He does play one hell of a game of polo. He can't be all bad."

  "If anyone should understand libertine men, darling…" Blaze suggestively declared.

  "That was a long time ago," he said in reference to his past. "De Vec's escapades, on the other hand, are too damn recent for comfort," he complained.

  "I'm only suggesting you might have a bit of Christian charity considering the adventures of your youth."

  "I'm not a Christian, bia," he said with a small smile, "and," he went on, his tone collected and temperate, knowing she was referring to his children born before he married her, "our culture permits a different style of liaison than the yellow-eyes."

  "Does that include Lucy Attenborough, Cornelia Jennings, et al.?"

  "All before you, sweetheart, keep in mind." He sighed then. "But I see your point. I'll be civil to the man."

  "That's all I ask."

  "That's all you'll get," he muttered.

  "What was that darling?"

  "I said, wear the green flowered silk. It does you justice." He grinned. "And you'll owe me."

  "I'll try and think of some way to repay you," she said with a wink.

  * * *

  Belcourt was the largest of the Newport "cottages," the most elegant, extravagant, and opulent of the summer residences built for America's haut monde. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt and freely copied from Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon, the ultimate example of the Newport play palaces was ablaze with gas and electric lights—a breathtaking sight rising out of the dense and oppressive fog.

  Flanked by her parents and the Rutherfords, Daisy walked into the mirrored-and-gilded ballroom on the arm of Beau Rutherford. Not trusting her emotions after meeting the Duc that afternoon on the polo field, she considered Beau's escort necessary protection and defense. He'd long been in pursuit of her in any event. Their families also looked on the possibility of a match between them with great favor, so when Beau had suggested at dinner, with a teasing earnestness she'd come to recognize as his own offhand style of courtship, he accompany her to the dance, she'd accepted.

  He was very blond, very tall, and tanned from sailing.

  He was also bending low, whispering into Daisy's ear when the Duc first looked up at the announcement of the three couples.

  She could have been alone on the threshold of the ballroom, for his gaze focused only on her as she stood framed by enormous palms, liveried footmen, her parents, and their friends. Defenseless at the sight of her, fierce desire swept over him with the force of the pounding surf on the cliff shore outside. And when she smiled, then laughed outright at something Beau Rutherford whispered, the Duc de Vec abruptly excused himself from the group discussing the afternoon's polo match.

  Without reason or thought, impelled by a jealousy so intense he felt the heat of it to the tips of his fingers, he precipitously moved through the heavy crush of guests toward Daisy.

  He had no idea what he'd do when he reached her—that wasn't precisely true, he recognized a moment later, as visions of making her prisoner on one of his remote estates crossed his mind—'and he cautioned himself to some semblance of civility. A struggle soon lost, as hot, wrathful discontent overcame him no more than four strides later.

  A dozen feet from Daisy, Nadine Belmont put herself directly in his path and as he heedlessly began to move around her, she took his hand in hers, forcing him to stop. She hadn't made her way from a seamstress's cottage in Louisville to her Newport cottage and profitable marriage on her looks alone, but the smile she turned up to him was gracious. "I think you owe me a dance, darling," she said, aware of Daisy's arrival, conscious of the rumors concerning the relationship between Daisy and the Duc, not disposed to let her newest amorous quarry escape. "Actually, I know you owe me a dance, because I'm your hostess and my husband Oliver rules on eligibility for the polo teams."

  The Duc had to smile despite himself at her audacity. "Are you threatening me if I don't dance with you, Nadine?"

  "Do I look like I have to threaten, Etienne?" Bringing her fan up in a practiced languorous movement so the lacy arc rested on the black lace verges of her splendid décolletage, she smiled, her kohled eyes seductive.

  He could refuse a
nd risk a scene.

  He could refuse and risk disqualification, her implication of her husband's stewardship not necessarily benign. Charitable impulse hadn't brought Nadine to her present position in Eastern society. Glancing over her head in swift perusal, he saw Daisy walking out onto the dance floor with the Rutherford heir.

  His green gaze returned to Nadine, lazily drifted over her smiling face, down to her décolletage, and then slowly back again to her amused eyes.

  He grinned. "Did I say I was on my way over to invite you to waltz?"

  She snapped her fan shut and winked at him. "Clever man."

  The dance floor was crowded, strains of the Viennese waltz wafting dulcetly above tinkling laughter and flirtatious conversation as dancers twirled and glided across the ballroom. Rustling silk gowns framed naked shoulders, gleaming and perfumed. Jeweled and coiffed ladies with painted fans swinging from their kid-skin covered wrists were juxtaposed like plumed and tropical birds of paradise with the stark black severity of their male partners in evening dress. The pungent scent of wealth rose in the heated air past the glittering crystal chandeliers to the gold-leaf ceiling reputedly costing more than the new city hall.

  "You should dance more often, Etienne." Nadine's smile was flirtatious, her suggestion based not only on his expertise but on the Duc's normal reluctance to participate in ballroom festivities.

  "If threatened so effectively," he replied with a roguish smile, "in future, you can be sure I will."

  "You wouldn't have danced with me otherwise?" Her coquettish face was raised to his, her pale brows arched in provocative query.

  The truth would never do.

  "I live to dance with you, Nadine," the Duc drawled, his smile distracting from the irony of his remark. "Your Viennese orchestra is superb."

  Behind an artful arrangement of potted lilies and flowering hibiscus trees, the fifty musicians from Vienna were earning their generous stipend.

  "Alva has never brought over a Viennese orchestra," Nadine said, contentment smooth in her voice at having outshone her Vanderbilt adversary.

  Aware of the rivalry between the two ladies vying for leadership of society's exalted four hundred, the Duc wondered at what point the competition would reach outrageous levels. Both ladies had already brought "cottage" architecture to new heights of the ridiculous.

  "A coup for you then," he replied, amusement in the gleaming green of his eyes.

  "And you've never been her guest."

  Etienne masked his momentary shock at the ownership in her tone. He'd never realized he was a commodity of such import. "I'm sure Alva's had many guests of considerably more interest," he modestly replied.

  "She wants you, too, Etienne, mark my words."

  He was always slightly astonished at the freedom of speech American women affected. And when Nadine melted into his body on a swinging turn, he decided he'd better lock his door tonight.

  He'd lost sight of Daisy in the crush of dancers, she and her young blond partner having slipped away in the sea of twirling guests. But they reappeared suddenly from behind a decorative arch festooned with garlanded orchids and she was smiling up at the blasted man.

  It shouldn't matter, he reasonably decreed.

  It shouldn't matter so much, he thought a second later, an abrupt, surging frustration assailing him.

  She could smile at whomever she pleased.

  Rutherford was probably her newest attachment.

  Perhaps Beau Rutherford was the reason for her letter offering him her friendship.

  Was he?

  The Duc glided into a turn to maintain her within sight.

  Arrayed in a cloth of gold-gown embroidered with glittering butterflies, Daisy presented a ravishing sight of opulence, the shimmering fabric gorgeous contrast to her dark skin and hair. If she'd suddenly shouted to him across the milling crowd and vast ballroom, he couldn't have been more struck.

  She was a veritable vision—a glowing tantalizing vision.

  Damn the man holding her and damn her offer of friendship.

  And damn her father, too, who tried to kill him this afternoon.

  He intended to rip her out of Rutherford's arms.

  And then what? the saner portion of his brain posed in rational query. But a second later, lucid thought lost out to the flood of galvanic violent emotions flaring through his senses.

  Then I'll have her, he grimly decreed, like a long ago de Vec might have contemplated the advantages of plunder.

  From the look of things, Nadine had put her stamp of ownership on Etienne, Daisy reflected, her eyes drawn to the splendid image they presented. Small and fair against his powerful size and brooding good looks, Nadine and the Duc were the personifica-tion of femininity and virile manhood. And Nadine couldn't have been any closer to Etienne unless she climbed inside his jacket. Where the hell was her husband?

  Probably upstairs sleeping. Oliver Belmont maintained an eccentric regimen of exercise, diet, and rest, waking at sunrise and retiring very early. Since Nadine often danced until dawn and slept until afternoon, perhaps the brevity of their hours together accounted for the preservation of their marriage.

  Oliver was tolerant, too, everyone knew, of his young wife's escapades.

  And it looked like Nadine's newest playmate was the Duc de Vec.

  Why did it bother her so?

  Since this afternoon, when she'd first recognized his reckless style of play on the polo ground and then spoken to him, Daisy had asked herself that question countless times. Her answers were muddled and incomplete, logic battling the power of her emotions. On seeing him again, she'd felt as though a hot sun were beating down on her naked body, desire so overwhelming a sensation. But the practical voice so dominant in her personality had won the struggle for supremacy over the last few hours, its influence more persevering and tenacious. She'd made the right decision considering all the serious problems explicit in their relationship, she kept reminding herself. She and Etienne could never have solved all the numerous and fundamental discrepancies in their lives. So grow up, she silently admonished, get a grip on yourself. And keep Nadine in mind. As usual, Etienne had found a cordial woman eager to amuse him. Typical. Normal. Habitual. He'd never change.

  When the waltz concluded with a flourish of violins, half a room separated Daisy and the Duc.

  Discussion immediately broke out as conversational groups drifted together to exchange the latest gossip concerning Newport's "cottagers." While Daisy and Beau joined a group of his friends, Nadine and Etienne were surrounded by guests offering congratulations or advice on the afternoon's tied match. As high scorer, Etienne modestly accepted the accolades, politely acknowledged advice from the polo cognoscenti, but he was restless, his glance straying frequently to Daisy, talking with friends near the terrace doors. Vaguely detached from the exchange of comment swirling around him, he found himself automatically agreeing with something Nadine said, only to discover later, when one of the men launched into a long recital of the many ships wrecked on Barkley lighthouse shoals, that he'd promised to accompany a picnic excursion to the seashore the following day.

  He could plead a polo match or practice later, he decided, to avoid the outing, his gaze drifting again to the group surrounding Daisy. She seemed to be making her adieus, for men were bowing to her. Gently lifting Nadine's hand from his arm, he, too, made his excuses. "I promised Durham a game of billiards." His smile encompassed those in their conversational group, falling last on his hostess's cool, suspicious expression.

  "I'll go with you," she said.

  "You can bring me luck," he pleasantly replied, knowing the billiard room, a male bastion of cigar smoke and masculine ribaldry, was uncongenial to a lady's comfort. But he was saved, instead, from delay in his pursuit of Daisy or an unpleasant scene with his hostess, when a lackey approached her. Nadine's husband, it seemed, was threatening to fly into a rage if his new shipment of ginseng root wasn't immediately located. Oliver Belmont wanted his evening elixir, he wanted the
latest delivery, and he wanted it immediately.

  "Very well. Tell him I'll see to it." With raised eyebrows Nadine turned back to her guests. "Oliver will sulk if he doesn't have the freshest ginseng, although I can't see how it matters when it takes two weeks to be brought over the sea, but—" Her shrug was a delicate indication of sufferance. Touching Etienne's arm lightly, she murmured, "Don't go away… I'll see you later."

  Having been delayed by several acquaintances as she made her way down the corridor in the direction of the powder room, Daisy was still in sight when Etienne exited the ballroom. But only barely… a flash of cloth of gold and one bare shoulder disappeared into a doorway.

  Since several other ladies followed in her wake, Etienne recognized the withdrawing room set aside for female guests. Taking up a position a short distance away, he was able to observe the entrance without being obvious. Leaning against the wall in the shadow of one of the numerous malachite columns decorating the corridor, he waited for the woman who had been constantly in his mind, the woman who'd passionately declared her love for him, the same one who'd written only short weeks later refusing his offer of marriage.

  In the seclusion of the dim hallway he tried to be more accepting of her refusal, to understand Daisy's reasons with a benign detachment. A certain peacefulness prevailed in the cool shadows away from the brightly lit ballroom and brittle party chatter. The cloistered marble vault should have helped soothe his more savage impulses. But images of Beau Rutherford reappeared in his mind, initiating an ungovernable rush of anger.

  In all the weeks of their separation, he'd rationally considered the possibility of other men with Daisy. But faced with the reality, all rationale disappeared. Emotion alone impelled him… and uncontrollable jealousy. And perhaps pride, too, incited his temper… he'd never asked a woman to marry him before.

  Did Daisy's egalitarian principles allow caprice in her relationships as inconstant as had been all his previous liaisons? Had all her talk of love been no more than playful frolic? Too familiar himself with sensual indulgence as amusement, he chafingly realized that same impulse may have influenced Daisy.