He was too old, he told himself, with two grown children and a grandson of his own, to be fantasizing like some grass-green cub. He had had his children when he was young, a sensible time, and his wish for a child with Daisy was ludicrous. She would hardly speak to him. He mentally dismissed his fantasy with deprecating logic, embarrassed at the extent of his longing. Thinking of having children, babies was madness; he was going to be forty at Christmas.
Would Daisy mind being pregnant? Insensate to reason, his mind pursued the obsession stirring his susceptible emotions. Isabelle had found the entire situation loathsome. Did all women? Or would Daisy find pleasure in bearing a child?
Should he ask her, he wondered, a smile forming on his lips, when he saw her this afternoon?
* * *
As it turned out, the Duc arrived at Nadine's picnic almost simultaneously with a storm rolling in from the sea, its heavy thunderheads darkening the sky, blowing in on brisk thirty-mile-an-hour winds, the shoreline bearing the assault of crashing foam-tipped waves. All Nadine's picnic guests were in the process of scrambling into barouches while Belmont servants struggled to secure the raised carriage hoods against the imminent rain.
Catching sight of Trey helping his groom tie a wicker hamper onto the back of a well-sprung landau, the Duc guided his horse through the numerous vehicles, their teams restive in the rising wind, his own mount sidling and sidestepping in response to the nervous teams.
"Where's Daisy?" Etienne had to shout to be heard above the shrieking gusts. He hadn't seen her in the congestion of people and carriages.
Trey came closer, putting his hand to his ear, and when the Duc repeated his question, answered. "She's still at the lighthouse. She stayed behind to paint." His words, strangely muted by the intensity of the blustery squalls, were perceived by the Duc's auditory senses in a rhythm of half-spoken syllables.
"Alone?" he asked.
"With the lighthouse keeper. You brought the rain," Trey went on with a grin, moving closer so his voice was clearer. "Daisy'll be safe there until this blows over. Ride back with us in our carriage. You're going to get soaked otherwise."
Etienne gauged the distance to the lighthouse, visible on a spit of land beyond an undulating series of dunes and stunted pines. "I'll see her home when this blows over. If you don't mind."
The men's voices were raised, their dark hair whipped by the wind, their eyes half-shut against the blowing sand. "Whether I mind isn't a factor with Daisy," Trey shouted, his smile amiable. "Be my guest."
The Duc smiled back. "Thank you," he said, but his words were taken away by a gust of rain.
Sweeping sheets of rain struck Etienne before he was halfway to the lighthouse, his horse slowed by the gale-force winds. He'd changed at Nadine's after his morning with Hector so at least his leather jacket protected him from the worst of the downpour. But his clothes were thoroughly drenched by the time he entered the lighthouse after tethering his horse in the lee of the building.
"Afternoon," the lighthouse keeper casually said when Etienne scaled the steep narrow steps to the top, the old man's seventy-years experience with Atlantic storms evident in his unruffled serenity. "You get a good view of the storm front from up here. Nice animal you're riding."
The Duc was mounted on a bay, bred at his Chantilly stud, a long-legged thoroughbred with enough Irish hunter in him to have the staying power he needed for polo. "Thanks," he briefly acknowledged, not here for a chat, his glance swiftly taking in the small dimensions of the tower room. "I'm looking for a woman who was painting on the shoreline this afternoon. Is she here?" Had he somehow missed Daisy downstairs?
"Nope." The old man rocked his cushioned chair in a slow rhythm, his old spaniel lying at his feet, keeping time with his feathered tail. "Saw her over to the old Hammerhead farm earlier. Figured she picked up and left when the clouds started rolling in."
"Were's the farm?" The Duc's voice was quiet, but the spaniel must have caught his anxious intonation because it lifted its head and stared at Etienne.
"Just past that rise over there." The lighthouse keeper lifted his chin in a northerly direction, indicating the area beyond the curve of the bay. "Where them three pines are leaning almost to the ground."
"Is there shelter?"
"Nope. Everything burned to the ground thirty years ago. Excepting the well-house and that would have gone too but the artesian well kept is moss-damp so it wouldn't burn. Fire killed old widow Hammerhead in her bed though," he went on, relating the details in the slightly nasal inflection of the local populace. "Smoke must have got her or mayhap a heart attack considerin' the state of her heart. She was too fat to move fast too, so—"
"Daisy might be there then," Etienne interrupted, already turning toward the narrow staircase.
"Told you she left."
"She never returned to the carriages." Etienne's voice echoed up the stuccoed walls of the stairwell as he sprinted downward.
"You want me to send Boscoe here for help?" The man's voice followed Etienne's descent. "Can't leave the station during a storm but Boscoe will bring back Will Shatterly."
"No," the Duc shouted back. "I'll find her myself." He wanted to be alone when he found her.
Etienne's horse struggled gamely over the saturated terrain, its hoofs sinking deep into the marshy ground or water-soaked sand of the dunes. At least the wind was slicing into them at an angle now, easing the strain of having to fight the full force of its velocity. Etienne's eyes were almost shut against the driving rain, his horse's ears laid back as it strained its powerful muscles to maintain its balance in the yielding soil.
When they crested the rise some twenty minutes later, what remained of the old farmstead came into sight. An ancient apple orchard lay to the south of what appeared to be the foundations of the house; the ruins of a barn, distinguishable by the charred remains of a few roof timbers not completely burned, lay to the north. If there had been smaller outbuildings, after thirty years no evidence of them remained. But a large stand of orange day-lilies caught his eye against the storm-gray of the sky and when the Duc turned to focus on the splash of color in the landscape laid waste by fire and time, he saw the well-house.
The tiny weathered building had been constructed at the base of another small knoll, so the wind broke over it before dissipating into the grassy dunes. A gnarled lilac bush spread halfway across the doorway, its leafy branches lashing furiously against the soaked wood.
He saw no sign of life as he approached. No window on the structure. No indication Daisy had been in the vicinity.
Dismounting, Etienne tied his horse behind the well-house, and fighting the wind, moved around to the door. When he caught sight of the freshly crushed grasses on the threshold, he involuntarily sucked in a breath. Was she here? Exhaling, he conditioned himself against the possibility of an untenanted building. But his gaze took in the evidence of footsteps, and quickly shoving the door open, he bent his head to enter the low portal.
Silhouetted against the silvery sky, his broad leather-clad shoulders filled the entrance like some apparition of the storm itself: potent and powerful and overwhelming. Pausing for a moment on the threshold between light and darkness, he turned his body slightly to ease his wide shoulders past the jamb. Once inside, he stood upright and shook his wet head like a wild animal might to clear the water from his face.
"Etienne!" It was Daisy's breathless voice.
Narrowing his eyes against the deep shadow beyond the door, he distinguished her form—only dimly visible pressed against the far wall. She was standing very straight… and trembling. Taking a moment to visualize her position in relation to the entrance and the bubbling well in the center of the space, he shut the door, closing out the storm. And the world.
"I found you," he quietly said, knowing instinctively what would follow.
Daisy's chilled body responded to his murmured words as if he'd lit a fire to warm her, pleasure inundating her senses without cerebral dispute. But a pulsebeat later, a s
mall voice of reason reminded her to be less desperately happy and more wary. "I'm cold," she said, still pressed to the wall, as if her trembling susceptibility to his dramatic presence required explanation beyond the obvious. As if her untrustworthy emotions needed concealment.
"Of course you're cold." He touched her shoulders lightly as he reached her. "You're soaked." Swiftly unbuttoning his leather jacket, he placed it over her shoulders. "My jacket's not wet in-side." It was warm from his body, heated like her newly pulsing blood. "Now tell me how you came to be caught in this storm." He smiled and she heard it more than saw it. "I thought an Absarokee woman would have read the signs better."
He was disarming in his courtesy, easing her tremulous feelings, talking to her about the weather as if good manners were applicable even in a tumbledown well-house in the middle of a raging storm, as if discussing the weather was the only reason he'd come. As if the other reasons he was here could be momentarily curtailed.
His jacket smelled of his body and his scent, the fragrant cologne he had had made specially for him in Grasse sweetly pungent in the small dim interior. He stood very close although he made no move to touch her. There was no need for haste in their complete isolation.
"I was painting a seascape," she said, trying to be as urbane as he, when she was struggling with the sensation of his nearness. "Everything was going just perfectly, you know the feeling when each brushstroke is absolutely right, when your mind and hand are in perfect conjunction"—her words began tumbling out with the same spontaneity she experienced while painting—"when even the watercolors blend mysteriously into the most magical hues…"
"No." Etienne's deep voice was quiet in the dimness. And amused.
Daisy grinned. "Take my word for it," she said, remembering his comments when they attended the gallery shows, about his complete lack of artistic talent, "it happens and when that phenomenon occurs, the world is blocked out, you exist in some energized dimension of your mind, isolated and detached. When the winds became strong enough to interfere with my work, I finally noticed the thunderheads behind me. I started back immediately but the rain overtook me and I decided to take shelter here. I was drenched through by the rain."
"I noticed."
The velvet resonance of his voice seemed to reach out and touch her, his eyes too close suddenly, his husky tone conveying a message distinct from the words. "I'm trying to fight this," Daisy whispered.
"You didn't want to fight it last night." he murmured. "At Nadine's."
"Yes… yes, I did. I tried… Etienne, you're too close… please." There was desperation in her voice… and need.
He heard the need and ignored the desperation. "I've missed you every day and night since you left," he whispered. "I haven't looked at another woman. My word as de Vec on it."
"I don't know what to do." Her voice barely carried across the small distance separating them.
"Honestly?"
His whispered word touched her cheek, warm and seductive. And her answer lodged in her throat because he was right.
They both knew.
Like an insatiable hunger, they knew.
Alone in this sultry, stifling darkness, they knew.
When Daisy slid away, as if she could flee impulse by moving the eight-foot width of the well-house, the Duc shut his eyes for a moment and drew a deep calming breath. "There's nowhere to go, Daisy," he said, very softly, his gaze following her. "Nowhere."
"I don't want you to touch me, Etienne," she said in a small breathless voice, holding his jacket close around her, like a shield. "I want to forget you and last night, I want to go back to Montana and continue forgetting you, I want to find someone else," she went on with new heat in her voice, "who doesn't have a wife with lists of her husband's infidelities, long lists, someone who lives where I live and cares about my people. Someone—"
He'd moved with predatory speed when she mentioned finding someone else, convulsed with unspeakable jealousy, and his mouth stopped her flood of words, covering hers with a punishing kiss of possession and fury. His fingers hurt her as he pulled her tightly into his body, his splayed hands at the base of her spine, and the back of her head inflexible in their restraint. "You're lying," he murmured, his mouth lifting from hers for a brief moment. "You're lying." His eyes emitted a hint of color somehow in the near-dark, jealous-green and angry. "Tell me other men can make you tremble, tell me other men can make you breathless. Tell me, damn you, because I haven't slept a peaceful night in nine weeks and I want to hear the truth."
Daisy wasn't cold anymore, her clothes beginning to warm from the heat of her skin, from the heat of Etienne's body pressed hard against hers. And what was truth was coiling in the pit of her stomach, flame-hot and spreading with every pulsebeat.
"You know already, damn you," she quietly exploded, "but here's the truth if you want me to say it. I want to make love to you. I want you to make love to me. I want us to make love to each other. Is that clear enough?" she cried, although he was close enough a whisper would have sufficed.
"It's honest at least," he bluntly said. "Finally."
"Here's some more honesty then. I can't sleep at night for want of you, and in the morning I crave you beside me to kiss me at daybreak, I hate Nadine's possessiveness, I hate all the Claras and Lilys, too, and your wife's claim on twenty years of your life. I think of you when I'm trying to work and when I'm trying to eat. I think of you when I see a tall man anywhere, when someone with dark ruffled hair walks by me in the street. I think of you when I see a baby. I think of you a lot when I see babies. And I hate you for making me feel this way." She had run out of breath at the end, her final words finished in a whisper of sound.
"Have my baby," Etienne said, very softly, knowing what she was feeling, for the first time in his life overwhelmed by emotions he couldn't control or rationalize or neatly walk away from.
"Don't say that," Daisy whispered.
"Do you know how many babies were on Bailey's Beach this morning?" he said in a voice taut with consternation. "Do you know I never would have noticed six months ago? I question my sanity at times." He took a steadying breath. "Obsession has never been a part of my life. Until you."
"Circumstances circumscribe our lives, Etienne. Our feelings don't count for everything." She was saying the words with her mind in the practical familiar way habitual to her personality, but the pragmatic sentiments didn't register properly anymore. They didn't register at all, her brain's receptors intent on absorbing the vivid heat of passion coursing through her body.
"Have my baby," he said again, ignoring her words, interpreting her own hesitant uncertainty beneath the logical explanation, feeling the heat of her skin next to his. His hands moved to the buttons at the neck of her dress and he slowly slipped the first one free.
"It's not that simple," she protested, but she didn't stay his hands, the touch of his fingers, the warmth of his palms on her breasts cure for the ache inside her.
"It's simple. This is simple." He smiled then and kissed her lightly on her lips. "The rest is complex."
But complexities were ignored a moment later, and the opposing circumstances of their lives, because their need and desire, their obsession for each other and their love, eluded the practicalities and exposed the weakness in logic.
"If there's a baby," Daisy whispered, recognizable joy in her voice as he slipped her dress from her shoulders, "it's all your fault."
"I'll remind you of that," he teasingly replied, "later, when you're screaming."
She reached up and kissed him then, her arms clinging around his neck, her kisses sweet as candy. And they stood together, their bodies melting into each other for a languid dulcet time of murmured lovewords and warm mouths.
"We should build a monument for this momentous occasion," the Duc teased, between leisured kisses.
"Could you build one that looks like a bed?" Daisy murmured, the curve of her smile tactile pleasure as Etienne's mouth dipped to kiss her again.
Raisi
ng his head, he surveyed the limited space, his brows creasing in a mild scowl. "Not exactly pavilions of paradise. I'd envisioned something different for the conception of our child."
Trained by her grandmother as a medicine woman, Daisy understood better than most nature's ways. "You can't be so certain, Etienne, even if you are de Vec. Some things aren't accomplished by fiat."
How could he tell her he had this feeling without sounding adolescent or mad? How could he say he'd never experienced this sensation before because the women he'd dallied with in the past were sophisticated women who didn't wish to add to their families any more than he wished to add a de Vec bastard to some aristocratic family other than his own. He couldn't, so he said instead, "I'll make you a bed." His smile was beautiful and lush. "And then we'll work from there… on the other… things." The interior was moss-covered, floor and walls, even patches of the old tin roof bearing evidence of the tenacious vegetation.
"Are you cold?"
She smile. "Not any more."
He moved to open the door a minimum distance to introduce light but not let in the storm, the stiff old hinges sufficient resistance against the wind. "So I can see you better," he whispered, brushing her cheek with his finger as he walked past her to the corner farthest from the door. Taking off his shirt, he laid it on the soft cushion of moss covering the ground. Lifting his jacket from the floor where it had fallen, he extended the rough bed by spreading the leather wet-side down.
"If I were more temperate," he said, smiling, taking her hand in his a moment later when he returned to her, "I'd wait for better accommodations. But after nine weeks…" His mouth quirked into a broad grin.
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