He did then, obliging with a teasing smile that shone in the moonlit night.
The journey to the stables was interrupted by several more pleasurable obligations of a similar nature under a night sky brilliant with sparkling stars. Their breath curled in the brisk autumn air, but their hearts were warm with love, their teasing smiles and murmured words of passion and devotion more special somehow away from the world, more private and significant, as if their love could flourish unimpeded in the silent majesty of their mountain valley.
"I love you beyond the starline and the galaxy's boundaries," Daisy whispered, as Etienne set her down on the straw-covered stable floor, the open doorway illuminated by moonlight, the soft rustle of the horses moving in their stalls audible in the quiet night. "And I don't care anymore if a thousand generations of de Vecs roll over in their graves when you divorce."
"You never had to even consider anything so noble," Etienne softly said, enclosing her in his arms. "You're not the reason or cause, only the impetus for a divorce I should have gotten years ago."
"I feel sad at times," Daisy quietly said, "being the agent for your disgrace with certain of your world."
"Lord, Daisy, don't say that, don't even think it." He lifted her chin gently with the pad of his forefinger and said very low, "You're the reason, the heart of any joy I've ever known."
Her eyes were enormous in the moonlight. "You're not marrying me… just… because… of the baby." The consideration overcame her reason at times, although she'd never put her reservations into words before.
"No—never—although I would of course, if I hadn't… Oh, hell. No," he began again, "I'm not marrying you for that reason. I'm marrying you because you're crucial to my life. I can't conceive of living without you." He sighed, his hands drifting down her arms. "Although I hope you have patience. It's going to be endless months yet."
"We could be married tonight," Daisy said, her voice hushed, hesitant at the very last—embarrassed she was pressing him.
"Tell me how," the Duc said without debate, a dream being offered him he wouldn't refuse no matter what the requirements.
"My gods aren't your gods… but they're benevolent spirits."
"Through thousands of years," Etienne softly added, the totems vivid in his mind, their existence integral to all tribal cultures, understanding Daisy was offering him marriage in the way of her world.
"I will take you for my husband. I have said it now and it is so." Her warm breath spiraled up between them, her body close and warm, her face lifted to his, radiant with love.
"I will take you for my wife." His hands slid up to her shoulders and he bent to touch the heated softness of her lips, thanking the benevolent spirits who spoke on the wind and in the blue sky and in the darkness of the night—the gods who protected the Absarokee from unknown demons and known enemies, the gods who loved The People of the northern plains.
"And it is so," Daisy whispered, sealing their troth.
* * *
The next weeks were idyllic, a time of holiday and work and ornamented pleasure, a season of flourishing and growing closeness between two people who hadn't realized what infinite nuances of intimacy existed.
They shopped for baby clothes one day, although Daisy had developed a case of cold feet at the very last before entering the fashionable store catering to wealthy parents.
"Tell them you're buying the clothes as a gift," Etienne suggested. "That should be innocuous enough."
But as they left the shop later, carrying their numerous packages, Daisy declared in a faintly anxious tone, "Did you see them whispering as we left? They didn't believe me."
"I wouldn't have either when you stammered and blushed so." His grin was cheerful.
"We should have left."
"But then we wouldn't have all these little embroidered things. It doesn't matter what they think."
Stopping abruptly, Daisy drew in a deep breath. "Father tells me to be less concerned with opinion."
"Excellent advice," the Duc lazily replied. "And now you have the baby clothes you wanted."
"They are darling, aren't they?"
"Absolutely."
"Let's go home and look at them," she said, her voice buoyant with joy.
"Let's," the Duc agreed, taking in the flushed and happy face of the woman he loved. And any of his acquaintances at his Parisian clubs would have been flabbergasted at the notion the Duc de Vec was about to spend his afternoon admiring baby clothes.
They went on holiday for a few days upmountain to Daisy's lodge tucked away in a secluded highland pasture. The weather was ideal, the fall leaves a panoply of color in the valleys below, the sun closer, it seemed, and warmer at the higher altitude, the stars at night so near they seemed within touching distance. They lay in the sun in the afternoons and under the stars at night, their bodies entwined, their hearts in accord, their feelings of contentment and love too pervasive and overwhelming to be neatly contained within the spare perimeters of those two simple words.
They talked of their plans—how Etienne wished to explore buying a mine, how much longer Daisy's counsel would be required in the litigation currently in court. They spoke of the possibility of traveling to Paris before too long.
"Once the divorce is final, we should be married in France," Etienne suggested, "in order to assure our child's inheritance."
"I'm not in need of your money."
"I'm concerned our child—children," he corrected with a smile, "have legal access to my wealth."
"I have money of my own."
"I'd like our marriage legitimate in French courts. Besides, your father's money is shared with the tribe."
"Blaze's fortune is more than enough for the family. As children, we have trust funds."
"If we're not married in France, inheriting not only my estates but my titles could be in question."
At Daisy's skeptical expression, he added, "Why not let the children decide… about the titles? Is that fair?"
She hesitated for a moment, struck with the fact her child would be titled, she too. How odd, she thought, the belief in aristocracy so far removed from the normal pattern of her life. There was no excuse, however, for her own prejudices biasing her children's choices, so she agreed. "It's fair of course. How many titles do you have?"
He shrugged, then smiled, his eyes taking on a playful cast. "Enough," he said, "to fill a nursery… if you like."
"Give me some idea of your plans." Her voice was softly teasing.
"They're not my plans. You wanted more, you said."
"How many titles?" she murmured, lying beside him on a fur blanket, the lodge walls translucent in the afternoon sun.
"Justin has some of them already."
"I understand. How many are left?" She rolled over so she lay partially on his chest, the seductive purr of her voice persuasive and heatedly cordial.
"Nine."
"Umm. That's a lot." But her pink tongue came out wetting her upper lip and she stretched to reach his smiling mouth.
They discussed the infinite possibilities in fragmented amorous phrases, having to do not so much with titles but with pleasure, agreeing in the end to fill their nursery in indulgent leisure.
In the course of the following weeks, while Daisy helped manage the court case, Etienne spent his days reviewing mining properties, attending to his affairs in Europe as well as possible via telegram, and negotiating to buy a local rail line.
Hazard and Trey served as the Duc's guides on the days they were available, and by month's end, Etienne had decided on investing in two properties. One was adjacent to the new Braddock-Black copper mine, allowing less possibility of controversy over ore veins, the other was at Butte.
In the evenings, Daisy and the Duc returned to Clear River Valley, to a home being renovated under Louis's guidance, turning it from a bachelor ranch house to a comfortable residence. They dined informally in a small parlor Louis had redone, made love like new lovers each night, and fell asleep in each othe
r's arms.
And if paradise could have been depicted in visual terms, it would have been patterned after the happiness and harmony of their existence.
On Saturday morning Daisy slept in, a luxury she allowed herself lately as the baby seemed to deplete her energy level. Etienne had risen at dawn, as he often did, to ride out with his grooms for the ponies' morning warmup.
He also planned on meeting Hazard and Trey early to go underground with them for an inspection of one of their mines. With the same energy he put into polo or any of the enterprises he undertook, the Duc was systematically learning all he could about copper mining.
After an hour of watching his young thoroughbreds put through their paces on the valley flats, the Duc left to ride to the Ruby Mine. The crisp fall air was invigorating, his spirits buoyant as he traveled the quiet country road. He liked mornings—he always had, a sense of renewal, freshness, and unlimited promise seemed to waft on the morning air. And one of the young two-year-olds they'd brought with them from France had run the mile in record time; he was looking forward to the next racing season. He was also keenly interested in his tour of the Ruby Mine. As one of the older Braddock-Black properties, it was extensively mined, and they'd be descending almost three thousand feet underground.
"You won't need your jacket," Hazard declared as he greeted the Duc outside the manager's office. "You can leave it inside. This is George Stuntz, our manager at Ruby."
And introductions led to a discussion of the exploration going on in the lower levels once George understood the Duc was interested in learning as much as he could about underground mining.
"We're driving drifts out to the east for two thousand feet, then starting drilling off at right angles," George said.
"And exploring at both the 2666 and 2433 levels," Hazard added.
At 2433 they were out as far as they wanted to go, but down at 2666, the progress was slower because the men couldn't work more than four-hour shifts with the one-hundred-degree temperatures and humidity.
"Some can't even manage that length of time," George explained. "The work's hard. We're having trouble with the drills again too," George told Hazard. The granite was so hard, each drill bit only lasted fifteen minutes before it was too dull to use. "The drill shop's falling behind trying to keep them sharp."
Hazard asked about the signs of water that had been showing up lately.
The manager held up crossed fingers and smiled.
"Let's hope our luck holds."
It was almost nine-thirty when Hazard, Trey, and Etienne entered the cage taking them underground, and when they exited at the 2666 level into the lamplit station, the news greeting them was troubling.
The men were beginning to get water in all the drill holes.
"Tell the men to come out," Hazard immediately ordered, the new signs of water ominous. "We'll pull back and shut the bulkhead door at the 2666 level." The Ruby had had water problems from the beginning, its ore veins linked somehow to underground water.
Within ten minutes, the entire crew on that level had been brought out from their workings, and the iron door to the east drift had been solidly closed.
Within minutes after the door was sealed, water started coming up the raise—a four-by-four-foot vertical shaft used for ventilation and dropping ore—so fast everyone knew a major rupture had occurred.
"We'll have to shut the door at 2433 level too," Hazard tersely said, hoping to contain the water at that point.
The men knew the procedures. Everything had to be cleaned out of the tunnel so the force of the water wouldn't be augmented by loose timbers or equipment crashing into the iron doors. The crew scrambled, moving at top speed, loading everything onto the hoist, the skip squealing as it pulled the filled hoist to the surface at maximum speeds of thirty-six hundred feet per minute. As one skip went up, another came hurtling down, until the timbers for scaffolding and all the mining gear had been cleared.
The men, wading knee-deep in water by now, were evacuated to the 2433 level where the next iron door had to be closed.
At the end of the tunnel leading to the east drift, an enormous iron framework had been installed, its two doors pushed back against the tunnel walls. Built against such an eventuality as this, water always a threat in the Ruby mine, the doors were of heavy-gauge metal.
Trey noticed the seeping water first, a small puddle begin-ning to form a hundred yards past the doors, and in the short seconds it took to call attention to it, the puddle expanded rapidly. Would the water break through? Trey wondered. Everyone knew the possibility existed and they worked feverishly to pull the doors into place.
A muffled roar reverberated like a giant's rumbling tread, giving them only a moment's warning before the tunnel floor exploded in a geyser of water.
The new exploratory tunnels were more unstable than the established working ones, not shored up with the same amount of timbers, and Hazard's voice echoed everyone's apprehension when he said, "We haven't much time."
The weighty doors moved in creaking protest as the men all threw their weight against them, the water already lapping around their base, adding resistance. With the temperature and humidity hovering around the hundred mark, the men were soaked in sweat, sapped by the work they'd already accomplished in the sultry heat, unable to muster the strength necessary to swing the doors shut quickly. With their muscles pushed to the limit, the strain showed in every face as gritted teeth indicated each man's intense effort.
The water was nearly a foot deep now and rising so rapidly one could distinguish its upward progression without even using a reference point, the swiftly streaming tide from the breakthrough in the tunnel ahead gushing toward them like a river in flood. But their brute strength was bringing the doors slowly together despite the irresistible pressure of the rising water.
Only a narrow ten-inch gap remained with the water thigh-high, when a water-soaked timber—missed somehow in the cleanup—shot through the opening like a projectile, lodging itself with an explosive clang against one of the doors. The brawny men struggled and cursed, trying to heave the timber free, or force it back, but the timber had splintered on one side on impact and was hung up with deadly accuracy on the levered handle mechanism.
It was immovable.
The door, only inches from closing, couldn't be shut.
Water was sweeping through the gap with increasing momentum as two hundred feet of water pressure below propelled it upward.
"It's over," Hazard curtly said when the water reached his waist. "Everyone out." He couldn't risk so many lives. And as they waded back toward the hoist, their progress slow in the ris-ing water, Ruby Mine, a man-made invasion of the earth drilled and blasted out over the course of several years, began succumbing with horrifying speed to the more powerful forces of nature.
"We should—try—the pumps, boss," one of the miners suggested as the hoist came into sight, the kerosene lamps at the station glowing in the inky shadow.
"We'll try two of them—down at the 2200 level," Hazard replied, his breath, like all of the others', coming in labored gasps. "Maybe—we can control the rise."
The Duc didn't have to ask what would happen if they didn't contain the water. He could tell from the grim looks on everyone's faces.
In less than ten minutes, two deep-well pumps were dropped into the shaft, and twelve-inch pipes began drawing up the water, the turbine motors above ground operating at maximum speed. But the water continued climbing even with the pumps draining at full capacity.
If the water reached the pumps, everyone knew… the mine was lost.
The situation looked ominous, for the water was a foot deep already at the 2200 level, the pump platforms almost underwater.
"We could try opening the crosscuts over to Alaska shaft," Trey shouted above the sound of the driving pistons. They were all in the process of shoring up the pump platforms. "It would reduce the water pressure here."
"The cuts aren't through yet," Hazard shouted back, the sinews in
his arms strained with the weight of the pump.
"Dynamite," Trey cried.
"I'll go too," Etienne yelled.
Trey shook his head no.
The Duc nodded back—yes.
Neither man wasted unnecessary words, both competent, capable, and familiar with taking on the world head-on.
"He'd better not go," Hazard cautioned Trey, after the pumps were raised another two feet above the water and the men were far enough away to speak in a more normal tone. "You'd better not," he declared, turning toward Etienne. "Daisy won't approve of you risking your life."
"I happen to know a little about dynamite," Etienne modestly replied, a faint smile on his face, "since I own a share of one of Nobel's Ballistite factories." His mind was made up; with or without Daisy's approval, he was going. "I can help. She won't know… and I don't intend to argue… there isn't time."
"I'll go too," a large blonde man interjected, understanding, as they all did, the rapidly rising water didn't allow lengthy discussion.
"Me too," another miner offered. "I'm a fast runner."
"Thanks," Trey said, smiling at Trewayne's realistic appraisal. They were all going to have to run like hell once the dynamite was lit, because if they were successful in blowing the crosscut open, a ten-foot wall of water would be racing them to the skip.
The decision made without further discussion, for time was at a premium, the men left the pumps and took the cage up to level six where another crosscut connected the two shafts.
"You and Trewayne blow the east side, and Lund and I will do the west," Trey explained. "You're sure you know what you're doing?" he added, gazing at Etienne. A strong affirmative would go far to assuage the measure of guilt he was currently feeling. Daisy would tear him apart, Trey thought, if she felt he'd encouraged the Duc in this foolhardy mission.
"I learned to use dynamite when we were blowing tunnels through the Alps for one of our railroads."
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