Forbidden by Susan Johnson (best feel good books txt) 📗

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,