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

don't know. They all look the same to me." Etienne was busy signing several of the papers Bourges had prepared in his absence, routine briefs required by law for the ongoing appeals in his divorce. Looking up suddenly, the Duc cast a look of query at Bourges as the implication of his barrister's question registered.

"Really? Priests? And Isabelle?" He shook his head in the next second of contemplation. "You don't know Isabelle." Had he been a less courteous man he could have said Isabelle was the only women he knew, and he was speaking from vast knowledge, who was actually tight-lipped while engaged in intercourse. With Isabelle one didn't contemplate using the words, making love, to describe the experience. An experience that had caused his youthful ego some small amount of anxiety at the time. "Although it's certainly an interesting speculation." The Duc was infinitely less naive than he'd been all those years ago and no longer apt to discount any aberration purely out of hand.

"We'll find out soon enough," Bourges said with a degree of conviction based on his previous successes. "I'm pleased you decided to…" he paused, knowing the Duc was still inclined to be private about his marriage.

"—Take off the kid gloves?" Etienne finished for him.

"Sometimes it's necessary. Often, it is," Bourges added.

"I suppose when one's wife tries to reduce one to penury, it's time to discard courtesy." Etienne's smile was tight. "Can you join my legal staff after lunch? We're going to discuss all the ramifications of this bid to take them over."

Bourges's agreement brought a genuine smile to Etienne's face.

But when Bourges left a few moments later, Etienne sat at his desk, slumped low, his head thrown back, his arms lying slack on the deep green leather arms of his chair. He was tired. Physically fatigued after a rough sea-crossing, weary of the fight with Isabelle. Feeling a solitary desolation. Feeling alone. He was taking on the entire fabric of the small, insulated world he lived in, the world his parents and ancestors for a millennium had claimed as theirs. By seeking his own individual happiness, he'd alienated his wife, the Church, the aristocratic society in which the hypocrisy of separate lives passed for the union of marriage, and many of those people he'd previously called friends.

Enormous changes had occurred in his complaisant life since he'd met Daisy. And while he never regretted loving her, there were moments, like now… when he was overwhelmed by the extent of those forces aligned against him.

He supposed he should eat something before his phalanx of barristers arrived to help devise their campaign. He had every intention of winning—an inherent courage was well-grounded in his soul, but it took a certain girding of his motive power at times to vitalize his energy. He smiled suddenly. Maybe Daisy was right. Maybe his life had been too easy.

But if it had been, he was paying for it now.

Sitting up abruptly, he reached for the bell-pull.

Lunch. And then the ruination of his two partners and Isabelle for dessert. At least there was pleasure in the prospect of dessert.

Etienne and his attorneys spent the next three weeks contacting every stockholder of consequence, explaining the situation, offering to buy their stock for more than Verlaine and Marveil. It was time-consuming drudgery and, of course, ultimately expensive to outbid his partners. He owed enormous favors on the Bourse before he was finished because Isabelle was claiming the stock as hers. The concept of public trader for a female may have been a legal principle in France at the time, but the men sitting on the board at the Bourse, preferred the traditional language of French law in which the husband had sole control of property. And there at least, Charles and his magistrates had no power. So his railroads were salvaged, bought at the inflated bidding price by a Monaco-based holding company which the Duc owned through an intricate and concealed layering of corporations. Isabelle no longer was a threat to his income. But the price was steep.

To realize his vengeance on Verlaine and Marveil required a more complex scheme. The Duc wanted his money back from the sale of their magnified stock to his Monaco firm, so he made arrangements with friends in Amsterdam to interest his two ex-partners in a diamond mine in South Africa. Like setting up an elaborate ballet of deceit and potential profit, his Dutch allies, for a suitable price, slowly drew Verlaine and Marveil into the intrigue. With the lure of enormous profit temptingly seductive, his two ex-partners were currently traveling to Amsterdam to see gems extracted from the "mine"—which existed on paper alone.

In the meantime, to the Duc's impatient inquiries about Isabelle and the detectives, Bourges had pointed out: "These things take time to check out. We're gathering information. Soon we'll have something substantial, but we need reliable witnesses to go to court."

Almost a month had passed since the Duc had left Newport, and in that time he'd accepted no invitations, gone nowhere other than those places required to save his railroads and his property. Valentin had come often to visit; he'd also been helpful at the Bourse since his father sat on the board; he'd stayed for dinner occasionally and was a frequent companion at night over drinks.

Fall had touched the leaves, the evenings were cooler, the last summer roses bloomed sporadically in the garden where the Duc and Daisy had lain in the sun short months ago. Etienne was waiting now to hear if Verlaine and Marveil had taken the bait, but he found himself less concerned with his revenge as the days passed and more concerned with seeing that Isabelle was disengaged from his life.

His feelings were less pragmatic than emotional, based on his longing to have a child with Daisy. While Daisy declared the divorce irrelevant to her, he wished for his child to be legitimate, an heir to his titles as well as his fortune. He understood her