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

disregard. "Of course not," he said with a smile. "Do you care whether I care?"

Daisy refused to respond to his enticing lazy smile. The man was obviously familiar with the potency of his charm. He would have to find some other woman to fawn over him. "Should I?"

She was intensely direct, he decided, looking at her now with genuine interest. "I don't see why," he replied, smiling that celebrated smile he'd learned to use so successfully. He'd been sixteen when he'd first employed it to advantage and the intervening years had proved its perfection. Women responded to it, and adored him.

She didn't smile back.

She was the half-blood's sister, he immediately thought, with some of the same inherent arrogance Empress Jordan's husband conveyed. "You're Trey Braddock-Black's sister," he said, as though methodically taking note of her aloud.

"Half sister," she abruptly replied, the distinction seemingly relevant to her. She hadn't moved, her stance one of infinite repose, her hands lightly clasped around her ivory-handled fan.

"Ah… you're Adelaide's houseguest." His tone was one of gratified revelation: the name with the face with the circumstances all suddenly coming together. Valentin had spoken of Daisy; she was in Paris as legal advisor for Empress.

"Apparently," Daisy bluntly said, her headache adding asperity to her voice, "you didn't listen to Isme's introduction."

My, she was bristly, he thought, and unbidden, a second more speculative thought surfaced, habitual in a man favored in boudoirs across the Continent. Would she be bristly in bed?—an interesting concept. "Forgive me," he blandly apologized, enchanted with the small touches of fire in her black eyes. "Isme tends to chatter on." He was perhaps baiting her slightly with the taint of chauvinism in his last phrase, but a certain amount of truth existed in his declaration. Isme's conversation was generally forgettable.

"As do all women?" she retorted, her tone adversarial.

"Are we in court?" His voice dropped a husky octave or so and turned silken. He never rose to the petulance in a woman's tone. She intrigued him curiously, despite her contentious manner. She was also strikingly beautiful, like the romantic heroine in Chateaubriand's Atala.

"We aren't anywhere, Monsieur le Duc," Daisy said, responding to the practiced suaveness of his reply with a distinctly icy inflection. "Now if you'll excuse me…"

He watched her thread her way through the crush of people and exit into the hallway, continuing his silent contemplation as she ascended the curved stairway to the living quarters on the floor above. Mademoiselle Black, it seemed, was deserting the party.

A good idea actually, he decided the next moment as the final swish of her creme satin gown disappeared around the corner. He'd outstayed his original intentions.

He found in the course of his evening gambling at the Jockey Club that while he may have consciously dismissed the coolly acerbic Mademoiselle Black when she disappeared from sight up the stairs, her aloof dark eyes were reappearing frequently in his memory, as did recurring images of her standing before him with her extraordinary poise and arrogance, so unusual in a woman. Maybe it was the aqua vitae from Scotland he was drinking, but he was strangely affected by his vivid memories despite his conscious dislike of her. He disliked her rudeness and her unfeminine ways. She spoke too directly, like a man. He regarded that as unpleasant in a woman. And she hadn't smiled once. He disliked that as well. Women normally exerted a certain genial charm, an intrinsic quality of their gender and social training.

She was too mannish, he decided, as though some choices were being offered him and he was declining. Tossing down his winning hand, he silently reiterated, definitely too mannish.

But the classic perfection of her face insistently reappeared in his thoughts only a moment later as he scooped the gold markers into a pile. Brusque mannerisms aside, he thought, one couldn't deny her beauty. She was darkly exotic like some lush bird of paradise set amidst the frivolous female vanity displayed at Adelaide's tonight. The kind of woman who drew eyes. She'd worn egret feathers in the heavy black coils of her hair, enormous sapphires in her ears, the famed Braddock-Black sapphires no doubt, and a Worth gown suitable for a queen. On a lesser woman the resplendent adornment would have been overwhelming, but Daisy Black's beauty was splendid with an untamed quality that gleamed like shimmering flame. And she was also obviously intelligent. He'd never met a female attorney.

She piqued his interest, he admitted, a logical man at base.

Or perhaps more accurately, what piqued him was her immunity to his charm. Anyone with less assurance would have sensibly forsworn any further contact with Daisy Black and her immunity. Anyone having had less to drink might not even have contemplated her coolness as a challenge. Most men regarded Hazard Black's daughter as a female version of him and wisely withdrew from the field.

Etienne Mattel, Duc de Vec and bearer of a dozen lesser titles, was not most men, had from the cradle been disabused of that notion, and over the years had come to view himself, without conceit, as capable of accomplishing most anything he wished. He wished, he suddenly decided, to bring the cool Mademoiselle Black to bed. It would be like taming a wild creature or perhaps leashing a small storm, he thought, a faint wolfish smile appearing on his aquiline face.

A fascinating challenge.

"Are you ready, de Vec?" The voice of one of his fellow players interrupted his thoughts.

His smile widened. "I'm ready," he said and picked up his new hand.

Daisy had watched Isme's eyes as she'd introduced the Duc, heard the malice in her voice, and wondered what her motives were. It was apparent the minute Isme spoke that the Duc and she had been lovers. That special kind of intimacy between people is forever evident in gesture and mien, although surely with de Vec's reputation that nuance of friendship beyond friendship must be very common. He was reportedly the most sought-after man in Paris.

Definitely of no interest to her.

The