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

"And I should know," he softly breathed.

On that cheerful note they rolled to a stop at the end of a small private lane before a pretty thatched-roof cottage less precious than Marie Antoinette's playtoys at Versailles, but nearly of a size.

It was wretched, Etienne thought, helping Daisy down, to want a woman this badly.

If he was less miserable, Daisy thought, she wouldn't be feeling this overwhelming need to comfort him.

They were an odd and mismatched pair on the brink of a seduction.

It was moot at the moment who was the seducer and who the seducee.

It was additionally moot whether one enormous gigantic mistake was about to occur.

And to add to the general disarray of circumstances, apparently both his servants were gone—it must be market day, he never could remember. The house was stoutly locked.

A riot of flowers surrounded the cottage in gardens, on trellises, in pots and window boxes. While Etienne stood cursing on the front stoop, unable to open the door, Daisy plucked a double white rose from the trellis near the door and slipped it into his lapel buttonhole.

"Cheer up. Everything will be fine. I don't intend to eat you alive."

Looking down at Daisy standing beside him, her small hand still resting on his lapel, her smile open and warm, her dark eyes winsome with gaiety, he suddenly grinned. "I was hoping you would."

"In that case, then, I might make an exception. I'm glad the servants are gone."

He paused for a moment considering. "I suppose you're right." His grin widened. Although he'd never thought of servants as intruding. One never noticed. Somehow the idea of a secluded hermitage with Daisy was appealing.

"When do you think they'll be back"—she moved a step closer—"from the market?" Her voice had changed.

With the trellis behind her, the pale roses framing her dark beauty, she seemed suddenly as though she belonged at Colsec. "Tonight."

"That late." She smiled suggestively, a siren in flowered organza and pale green hair ribbons.

"Have I told you I adore you?" he said, gently, placing his hands on her bare arms.

"How reassuring," she replied, smiling up at him. "I was afraid you made love with a scowl."

Her directness was delightful. "Are you propositioning me?"

"Did we drive all the way out here to really have a drink?" she mildly inquired.

Which reminded him tardily of the coachman.

"You're welcome to wait in the village, Guillaume," he shouted to the driver. "Come back at dusk." Since Guillaume had been raised in Colsec, he didn't require a more detailed invitation.

A moment later, the Duc and Daisy were utterly alone, standing before Etienne's locked cottage.

"Well?" Daisy said with an age-old female inflection requiring some masculine action.

"Stand back," the Duc immediately said. Picking up a garden spade leaning against the brick wall, he broke the window adjacent to the door, reached in and unlatched the lock. Pushing the door open, he smiled warmly at Daisy. "Welcome, Mademoiselle Black, to my humble home."

The cottage was a jewel box of a home, several million francs removed from humble, filled with Etienne's favorite paintings and furniture and a great many Indian artifacts collected during his expedition with Georges. The tile floors were covered with thick woven rugs in the deep tones of natural dyes, patterned in severe geometric styles. The furniture was leather and pillow-strewn with a primitive simplicity that reminded Daisy intensely of her own Absarokee heritage. Masks, totems, and sculptures brought vividly to mind the painted shields, parfleches, and special decorated lodges of her culture.

She stood arrested in the entrance to the small timber-ceilinged parlor taking in the staggering sense of déjà vu. Even the flowers in vases and those visible through the large mullioned windows in the extravagant garden behind the house were natural to her prairie home.

"Do you like it?" The Duc's voice was deep and soft and very near.

Without turning she knew he was no more than a foot behind her.

"The flowers—where did they come from?" She moved then so she faced him.

"We had a botanist with the expedition. Everything was documented and carefully saved. My gardeners have been working ten years to transform those few seeds into this display."

"I feel like I'm home."

"I thought you might. It was my rationale for bringing you here."

"This was deliberate? You wouldn't have had to go to so much trouble." Her voice had taken on that edge they'd both been struggling with.

"No," he said evenly, "it wasn't deliberate. Had I been deliberate," he went on, his tone carefully modulated, "I wouldn't have brought you here." He took a cautious breath, unfamiliar with revealing his inner feelings, and added, "My friends don't even know of this house. My servants know me by one of my minor titles. I'm private here. So, no… my intention wasn't deliberate bringing you to Colsec. It was a completely senseless decision without a taint of the Duc de Vec you find so offensive."

"I'm sorry," Daisy quietly said, "For my obvious bad manners."

"I could apologize as well, I suppose… but why don't I show you my small domain instead? I don't know," he said with a moodiness he'd been fighting all afternoon, "if I want to apologize."

"What do you find so resentful?"

"The unprecedented upheavals in my life," he simply said. "I had over the years fashioned an orderly life of reasonable content." He looked around the small parlor that until today had been an exclusive male reserve. "I find your presence," he quietly added, "threatening to that reasonable content."

She was surprised at his choice of words. "Reasonable content hardly approximates your public persona. You're a man of excess."

"A term," he dryly said, "as superficial as the concept."

"If I offer you excess too," Daisy declared, trying to be as open as possible in this minefield of possibilities, "will that threaten you?"

The Duc smile. "We're talking about different things."

"You admit you're no monk."

He shrugged and held out his hand instead of answering. "Come. I don't like the direction of this conversation. The past doesn't interest me." He smiled down at her like an