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

Isabelle was still in her tea gown when she came into the library. Without greeting him, only nodding in acknowledgment of his salutation, she sat before the Duc in the chair his grandfather had bought after Napoleon's furnishings had been dispersed. The Empire style suited Isabelle's cool beauty. Petite as a Meissen shepherdess, blonde, the same age as he, she was slim as the day the Duc had married her. Isabelle saw discipline as her greatest virtue.

"She must have been exceptional to keep you from the King's family party," his wife pointedly said. "Your absence was remarked on."

"I'm sorry," Etienne replied, simply, long past the time when Isabelle's barbs could draw blood. "I'll send my apologies."

"You will be at the public function tomorrow, I trust? Justin and Jolie will be there of course with Henri and Hector."

He knew Henri would be with his daughter Jolie. Unlike he and Isabelle, his daughter and her husband enjoyed each other's company. "Hector too?" he said. "How nice."

Knowing Etienne's adoration of his grandson, Isabelle had made it a point to see Hector would be in attendance. Insurance, as it were, to guarantee that Etienne accompany the family to the public celebration of the King's birthday. Status and position were of prime importance to Isabelle; both her family and Etienne's were closely related to the Bourbons, and Orleans and court functions were a prestigious display of their prominence, an opportunity to remind others that her family and the de Vecs were some of the oldest and richest in France.

"The King's garden party begins at two; our small reception follows at, perhaps, seven?" She left the statement casually open.

"We're having a reception?" He thought they'd agreed not to have one.

"Just a few close friends… for drinks and dinner."

That translated fifty or more, involved a long night of essentially Isabelle's friends proving she'd done exactly as she pleased again—as usual. He wondered when he would learn her word meant nothing. "Are we driving together?" he asked instead of arguing about a reception that was at this late date a fait accompli.

"Yes."

"I'll be ready," he said, leaning back in his chair. "Is there more?" he asked when she didn't immediately rise. Their conversations were reduced to essentials. Isabelle never stayed simply to chat.

"Justin," she said.

"Yes?" He hated her habit of surrendering each bit of information slowly rather than simply stating the facts. And he disloyally thought of the frankness of the beautiful Mademoiselle Daisy Black. She always said exactly what she meant.

"I can't convince him."

"Of what, Isabelle?"

"You know how insistent he is."

"At times I suppose he is, as we all are. Is this pertinent?"

"The trip."

"The trip?"

"To Egypt. He's still insisting on his trip to Egypt."

There. At last. He couldn't restrain his small sigh of irritation. "I thought this had all been agreed on months ago." Justin wished to travel—nothing terribly remote—Egypt was practically at France's back door, a regular stop on all the tours.

"What if he's hurt or catches some filthy disease or drowns in some murky dirty river?" Her perfectly made-up face reflected her distaste.

"Isabelle," Etienne quietly said, with utmost patience, since he'd gone over this a dozen times already. Isabelle saw anything beyond the major cities of Europe as an outland peopled with brigands, foreigners, and barefoot peasants, all of whom she viewed as subhuman, none of whom she cared to view at close proximity. "Justin is twenty now. The Nile is not some dirty river but the cradle of an ancient civilization well worth seeing. He's old enough to travel where he pleases and has more than enough money to travel without either of our consents. He's only being polite to even discuss it with us. Now leave the poor boy alone."

Her lips were pursed in an expression the servants often saw when she was displeased. "You always did take the children's side. That sort of laxity as a parent is related, I presume, to your socialist tendencies."

Isabelle was a royalist, viewing any political stance left of the restoration of the monarchy as socialist. Etienne was a moderate in his politics, even having served two terms in the Senate years ago when the Republic was shakily trying to find its way after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. He believed in individual rights, not divine right, and he also believed children deserved respect for their wishes. "I'm sorry," he neutrally said, "if you feel that way." This argument too was years old. Isabelle regarded anyone not agreeing with her as an enemy. Over the years he'd been obliged to stand up for the children often against her more rigid strictures of conduct.

"Look, Isabelle," the Duc went on soothingly, weary of the age-old controversy, "the children are grown. Jolie's happily married with a child of her own. They both came into their trusts two years ago. We have to stop interfering in their decisions."

"You want Justin to be just like you, traveling all over the world like a vagabond."

"I don't want him to be like me," the Duc said, his voice as mild as possible. It was the last thing he wanted for his son, this empty world of his. "I want him to have some freedom."

She sniffed then, and he always thought it made her look and sound like a cat. "Certainly you've had enough freedom," she scathingly replied.

Within the solid bars of convention their families and traditions had forged, he reflected, but this also had been a topic of conversation a thousand times before. "I want a different freedom for him, Isabelle. You probably wouldn't understand. Now if we're finished, I think I'll go and see Hector." His daughter and family lived in their own apartment across the courtyard garden in another wing of the Hôtel de Vec.

"They're gone," his wife spitefully said, pleased she could thwart her husband, who spent too much time with their grandson. He was spoiling the boy, just as he'd spoiled Justin and Jolie.

"In that case, I'll be going out. Tomorrow at the King's then. You're looking beautiful as