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

were bruising hard, imprisoning her… the antithesis of his soft voice.

"Damn you!" She struggled anew against his weight and grip… against her own overwhelming feelings. How could she despise his arrogance, his force majeur, his entire way of life�and want him still? "You can't have everything you want!" she protested in a rush of heated words. "Seignorial rights are passe!"

They weren't precisely, he thought, recalling the numerous incidents on his outlying estates when peasant fathers came to him with their young daughters as offerings. But he didn't suppose this was a pertinent time to discuss the discrepancies between Daisy Black's and his experience apropos seignorial rights.

"Does it help if I love you beyond distraction… Dammit!" He was angry too but in a different way than Daisy. In a sadder way, perhaps, because she was free and he was not.

"You don't know what love is," Daisy said, reaching up to push his hands from her face, vehement and resentful.

Maybe he didn't, but whatever he was feeling now was susceptible to the harsh truth of her caustic remark. His hands fell away in a swift release and looking down at her for a silent moment, he cursed her allure and his damnable need. "Forgive me," he said, clipped and cool, and lifting the weight of his body from hers, moved to the seat opposite her.

They were both breathing hard, their hearts racing like the speeding carriage, the only sound in the shuttered interior the rasping exhalation of their breath.

"I'm not one of your tarts." She spoke as women do in anger, defining the differences in pedigrees.

Her hair was disheveled, heavy black tresses streaming down her shoulders, a curving fall of midnight silk over one temple; her dress too, pushed in crushed folds of teal blue fabric up over her thighs, offered a tempting vision of golden flesh and the Duc considered for a moment pointing out the subtle nuances sometimes distinguishing a lady from a tart. But he said instead with a gruff uncordialness, "More's the pity," and, crossing his legs, slouched, sullen and black of mood, farther into the corner of his seat.

"Take me back." Her voice held that same haughty blend of coolness and noblesse oblige he'd remarked on when meeting her half brother.

In cultivating haughtiness however, the Duc had a thousand-year advantage—at least in terms of structured society—and he lifted his brows that infinitesimal fraction developed over fifty generations and said, "No."

He managed to give the impression of comfortably lounging in the swaying carriage and, across the filtered light of the shade-drawn interior, their eyes met in a confrontation as old as time… will against will with the deciding factor—sheer physical strength. "My father could kill you… or my brothers." Daisy spoke with a remarkable softness.

"Your brother said that to me once."

"Over Empress." With her hands braced on the seat to hold herself balanced, the shrug of her shoulder was diminished in drama. "There'll be someone else after me, Etienne. You know it and I know it, so I'd appreciate a little less emotion and a bit more sense. Tell Guillaume to turn around and take me back to Adelaide's." Daisy attempted to tug the blue silk of her skirt down over her legs without losing her balance in the swaying carriage. "And you might tell Guillaume to slow down," she added, like a governess would reprimand a pupil. "He's going to run someone over."

The Duc didn't answer. He only leaned slightly forward and reaching over, undid the covering up of her legs. "No need to get prudish, Daisy. Your legs are—" he paused for a moment, his green eyes drifting up her thighs, "very beautiful…" He caught himself before mentioning "and for my eyes only" because she didn't believe in seignorial rights and he realized even himself how anachronistic his feelings were.

"Etienne…" Her dark eyes were narrowed. "I'm not like the others." But she didn't refasten what he'd undone, secure in herself, knowing whether she sat opposite him clothed or unclothed her point was made. "You're overplaying your hand."

"I'm not playing."

"This is eighteen ninety-one, Etienne. I'm independent, wealthy, educated, and supported by a very powerful family. Don't be foolish."

He hadn't moved in his lounging posture and it piqued her briefly—both his insouciance and his ability somehow to be immune to the rough motion of the speeding carriage. "Your wife might be waiting for you," she added with testy sarcasm, wanting to remind him with a female bitchiness of his obligations… and elicit some reaction from his damnable composure.

He smiled then, not exactly the reaction she expected, and said with a smile in his voice as well, "She left for Deauville this morning."

"I hate you." She hated his smugness, his male freedom, his unconcern.

"No, you don't."

She hated his arrogance most, his knowing women could never hate him. And he'd talked to his wife this morning… for all his easy denial of their closeness—hell, knowing him, he probably slept with her last night after their reception.

"She left a note with my valet. I was out, you see, like some damn wet-behind-the-ears adolescent in love driving by Adelaide's. Does that answer all your unasked questions?"

How did he know, she wondered, gazing at his lounging strength, that she'd jealously thought him in bed with his wife. His riding clothes were fawn-colored, the suede of his jacket soft as velvet, his long powerful legs covered in sleek gabardine, his booted feet so close in the narrow aisle between them, she could have reached out and touched the gleaming leather. And his stark handsomeness, his brooding, moody eyes drew her like some haunting promise of paradise. "I don't have any questions," she lied, "save one." Struggling to ignore the heated feelings warming her body, she reminded herself he was a very sensual man… but not with her alone—with any female. "When are you taking me back to Adelaide's?"

He shrugged. A small placid movement, barely perceptible in the stillness of his pose. "We'll see," he said, using the royal