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

courtroom, Judge Nott had discourteously suggested Braddock-Black Ltd. would be better served by a "capable" lawyer.

Red-faced and frustrated he couldn't legally eject her from his court, he'd insisted on presenting his views on women in an inflammatory, avowedly antifeminist, tirade.

"We cannot but think," he'd expostulated, ignoring the intent of the state law as incidental to his personal attitude, "the common law wise in excluding women from the profession of law. The law of nature destines and qualifies the female sex for the bearing and nurture of the children of our race" (at which point, his disapproval of Daisy's race was openly evident in his bitter, piercing gaze) "and for the custody of the homes of the world, and their maintenance in love and honor. And all lifelong calling of women…" His voice was beginning to thunder, his jowls quivering in sympathy. "… inconsistent with these social duties of their sex, as-is-the-profession-of-law…" A hint of purple tinged his cheeks, so rabid were his emotions. "… are departures from the order of nature, and when voluntary, treason against it!"3

From that unpropitious beginning, his obstructive motives had never wavered. Throughout the course of the trial, Daisy had been reprimanded unnecessarily, spoken to with indifference or discourtesy, ignored and overruled countless times—an effort in futility, since the presentation of her witnesses and cross examination were brilliantly effective in citing the illegalities of Hanna Mining's incursions into Braddock-Black copper deposits. Regardless of Judge Nott's prejudices, the jury was being offered her evidence with skillful adept coolness. Daisy Black rarely showed her temper in court or otherwise. She'd accomplished the rare feat of sisterhood in a select minority of women lawyers in America by hard work and willful control of her emotions. Unlike whitemen, who were often viewed as emotional, loud, and rude, her Absarokee heritage nurtured restraint and courtesy. And she conducted herself with a composure and self-possession that had earned her the sobriquet "Iron-pants."

Furiously provoked by the judge's last comment, her brother Trey was on his feet, leaning forward belligerently across the table reserved for Braddock-Black personnel, looking as though he were about to leap over the littered tabletop. His silver eyes were hot with anger, the set of his spine rigid, and only their father's hand on his sleeve restrained him.

"Whether I'm married or not, Judge Nott," Daisy was reply-ing with equanimity to the judge's rude allusion she was single because she lacked the gentler graces of her sex, "has nothing to do with the intelligent presentation of this case or the fact that my speciality in mining law will make it difficult for Hanna Mining to profit by taking ore from Braddock-Black Limited. And as far as the gentler graces of my sex, I've seen too many married women of Montana ploughing and planting and driving wagon teams to consider languid femininity and delicate tea ceremonies a requisite for marriage."

The jury guffawed, Trey sat back down with a smile on his face, and Hazard Black, father to the outspoken woman putting Judge Nott in his place, murmured to his son and the two other Braddock-Black lawyers seated at their table, "Nott just lost his appointment to the federal court." Hazard Black's enormous wealth made him a potent political force in Montana despite his Indian heritage. Judge Nott had seriously erred in insulting his daughter.

Although born into a warrior culture and trained in warfare as a young man, in the decades since the whiteman had moved into Montana, Hazard Black had learned to deal with his enemies in a manner commensurate with the law. Fortunately, frontier justice was often not only moot, but informal and swiftly dispensed in a sparsely settled state where the nearest authorities were hours or days away. But-regardless of the whiteman's idiosyncrasies and restrictions imposed on the traditional modes of Absarokee justice, Hazard Black always paid his debts.

Which point Daisy took issue with on the way back to the office later that afternoon, after court had been recessed for the day. "Just a friendly warning, Father. I don't need any vengeful retaliation for the judge's allusion to my being single. It was uncalled-for and more personal than his other forms of rudeness, but he's a simpleminded bigot I can handle myself." Daisy spoke in a moderate tone, as though she weren't warning off her father from some resolute masculine sense of affront. She understood the Absarokee operating rules on vengeance as well as he.

The spring sun was no more warmly benevolent than Hazard's smile as he walked beside his daughter. "You did extremely well, dear. You don't need me to protect you from Nott's stupidity," her father replied, not inclined to argue his masculine code of ethics.

Pleased her father seemed so amenable, Daisy politely reminded him she was no novice in dealing with male prejudice.

"He's not the first," she went on, "to oppose women practicing law or advocate that a 'woman's place is in the home.'"

"Or in a plush bordello like Ruby's," Trey sardonically added, his mouth curving into a grin. Keeping leisurely pace beside Daisy, he glanced down at his sister with amusement in his eyes. "Nott spends a lot of time there, insuring," he mockingly went on, "the double standard is alive and well."

He'll have more time to spend there in the future, Hazard coolly thought—if he can afford it when he loses his appointment. Regardless of his affable reply to his daughter, Hazard intended to see Nott suffer for his rudeness. Hazard had spent a lifetime fighting for his clan's existence and a degree of equality in an unequal society. Luckily wealth proved effective in the fluid nature of American culture and the degree of that fluidity was markedly more unhindered in the West. Men who were penniless one day could be millionaires the next in the mineral-rich West and an individual's past was never scrutinized too closely. It wasn't healthy in a state that still settled a great deal of controversy with gunshot justice.

"Actually, I was surprised he was stupid enough to take you on,"