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

his day busy with details of his departure. But he thought then of all the times his father had comforted him in his childhood, or been available for advice or money or influence when he'd gotten himself into a scrap, or simply listened to him from his nursery days on with genuine interest, and he said, "Of course."

When Jolie walked through the door of the breakfast room a scant half hour later, Hector in tow, Justin said, "He's done it at last. That's the remarkable news. Hi, Hector, tell Uncle Justin what you want me to bring you back from Egypt."

"Camel," Hector said, causing Justin to look up at his sister in surprise.

"You've been talking about Egypt for months now. Consequently he's been talking about Egypt for months and even two-year-olds know what a camel is when they hear about it daily." Her smile was serene.

"I didn't know what a camel was when I was two."

"Papa hadn't been to Egypt yet. Are you really, Papa?" she casually said, turning to her father who was holding Hector in his lap, showing him the moving astrological signs on his pocket watch. "At last?" She smiled.

"Why is everyone saying 'at last' to me? Have I been ignoring some significant intimations all these years?"

"Everyone knows you and Maman don't get along."

"Which isn't particularly unusual."

"Perhaps for your generation," Justin interposed.

"You're going to need Bourges."

"Why does everyone seem to think I need Bourges?"

"Papa, sometimes you're so naive," his daughter said to the man generally considered the least naive in Paris. "Maman would sooner see you dead than divorced."

"What 'vorce?" Hector asked, taking a moment from his attempt at dismantling Etienne's watch to gaze up at his mother.

"Sometimes people don't get along and then they get a divorce," she explained. To her father's raised brows, she added, "He's certainly going to hear enough about it in the coming months. I believe in being honest. You always were, Papa."

She pronounced the last sentence with an energetic affirmation to which Etienne couldn't help but smile. "Perhaps though," he said, coming from an older school of honesty, "we could continue the details of this discussion later. I simply wanted to tell you before someone else did. And," he added with a grin, "I was beginning to miss Hector already last night."

"You're welcome, Papa, you know that… anytime."

"Under the circumstances—"

"Hector can come over whenever you like. If I'm not home, I'll give instructions to Nurse to bring him over. If you have any sentimental attachment to that watch, Papa, perhaps we should lure Hector's attention away with some of those strawberries. Hector, darling," she coaxed without waiting for her father's response, "look at this strawberry like Madame Squirrel eats." With the consummate experience of a mother, she offered the strawberry with one hand and rescued Etienne's watch with the other. "Now tell me about Adelaide's pretty young friend," she said, sitting down, her smile like her father's, dazzling and amiable. "Of course I keep track of you," she said, in response to her father's surprised expression. "Someone has to."

The Duc de Vec's call on Bourges turned out to be less warmhearted and merciful. Felicien Bourges pointed out in a precise, swift commentary the limitations of France's negotiated divorce law. It was not a secular law of mutual consent, so should Isabelle choose not to petition for divorce or contest the Duc's petition, the proceedings could drag on in the courts through various cross-petitions and appeals at great length. Furthermore, if the Duchesse had to be petitioned for divorce, proving material injuries before a judge most likely in the debt of the Minister of Justice, Comte de Montigny, might not only be difficult but…

"Are you telling me it's impossible?" The Duc's tone conveyed his opinion of that word. Bourges was extremely young. Perhaps his reputation while not necessarily undeserved, had been shaped by fortuitous circumstances. Did he have the experience?

"No. I simply wished to define the obstacles." Felicien Bourges, the son of a peasant, who had risen by hard work and talent through the difficult route of a scholarship student in an educational system antagonistic to scholarship students, understood obstacles. It was his inspiration and his genius.

Men of the Duc's privileged background were only familiar with compliance. Did this casually seated man so used to command realize the extent of his difficulties? Bourges wondered.

"Will the divorce take long?" Etienne asked. Since Bourges hadn't said the divorce was impossible, it was possible. And if he had said it was impossible, Etienne would simply have found another barrister.

"The Duchesse's brother is Minister of Justice. Very unfortunate." The young lawyer leaned forward slightly as if emphasizing his point.

"Surely only a hindrance."

"A formidable one. But," Felicien added in the self-possessed tone at odds with his very youthful appearance, "not insuperable."

"How long?" the Duc repeated.

"That depends on the Duchesse. She is opposed, you say?"

"So she said. Personally, I believe she has a price. I told her she had simply to name it."

The woman he was so anxious to marry must be most unusual, Felicien thought, or perhaps enceinte. He knew the Duc by reputation and de Vec's priorities with the women in his past had never been matrimonial. "Is there some anxiety about… the time period?"

The Duc smiled at his euphemistic query and at the familiar phrasing. "None other than my own selfish desire to marry again."

"You realize of course, the lady you wish to marry cannot be named accomplice in the divorce decree or you'll be prohibited by law from marrying her."

"Then you must see she's not." The Duc spoke with patrician assurance.

How nice it would be, Bourges thought, if the law could be so easily administered. "I suggest we speak to the Duchesse's counsel first… as a preliminary procedure."

"Old Letheve will be scandalized."

"She hasn't secured other counsel then?"

"When I spoke to her last, yesterday, she felt, I think, that all was resolved—between us. You may speak to Letheve first if you wish. I don't know how things are handled in…