Forbidden by Susan Johnson Page A

as a female version of him and wisely withdrew from the field.
    Etienne Mattel, Duc de Vec and bearer of a dozen lesser titles, was not most men, had from the cradle been disabused of that notion, and over the years had come to view himself, without conceit, as capable of accomplishing most anything he wished. He wished, he suddenly decided, to bring the cool Mademoiselle Black to bed. It would be like taming a wild creature or perhaps leashing a small storm, he thought, a faint wolfish smile appearing on his aquiline face.
    A fascinating challenge.
    "Are you ready, de Vec?" The voice of one of his fellow players interrupted his thoughts.
    His smile widened. "I'm ready," he said and picked up his new hand.
    Daisy had watched Isme's eyes as she'd introduced the Duc, heard the malice in her voice, and wondered what her motives were. It was apparent the minute Isme spoke that the Duc and she had been lovers. That special kind of intimacy between people is forever evident in gesture and mien, although surely with de Vec's reputation that nuance of friendship beyond friendship must be very common. He was reportedly the most sought-after man in Paris.
    Definitely of no interest to her.
    The absolute antithesis of what she sought in a man, the Duc de Vec was too handsome, too charming, too facilely competent—too idle. Men of his rank did nothing but pursue pleasure and sport. She found the aristocratic ideal disgraceful and reprehensible, a frittering waste of one's life.
    Which made her unusual reaction to the Duc so disconcerting.
    The thought brought her motionless, her hand suspended over the antique silver hairbrush on the bureautop. Her initial impulse to reach out and touch him when they'd been introduced had been overwhelming. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the Duc de Vec exuded an intemperate virility, as though he were offering luxurious pleasure with his lazy smile and tall lean body and starkly handsome looks.
    It was his eyes perhaps which most enhanced that seductive magnetism. They were heavy-lidded, sensationally lashed, intense somehow despite his insouciance—a deep glittering jungle-green, she remembered with a tiny shiver, like some great stalking cat's. And when he'd bowed over her hand, his gaze automatically holding hers for a long moment with a whisper of invitation habitual and unconscious, only steely willpower had restrained her from touching the dark silk of his bowed head. She'd also wondered in the next flashing moment before he stood upright once more how the powerful muscles of his shoulders, visible beneath his impeccable black evening jacket when he moved—how they would feel. Or how he would look with his jacket off.
    With anyone else, perhaps, she might have given into those singular sensations. She wasn't prudish, she thought, grasping the brush with a steady hand and sweeping it through her hair as though she could as easily sweep the Duc from her thoughts. She understood emotion and feeling. Anyone raised an Absarokee on the windswept, open-skied northern plains understood profound emotion.
    But the Duc de Vec was too familiar with the power of his charm, too confident of his attraction, a casual predator of female affection. She hadn't cared to be another casual conquest. Her dark hair gleamed in the lamp-lit room as she counted the ritual one hundred strokes before replacing the brush on the mirror-topped bureau. There. Finished. Like her brief meeting with the Duc. She'd been right to deal with him curtly, she told herself, tying the peach-colored ribbon at the neck of her lawn nightgown into a neat bow. There was no point in any degree of friendship with a man who viewed women as transient entertainments, she reflected, slipping between the silk sheets.
    Sleep eluded her, however, with the music from Adelaide's ball drifting up the stairs and through the open bedroom windows. How would it feel, she inexplicably mused—a Viennese waltz silvery sweet in her ears, the scent of lilac