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"Are you finished?" he softly inquired, ignoring her remark.

"Yes, finished," she said, thinking instead of the unfinished state of her desire. "Come here and kiss me."

"I'll get a towel." He had his own plans and they didn't include getting wet.

She suddenly rose like Aphrodite born, in sleek lush invitation, water streaming in glistening iridescence down her body, her black hair cascading in a river of silk down the supple curve of her back, the dark triangle of hair between her smooth, gleaming thighs, shiny, damp, and tempting. She touched herself briefly there with a graceful gesture as if in invitation and waited for him. But drawing near, he only offered her his hand to step from the tub and wrapped her in the large white towel he'd taken from the bed. "Can we eat later?" she said very low, her throaty persuasion asking for more. "I mean luncheon," she softly added, letting the towel slide to the floor, watching his eyes drift down her slender form, thinking there were mysteries beyond the explanation of the intellect when she wanted to make love to this man anytime she saw him, anytime she thought of him… anytime at all.

"Come outside with me," he coaxed.

"Don't you want me?" She was more direct than coquettish. And she felt strangely breathless standing nude before him like a slave on the block.

Taking a very deep breath, he slowly exhaled. "Oh, yes."

With Eve-like assurance she reached for the buttons of his shirt. She had the admission she wanted, a response comparable to her own hot-blooded yearning. When he stayed her hand with a gentle pressure before her fingers unfastened the first ivory button, the inquiry in her eyes was mild.

"I hope this won't ruin my libertine image," he said with a grin, "but I promised Gabriella—my cook," he added in the event she didn't recognize the name, "we'd take luncheon at three." Bringing her captured hand to his lips he gently kissed her fingertips before placing her hand carefully within the curve of his palms. "François reminded me when he brought up your water that she was preparing a salmon aspic. The temperature's warm today and well… she and François have taken care of me here at Colsec for a long time."

"Let me get this straight. Gabriella's salmon aspic takes precedence over making love to me?"

If she hadn't been grinning, he would have answered her differently. "Let's just say I've more confidence in your ability to wait than Gabriella's aspic… and," he added, his smile wide, his hands holding hers warmly engulfing, "if you get angry with me, I know one or two ways to curtail your resentment."

They stood very close, their spirits in tremulous rapport—held in check… only barely.

"In other words, Gabriella doesn't succumb to your seductions."

"That's about it."

"So if I were to agree without argument to postpone my libidinous urges, you would no doubt…" Her voice took on a husky contralto resonance, and the light of mischief shone in her eyes. "… reward me later."

"My word on it, counselor," he said, grinning. "After the aspic's been served, I'm completely at your disposal."

"Completely?" The single word held suggestion rich in imagery.

He smiled. "Absolutely."

After selecting one of his shirts to wear when he told her she might as well be comfortable in the isolation of his estate, they walked hand in hand down his curved low-ceilinged stairway. Etienne's overlarge shirt reminded Daisy of the Absarokee dresses she wore when she was with the clans at the summer camp. Her bare feet, too, recalled the freedom of those summer days.

He led her out the front entrance to a winding grassy path leading through cool ferns and weeping willows down to the river where a sylvan clearing opened before them, all exquisite shades of green and dappled sunshine. Artistically placed on the verge of the tall willows, a rustic summer pavilion complemented the fairylike glade. A folly built of slender willow saplings with bark and branches still intact, roofed in green, verdant thatch offered cool haven against the summer-day's heat.

"How wonderful," Daisy exclaimed on seeing it. Like an illustration from a fairy tale, the pavilion on the river-bank immediately evoked another reality, a fantasia. "You didn't show me this last time."

"I've five miles on the river," Etienne said in polite evasion. He hadn't intended on seeing her again—last time. "This is one of my toys."

"There are others?" She hadn't thought him a fanciful man, so much of his life was patterned in the predictable aristocratic mold.

"A few," he modestly said, thinking how her eyes would sparkle when he showed her his Mongolian yurt constructed on a rise overlooking a great banking curve of the Seine. But just then François appeared almost noiselessly from the woodland path, carrying a large covered silver tray. Escorting Daisy into the open-air pavilion, the Duc seated her on a wicker settee, elaborate in woven detail, cushioned in pillows of a lush deep-purple woven fabric. He offered her champagne from a bottle on ice in a silver bucket, seated himself on the railing beside Daisy's settee, and oversaw François's arrangement of the luncheon table. Several trips later the last item of food was deposited on the natural linen table cover. With a gracious thank you, the Duc acknowledged François's elegant display. "We won't require your assistance any longer," he added, his voice quietly dismissive.

"Very good, sire. The towels you asked for are on the small jetty near the boathouse."

"And the champagne?"

"In the boathouse."

"Tell Gabriella I'm having some more playthings sent out for your grandchildren. Au Nain Bleu's manager promised me tomorrow."

François bowed with a peasant gesture, his hand over his heart. "Thank you, sire," he said to the man he knew as Baron Fermond. "Gabriella will be pleased."

"How long have you employed them?" Daisy asked after François had disappeared into the dense willow grove.

"They came with the estate. Their family was young then… it must be twenty-some years ago." His answer was more casual than his memory. He remembered precisely to the day, for he'd bought Colsec directly after Isabelle had informed him shortly after the twins' birth that he would no longer be welcome in her bed. That same day, he'd had his steward look into a retreat for himself near Paris. A week later he'd bought Colsec. He'd come here often over the years when society became intolerable and his moodiness needed surcease. "They were afraid they'd be turned out," he went on, "and I'd bring in my own servants. But I was looking for anonymity, no ties to my Paris staff. Their children work for me now, too, either in the village or here. Their youngest boy heads my library in the village."

Daisy raised her brow in silent query. French peasants were rarely librarians, and a small village with a library was exceptional.

"Your clan isn't the only beneficent unit of humanity in the world, darling." His soft irony was teasing.

"You surprise me," Daisy said in genuine admiration. "I thought your charity was confined to gifts of jewelry to fashionable ladies."

"In time, no doubt, I'll astonish you with my… charity."

Her voice when she answered was husky with seductive suggestion. "I certainly hope so."

"You'll have to meet my nuns," the Duc went on, amusement coloring his tone. "I endow a nunnery too."

"A nunnery?" Daisy's eyes had narrowed slightly in licentious suspicion.

"I've never felt the urge," Etienne said with a faint smile, reading her expression correctly. "The Bishop had cut their funds and they were starving, that's all."

"You support a great number of people." She said it almost grudgingly, reluctant to admit she had been almost entirely wrong in her assessment of Etienne.

"Many of them contribute to my wealth. I'd be a fool not to." His simple answer, unique to his class, was delivered with his usual casual logic.

Daisy had been raised in a culture where the individual contributed to the welfare of the tribe and, while she hardly needed another reason to find the Duc de Vec appealing, enamoured as she was already, the fact that he had a social consciousness in a society known for its selfishness was gratifying. No, more—she found it another temptation to love him. Which thought immediately struck her with alarm. Lifting her champagne glass for refilling, she said by way of suppressing disastrous thoughts of love—hopeless and impossible in relation to the Duc de Vec, "Should we sample the extraordinary salmon aspic? And I warn you, considering what I relinquished for Gabriella's serenity, I expect the ambrosia of the gods."

Five minutes later, glancing up from her comfortable half-reclining position on the settee, her portion of aspic devoured, she said to Etienne's knowing look, "Don't look so smug and cut me another serving."

"I think this is where I'm allowed to say something superior."

"Not if you value your life."

He only grinned and served her another sizable portion. In silence, he watched her eat, watched her lick the fork clean, watched her small considering pause before she said, "It's an aphrodisiac, isn't it?"

"I don't think it has to be. Gabriella tells me it's a family recipe ceremoniously cooked for weddings. The ice required for it makes it of course a luxury for peasant households."

"What's in it?" Despite his mild denial, she was already feeling a slow seeping desire drift through her senses.

He shrugged like any nobleman would when confronted with a question related to the kitchen. "Don't ask me. Would you like me to call Gabriella?"

"No," Daisy instantly retorted, not currently in the mood for additional company.

"Could I interest you in some wild strawberries or some
génoise
? Would you like a cup of tea?"

"Don't you feel it?" she asked, incredulous he could so casually converse about food when she was beginning to feel the Egyptian cotton of his shirt as though it were heated silk.

"Of course." He'd eaten too.
⁵

"And this was why you delayed me… it wasn't concern for a servant's feelings."

"It was both," he said. "Gabriella terrifies me." His smile negated his latter statement and in truth, Gabriella coddled him. For which he, as a grateful man, reciprocated. "More champagne?"

"No, thank you." Leaning over, she placed her plate on the floor. Settling back against the cushions, she unbuttoned the small closures at her wrists, then slid the crested silver buttons of the shirt-front open. Smiling up at the Duc, who had set his champagne glass down, she let the shirt slowly slide down her shoulders and arms until it lay in puddled white ripples on the deep purple of the cushions. Lifting her hands free, she raised herself enough to slip the shirttail away before lying back against the grape-colored cushions. "I'm waiting for my promised reward," she said, her smile lighting up her eyes.

She was, he thought as he gazed at her, the most perfectly formed woman he'd ever seen. Slender, toned, her long legs lazily crossed, her arms resting against the settee back and curve of pillows, she was every man's erotic dream. Her full splendid breasts were suspended by the position of her raised arms so their weighted volume appeared almost perfectly round, soft and luscious, and waiting to be touched… her nipples peaked, tautly subject to Gabriella's aspic. He could already imagine her whimper of excitement when he finally sucked on them. And when his glance drifted downward to the heating juncture of her thighs, she shifted in a small restless movement as though he had touched her there.

Putting out his hand, he said, "Come," knowing she would obey. When she rose to walk to him, he watched each step, counted them with the rhythm of his pulsebeat, wondered in a small corner of his brain- not yet inundated with desire whether anyone in history had lost his reason so willingly. A blithe, ingenuous thought, it brought a smile to his lips.

The warmth of her hand slid into his curved fingers. He pulled her close and for that millisecond before their lips touched, the air between them seemed liquid and scented. That first contact of their lips, delicate and subtle, her small mouth shaping itself against the champagne coolness of his, instantly scorched their -senses, burned through their bodies, ignited an appetite for sensation already roused by Gabriella's festive delicacy. And they clung to each other for a moment—breathless… stunned by the violence of their need.