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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 from the gardens fragrant on the night air—to be held in his arms as they danced? Not only the fantastic thought, but the sudden vivid image of the Duc de Vec holding her close, shocked her for a moment like a numbing blow. The music and the scented air must be affecting her, she decided with swift relentless logic. With reality restored once again, she drew in a small calming breath—a strange necessity if she'd allowed herself leave to notice. Priding herself on her sensible-ness, aware of both her personal assets and liabilities, she'd always credited herself most for her practical assessment of a situation. Overlooking her need for a forced calmness, she reminded herself that both her instinct and logic had judged the Duc and found him unsuitable.

For
her
particular interest, she quickly qualified. The Duc de Vec, of course, was highly suitable in his aristocratic world. Closely related to the royal family, his pedigree perhaps purer in some respects, his wealth princely by all accounts, his personal attributes—looks and charm, his expertise on the playing field and hunting field, his manner of success with women—were all the inimitable standard for his class.

How could she be even remotely attracted to him? Why was he even in her thoughts?

He was the archetypal bored aristocrat interested only in his pleasure; her roots were in the boundless freedom and simplicity of her ancestors' way of life, where pleasure was a part of life, not its purpose, and common interests supported the clan existence.

Even her training as a lawyer was predicated on the ultimate goal of helping her tribe. She'd learned well from her father about reality and her anchors to the past. Being tied to two cultures wasn't new, but a dilemma that had existed from the moment of first contact with the white man centuries ago. She understood assimilation. You used what you needed, you learned to compromise and negotiate, but beneath the incorporation and discipline, intransmutable and renegade was a deep and abiding knowledge of who she truly was.

She was the daughter of a chief who was himself the descendent of chiefs going back to a time beyond remembrance. Despite the veneer of couturier gowns, continental languages, and college instruction, she was her father's daughter.

And the seductively magnetic Duc de Vec was anathema.

The following morning with his own plans of an opposite nature, the Duc arranged to have himself invited to an intimate dinner party at Adelaide's.

"You surprise me, Etienne," Adelaide said, intent on the reason de Vec and Valentin were at breakfast with her. "I didn't know you rose so early."

She obviously wasn't aware her husband rose early either, Etienne thought, since he and Valentin made a practice of riding most mornings at dawn when the day was fresh and cool. "A habit from childhood," he pleasantly replied. "I blame it on my nanny. She liked sunrises."

"How sentimental." Adelaide wasn't being condescending or coy. She was in fact genuinely astonished, her opinion of the Duc quite altered.

"I loved old Rennie most as a child," Etienne honestly declared. "She was my family, my friend, my playmate." Essentially without subterfuge, he was secure in his own self-esteem. That too he attributed to his Scottish nanny. Certainly neither of his parents were competent models of maturity. His father had had two obsessions: gambling and mountain climbing. Luckily, he was successful at both, so the family wealth wasn't diminished nor was his presence often felt at home. Regrettably, his luck ran out one day on the rockface of Dag Namur at sixteen thousand feet, and Etienne became the next Duc de Vec at the young age of twelve.

His mother found the role of widow as uninteresting as she'd found marriage and motherhood. Fascinated primarily by society's pleasures, after having done her wifely duty of providing an heir for her husband, she'd entertained herself discreetly with a variety of lovers while her husband was away. At his death, the freedom and independence she'd always craved became a reality and a way of life. From his mother, no doubt, he'd inherited his propensity for sexual adventuring. They'd become friends in his adolescence, when he'd begun to better understand the nature of her interests; she was his confidante now and favorite lunch companion.

"And forgive us for waking you," he added with a smile, aware of Adelaide's struggle to suppress a yawn.

"I will if you tell me what weighty issue brings you to breakfast," Adelaide declared, more curious than tired. Since Valentin never woke her before eleven, this was obviously of some import.

"Etienne would like to be included in our dinner party tonight," her husband casually replied, stirring another spoonful of sugar into his coffee. "I said you'd be delighted."

"You won't be bored?" Adelaide said to the Duc. "We're only having a few people in to dine."

"If Mademoiselle Black is seated beside me I won't be bored," the Duc quietly said.

One couldn't accuse him of subterfuge. He was being exceedingly plain as was the reason now for her early morning call to breakfast. "She's not your type, Etienne." Adelaide gazed at him as a mother might a child asking for some curiosity.

"Let me be the judge of that, Adelaide." The Duc's voice was soft, his expression unreadable.

Her brows rose and she shrugged slightly, a Parisian withdrawal. "Don't say I didn't warn you," she said, her tone cheerful as she considered the interesting possibilities in the Duc's endeavor. "Daisy's even more opinionated than Empress, and stubbornly independent. It must be the air in Montana. She won't be tractable."

"So I discovered when I met her last night," the Duc said with a faint smile. "Despite that, I find her fascinating." Maybe the fascination had to do with the piquant challenge of a woman walking away from him. He couldn't remember that having happened before.

Familiar with the Duc's expression, Valentin gave warning of his own. "Daisy's our guest, Etienne. I won't have her hurt."

The Duc was comfortably lounging in a chair by the window as if he shared breakfast with the Prince and Princess de Chantel often. "Rest easy, Valentin," he reassured his friend, with whom he did breakfast frequently—normally at
his
home. "I don't intend to force the lady." His voice had the easy confidence of a man more often the recipient of seductive advances than supplicant.

Adelaide laughed, a bright trilling sound, light as the sun streaming through the windows. "You men are…" She smiled knowingly over the rim of her teacup, her gaze surveying both men looking very boyish in their shirt sleeves and riding pants. "… very naive about Daisy."

Daisy almost turned around and left the drawing room that evening when she saw the Duc de Vec sprawled in one of the embroidered chairs flanking the fireplace, cradling a small tumbler of liquor between his large hands.

But his eyes caught hers when she entered the room as if he'd been watching for her arrival and she begrudged giving him the satisfaction of knowing his presence affected her.

Although he didn't approach her in the half hour before dinner was announced, she caught his gaze on her several times… and he'd smiled then, his promise-of-pleasure smile that managed somehow to be amiable and sweet in addition to its obvious sensual allure.

Tiny flutters of heat stirred her senses when he smiled. While pretending not to notice, she consciously tamped down her strange flutters, not sure if they were anger or anticipation, not wishing to acknowledge she was experiencing
any
sensations related to the darkly handsome man seated with the animated group of men discussing polo.

He appeared not to participate in the conversation except when asked a direct question, she noted, then chastised herself a moment later for monitoring his activities so closely. The impossibility of any relationship with the infamous Duc de Vec had been thoroughly dealt with last night before she fell asleep, she reminded herself, turning back to the women seated near Adelaide. Forcefully turning her full attention on the merits of pink diamonds as the newest fashion statement in accessories, she concentrated on the discussion of jewelers and styles. She was relieved to hear dinner announced just as the Duchesse Montaine asked her opinion on combining yellow and pink diamonds in a parure.

Her relief was short-lived, however, since the Duc de Vec presented himself as her dinner partner, bowing slightly, offering his arm to escort her into the dining room. He seemed, perhaps because of her surprise, to loom extremely large above her, his closeness penetrating, vividly distracting to her sense of aloof-ness. She wanted to say: Why are you doing this? But too many people were near and expressing those sentiments would suggest he was doing something perhaps he wasn't, and would also indicate the extent of her flustered agitation. So she bit back the words when the Duc pleasantly said, "Good evening, Mademoiselle Black. Are you as hungry as I?"

Rising from her chair, she gave him a sharp look, wondering whether he intended the double entendre or she was simply misinterpreting his meaning.

Her response brought a faint smile to the Duc's mouth, for his comment had been perfectly innocuous. How pleasant her agitation, he mused. "I missed lunch," he went on in an amiable tone as though he calmed sexually awakened young ladies every day of the week, which in truth, wasn't too wide of the mark. "I was playing polo."

Taking a small relaxing breath before placing her fingers lightly on his forearm, Daisy decided she was simply overreacting to a man who was probably incapable of double entendre. And his comment about missing lunch was actually off hand. She'd envisioned a subtlety that didn't exist in the man. He played polo. That was essentially what he did. And when he wasn't playing polo, he was hunting or gambling or amusing himself with other men's wives. The quintessential blueblood. Useless and idle through countless generations. Looking up at him as they strolled into the dining room, she said with a keen glance and an edge to her voice, "You don't ever work, do you?"

"Playing polo was hard work this afternoon," he amiably replied, deflecting the asperity in her question. He smiled down at her. "I think I lost five pounds."