"Did you like that?" While Empress had lived her adolescent years in the mountains, she'd not had the advantage of the Absarokee dedication to riding and outdoor sports.
"Competition is exhilarating; winning more so," Daisy admitted with a grin. "Being raised with three brothers sharpened my athletic abilities and fighting skills. I don't make a very demure wallflower." But that same competitive spirit had made her less vulnerable to those feminine romantic infatuations her friends gossiped and giggled about. Perhaps if she'd been more susceptible to those giddy girlish emotions, the men in her life would have played a more substantive role—and she too would have a baby nestled at her breast. The sight of Empress and her daughter occasioned a small twinge of envy. Would she ever find someone she loved enough to marry? Would Martin have filled the void she suddenly felt gazing at the poignant scene of mother and child?
"Speaking of wallflowers…" Empress casually declared, "brings Sally Newcombe to mind. Martin stopped by your office,I hear. Would you ever have married him?" Empress asked as if reading Daisy's mind.
"I kept thinking… I would," Daisy slowly replied, aware, even as she uttered the words, of the improbability of that action. Somehow she couldn't picture Martin as the necessary complement to her wishful image of mother and child. And with the exception of a mild irritation at the abruptness of his marriage, she felt no stabbing jealousy or loss. Even the swiftness of his marriage was recognizable in practical terms. Raised in a politically conscious home, Daisy was sensibly aware of pragmatic, expedient behavior.
"But…" Empress prompted with Daisy's sentence left incomplete, curious about the state of her emotions.
Daisy's gaze drifted momentarily to the flower garden visible through the terrace door, as though the answer to her flawed love life lay in the bucolic arrangement of flora. If her life had been more conventional… she mused—immediately recognizing the impossibility considering her circumstances.
Conventionally Indian?
Conventionally white?
Conventionally female?
What constancy was the proper choice?
She didn't conveniently fit any of the categories—an asset at times and at others, a distinct conundrum.
"I never wished to relinquish my freedom for a permanent relationship with Martin," Daisy explained. "I suppose that reluctance must have had something to do with the degree of my feelings for Martin. He's handsome certainly… and a pleasure to discuss political concerns with…"
"Not exactly mad, passionate love though," Empress quietly interjected, aware herself how that overwhelming emotion could forever change the fabric of one's life.
"Maybe everyone doesn't experience the stunning sting of Cupid's arrow." Daisy spoke reflectively, seriously beginning to question the possibility of ever being struck by love in those fanciful terms.
"I'm not sure of the universal nature of love but when it strikes you, you'll know."
"It surely brought Trey to a shockingly swift and blissful state of arrest in his life of excess," Daisy declared, her smile touched with mischief.
"So I'm told," Empress modestly replied, although she was fully aware of her husband's previous reputation as standing stud for scandalous numbers of women.
"He never even looks at another woman… and in that fact alone, I confess… if I had been somewhat skeptical in the past of the possibility of LOVE in capital letters, that larger-than-life scream from the mountaintops, turn-your-life-around sensation, I'm thoroughly convinced of its existence." Daisy was only half teasing. Trey's startling conversion had been on the order of a religious experience.
"Now you just have to find someone who electrifies your senses."
"I haven't exactly been secluded from the world since I left adolescence," Daisy said with a grin. "But no one's—"
"Resplendently desirable."
Daisy shrugged. "Since I'm uninitiated in that miraculous state of rapture, I don't know what I'm looking for—only that I obviously haven't found him. Not that I'd notice, considering my work schedule."
"You do work long hours."
"And unless the perfect man walks into my office…"
"At least in Paris, Adelaide will see that you meet everyone—and dance a little too."
"Adelaide's concept of 'a little' is considerably more than mine, unfortunately."
"Some socializing will do you good."
"Not in Paris. No offense, Empress. Flitting between ballrooms, afternoon musicals, and tedious dinners isn't my idea of pleasant diversion. But what I'm going to miss most," Daisy said with a small sigh, reminded of her last journey upmountain for sometime, "is riding. My daily pilgrimage with Golden Girl maintains my sanity."
"I'll have Adelaide introduce you to Etienne. He'll lend you a horse you'll like as well as Golden Girl. His stable is the best in Paris."
"De Vec, you mean." There was disparagement in Daisy's voice. "The man who's slept with every woman of beauty in Paris?"
"His reputation aside," Empress replied, not disclaiming the gossip, "Etienne's a good man… and kind. He was a friend when I desperately needed one."
"I don't understand men like de Vec," Daisy bluntly declared. She didn't. More austere than Empress—not less sophisticated, because she understood all the intricacies of society and its penchant for pleasurable transgressions—only at base, she'd never understood the brittle dilettante world Empress took for granted. Where people played at love with discretion and grace and very little feeling. Where work was a betrayal of one's class and the seamy concerns of ordinary humanity were beneath one's notice. She didn't feel inclined to strike up an acquaintance�even for the purpose of obtaining prime horseflesh—with a man who most epitomized the modish world she disdained. "I can go without riding for a few weeks," Daisy demurred. "Or ride some of the horses in Adelaide's stables."
"I'll write you a letter of introduction in case you change your mind. Etienne would be happy to lend you any of his horses for riding. You'd appreciate the quality of his polo ponies too since your family's involved in their breeding. Etienne's ponies' have origins in bloodstock from somewhere in northern India. And you needn't talk to him at all." Empress smiled. Daisy was strangely independent, even prickly at times with
