He shrugged, then smiled, his eyes taking on a playful cast. "Enough," he said, "to fill a nursery… if you like."
"Give me some idea of your plans." Her voice was softly teasing.
"They're not my plans. You wanted more, you said."
"How many titles?" she murmured, lying beside him on a fur blanket, the lodge walls translucent in the afternoon sun.
"Justin has some of them already."
"I understand. How many are left?" She rolled over so she lay partially on his chest, the seductive purr of her voice persuasive and heatedly cordial.
"Nine."
"Umm. That's a lot." But her pink tongue came out wetting her upper lip and she stretched to reach his smiling mouth.
They discussed the infinite possibilities in fragmented amorous phrases, having to do not so much with titles but with pleasure, agreeing in the end to fill their nursery in indulgent leisure.
In the course of the following weeks, while Daisy helped manage the court case, Etienne spent his days reviewing mining properties, attending to his affairs in Europe as well as possible via telegram, and negotiating to buy a local rail line.
Hazard and Trey served as the Duc's guides on the days they were available, and by month's end, Etienne had decided on investing in two properties. One was adjacent to the new Braddock-Black copper mine, allowing less possibility of controversy over ore veins, the other was at Butte.
In the evenings, Daisy and the Duc returned to Clear River Valley, to a home being renovated under Louis's guidance, turning it from a bachelor ranch house to a comfortable residence. They dined informally in a small parlor Louis had redone, made love like new lovers each night, and fell asleep in each other's arms.
And if paradise could have been depicted in visual terms, it would have been patterned after the happiness and harmony of their existence.
On Saturday morning Daisy slept in, a luxury she allowed herself lately as the baby seemed to deplete her energy level. Etienne had risen at dawn, as he often did, to ride out with his grooms for the ponies' morning warmup.
He also planned on meeting Hazard and Trey early to go underground with them for an inspection of one of their mines. With the same energy he put into polo or any of the enterprises he undertook, the Duc was systematically learning all he could about copper mining.
After an hour of watching his young thoroughbreds put through their paces on the valley flats, the Duc left to ride to the Ruby Mine. The crisp fall air was invigorating, his spirits buoyant as he traveled the quiet country road. He liked mornings—he always had, a sense of renewal, freshness, and unlimited promise seemed to waft on the morning air. And one of the young two-year-olds they'd brought with them from France had run the mile in record time; he was looking forward to the next racing season. He was also keenly interested in his tour of the Ruby Mine. As one of the older Braddock-Black properties, it was extensively mined, and they'd be descending almost three thousand feet underground.
"You won't need your jacket," Hazard declared as he greeted the Duc outside the manager's office. "You can leave it inside. This is George Stuntz, our manager at Ruby."
And introductions led to a discussion of the exploration going on in the lower levels once George understood the Duc was interested in learning as much as he could about underground mining.
"We're driving drifts out to the east for two thousand feet, then starting drilling off at right angles," George said.
"And exploring at both the 2666 and 2433 levels," Hazard added.
At 2433 they were out as far as they wanted to go, but down at 2666, the progress was slower because the men couldn't work more than four-hour shifts with the one-hundred-degree temperatures and humidity.
"Some can't even manage that length of time," George explained. "The work's hard. We're having trouble with the drills again too," George told Hazard. The granite was so hard, each drill bit only lasted fifteen minutes before it was too dull to use. "The drill shop's falling behind trying to keep them sharp."
Hazard asked about the signs of water that had been showing up lately.
The manager held up crossed fingers and smiled.
"Let's hope our luck holds."
It was almost nine-thirty when Hazard, Trey, and Etienne entered the cage taking them underground, and when they exited at the 2666 level into the lamplit station, the news greeting them was troubling.
The men were beginning to get water in all the drill holes.
"Tell the men to come out," Hazard immediately ordered, the new signs of water ominous. "We'll pull back and shut the bulkhead door at the 2666 level." The Ruby had had water problems from the beginning, its ore veins linked somehow to underground water.
Within ten minutes, the entire crew on that level had been brought out from their workings, and the iron door to the east drift had been solidly closed.
Within minutes after the door was sealed, water started coming up the raise—a four-by-four-foot vertical shaft used for ventilation and dropping ore—so fast everyone knew a major rupture had occurred.
"We'll have to shut the door at 2433 level too," Hazard tersely said, hoping to contain the water at that point.
The men knew the procedures. Everything had to be cleaned out of the tunnel so the force of the water wouldn't be augmented by loose timbers or equipment crashing into the iron doors. The crew scrambled, moving at top speed, loading everything onto the hoist, the skip squealing as it pulled the filled hoist to the surface at maximum speeds of thirty-six hundred feet per minute. As one skip went up, another came hurtling down, until the timbers for scaffolding and all the mining gear had been cleared.
The men, wading knee-deep in water by now, were evacuated to the 2433 level where the next iron door had to be closed.
At the end of the tunnel leading to the east drift, an enormous iron
