"You appear, milord, to have lost interest in my story."
The earl's eyes narrowed at the sharp tone. Despite her predicament,Louise's daughter was clearly far from subdued.
"On the contrary, child," he said dryly. "My interest is merely piquedand awaits full satisfaction. Your mother was always a trifleunconventional, but I find it hard to believe she leant her countenanceto this escapade of yours." To his dismay, two hot tears rolled slowlydown the small face, were wiped away hastily by a firm thumb and theback of a small hand rubbed briskly across a damp nose. Silentlycursing his thoughtless stupidity, his lordship drew a fine cambrichandkerchief from a ruffled sleeve, passing it across the table withthe brisk injunction, "Come, child, you are not on the street now."
Those liquid brown eyes flashed fire for the barest instant beforeDanielle took the offering and blew her nose vigorously.
"My mother is dead." Long restless fingers tore convulsively at thedamp, flimsy material for a few moments before she scrunched it into atight ball in her fist and raised a determined, defiant face.
The flat statement came as no surprise now and the earl reflectedirritably that he should have known it from the beginning.
"I do apologize, Danielle," he said gently. "But I would like to knowhow and when."
* * *
It had been a brilliant February morning with a hard hoar frostglinting under the pale sun when Danielle de St. Varennes had sprungfrom her bed with all the eagerness of youth. There was a chill in theair, but in spiteof the early hour someone had kindled a fire in thegrate. She had no idea who and it wouldn't have occurred to her to ask.Apart from Old Nurse, who had cared for her from babyhood, her mother'smaid, and a few of the upper servants, those who scurried around theenormous chateau making life pleasant for its owners were merelyfaceless bodies.
Once she had chanced upon her Uncle Eduard taking his pleasure in anembrasured window nook of one of the endless, draughty corridors. Shehad seen a pair of wide frightened eyes that for an instant locked withhers over the broad shoulder of her uncle, a pair of dumpy white legsin knee-length cotton stockings revealed under the simple peasant skirtnow raised to the servant girl's waist. A soft voice had pleaded,
"Je vous emprie, milord. Je suis enceinte,"
and Danielle had ducked behind the arras half fascinated, halfdisgusted, watching as Eduard's ample buttocks in their tight huntingbritches pumped vigorously before, with a deep grunt, he expendedhimself and without a word moved away, adjusting his dress carefully,heedless of the silent swooning fall of the figure he'd been holdingrigid against the wall.
Danielle had slipped thoughtfully out of her hide, retracing her stepsin search of her mother. She was not unfamiliar with the processes ofmating and birth, growing up as she had in a careless, male-dominatedenvironment where her predilection for roaming around the estate in apair of britches astride a magnificent blood stallion had been viewedas perfectly reasonable. She had not, however, seen humans working inthis way before—and it was work; that much she had learned hangingaround the breeding sheds, the kennels, and the fields. If caught ather observations by her uncles, her father, or grandfather an indulgentbox on the ear was the most she could expect. But something told herthat what she had just witnessed did not quite fall into the categoryof rutting animals. Or did it? Louise had informed her succinctly thatit did and the twelve-year-old Danielle had learned an interestinglesson.
It was an unconventional upbringing for the daughter of one of France'saristocrats. Her father's only contribution to her education had beento toss his two-year-old infant onto the broad back of a supposedlyplacid mare. Since Lucien's idea of a placid horse was hardly congruentwith the generally accepted reality, the tiny Danielle had tumbled fromwhat child's eyes recognized as the highest peak of the universe. Shehad been instantly replaced, but this time, Lucien, with a rare flashof sense, had mounted behind her. By the time Danielle de St. Varenneswas six there wasn't a horse in the stable she couldn't ride as long assomeone was available to hoist her chubby little legs astride thesaddle. Her Uncle Armand had taught her to shoot, Marc to fence, andher grandfather had instructed a willing mind in the intricacies of hiswine cellar and the chessboard. But these attentions had been bestowedwith a careless disregard for the developing girl beneath the quick,eager tomboy, and the child had realized early that she was interestingand worthy of notice only as long as she played the role of boy/heir tothe dukedom.
Louise had exchanged her male relatives' right to educate her daughterin the way they would have done her son for the right to provide thechild with an intellectual education befitting her quick mind. Thevillage cure was a gentle, disillusioned man of great learning who tookimmense pleasure in training and immersing the girl's sharp wit in thedisciplines of the classics, mathematics, and philosophy. From hermother she learned about the female role in this male-dominated worldthat was her birthright. By the time Danielle was sixteen she was acurious hodgepodge of a young woman whose understanding and experienceof the gently bred world of an eighteenth-century virgin being preparedfor the altar of
matrimony far exceeded respectable limits, a high spirited boy/girl whocould outride, outshoot her male peers, whose prowess on the fencingpiste was second to none, and whose exceptionally well-educated mindcombined with a natural housekeeping ability to manage the intricaciesof a nobleman's household.
That early February morning, the day after her seventeenth birthday,Danielle had pulled on her riding britches, splashed her face in thecold water in the ewer, and headed for the stables. Dom was saddled andready for her, prancing on the cobbles of the stable-yard, the elegantvelvety nose uplifted to the fresh scents of the dawn. Steamy breathfilled the air from puckered nostrils as the stallion snorted hisreadiness for a headlong gallop. The girl laid
