Free Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz

think it’s amusing to be impudent. Alexander, apologize at once!”
    “No, Titiana, darling, don’t be silly … I was teasing him and the little one got angry.” Claire de Champery was in the best of humors. She felt the congestion of blood rushing between her primly pressed together thighs, proof positive that she had been right to provoke the boy. From the moment she had seen him coming across the room, she had noticed that the childish beauty she had savored in secret for years had become that of a youth. She saw the faint beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip, she measured with her eyes the new physical development which had given a fourteen-year-old the muscle structure of a youth. No longer a boy, yet not a man—a most delectable, a most tantalizing, a most fleeting age. A moment in a man’s life, she reminded herself, that did not last long. A youth—a pure and perfect youth—that most tasty morsel of all. He knew nothing yet, she was sure of that. Off at a boys’ school all year long, what could he possibly have learned besides the little dirty games they might play with each other? But his fiery reaction to her mockery told her that he was ready to be taught.
    “Claire,” Titiana insisted, “he simply must apologize. I can’t permit him to behave in such a manner.”
    “Let him do a penance instead, Titiana darling. An apology is too easily given. Ah, I have it—he shall take me for a troika ride—that is, if he is old enough to control the horses?”
    “I have been driving the troika for over four years,” Stash said with scorn.
    “ Tant mieux . Then I have nothing to fear. Be at my chalet at three tomorrow afternoon and I’ll be ready to leave. Now, baby, go and eat your pastries … you look as if you’re longing for them.”
    As the Marquise dismissed the sullen youth, she turned back to Titiana and resumed the conversation with the facile charm which had drawn the Princess to her in the first place.
    The day after Stash’s scene with the Marquise de Champery, he arrived on time to take the Frenchwoman for a troika ride, since his mother had continued to insist on it.
    The maid who let him into the chalet told him that her mistress was not quite ready to leave. She took his coat and led the way to a little sitting room just off the Marquise’s bedroom. A fire had been lit and the room was very warm. The maid pointed out a tray of bottles of different liquors and an assortment of boxes of various kinds of cigarettes, and left him. Stash tightened his lips in annoyance. He was not old enough to drink or smoke and he knew that the Marquise was aware of it This was just more of her baiting, another reminder that he was still a child. He was still standing resentfully in the center of the luxurious nest of a room when the Marquise entered. She was dressed in a loose flowing tea gown of black chiffon trimmed with lace.
    “Oh, so you’re not coming driving then,” Stash exclaimed in relief, at the sight of her unsuitable clothes.
    “No, I have merely changed your penance, my boy.”
    “Penance! You mean charade! This whole thing is absurd. I’m not a child to be treated like this. I’m leaving … enough of this!”
    “I think not,” the Marquise said softly. “You spoke to me most rudely and your darling maman is still very angry with you.” The woman knew well that the only influence to which Stash made himself subject was that of his mother.
    “Come sit down on this couch with me and I shall tell you what it is.”
    The boy suppressed a sigh of anger and silently did as he was told.
    “I have been thinking,” she mused. “We’ve known eachother a long time … is that not so? You were only seven when I first saw you … a little boy. And now you are almost a man. Do you have any idea how old I am?”
    Stash was startled and deeply gratified at being told he was almost a man. His anger forgotten, he answered shyly. “You’re not as old as my