The Duchess

  It was an hour before Oman returned. “It is done,” he said.

  Claire, holding Trevelyan to her, barely glanced up at him, but when she did, she looked back, startled. There was something different about Oman. Since he’d seen her little sister, she could guess at what had transpired.

  “Where is your emerald?” she asked, for the big emerald in his turban was gone.

  Oman merely shrugged.

  “Did you lend it to her or give it to her?”

  “A mere three days have I lent it to her. The lowly jewel will benefit from the wearing by one so young and so beautiful.”

  “Brat,” Claire said under her breath, then looked back at Trevelyan’s sleeping form. No matter that her sister charged for her services, Claire knew she’d do a good job. No doubt Brat would delight in the melodrama of whatever lies she had to create to keep people from knowing Claire was not in her room.

  Claire thought that it was possible that you never knew a person until you’d nursed him when he was ill. Toward midnight Trevelyan was deep enough asleep that she was able to ease out from under him. For a moment she stood at the side of the bed and looked at him. She was beyond tired. Between the dancing, the two long walks, and the fear she’d felt at being near an illness as strong as Trevelyan’s, she wanted to sink into a feather bed and never get out of it.

  He was on his back, asleep at last. And those eyes of his were closed. Those black, intense, seen-everything, done-everything, bored-by-it-all eyes of his were at last closed. She bent over him and smoothed his hair off his forehead. His hair was too long but somehow it suited him. Oman had lit candles in the room and as she touched Trevelyan’s face she looked at him. Earlier she’d said he’d lost the greenish cast to his skin, and he had. Now his skin was a healthy tan and there was even some fat under his skin so he didn’t look skeletal, as he had when she’d first seen him. She put her fingertip on the long scar on his left cheek, then on the scar on his right cheek, and wondered how they had been made. Curious, she sat on the edge of the bed and began to touch his face. High cheekbones. A strong, square jaw covered with bristly black whiskers. His thick, drooping mustache was soft and she could see that it half concealed a very sensuous mouth.

  “My goodness, Trevelyan, you’re quite a handsome man,” she whispered. He didn’t have Harry’s blond, healthy good looks but he had—the devil’s looks, she thought. If there were a play, Trevelyan would make a perfect devil and Harry could play an angel. Perhaps she should suggest it to Brat’s friend who staged his one-man plays.

  “Is he well again?”

  Claire jumped, guilty at being caught touching Trevelyan. She turned to Oman. “I think the worst is over. Does he have these spells often?” Claire wanted to know if Trevelyan’s illness was permanent or temporary. But at the same time she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to know if these shaking spells would eventually lead to his death.

  Oman didn’t answer, but merely shrugged in a way that could mean that he didn’t know, didn’t care, or that it was all up to Allah.

  “Would you get me some hot water? I want to wash him.”

  Within minutes Oman was back with a pitcher of hot water and Claire began to wash Trevelyan’s face and neck. She pulled back the cover and removed the belt that held his plaid in place. Carefully and with some reverence, she unpinned the laird’s badge that bound the plaid about his shoulders and placed it on the table by the bed.

  Trevelyan was sleeping the sleep of the dead and she didn’t think anything in the world could wake him. He didn’t so much as stir when she pushed him and got the plaid from under him. His linen shirt was soaked with his sweat. She unbuttoned it partway down and ran the clean, hot, wet cloth over his skin, which was covered with dried sweat.

  It was when she reached his collarbone that she saw the first scar. She didn’t know why this body scar should surprise her, especially when his face was so scarred, but it did. She unbuttoned his shirt farther and there were two more scars. No longer trying to be discreet, she unbuttoned his shirt the rest of the way and looked at him.

  His chest was lean but there was a great deal of muscle on him. In spite of his weakness now, he was obviously a man who had spent a lot of time in strenuous exercise. But what interested her were the many, many white scars over his ribs. She ran her fingertips over first one, then another. It was her guess that they were knife wounds. What had been done to him? she wondered. The scars ranged from an inch and a half to three inches long. They didn’t look as though they had ever been very deep or life threatening, but that there were so many of the pale scars was what was so unusual.

  She stood back for a moment and tried to imagine what could have caused such scars. She’d heard of the dreadful treatment English boys endured in their sadistic all-boys’ schools, but she’d never heard of anything like this. Suddenly, she wanted to get that shirt off of him and see what else had been done to him. She called Oman to her. “Help me undress him,” she said and didn’t meet the man’s eyes. Let him think this was common practice among American girls, she thought.

  Trevelyan groaned as Oman, with Claire helping, managed to get the shirt from Trevelyan’s big body. There were more scars on his back. There were four of them, in rows, curving from his spine up and over his left shoulder. They looked like claw marks, as though some great animal had attacked him and torn into his back. She could understand these marks more than she could the ones on his ribs. Her father loved to hunt and he had often come home from a trip to the wilds of the American West with horrifying stories about men who got too close to a bear or a mountain lion and had been clawed.

  But what puzzled her about these marks was that she had seen no evidence that Trevelyan liked to hunt. There were no skins of animals about his room as there were wherever her father went. Her father liked to remember every animal he had slaughtered, liked often to relive the event both in retelling the story and remembering it. But, she reminded herself, Trevelyan was in hiding.

  She sent Oman from the room and washed Trevelyan’s chest and back, then went to a trunk by the window and found another shirt for him. It was an odd shirt, made of fine cotton but printed with little brown and white figures that were, she assumed, meant to be people. She struggled to get him into the shirt and had only just succeeded when he began shaking again. Without a thought, she climbed into bed with him and held him close to her, stroking his brow and trying to soothe him as he thrashed about.

  Trevelyan woke slowly. He had trouble focusing and trouble remembering where he was. For a moment he thought he was again in Pesha and that the canopy overhead was Nyssa’s bed.

  But as he turned his head and saw the stone walls and the heavy oak of the bed—no gilding—he remembered all. For all that he had trouble remembering where he was, he knew that his head rested upon a firm, female breast. He turned to look up to see Claire holding him against her ample bosom, and he could feel his body between her legs. She was sleeping, but at his movement, she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

  And as naturally as day follows night, he put his hand on her breast and kissed her neck.

  Claire closed her eyes for a moment, feeling his lips on her neck. Without having any idea what she was doing, she moved her legs and Trevelyan rolled on top of her. She could feel the hard maleness of him on her body. He had changed from a sick child to a hungry man in an instant.

  His lips moved up her neck to her ear. He took the lobe between his teeth and Claire arched her neck as his hand caressed and massaged her breast.

  His hand moved down her side to her waist, over her hip, to her thigh.

  Then suddenly, his hand came up again. He roughly took her chin in his hand and turned her to look at him. It was as though he were demanding that she know who he was, that she see him not as a friend, not as a sick child, but as Trevelyan.

  She was not up to the challenge. She was not up to what she saw in his eyes. She turned her head away. “No,” she whispered.

  Without a word
, Trevelyan rolled off of her and Claire got out of bed. Her hands and body were shaking. I have to get out of here, she thought. She started for the door.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  She stopped at the far corner of the bed. “Two nights and one day,” she answered, not yet able to control her shaking.

  “And you have taken care of me by yourself?”

  “Oman has helped.” She took a deep breath to calm herself.

  “And what have they said in the house of your absence? Harry must have been upset.”

  She knew what he was doing: talking of everyday matters to keep her from leaving. “No one knows I haven’t been in my room. My sister has told them all that I am very, very sick and can’t be disturbed. I think she’s told them I have something akin to smallpox and cholera combined, but that whatever I have is very, very contagious.” She looked at him for the first time. She’d never noticed what thick eyelashes he had.

  He smiled. “What an admirable person you are and what a lovely sister you have.”

  “She didn’t do it for free. She ‘borrowed’ Oman’s emerald for three days and she sent word through him that I was to give her my ruby bracelet.”

  “And did you?”

  “Of course. But the truth of the matter is I didn’t mind. I don’t like rubies. They look like blood. I much prefer emeralds. They look like green things growing.”

  He closed his eyes and lay back against the pillows. “Thank you.”

  She couldn’t help herself, but she looked at him. She could still feel his lips on her neck. “I think you’ll be all right now. Oman says these spells of yours come and go and that you’re all right after them. I must go.”

  He opened his eyes and she saw pleading in them. “Please do not leave.”

  For some reason, she was sure he rarely used the word please. “I…I must. I cannot stay.”

  He smiled a know-it-all little smile. “You must leave because I kissed you?”

  “It wasn’t right,” she said softly. “We should not—We must not…”

  “I was half asleep and dreaming. You can’t be angry at me for that, can you?”

  “I’m not angry. I’m…”

  “Oh, I see. It’s Harry. You’re worried because you liked my kisses better than his. Or does Harry kiss you? I seem to remember that he likes horses more than women, and experienced women more than virgins.”

  Anger made her straighten. “For your information, I love Harry’s kisses,” she said, walking toward his side of the bed. “I love everything about him. He’s certainly better looking than you, with your black eyes and your scarred body. I’ll wager Harry doesn’t have a scar on his body.”

  Trevelyan continued smiling. “But you know about my body but not his,” he said so softly she could barely hear him.

  “You are despicable.”

  She turned to leave, but he caught her wrist. She pulled, but she didn’t look back at him.

  “I apologize,” he said. “I apologize for trying to make love to a beautiful woman who was in bed with me. It was indeed despicable of me. I apologize for envying Harry, who seems to have everything in life. You are right: it is contemptible of me. In future I will try to control myself.”

  She glared at him. “That is not a sincere apology.”

  “But then it can’t be, can it, for I’m not at all sincere. Hate me for it if you must, but I’d love to do it all over again. All over.”

  Claire couldn’t keep from laughing. “You are despicable.” She pulled at her hand but he kept holding it.

  “Stay with me. Talk to me,” he said, and for a brief second there was sincerity in his eyes, sincerity and pleading.

  “About what?” The moment she said it, she knew she was lost, for even to her she sounded as though she wanted to stay. “I must—” she began.

  “Why do you want to be a duchess?” he asked.

  “What a ridiculous question.” She gave a hard tug on her hand and pulled away from him. “Perhaps we should ask every woman in the world whether or not she wants to be a duchess and see if any woman anywhere answers no.”

  “Even the queens and the princesses?”

  “I imagine queens and princesses especially want to be duchesses. Prestige without all the responsibility.”

  “And you want prestige?”

  “I want Harry. Now, I really must go.”

  “No, please, stay and…and tell me a story.”

  “You mean like Goldilocks and the Three Bears?”

  “No, a real story. Tell me about…” He searched for something. Anything to make her stay, to make her remain close to him. She made him feel as though he really could heal, heal from all the wounds he’d suffered throughout his lifetime, not just from another attack of malaria. “Tell me about your parents.”

  She was silent for a moment. “I’ll tell you a love story—a true love story. At one time my mother was a very beautiful woman.”

  “As beautiful as that little sister of yours?” His eyes dropped to her bosom and his voice lowered to a quiet, seductive level. “As beautiful as you?”

  “Do you want to hear this or not?” she snapped, but turned away, her face red.

  He smiled and lay back against the pillow, obviously pleased at having had an effect on her. “Please continue.”

  “You have to swear on your life you will never reveal what I’m about to tell you. My mother would kill me if she knew I’d told. Actually, she might kill me if she knew I knew.”

  “I do indeed swear,” he said, trying not to smile.

  “My mother likes to tell people she’s from an old Virginia family, but the truth is, she grew up in a shack in the Smoky Mountains. She grew up without an education and only the minimum of food and clothing.”

  “But she was beautiful?”

  “Very. When she was seventeen she left home and went to New York. I don’t know where she got the money for her travel expenses—Brat says she stole it from her family, that her father had sold some hogs the day before and while the family slept my mother stole the money and went to New York. But I always take the stories my sister tells me with a grain of salt. However she got the money, she showed up in New York wearing an expensive suit and got a good job at the perfume counter of a fancy department store. Then she met my father, fell in love with him, and they were married and have lived happily ever after.”

  “I see,” Trevelyan said after a moment. His face had lost that soft look of seduction. Now he looked interested, as he always did when he had a puzzle to figure out. “And together the two of them used that great American freedom of yours, earned a vast fortune so you could be an heiress and become a duchess.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “How exactly?” His eyes were so intense she was sure his look could pierce metal.

  “My grandfather, my father’s father, was known as the Commander.”

  Trevelyan looked up at her, eyes ablaze.

  “I see you’ve heard of him,” she said, and it was her turn to give a smug smile.

  “How convenient that your mother fell in love with the son of such a rich man.”

  “Yes, it was. You can laugh if you want but Grandfather didn’t give the newlyweds any money. Not any real money, anyway, only about $10,000 a year.”

  “Poverty!”

  “It is if you’ve grown up as wealthy as my father did,” she said quickly.

  “But he and your mother struggled by. After all, they did have love.”

  She ignored his comment, ignored the cynicism in his voice. “My grandfather died fifteen years ago and left approximately thirty million dollars. He—”

  “Give or take a few mill.”

  “He left ten million to my father, ten million to my mother—he believed women should be independent—and ten in trust for me.”

  “What about your adorable little sister?”

  “She wasn’t born yet.”

  “I imagine there’s enough for her.”

&n
bsp; Claire was silent.

  He studied her face for a moment. She was busying herself straightening the items on the table by the bed. “What’s the rest of the story?” he asked.

  She didn’t want to tell him any more. Why couldn’t he accept a story the way it was told? Why did he always have to look underneath the surface? “I guess the rest of it is that my parents spent their money.”

  The expression on Trevelyan’s face could only be described as horror.

  Claire gave a weak smile. “My father is a lover of fine things: horses, brandy, sea travel on his yacht.”

  Lazy, Trevelyan thought. “And your mother? How did she manage to spend so much?”

  “I think she wanted to be part of a society she’d never had access to as a child. So she built a house and gave parties.”

  “Ten million dollars’ worth of parties?” he asked softly.

  “Both my parents also spent a great deal on my education, and I’ve always had whatever I wanted, and so has Brat.”

  Trevelyan took a moment to digest this information. “So now all the money your family has left is what you have in trust?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how is the trust administered?”

  “Since my grandfather died I have received a quarter of the interest each year.”

  “So, in essence, you’ve paid for your own education.”

  She ignored him. “When I marry I receive the principal.”

  Trevelyan waited for her to say more. “Out with the rest of it.”

  “I only get the money if my parents approve of whom I marry. My grandfather put that in his will because he had a younger sister and he gave her a few million dollars, but she immediately married a man who gambled. The man spent every penny my aunt had.”

  “Then what happened to your aunt?”

  “After her money was gone she went back to live with my grandfather.”