The Duchess

  Since she’d first seen these tables she had been very curious as to what Trevelyan was doing on them, but now she seemed to be bursting with curiosity. She glanced toward the silent bedroom door and went to the first table.

  There were many bits of paper on the table, stacks of the little pieces. Some were only an inch square and some were as big as three inches square. All of them were covered with the tiniest writing she’d ever seen. She picked up one of the larger pieces and looked at it, but could make out nothing.

  With another glance at the bedroom door she carried the paper to the window and held it up to the fading light. The writing seemed to tell of the walls of a city. It wasn’t easy to read the small writing but what she could understand described the height of the walls and what they were made of. On the back of the paper were dimensions of the stones in the walls and a bit of theory on when the walls were built.

  She put the paper back on the table and went to another table. These papers seemed to be a translation of poetry from incomprehensible script. Nothing she had seen so far made any sense, so she went around to all the tables. There were four tables dealing only with translations, each from a different language, and not a modern language. There was a table containing pages that seemed to be about traveling in China. Another table had pages pertaining to the search for gold in Arabia.

  It was when she reached the seventh table that the answer began to dawn on her. On the seventh table was work on creating an alphabet for the Peshan language. It wasn’t that she recognized the language, but there were extensive notes near the alphabet describing the sounds of the language. The name Pesha was everywhere.

  Claire didn’t think she was feeling too well as she walked back to the first table and looked again at the little pieces of paper. She had read that Captain Baker often went to places where the act of writing wasn’t understood. Had he allowed any of the people in these towns to see him writing he would have forfeited his life. So he often wrote on tiny pieces of paper that could be hidden at a moment’s notice. When she used to read Captain Baker’s accounts of these secret writings, she would thrill at his daring. If even one of these papers had been seen he would have been killed.

  She picked up one scrap of paper after another and read what she could. There were notes on the language of Pesha, on the people. There were tiny sketches of the people in their long gowns, with all their jewelry about their arms. There were notes on the size of and distance between the walls of the city.

  She went to the eighth table and there she had the shock of all her short life, for there were notes about her. Written out in what she was beginning to recognize as Trevelyan’s strong, pointed handwriting was every conversation she’d ever had with him. She quickly scanned a page that told of her trying to cope with the inhabitants of Bramley. Trevelyan rather brilliantly made her seem like a well-meaning but very stupid child.

  Under the written pages was a stack of cartoons. She had seen hundreds of Captain Baker’s illustrations and knew his style well. On top was a cartoon of her pushing Harry over a chair and knocking the cherry pit from his throat. She was depicted as a big, strong, rather horsey-looking woman and Harry as somewhat feeble. There was another cartoon of her curled in Trevelyan’s window seat, eating an apple, her nose less than an inch from the pages of a book. The caption read, “American Heiress meets Captain Baker in the original Latin.”

  There was another cartoon of her on a rearing horse. She was using her whip to command an old, sick man to calm the horse. She saw a cartoon of herself sitting at the head of an enormously long table, wearing a coronet and presiding over Harry’s odd relatives, each of them perfectly caricatured.

  There were more pages of notes, more pages of cartoons, but she couldn’t bear to see any more. Very slowly, she put the notes down on the table and walked to the window.

  “Find out what you wanted to know?” Trevelyan asked from behind her.

  She wasn’t startled to find out he was there and had probably been watching her for some time. When she turned to look at him he was wearing a long robe of some strange design and smiling as though he expected her to congratulate him on having kept his secret.

  “You are Captain Baker,” she said so softly that the sound was little more than a whisper.

  “I am.” There was pride in his voice, along with that sound of expectation.

  “I must go. Harry will be waiting for me.”

  The smile left Trevelyan’s face. He caught her arm before she reached the door. “You have nothing to say? You’ve asked so much about Captain Baker before now.”

  She didn’t look at him. “I have nothing to say.” As politely as she could, she pulled away and started down the stairs.

  “I will see you tomorrow?” he asked.

  She stopped on the stair but she didn’t look back at him. “No, I will not come tomorrow.” She started walking again.

  “Come or go, I don’t care,” he called after her, then turned back into the room. What a very, very odd way for a woman to act, he thought. From the first day he’d met her all he’d heard was how wonderful, how great…Yes, that was it, how great Captain Baker was, yet now that she’d found out she was in the same room with the man she thought to be great, she acted as though he were poison.

  His head came up. Perhaps she was in awe of him. He’d encountered that in people before. They had heard of him and knew of his work and when they spoke to him their voices quivered. He smiled and bounded down the stairs two at a time.

  He reached her just as she reached the door to the outside. He caught her arm. “There’s no reason to be afraid of me,” he said. “You’ve seen that I’m a man like any other. You’ve seen that I’m flesh like any other man. You may continue to visit me.”

  “May I?”

  “Yes,” he answered, completely missing the irony in her voice.

  She stood still for a long while and looked at him. “The scars on your cheeks are from the lance in Africa? It went through one side of your jaw and out the other.”

  He nodded.

  “The scars on your back, they’re from a lion, also in Africa?”

  He smiled broader. It was quite soul satisfying that this woman knew so much about him. Many men knew about what he had done in his life, but not many women were allowed to read what he had written. And, right now, had he been given a choice, he would rather Claire know what he had done in his life than any other person on earth.

  “And the knife wounds on your ribs?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer right away.

  “You are a Master Sufi,” she said softly.

  He was very impressed with her knowledge of him.

  Claire gave him a humorless smile. “Now I know what others don’t. You wrote that you had become a Master Sufi, but one critic said that was impossible, that to pass the…graduation I guess you’d call it, you’d have to go through a ceremony. It is, I believe, a ceremony in which you are put into a trance and you inflict—” She broke off, not liking to think of what he had done, but then he was a scholar as there had never been a scholar. He wasn’t content with researching a subject, he wanted to experience what he saw. To become a Master Sufi, a priest of what has been called the Religion of Beauty, he would have had to put himself in a trance and, while singing and dancing, stab himself with a knife. It is said that initiates’ wounds would later be healed by the touch of their master.

  Trevelyan gave her a bit of a bow to acknowledge that she was right.

  Claire looked at him a moment longer, then put her hand on the door.

  He covered her hand with his. “It doesn’t matter what’s gone before. You may still visit me. I will…” He smiled. “I will teach you Peshan.”

  She pulled her hand away from his. “And what will I teach you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I know all the languages you know. I—”

  “Perhaps I can teach you more about being an American heiress. Perhaps I can teach you what it feels like to be
an American who is about to become a duchess.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her anger was beginning to show now. She had hoped she would be able to make it out of the old wing of the house before she exploded, but she wasn’t going to make it. “Will you write a book on your observations of me? Will I see your cartoons in every bookstore in the world?”

  It took Trevelyan a moment to understand what she was talking about. “As you have said, I write about everything.”

  “Including your friends.” She smiled at that. “Now that I see it I don’t know how I didn’t know who you were from the beginning. The scars. The cold eyes that look at everything and everyone as though they were biological specimens that should be cataloged and categorized. Will you give me a Latin name for having discovered me? Americanus bakerus. I assume you do want the credit for having made the identification. Do I get the great privilege of having a male Latin name? Or is it Americana bakera?”

  “I have never done anything to make you believe I am as you describe. I—”

  “Haven’t you? At every opportunity you have asked me questions about myself and my family. You’ve asked how I feel about people I know.” Her mouth tightened. “You have asked me questions about Captain Baker, about—” She looked him up and down. “You have asked me about yourself. It was rather like eavesdropping wasn’t it, Captain Baker? Or should I call you Trevelyan? Or maybe I shouldn’t call you at all.”

  Again she reached for the door, but he blocked her way.

  “I didn’t mean to lie to you,” he said. “There are reasons that force me to keep my identity a secret.”

  “So you can spy on people?”

  “I don’t spy on people.”

  “Perhaps the people of Pesha would look at it differently.” She could see he had no idea what she meant. “Let me explain something to you, whatever your name is. I am not a savage for you to study.” She looked away for a moment, then back again. “When I think of the way you sat and watched me while I was at MacTarvit’s. And in here I…I helped you while you were ill.” She took a step away from him, as though she didn’t want to get too close. “I am not one of your savages who you think have quaint and fascinating customs. I am an American, a very rich American, and if you write anything about me, I will sue you.”

  He blinked at her a few times, then stepped away from the door. “I will not write about you, Miss Willoughby. Good-bye, and I wish you all the luck in the world with your duke.”

  She didn’t acknowledge his remark as she walked out of the room.

  Chapter Ten

  When Claire reached the house the family was already seated at dinner. She didn’t bother to go to her room and change out of her dress, grimy now from having been worn for so many days. Nor did she notice the way the servants looked at her. She walked to the dining room doors, put her hand out to open one, and the footman stopped her.

  “Her Grace says that the diners are not to be disturbed,” the man said.

  Claire looked up at him. “When I am duchess I will remember who you are,” she said quietly.

  The footman opened the door for her.

  She marched straight to Harry, seated at the head of the table. They were just starting on the soup course. “I must see you,” she said.

  Claire had been in the British Isles long enough to know that no one ever, under any circumstances, interrupted an Englishman at his dinner. It was so much a rule that no one had bothered to think of it as a rule. It was not done, probably had never been done, probably had never been thought of being done

  Harry was so shocked that he just sat there and looked at her. His mouth was a bit open and he had his soupspoon suspended in midair.

  “I want to see you now. At once,” she said.

  She didn’t look at the other people at the table, but she was well aware that they were staring at her, shocked at this breach of etiquette. Claire had no doubt that she was probably reinforcing their ideas of Americans as barbarians.

  Harry put his spoon down, pushed his chair back, and followed her out of the room. “What has happened?” he asked, for he was convinced that only death could have caused this commotion.

  “I must talk to you.”

  Harry’s heart began to pound. He didn’t think that her news had to do with his mother. Surely he would have been told first if anything had happened to her. The second thing that came to his mind was that Claire was here to break off their engagement. He dreaded that. If he lost his little American heiress, his mother would be angry, possibly more than angry.

  By the time they reached the blue drawing room, Harry was prepared for the worst. If something had happened to make her want to break the engagement, he would do what he could to change her mind. Maybe it was his mother’s rules against having trays brought to the rooms. If that was what was wrong, Harry thought he might go against his mother’s wishes and allow Claire to have meals in her room if that’s what she wanted.

  He closed the door behind him and leaned against it. “What is it?”

  To his surprise, Claire threw herself at him, wrapping her arms about his chest and holding him to her. It took him a moment to realize that the danger was over. He held her at arms’ length. “What has happened?”

  She began talking but she was so incoherent that it was a moment before he understood what she was saying. He heard the word Trevelyan, and Harry almost laughed in relief. Was that all that was wrong with her? His brother could enrage a saint. His brother had enraged men—to be fair, it was mostly men—from one end of the world to the other.

  “What has Vellie done now?” he asked, dropping his hands from her shoulders.

  “I have been with him.” She wasn’t crying but he could feel her shaking. It was his experience that Trevelyan often made people shake with rage or some other emotion.

  “Been with him?” Harry said softly and thought about the words. “Do you mean to marry him?”

  Claire pulled away from him. “Marry him? Are you out of your mind?”

  Again relief swept over Harry. “We will wait and see what happens. If you find that you are with child then we’ll be married sooner than we’d planned. I’ll pass the child off as mine and—”

  She looked at him in horror. “What are you talking about?”

  “If you have been with him, then…”

  Claire began to laugh at that. “Oh, Harry, you are funny. I don’t mean that I’ve been with him, I mean that for the last few days I wasn’t sick, I was with Trevelyan. He was ill and I was nursing him.”

  “Oh,” was all that Harry could say. He didn’t want Claire to know that he hadn’t known that she’d been ill. He had come in from his horse-buying trip but hours ago and his main concern had been his dinner. He had noticed that she was not at the dinner table, but with Claire that was not unusual. He didn’t understand Americans and he had no inclination to try to understand one. If she didn’t want to eat dinner, that was her prerogative.

  “He is Captain Baker,” she said, and there was anger in her voice.

  “Yes.”

  “I want to know about him. I want to know what he’s doing here and why he’s hiding.”

  Harry had never seen her so agitated, her face so flushed, her eyes so bright. “Claire, have you fallen in love with him?”

  “No,” she said, and he could see the honesty in her eyes. “I have not fallen in love with him.”

  Harry breathed a sigh of relief at that, but then he frowned. It was his experience that when a woman said she wanted to talk about something, it often meant hours and hours of talk. He thought with longing of his dinner. He opened the door, told the footman to bring his dinner to him in the blue drawing room and that he was not to be disturbed.

  “Now, my dear, why don’t you tell me what Vellie has done to upset you so much?” He wanted to know how much his brother had told her, how much she knew of the truth of how Trevelyan was related to his family.

  She started talking
in a flood of words. Harry’d always had the impression that she was a quiet little thing, with few words in her—one of the best things about her to his way of thinking—but now there were as many words as he’d ever heard. She told about days spent with Trevelyan. She told of Vellie’s having taken her to visit old man MacTarvit. She told of walks and meals and reading his books.

  She stopped talking when the dinner was brought and placed on the big table in the room. When the servants were gone and they were again alone, Harry began to eat, but Claire paced the room and talked to him.

  “You don’t know what Captain Baker has meant to my life. I have studied his work; I have studied his life. I know a great deal about him.”

  For the life of him Harry could not figure out what Trevelyan had done that had so upset her. Was it that he had lied to her? Was keeping his identity a secret what was making her so angry?

  It was when she started to tell of finding the drawings of herself, some of those dreadful caricatures of Vellie’s, that he began to understand. The first time Harry had seen the cartoons Trevelyan had drawn of him he had been insulted as he’d never been before or since. Trevelyan had depicted him as a little boy in ringlets, physically attached to his mother, as though they were one person. Sometimes Trevelyan had shown him as having his mother’s face and his mother as having Harry’s.

  Harry started to tell her that Trevelyan made those cartoons of everyone. Harry had seen some drawings that Vellie had made of himself that were almost vicious. Trevelyan often depicted himself as a fool, a man who trusted all the wrong people and was always betrayed.

  But something made Harry hesitate. He hadn’t been aware that Claire was spending so much time with his brother. He had assumed that she was doing whatever women did with their days. It was a shock to find out that she had spent days and nights with him, had even traveled through the tunnels with him.

  “Trevelyan can be quite unkind,” Harry said, his mouth full. He watched her. “But women usually like him.”

  “I did too. I thought of him as my friend, but he was using me. He was studying me. He wrote about me as though I were one of his savages and he was observing my bizarre customs.”