The tunnel door opened and Brat entered. She stood by the bed and stared down at Claire for a while. “You and Harry have a fight?”
Claire sniffed. She was lying on her back. There weren’t many tears left in her. “I don’t know.”
“Harry thinks you did. He went to Edinburgh. Didn’t even pack. Just talked to his mother, then got on his horse and left. Only took five servants with him. The others are to bring his trunks and come later.”
There seemed to be more tears in Claire, because they started flowing again. “He shot a buck. I was upset.”
Brat played with the hangings at the end of the bed. “I don’t think Harry’s visit with his mother was very pleasant.”
“I wouldn’t doubt if he wanted to break the engagement,” Claire said. “I was awful today.”
“Maybe Harry wanted out, but I don’t think our mother will allow you to break up with Harry. Do you know how much she’s already charged to your name? To the new duchess of MacArran?”
“I don’t want to know,” Claire said.
Brat walked toward the portrait door. “I have to go now. I hope you feel better.” She paused. “And I hope you make up your mind.”
“Make up my mind about what?”
Brat didn’t answer, just gave her sister a little smile and disappeared behind the portrait.
Claire turned onto her stomach and started crying again. Now she had angered Harry as well as his mother, and everyone in the house knew they’d had a quarrel. But then lovers always had quarrels, didn’t they? Except that Claire knew her quarrel with Harry was no ordinary one.
So, he had gone to Edinburgh and now she was left alone in that house. She would have no company, nothing to occupy her mind, no one to talk to until he returned. She’d have to wait until he returned before she had someone to talk to, to—
She started crying harder, for she knew that she and Harry didn’t talk. When Harry returned she was going to have to make up their argument. She’d have to tell him how very, very sorry she was, then she’d have to…What? Spend her days hunting and seeing more animals killed? Would she come to own a hundred riding habits and six dozen shotguns? Ten years from now would she still be attending tea with her mother-in-law, a tea where she was never so much as allowed to sit down?
Each thought made her cry harder.
Chapter Eighteen
Claire was awakened from a deep sleep by someone shaking her shoulder. She could barely open her eyes, since they were swollen from having cried for the better part of a day. The room was dark except for the candle the man standing over her held. Her head was pounding.
She managed to get her eyes open enough to see the glare of the white clothing Oman wore. For a second she was too groggy to respond, but then she became alarmed.
“What is it?” she asked, trying to sit up, but her muscles seemed to be weak. She was still wearing her damp habit.
“He has been shot,” Oman said in his accented voice. “Someone has made attempt to kill him.”
Claire’s eyes widened. “Trevelyan?” she whispered, and Oman nodded. Claire was out of the bed in a second, but the moment her feet touched the floor, she swayed and put her hand to her head. It had been a long while since she had eaten. She looked at the clock on the mantel and saw that it was a few minutes after midnight.
“Did he send for me?” she asked. “How badly is he hurt? I doubt he’ll have a doctor, will he? Is he going to be all right?”
To all of these questions, Oman merely said, “Come,” and started toward the portrait door.
Claire followed him through the tunnel passages, and out onto the roof. She didn’t think of what she was doing, but followed Oman, her heart pounding with every step.
When they reached Trevelyan’s writing room, the first words she heard were a bellow of rage. “Where the hell have you been? I could have bled to death waiting for you.”
Immediately, Claire smiled in relief. Any man who could yell like that wasn’t yet on his deathbed.
She walked into his bedroom. “I can see that loss of blood hasn’t sweetened your temper. Now let me see what’s been done to you.”
He was staring at her when she reached the side of the bed. The shoulder of his linen shirt was soaked with blood but his color was good and he looked healthy enough.
“What are you doing here?” There was hostility in his voice.
That answered the question of whether he had asked for her or not. “I heard you needed help and I came to give it.” She reached out to touch his shoulder, but he pulled away and in doing so he grunted with pain.
“I don’t need you.”
“Then I shall call for a doctor.” She started to leave the room.
“No!” he said sharply.
She turned back to look at him. “It’s either me or a doctor. Those are your only choices.”
He didn’t answer, but he lay back against the pillows as though in surrender.
Claire went to him. Next to the bed Oman had put out surgical instruments, hot water, and rolls of cotton cloth for bandages. Very carefully, she cut away Trevelyan’s shirt and looked at the wound. It was clean except for the blood around it, no gunpowder, no dirt or gravel in it, and, thank heaven, the bullet had gone through. The wound was in his upper arm, through the muscle but missing the bone.
Carefully, she began to clean the blood from the wound and from his chest. “Who shot you?” she asked softly.
“Could have been any number of people. I have angered a few people in my life.”
“You? That’s difficult to believe.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. There was a faint smile about his lips. “You’ve been crying,” he said.
“When I heard you were injured I was in torrents. I cried all the way here.”
He leaned back against the pillows as she began to bandage his arm. “I heard that it was Harry who was making you cry. I heard that he shot a buck and you got very angry.” He looked at her and his voice lowered. “I heard that he told his mother he couldn’t marry you.”
Claire’s hands stilled. “Did he?” She tried to keep her voice from trembling but she couldn’t. “You shouldn’t listen to gossip. Who shot you? One of the hunters? Some of them are very bad shots. In the last few days I have seen many animals that were only wounded: birds missing legs or wings, rabbits without feet hopping away, a buck that wasn’t dead, a—” She broke off, sure that she was going to start crying again.
Trevelyan was looking at her intently, watching her as she bandaged his arm. “What have you been doing in the two and a half weeks since I’ve seen you?”
“Has it been that long? It seems like only yesterday that I was sitting in this room drinking whisky and talking to you. Surely it’s only been a few hours since I was dancing with the crofters and…and…Angus MacTarvit.”
Just the sound of that name was too much for her. She sat down hard on a chair and began to weep again, her hands covering her face.
Trevelyan leaned against the pillows and watched her, his face betraying little emotion, but he knew what was wrong with her. He knew it because he had lived it. He knew very well what this house could do to a person’s spirit. You either conformed or your spirit was killed.
In the long, long two and a half weeks since he had seen her, he had been kept informed of what she was doing by her beautiful little sister. Sarah Ann had daily come to his rooms and told him all the gossip of everyone in the house. He’d heard how Claire was trying to be what Harry wanted in a wife, but, more important, he’d heard how Claire’s greedy mother was already spending the fortune that Claire was to inherit upon her marriage—marriage to the right person.
“I’m starving,” he said loudly, over her crying. “I think Oman cooked a kettleful of something. Maybe you’d get me something to eat.”
Claire began to sniff and looked about for a handkerchief. Finding none, she blew her nose on a piece of bandage. Feeling listless and miserable she left the bedroom and we
nt to the outside room. Oman was waiting for her, and in his hand was a big tray bearing two plates heaped with food and two large glasses of whisky. Claire started to take the tray but he waved her aside and followed her back into the bedroom, where he placed the tray on the foot of the bed, then left.
Claire reached for a piece of chicken, but Trevelyan’s voice stopped her. “I can’t eat with you wearing that thing. You smell worse than a goat. Open that door and take out a robe, then get that dress off. Don’t look at me like that! I’m not trying to molest you, I’m trying to eat my dinner without the perfume of that garment.”
Claire didn’t have the spirit to disobey him. She opened the left door of the wardrobe and saw inside a variety of loose robes. There was a blue one that was especially lovely and she took it out of the closet. Holding it, she looked about for some place to change, then Trevelyan motioned toward a tapestry. She walked over to it and found the door to what had to be the ancient medieval garderobe, the outdoor toilet that was indoors. She stepped inside the little room.
“And take off that corset,” Trevelyan yelled from the bedroom. “I can’t bear to hear you gasping for breath.”
Claire thought she should protest, but she didn’t, and in the next second she was tearing at her clothes, anxious to rid herself of the hated habit. And she took off her corset too. Then, when she realized that her undergarments were damp, she removed them too. She felt downright decadent and definitely sinful as she slipped the soft silken garment over bare skin. She unpinned her hair and tried to comb it with her fingers.
She ran her hands over the silk gown embroidered with little green butterflies and felt as though for the first time in days she could breathe again. In the house and with Harry she had to behave herself, but not with Trevelyan. Nothing she did or said ever shocked him.
She walked out from behind the tapestry and had the satisfaction of seeing Trevelyan pause with food on the way to his mouth. His eyes widened as he looked from her face down to her bare feet then, very slowly, back up to her face.
Claire felt herself blushing as she looked down at her hands.
“Come over here and sit by me,” Trevelyan said in the sweetest voice imaginable. “Sit on my lap if you want.”
Claire looked back at him and laughed, and the embarrassment was gone. She sat on the end of the bed, took a deep drink of her whisky, then began to eat. The food that Oman had made was so different from what she had been eating for the last two weeks. Some of the food was hot—spicy hot—some cold, some soft, some crunchy.
“Tell me what you’ve been writing,” she said eagerly, her mouth full. “Tell me every word. Tell me everything you’ve been thinking and doing. And I want to know who shot you. Oman said that someone tried to kill you.”
“He exaggerates. I’m sure it was just as you said: a hunter with a bad aim.”
She ate a piece of chicken flavored with almonds. “But I thought you walked only in the early morning and after dark.”
“I do.”
It took Claire a moment to understand him. “Are you saying that someone shot you after dark?”
“I like this chicken, don’t you?”
“Trevelyan, I want an answer!”
“Why is it that you’re so docile with Harry and so abrasive with me? You’d think that, wounded as I am, you’d be kind to me.”
She laughed at him. “I’m not in love with you. I don’t have to pretend with you.” As soon as she said it, her eyes widened. “I didn’t mean that as it sounded.”
Trevelyan took a sip of his whisky and looked at her. “What would you say if I asked you to go hunting?”
“Sit in the rain and watch you slaughter animals? You have lost your reason.”
“Yet you do it with Harry.”
“Could we change the subject? Who do you think was out shooting in the dark? Did you see the person?”
“I neither saw nor heard anyone.” He kept eating and didn’t say anything else.
“You don’t think someone actually did try to kill you, do you?”
He took so long to answer that when he did Claire knew his answer was a lie. “I’m sure it was an accident.”
Claire felt chills down her spine, for she knew without a doubt that someone had tried to kill Trevelyan. “Jack Powell,” she said softly.
“Ridiculous. Jack has no reason to hate me. As far as I know he still thinks I’m dead.”
“Brat said there was an article in the paper that said Powell was in Edinburgh and he was going to present irrefutable proof that he and he alone had gone into Pesha.”
That news seemed to startle Trevelyan a great deal. “Did the paper say what the proof was?”
“No,” she said slowly. “What do you think it is?”
Trevelyan took his time drinking his whisky. “Something that I thought was lost.”
“Something that you brought back from Pesha?”
“Yes.” He continued eating and said nothing for a while.
“We shall go to Edinburgh and get this thing. We’ll steal it from this man Powell. What is it, anyway?”
“The Pearl of the Moon.”
She leaned back against the post of the bed—Bonnie Prince Charlie’s bed—and sighed. “The Pearl of the Moon. It sounds exotic and valuable. In the morning we’ll—”
“We will do no such thing. You’re going back to your room so I can get some sleep. If you can’t sleep, why don’t you write a long letter to the man you love and beg his forgiveness? I hear your mother’s already charging clothes to the new duchess of MacArran. You’ve got to do your duty and marry a man who does little but kill animals so you can pay her dress bills.”
Claire put her plate down. “I had forgotten how very rude you can be.” She got off the bed. “I guess I’d better go now and let you sleep. If someone else shoots at you, why don’t you call a doctor?”
“I shall.”
Claire looked down at the silk robe she wore. “I’ll change and—”
“Keep it. Just get out of here. I forgot what a humorless little prig you can be.”
At that Claire, with her head held high, walked out of the room. But once she was in the writing room, she saw Oman sitting on the window seat, his head nodding in sleep. She put her finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet, then motioned for him to follow her.
She went down the stairs and outside into the moonlight. Oman was soon beside her. She looked up at the tall man. “Was it a murder attempt? Not an accident?”
“It was murder.”
Claire sighed and she was amazed at how much fear she felt—and anger. How could anyone think to take such a great man as Captain Baker from the world? He was so young and he had so much yet to do.
She looked back at Oman. “Trevelyan said that Powell has something from Pesha called the Pearl of the Moon. Do you know what that is?”
Oman nodded.
“I’m assuming that this thing is very valuable. Would Trevelyan try to take it from Powell?”
“If the man Powell has the Pearl, then Captain will take it from him.”
Claire took a deep breath. She had thought so. From the way the news that Powell had this thing had shocked Trevelyan she’d guessed he might try to take it back. “When will he leave?”
“Now,” Oman said and moved past her to reenter the west wing.
Claire stood where she was for a few moments and looked up at the stars. There was no doubt in her mind that she shouldn’t consider going with Trevelyan. She was a woman engaged to another man. She was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and had gone after it. She was in love with Harry; she was going to spend her life being the duchess of MacArran.
On the other hand, she did owe Trevelyan something. He had been the one to help her in her scheme to marry Leatrice to James Kincaid. Never mind that the union hadn’t seemed to change anything in the house, but Trevelyan had helped. He hadn’t done it correctly, but that was neither here nor there.
And, also, Trevelyan was Ha
rry’s cousin. Wouldn’t Harry want her to help any of his family who needed help? Wasn’t part of being a duchess taking care of all her husband’s family? She couldn’t do things for her own family and neglect Harry’s. If Harry were here, he’d no doubt help Trevelyan. He’d probably ride out on his big horse and go into Edinburgh and demand that this man Powell give him the Pearl of the Moon. Yes, of course Harry would do that.
She looked back at Oman. “Make him travel in a carriage and make him wait for me. I’ll be in the stables as soon as possible.”
With that she turned back toward the house, only to realize that she didn’t know how to get into the house secretly. She couldn’t go through the front door, as she was sure people would see her, and the only entrance to the tunnels that she knew was through Trevelyan’s tower.
Oman seemed to know what her problem was. He started walking around the house, all the way to the east wing, and there, behind concealing shrubbery, was a small door. When Oman opened it, it creaked loudly. She started to say that she had no candle but Oman pointed to a niche in the wall where candles and matches lay. She lit a candle, then looked back to thank Oman, but he was gone.
Claire had no idea where she was or how to get to her room in the tunnels. She looked at the dust on the floor to see if there were tracks. She wasn’t surprised to see that there were many tracks and all of them were made by a foot that looked to be exactly the size of her sister’s.
Claire started down the tunnel, looking at the tracks and trying to figure out where she was. She came to a door and saw that the area in front of the door had been used so often that it was bare of dust. Cautiously she opened the door. It moved silently.
A stream of light so bright it could have been sunlight poured into the dark tunnel, and she heard a voice that could only have been her sister’s.
“I will not!” Brat said.
Claire stepped into the room to see a small, gaudy stage encrusted with gilding. Standing in the middle of the stage was her sister, dressed in a skimpy costume of colored silks, and a tall, very thin man wearing rags. They both turned when they saw Claire.