The Duchess
“Until they kill her,” Claire said. “Do they kill her with a very sharp ax? I do so hope they are thoughtful in their method of killing the woman they have worshiped for five whole years. I’d hate to think of her being tortured.”
“You shouldn’t talk about what you know nothing of.” He clenched his teeth together for a moment before continuing to tell her of his journey.
At dawn they stopped at an inn and had an enormous breakfast. Claire yawned.
“Why don’t you stay here and sleep, and I’ll go into the city and get Nyssa?” Trevelyan said.
Claire merely smiled at him, but smiled in such a way that she left no doubt that she didn’t plan to let him out of her sight.
Trevelyan sighed. “All right then, hurry up and finish. We still have a long way to go.”
Chapter Nineteen
They traveled until three in the afternoon, with Trevelyan telling her stories throughout the journey. He told of Africa and China and talked of the places he wanted to go. Only once did she feel any anger. He told how he’d gone into an African village where the chief had a great desire to see what kind of child would result from a union of black and white. So the chief had assembled twenty-five young women from his village and asked Captain Baker to impregnate them.
“What did you do?”
“I did the only thing I could under the circumstances.”
Claire smiled. “You told him no.”
Trevelyan’s eyes twinkled. “We were an hour late getting away the next morning.”
It took Claire several minutes before she understood what he was saying. She started to ask him lots of questions, but she forced herself to keep her mouth closed.
At three they stopped at an inn and Trevelyan hired two rooms for them. “We are near the city and Powell’s house. We’ll sleep until midnight.”
Claire refused to go to bed until he’d sworn that he’d wake her and not leave her behind when he went to Powell’s house. After she had Trevelyan’s promise, she went to her room, so tired she could hardly remove her clothing. She dragged her nightgown over her head, then fell across the bed, too tired to even pull the cover up.
When she awoke, she realized that it was dark outside but there was a bright lamp lit within the room. She rubbed her eyes and looked about her. Sitting on a chair at the end of the room was Trevelyan, a sketchbook in his hand, and hanging from a hook in the ceiling was her bustle frame.
Claire rubbed her eyes again. Trevelyan was making a drawing of her bustle frame.
“Sleep well?” he asked without looking up.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She flung the covers back, got out of bed, and jerked the frame from the ceiling.
“Interesting thing, that. There are some tribes in Africa that wear something similar, but theirs are made of grass. More of a basket than wire. Of course, in a pinch, the grass ones can be used to carry water. For the life of me, I can’t see a practical use for that.”
“I am not one of your tribes to be studied.” She was standing near him, her eyes blazing.
He looked down at her in her nightgown and smiled. “I’d like to study more of you than just your undergarments.” He glanced toward the bed. “We could postpone our visit to Powell’s for hours. Hours and hours and hours.”
Claire stepped away from him. “You shouldn’t come into my room in the middle of the night. You should have knocked. You should have—”
He cut her off because he didn’t want to listen to her. “How soon can you be ready? And don’t wear that thing.” He nodded toward the bustle frame. “We’ll probably have to go in through a window and it’ll never fit.”
“I have to wear the frame. My dress is cut to go over it. Without the frame the dress wouldn’t fit properly and it would drag in the back.”
Trevelyan gave her a cold look, his black eyes sparkling. “Don’t wear it.” He turned on his heel and left the room.
Thirty minutes later Claire appeared downstairs wearing her dark green wool walking costume, with her bustle frame holding out the back of it. She also wore a look of defiance, one that told Trevelyan that she was ready for a fight that she meant to win.
He started to say something but then shoved a pasty into her hand. “If you can’t get into the house it’ll serve you right. Let’s go.”
Claire made him wait for her while she arranged with the landlord’s eldest son to deliver a package for her. Trevelyan didn’t ask her what she was doing and she didn’t volunteer to tell him.
It didn’t take long to reach Powell’s pretty little Edinburgh town house with its bright red door.
“Are we really going to break in?” Claire whispered.
“Yes.” Trevelyan looked down at her. “You can stop now if you want.”
Claire shook her head no, then took a deep breath and followed Trevelyan to the back of the house. “Well?” she said once they were at the back of the house. “What do we do now?”
“We wait for Oman’s signal.”
Claire sat down on the side of a little porch and didn’t say anything else. Within minutes came a noise that made her nearly jump out of her skin. It seemed that cannons were going off in the street in front of the house.
“Now!” Trevelyan yelled above the noise and threw a rock at the nearest window. Before Claire could think what was going on, Trevelyan picked her up and shoved her at the window.
Claire wiggled through the opening but then her bustle caught on the crossbar of the window. Without daring to look at Trevelyan she moved backward a bit, reached back to the frame and pulled it upward so it collapsed against her back. Still holding it flat, she finished moving through the window.
Once she was inside the house, it was only seconds before Trevelyan was beside her. They were in a service room at the back of the kitchen and they could hear the noise in the street outside. Near them they could hear people, servants she assumed, moving about.
Trevelyan took Claire’s hand and confidently moved through the dark house toward a narrow staircase. It was obvious that he had been in the house before and knew it well. Once they were upstairs, twice they had to flatten themselves in doorways to keep from being seen. Claire saw Powell hurry down the stairs as he pulled a dressing gown on over his nightclothes. She recognized him from the several photographs she’d seen of him.
As the noise in the street continued, Trevelyan led Claire down a corridor of the upstairs until he came to a door at the end of the hall. It was locked. Trevelyan lost no time in raising his foot and kicking the heavy door in.
The minute the two of them stepped inside the room, it was as though they’d entered another country. The large room was hung with gauzy silks of a hundred pastels. One color seemed to blend into another. There was a smell of sandalwood and jasmine in the air. Trevelyan didn’t seem to notice the surroundings, but Claire stood by the door and gaped. The floor was covered with expensive hand-tied silk carpets, one on top of the other, and through the draperies that hung from the ceiling she could see piles of silk-covered pillows.
Trevelyan pushed the gauze curtains aside and made his way through the room, Claire close behind him. He stopped in front of her so abruptly that Claire ran into the back of him. She peeped around him to see what had made him stop.
In front of him, kneeling on a fat cushion before what looked to be an altar, her hands clasped together in prayer, her head slightly bowed, was what was surely the most exquisite creature on earth. Claire saw only her profile, but the small features and the perfection of them was astonishing. Long, sooty lashes rested on a honey-colored cheek. Her lovely little nose made a perfect line down to her sculptured mouth.
Claire stepped from behind Trevelyan and stared at the woman. She was small, smaller than Claire, but the sheer silk robe she wore did little to hide the delicate, womanly curves of her body. She was so still that Claire wasn’t sure she was alive.
There was a loud boom from the street outside, followed by shouts, and the noise brought Clai
re back to the present. “We have to go,” she whispered urgently to Trevelyan, who was just standing there and staring at this woman. When he made no move to speak to the woman, Claire took a step toward her, but Trevelyan put out a hand and stopped her.
“She is praying,” he said.
Claire waited a few more seconds, seconds that turned into minutes. If they were found in Jack Powell’s house, would they be thrown into jail? Or would Powell merely shoot them?
At long, long last, the woman raised her head, then turned and looked up at Trevelyan. Claire had only a second to see the woman and she gasped at the beauty of her. A perfect oval face, perfect almond-shaped eyes, perfect nose, perfect lips. Claire hated her immediately.
Her hatred increased in the next second as the woman, in a voice that sounded as though someone had melted honey and poured it over vocal cords, said, “Frank!” and launched herself into Trevelyan’s arms.
He was supporting her full weight, her tiny feet, shod in jeweled silk slippers, not touching the floor. She kissed him, kissed his chin, his neck, kissed all of him she could reach, all the while whispering to him in a soft, oozing language that sounded like a spoken love song.
“We have to go,” Claire said. Claire didn’t seem to be aware that Trevelyan was holding his head away from the woman’s kisses. She didn’t notice that Trevelyan was much more interested in Claire’s reactions than in the beautiful woman’s kisses. When the two of them didn’t seem to hear her, Claire thought she’d nudge Trevelyan and make him hear. That’s what she meant to do. What she did do was kick Trevelyan in the side of his calf at the same time that she hit him in the rib cage.
He grunted. “Why did you do that?” he asked as the woman kissed his neck.
“We have to go,” Claire said through clenched teeth.
Trevelyan nodded, said something in the soft language to the woman, and she nodded but continued kissing the soft bit of skin just above his collar.
“Trevelyan!” Claire snapped. “We must go.”
Trevelyan, smiling at Claire as though something she’d said pleased him very much, set Nyssa from him. It was only then that the woman noticed that Claire was in the room. Nyssa stepped back and looked at Claire’s face. No, she didn’t just look at Claire, she studied her. Then Nyssa looked down at Claire’s feet and very slowly looked from her feet back up to her head.
Claire stood where she was, her eyes filled with anger.
Nyssa began to walk around Claire, pausing at the back of her. She said something to Trevelyan and he answered.
“What did she say?” Claire asked.
“Nyssa said that you have a behind like the hump of a camel. I told her you wore wire to make yourself stick out at the back, but that I assumed your purpose was not to make yourself look like a camel.”
Claire glared at him.
Nyssa walked to the front of Claire then moved beside Trevelyan and began to talk to him.
“What is she saying now?” Claire asked.
“Let me see if I can translate it properly. She says that you have hips as wide as a cow’s, skin the color of the underbelly of a frog—or she might have said a lizard, Peshan is sometimes difficult for me—and that you have a bosom like a mountain. Although she says that your bosom is probably as real as the protrusion on your behind is. She says that your eyes are too round and too trusting and that—”
“Tell her that every bit of my bosom is mine and that she has a bosom like a boy.”
“Oh?” Trevelyan said with interest. “No padding at all?”
She looked at him. “Could we get out of here and take…her with us?”
“Then do what with her?” Trevelyan asked, obviously highly amused by all of this. “Toss her from the carriage as we go around a curve?”
Claire smiled at him. “I was thinking of tying her to a wheel. Someone as shapeless as she is would hardly make a lump.”
Trevelyan laughed, then Nyssa said something to him. “She wants you to pack for her. She says that Powell has allowed her no maids so you may become her maid.”
“Does she? Tell her her offer is too generous for me to accept; that I, a mere mortal, am not worthy to touch the luggage of the Pearl of the Moon.”
Trevelyan laughed then spoke softly to Nyssa. She answered him in Peshan, and Claire saw Trevelyan frown and shake his head. He began to talk to her, then Nyssa answered. Trevelyan talked more; Nyssa stamped her foot.
“What’s going on?”
Trevelyan kept talking to Nyssa and for a moment he didn’t answer Claire. “She wants her cup,” he said at last. “And I bloody well don’t want to get it for her.”
“What cup?”
Trevelyan started to speak, but Nyssa put her hand on his arm and looked up at him with pleading eyes. Claire was disgusted to see Trevelyan’s face soften. She’d never seen that look on his face before. He looked back at Claire. “It’s a gold cup. Jeweled. She brought it with her from Pesha and she says she won’t go with me unless she has it.”
“Where is it?”
Trevelyan shrugged. “Downstairs in a cabinet.”
It was on the tip of Claire’s tongue to say, “That’s that.” If this woman who called herself the Pearl of the Moon wouldn’t go without her cup and Trevelyan didn’t want to get her cup, then they’d just have to leave her where she was. Too bad. Claire had already started to look forward to the long carriage ride with this woman—that is, if one could look forward to insults and abuse.
Trevelyan read the look on Claire’s face. “Jack has been holding Nyssa prisoner in this room. He won’t allow her to leave it, even to walk in the park. She hasn’t seen sunlight in weeks. I think Jack plans to exhibit her like an animal.”
Claire looked at Nyssa. They were about the same height and probably about the same age, but they were very different in appearance. Claire had robust, healthy American good looks, with her pink skin and hourglass figure, while Nyssa was exotic looking, with her dark skin and small, delicate body. Nyssa was standing close to Trevelyan, leaning toward him, as though he could protect her.
“All right,” Claire said. “We’ll take her.”
Trevelyan turned and smiled down at Nyssa and said something to her. Nyssa’s dark eyes turned angry and she sat down on the cushion in front of the altar, her arms crossed over her chest. Trevelyan said something to her, then bent and picked her up. Nyssa started screaming. Trevelyan put his hand over her mouth but she bit his palm so that he half dropped her back onto the cushion.
“I will get her cup,” Claire said and started for the door.
Trevelyan caught her arm. “I know where it is,” he said heavily. “You stay with her. Pack some things for her. When I get back we’ll go.”
Trevelyan left Claire alone with Nyssa in the silk-draped room. Claire looked down at Nyssa, still sitting on her cushion, and Nyssa smiled at her. Perfect teeth. Of course, Claire thought, it was too much to hope that her teeth were black and rotten. Claire didn’t return the smile. “If you want to take anything with you, you’d better pack it. I’m sure that whatever I have won’t fit you. You’d never be able to fill out the top,” she said, looking pointedly at Nyssa’s small bosom.
Nyssa smiled again, and as though she understood, she got up and went to a carved and gilded chest against one wall of the room and began to remove garments. She put them in a large bag that was beautifully embroidered. When that was done, she took a little statue from her altar, dropped it into the bag, and went to sit on the cushion. She motioned to Claire to take a seat on another cushion but Claire walked away. It was difficult to feel comfortable with someone who had said your skin was the color of a frog’s belly.
Claire walked about the room and looked at the silks. She pushed them aside and looked out the window, trying to see the street. But there were bars on the window and all she could see was the side of the house next door.
It seemed a long time before Trevelyan returned and from under his coat withdrew a gold cup set all over with r
ubies. It wasn’t a very pretty cup, probably more valuable for its historic significance than for its artistic merit. Claire took the cup and held it up to the candlelight. Some of the rubies were of modern cut, some were mere lumps. All the edgings holding the stones to the cup were crude and misshapen. “Not exactly beautiful, is it?” she said.
Nyssa came to her feet and snatched the cup from Claire’s hand and gave the American an angry look.
“Could we get out of here?” Trevelyan said. “Before the two of you get into a fistfight? Oman can’t distract the people in the street much longer.”
Claire started to follow Trevelyan out of the door, but Nyssa pushed past her and plastered herself against the back of Trevelyan so that Claire brought up the rear. When Claire started to say something, Trevelyan put his finger to his lips to tell her to be quiet.
The two women followed Trevelyan down the stairs, twice having to hide to keep from being seen by the people who were now returning to the house. Outside, the street was quiet. In the back of the house, Trevelyan unlocked the door and held it open for the two women. As Claire passed him, he whispered, “I wouldn’t want you to get your camel hump caught again.”
Claire didn’t bother to answer him.
The three of them made it through several twisting streets and back to Oman, calmly sitting atop the carriage as though nothing had happened. Yet Oman’s usually pristine white clothes were torn and blackened from gunpowder from fireworks, and there was a cut across his cheek. Nyssa greeted Oman with great pleasure and said things to him that made the tall man smile.
The second the three of them were inside the coach, Oman cracked the whip over the horses and they were off. Nyssa sat beside Trevelyan while Claire sat opposite them.
Claire wasn’t sure what was wrong with her but she knew that she was angry, very, very angry. She leaned back against the wall of the coach and closed her eyes. She told herself that she wasn’t in the least interested in what Trevelyan did with this woman, but she was aware of every word that they spoke to each other. She couldn’t understand any of it, but she imagined that they were whispering love words to each other. And why not? Why shouldn’t this woman be in love with a man who had saved her from death?