The Duchess

  Nyssa snorted. “You give up easily. She is not married to this man Harry yet, but you act as though she is. You wait until she comes to you. I have never seen you like this. I have never seen you as the pursued one. You have always been the pursuer. Remember that pretty little woman in that village on the way back from Pesha? You wanted her and you went after her. Why is this one so different?”

  “It is enough that this one is different.”

  “How is she different?”

  Nyssa stood still and waited for him to answer. She had spent a great deal of time with this man and she knew him quite well, but the Captain Baker she knew and the man she had seen since he had come for her in Powell’s house were not the same man. The Captain Baker she knew was an observer, a man who did not get involved, who allowed no one and nothing to affect him. But this American woman affected him. She affected him very much. He couldn’t take his eyes from her. In the carriage, no matter what Nyssa had done to distract him, Frank’s attention had always been on Claire—as hers was on him.

  “You love her,” Nyssa whispered, and there was wonder in her voice. She had tried to make Captain Baker love her but she’d had no success. “You are in love with her.”

  “Yes” was all that Trevelyan could say. “Yes, I love her. I love her mind, her body. I love her sense of humor. I love her thoughts. I love the way she thinks and what she says.” He gave a sound that was a cross between hopelessness and despair. “I love her to the smell of her breath.” He turned to Nyssa and for the first time she saw what few people had: she saw that little boy who used to climb into bed with Leatrice and cry. “I love her as I’ve never loved anyone or anything. Were she to love me in return, I’d give her whatever she wanted.”

  Nyssa had to sit down, and she looked away from Trevelyan’s eyes. She didn’t think she was supposed to see what he had just shown her. “You would tell her that you are Harry’s older brother?”

  “Yes,” he said simply, then looked back at her. His guarded expression was back. He gave Nyssa a smile—a smile that she’d seen a thousand times, a smile that said he cared about no one and that he was an entity unto himself, that he needed no one. “Ah, well, such is life. No one can win every time. Would you like to play cards or would you like to go to bed with me?”

  Nyssa didn’t smile. “You should go to her,” she said softly. “You should show her that you love her.” Nyssa gave him a smile of great radiance. “You should make her miserable. Make her have to decide between you and this brother of yours.”

  Trevelyan started to protest that, but then he set his whisky glass down. “Yes,” he said softly. “I will make her choose.”

  Nyssa said something else, but Trevelyan didn’t hear her. He was already on his way out the door, on his way to Claire.

  Chapter Twenty

  As soon as Brat had gone into the tunnels, Claire angrily began to pull the pins from her hair, allowing it to hang down her back. She began to brush her hair as though her hair were her enemy; she attacked it.

  It wasn’t any of her business, of course. It wasn’t any of her concern that Trevelyan was going to spend the night with another woman. It didn’t matter to her. Trevelyan was Captain Baker, and Captain Baker was a renowned rake. A man known the world over for his exploits with women.

  She tugged at the fastenings of her dress, unhooked her bustle frame, then untied her petticoats. Standing in her corset and underwear, she looked at herself in the mirror. She turned and pivoted for a moment, then put her hands over her face. It didn’t matter, she told herself. It didn’t matter what a man like Captain Baker did. It wasn’t any of her concern.

  She pulled off her underwear with what was almost violence, let the soft cotton garments fall to the floor, then slipped a pristine white cotton nightgown over her head. She went to bed, turned out the lamp, and closed her eyes.

  She was afraid she might start crying but instead the moment she closed her eyes she was asleep. She was asleep and she was dreaming. She seemed to be in a hot country, a place of green plants and wildly colored birds. There was danger there and she was afraid. She stopped when she heard something moving in the jungle. She knew she should run but she couldn’t. She stood where she was and stared in horrified fascination at the movement of the plants. The movement came closer and when she thought she might scream, the plants parted and there was Trevelyan. In the dream, Claire didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more terrified.

  Claire opened her eyes with a start. Standing over her, holding a candle, was Trevelyan. His eyes were alight with life and fire, and he was staring at her as though asking her a question.

  Claire didn’t so much as hesitate. It was as though he were a continuation of her dream. She put up her arms to him.

  Trevelyan set the candle aside and went into her arms with all the ferocity of a beast from the jungle. He smothered her face with kisses, ran his hands down her arms, then lifted them above her head to hold them there.

  Claire was still half asleep, and this man’s touching of her was of another world.

  “I want to see you,” he said, and the way he said it made chills on her body. With practiced ease, he removed her nightgown, slipping it over her head.

  When she was nude, Trevelyan leaned back from her. He picked up the candle and held it aloft so that he could see her, see the way her breasts rose and fell with her deep, quick breaths. He looked at her waist, tiny from years of being confined in a corset. He ran his hand along her hip, down her thigh.

  He looked back up at her face.

  Claire’s breath was coming in short gasps and she felt hot. Trevelyan kissed her. She closed her eyes and let the sensation flow through her body. She could feel his kiss all the way to her toes.

  When he drew back, she opened her eyes and looked at him. He was smiling at her. It was a smile she’d not seen before. It was a smile sweet and soft, and it made him look like a boy. There was none of the cynicism that she usually saw, none of the hardness that was usually about him. His eyes were gentle and kind. If she hadn’t known him better, she’d have thought his eyes were full of love.

  “Trevelyan,” she whispered.

  He put his fingertips over her lips, then withdrew them and kissed her. Claire stopped thinking. When he looked at her like that, she couldn’t seem to form a thought.

  He began kissing her body. Slowly, languorously, as though he had all the time in the world. No rush. He moved from her neck down to her breast, taking the peak in his mouth.

  Claire arched her back and put her hands in his hair. His hair was soft and thick and full; she could feel the darkness of it.

  Trevelyan moved downward, kissing her waist, his tongue making little circles about her navel.

  All the time he was kissing her, his hands were touching her. Claire had never been touched before. She had grown up in a house where there was little physical touching, and until she’d met Harry she had not so much as been kissed. But now Trevelyan was touching her as though he meant to memorize her body, as though he had wanted to touch her for a long time and planned to enjoy it. His hands ran over her breasts, down her thighs.

  He kept kissing her, kissing her thighs, then her calves, and at last her feet. His big hands caressed the arches of her feet.

  Claire sat up on her elbows and looked at him. He was fully dressed and she felt rather like one of those women in a Renaissance painting who was nude while all around her were people in clothes. It was not a bad feeling. Perhaps she was Leda and he was Zeus come to mate with her and give her a child.

  Trevelyan smiled at her as though he knew what she was thinking, then he put his hands on her knees and slowly slid them up her body, over her breasts, up to her neck, and at last to hold her face. He looked in her eyes then. No, he didn’t just look, he studied her, as though he were looking for something, as though he were trying to find something within her eyes. He turned her face toward the light of the candle and continued to look at her.

  “Not yet,”
he whispered at last, then, before Claire could ask what he meant, he kissed her again.

  Claire thought she might die from one of Trevelyan’s kisses. They made her forget everything. They seemed to make her entire body become involved. He lowered his body onto hers and Claire gasped. She had never heard of the gloriousness of the weight of a man on top of one’s body. He was so large and she was so small, yet his weight felt heavenly. In the past, when she’d been told what men and women did in bed together, she had worried that the man might crush the woman.

  She rubbed her bare thigh against his clothed one as he kissed her. She knew he was teaching her about kissing, that he was taking his time and showing her what could be done with two mouths. He showed her kissing with his tongue and without it. He softly bit her lips, ran his tongue over them. He turned her head one way, then the other. He showed her deep kisses, soft kisses, hard kisses.

  As she always had been in everything else, Claire was a quick learner when it came to kisses. At first she lay under him, passive, allowing him to be the teacher, then she began to push at him. He seemed to know what she wanted to do. He rolled off of her, but pulled her with him so she lay on top of him as she began to kiss him. She experimented. She tried this way and that way. She began to kiss his eyes, his temple; she bit his earlobe.

  Trevelyan gave a little yelp when she bit too hard, then rolled her to her back. “Want to play, do you?” He put his face in her neck and growled. Claire giggled and pushed at him.

  Trevelyan, in mock anger, began nipping at her shoulders, then lower, until he was at her breast. In moments, he seemed to go from being a calm man with supreme patience to a wild man.

  Claire reacted to his passion. She tugged at his shirt, wanting to feel his skin next to her own. Trevelyan was out of his clothes in seconds, his mouth never leaving some part of her body while he undressed. She heard fabric rip once and she felt the way he moved his knee against her body while he undressed.

  He began to kiss her mouth again, but there was a new urgency in his kisses—as there was in hers. Inside, she felt as though she were running, running toward something or someone, but she didn’t know what.

  When he was nude and she felt his bare skin against her own for the first time, she gasped, then she began clawing at him, running her nails against the warm skin of his back. She moved her thighs against his, feeling how hairy and rough they were; the contrast made her even more excited.

  She was shocked when Trevelyan entered her. Shocked and in pain. She pushed away from him but he kissed her to keep her from crying out, then entered her fully.

  “Lie still,” he commanded. “The pain will stop in a moment.”

  She did as he said, but not because she believed him. She was sure she was going to be torn in half.

  He began to kiss her again, kiss her neck. His hand moved to her breast, his thumb on the peak. From somewhere deep within her, Claire began to respond to this ancient ritual.

  “Vellie,” she whispered.

  “Yes, my love, I’m here.”

  She moved her hips just a bit, clumsily. Trevelyan put his hand on her hip to guide her next movement. It didn’t hurt. In fact she rather liked it.

  Trevelyan put his hands on her thighs, holding her to him as he began to move himself out of her.

  “No!” she cried and clutched at him. “Don’t leave.”

  Trevelyan made the oddest sound. It was half chuckle, half groan, but it told her that he’d as soon die as leave her.

  Claire couldn’t help but smile as her arms tightened about him. Then, suddenly, her eyes opened wide as he slid back into her. “Oh,” she said, surprised at the sensation. “My goodness.”

  Trevelyan lifted his head to look at her, saw her face and smiled at her. “I think you’re going to take to this with the ease you took to whisky.”

  After that neither of them spoke again, for Trevelyan started his long, slow thrusts. Claire lay almost still, feeling this utterly new sensation and thinking that she might have died and gone to heaven.

  Somewhere within his movements, she began to move also. Trevelyan held her hips and began to guide her, so that she matched her movements with his. She was amazed at how well they fit together. Their bodies fit, her head fitting neatly into his shoulder, his hips into her hips, his—

  Her eyes opened wider as she began to feel something building within her. She clutched at him and raised her hips to a higher position.

  “Trevelyan,” she said, and there was a bit of fear in her voice. She looked at him and saw that strain showed on his face, as though he were trying to prevent something from happening. Inside of her, excitement kept building and building until she thought she might explode.

  When she did explode, she knew it was the most wonderful experience of her life. She clutched at Trevelyan, her fingers burying themselves into the flesh of his back. His face was hidden in her neck; she could feel damp tendrils of his hair against her skin.

  They lay together for a long while, holding each other tightly, until Claire pulled away. She wanted to look at him. Once, many years ago, she had been in her house in New York and she’d been walking into the small dining room where her mother was having tea with some of her women friends when she’d heard her mother say to the other women, “But, dear, you never know a man until you’ve spent the night with him.” At the time, Claire had been so embarrassed that she’d turned and gone back to her room, but now she had an idea of what her mother meant.

  She moved so she could look at Trevelyan. His eyes were closed and he looked very young, like a boy. “How old are you?” she asked.

  He smiled softly, his eyes still closed. “Thirty-three.”

  She caressed the hair at his temples, smoothing it back from his face. “I don’t think we should have done this,” she said softly.

  His eyes opened immediately; they were fierce and angry. “If you’re going to say that we’ve betrayed Harry, I think you ought to know that right now Harry is in Edinburgh with his mistress.”

  Claire was taken aback by the anger in Trevelyan’s voice. “Are you jealous of Harry?”

  “Of that damned mistress of his? She’s forty-five, married, and has two children, one of whom looks remarkably like Harry.”

  At the moment Claire couldn’t think about this news. Right now Harry seemed very far away. She kissed Trevelyan’s eyelids. “I don’t want to think about that now. I don’t want to think about anything at this moment.” Part of her knew that being in bed with one man when she was engaged to someone else was wrong, but another part knew that this man was Captain Baker. This was a man she had worshiped as a hero for many years.

  She ran her fingertips down the scars on his cheeks, remembering every word he’d written about how he had received those scars. Gently, she pushed him to his back and began to touch the other scars on his body, thinking about how he’d received them. She kissed the new wound on his arm. On his shins were long scars from where he had lanced his own legs when malaria had swollen them so badly. He’d had to cut his legs to allow the blood out.

  She sat beside him, touching him, looking at him. She was curious as to what a nude man looked like, and especially as to what this man looked like.

  When she looked back at his face she saw that he was frowning. “Do you look at me? Or are you planning what you will tell the world about Captain Baker?”

  She stretched out beside him and smoothed his heavy mustache. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “You’ve been so many people to me. When I met you I thought you were an old man, a weak, sick old man. Then I thought you were a cynic, one of those people who’s decided the world is a bad place and has chosen to be miserable. Then I discovered that you’re the famous Captain Baker. And now…”

  “And now?”

  “Now I don’t know who you are.”

  “Let me show you,” he said, and his eyes were bright with a flaming intensity. “Let me show you who I am. Give me the time until Harry returns. That’s all I ask
. Harry will probably return in four or five days, then you can go back to him. But before he returns, spend time with me. Every minute of every day.”

  Claire pulled the sheet up to cover her bare breasts. “I…I don’t know. There’s Miss Rogers and the duchess. I think Harry’s mother already knows too much of what I do, and there’s my own family to consider. My mother—”

  “I will take care of Rogers as well as the duchess. As for your parents, they don’t seem to bother themselves about the whereabouts of their daughters.”

  As Claire looked at him, she knew that more than anything else in the world she wanted to stay with him. At this moment she thought it possible that she might walk away and leave behind everything that was important to her. Her jaw tightened. “What about your perfect little Emerald of the Nile?”

  He smiled at her. “Pearl of the Moon.”

  “It’s difficult for me to remember,” she said stiffly. “I’m afraid that I haven’t had your…experience with her. Shall the world read about her in your next book?”

  “Of course. It’s what my readers like. Let me see if I remember what I wrote, for of course I wrote about Nyssa first, long before I wrote those boring parts about the measurements of the wagon wheels and such. I think I wrote something like, ‘Nyssa was all woman, all fire, all passion. She was wonderful to make love to. When you went to bed with her, it was like testing your manhood.’”

  Claire started to get out of bed, but he caught her arm and pulled her back. She wouldn’t look at him or speak to him, but folded her arms across her breasts and stared at the underside of the bed canopy.

  “Jealous?” he asked, his voice full of amusement.

  “You may leave my room now. And you needn’t bother to return.”

  He kissed her neck and her unresponsive lips. “It couldn’t possibly matter to you what I did—or do—with Nyssa. You’re in love with Harry, remember?”

  “You’re laughing at me again!” she spat at him. “At least Harry treats me as an adult. You laugh at me as though I were a child.”