The Duchess

  “You are a child,” he said softly. “You are the most beautiful grown-up child in the world.”

  She wasn’t sure whether to be pleased by his description or not. “I’m not as pretty as your moon pearl or as pretty as my little sister.”

  He kissed the corner of her lip. “You don’t even know what I mean by beauty.” He leaned back and smiled at her. “Have you ever done a truly selfish act in your life?”

  She didn’t know why this question should bother her so but it did. He made her sound like a do-gooder who was always suffering for a cause. “I’ve done many selfish things. At home in America I was quite indulgent with myself.”

  “You receive an allowance from your grandfather’s trust. Tell me, have you ever lent your parents money?”

  “Only a few times,” she snapped, and when he smiled in a know-it-all way, she started to get out of bed. “I didn’t like you when I first met you and I still don’t like you.”

  He pulled her back to the bed then moved so that he was half on top of her. “What don’t you like? That I see you as you are? That I don’t just see you as a beautiful little American heiress whose money is the most important thing in the world? Or does it bother you that I see your parents as they are? Or maybe it’s that I’m a realist and you’re a romantic? Maybe you think you like Harry because he’s as romantic as you are. Harry sees only what he wants to see. He thinks his mother is good because he wants to think the woman is good. He thinks he’s in love with you because he wants to be.”

  “Leave Harry out of this! Harry is a good, kind person.”

  “Yes, he is. Harry hasn’t a bad-tempered bone in his body. He’s incapable of hurting anyone.”

  “Unlike you! You hurt everyone. You hurt everyone who tries to get close to you.”

  At that Trevelyan’s eyes changed and he rolled off of her. “Yes,” he said. “That’s true.”

  She lay beside him, not touching him, angry at what he’d said about her, angry at herself for what they had said to each other and for what they had done together. She should not have allowed him into her bed. She should have told him to leave when he walked into her room and stood over her, but instead she’d welcomed him.

  She felt him move as though to get out of the bed and immediately she turned and threw her arms around him. “Don’t leave, Vellie,” she said. “I am so very tired of being alone.”

  He held her to him very tightly, and in ways his holding of her was more intimate than their lovemaking. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

  “Feel what?” She pressed her cheek against his chest.

  “The isolation. The loneliness.”

  She started to say that someone as famous as Captain Baker could never be lonely, that he had friends all over the world, but right now the man in her arms didn’t feel like Captain Baker. This man felt like Trevelyan, the man who had fainted when she’d first met him, the man who had introduced her to whisky and had given her books to read.

  Claire put her face up to his to be kissed, and after that they didn’t say any more as he began to make love to her again.

  When Claire awoke her little sister was sitting on a chair beside the bed. “You sleep like you were dead,” Brat said.

  Claire turned to look at the other side of the bed but it was empty.

  “He’s gone.”

  Claire sat up in bed, keeping the sheet about her nude body. “I know. Harry left yesterday. He went to Edinburgh on…on business.”

  Brat gave a little laugh. “Rogers broke her leg.”

  Claire gasped. “She what?” Trevelyan had said that he’d take care of Miss Rogers. He couldn’t have broken her leg, could he?

  “Last night she went to sleep in her own bed in her little room and this morning she woke up in a bed in the butler’s room and she had a plaster cast on her leg. The cast reaches all the way from her hip to her toes. She also had a terrible headache and she remembers nothing whatever of what happened during the night. The butler told her that she was sleepwalking and fell down the stairs and broke her leg. The doctor came and set it for her while she was still asleep. The butler said that the doctor gave Rogers some awful medicine that made her forget everything that had happened to her.”

  Claire grimaced. “And where did the doctor get such a medicine?”

  Brat smiled. “I think it came from Pesha.”

  Claire laughed. “I can imagine that it did.”

  Brat gave her sister an intense look. “Who’s the woman with Vellie? I couldn’t see her very well this morning, it was still dark, but she looked to be rather pretty. She was walking so close to him, had his arm tucked into her side and—”

  Brat looked at her sister in astonishment as she leaped out of bed. She’d never seen her sister naked before and she was surprised that Claire would so forget herself as to appear so before another person.

  “Help me get dressed,” Claire commanded. “I have to…to…”

  “Save Trevelyan?” Brat asked slyly.

  “Something of that nature,” Claire answered, drawing on her corset.

  It was a mere twenty minutes later that Claire was storming up the stairs of Trevelyan’s tower. She didn’t know what she expected to find, but she’d had enough time to imagine some dreadful things. She rather expected to find that horrid Nyssa sitting on Trevelyan’s lap. Instead, he was sitting quietly at one of his tables and writing with his usual concentration. He didn’t look up when she came in, but held out his empty whisky glass in her direction. She guessed that he thought it was Oman who had entered the room.

  Claire went to the cabinet where the bottle was, took it out, then went to refill his glass. As she poured, he looked up at her.

  “I thought you’d be asleep,” he said softly.

  Claire’s hand trembled as she set the bottle down on the table. One second they were looking at each other, Trevelyan’s eyes black with intensity, Claire’s eyes questioning and shy as she remembered all they had done to each other’s bodies during the night. The next second she was in his arms and they were kissing with passion, kissing in a frantic way, as though they had been separated for years rather than hours. Trevelyan lifted her skirts, then pulled her into his lap as he began to untie the drawstring of the trousers he wore under his silk robe.

  Claire was aghast when she realized what he meant to do. She started to protest, but he put his mouth over hers and she forgot all about protesting. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him hungrily.

  At first she didn’t hear the woman’s voice to her left. If Trevelyan heard it he made no sign. He kept kissing Claire and tossing aside three of her petticoats.

  Claire pushed at Trevelyan, trying to pull away from him. The woman spoke again. “Trevelyan!” Claire said sharply, pushing at him. She was trying to get off his lap.

  Trevelyan said something under his breath. Claire couldn’t understand it but she recognized it as Peshan. She heard the woman laugh and say something else.

  Claire gave a mighty push at Trevelyan. He released her and she landed with a loud thunk on the stone floor. Claire looked up to see Nyssa standing two tables away from them. The woman looked to be even more beautiful in the early morning light than she had the night before. She wore a robe of yellow silk that made her brown eyes look almost golden. Claire remembered every word of what Trevelyan had told her about making love to Nyssa. Had he left her, Claire, in the middle of the night and gone to this pearl of beauty? If he’d made love to twenty-five women in one night, surely he could handle a mere two.

  Claire got up and started for the door. “I have to go,” she said.

  Trevelyan caught her skirt before she could take a step. “You don’t have to go anywhere.”

  Nyssa said something and Trevelyan replied in Peshan.

  “What did she say?” Claire asked stiffly.

  “Nothing of interest.”

  “What did she say?” Claire demanded.

  Trevelyan gave a great sigh of weariness. “She said th
at the color of your dress was wrong for you, that it made you look pale and lifeless.”

  Nyssa said something else and Claire turned to glare at her. “Translate.”

  “Claire, love—” Trevelyan started, but then sighed. “She said that you’re too heavy for your height and that men don’t like fat women.”

  Claire clenched her teeth. “Tell her that men don’t like flat-chested, scrawny women such as she. Tell her that in my country of America, where people are civilized, women are supposed to have some meat on them.”

  “Claire…” Trevelyan said in a pleading voice.

  Claire turned to look at him, her eyes blazing. “You don’t want to tell her, do you? Did you spend the night with her? Did you go to her after you left me?”

  “After I left you I took care of that maid of yours. I haven’t had time for any other women.”

  “And time was the only restraint on you, wasn’t it? If you’d had time you would have made love to her.”

  “Actually, no,” Trevelyan said quite honestly. “Nyssa’s too demanding for me. Tires me out.”

  At that Claire could only gasp in horror. “I guess I’m an old maid compared to her. A gelding compared to a stallion.”

  “That didn’t come out as I meant it to. I meant that—”

  Quite suddenly it was all too much for Claire. She put her hands over her face and burst into tears. “I don’t blame you. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life, and I have no right to tell you what to do. You have every right to do what you want.”

  The hands that reached out to her weren’t Trevelyan’s. They were small hands of great comfort and they pulled Claire to a small shoulder. “I would give anything to have a bosom like yours,” Nyssa said in English that had a lovely, soft accent. “And I think my skin is too dark. How do you keep yours so white?”

  “I stay out of the sun,” Claire said, sniffing, then pulled away and looked at Nyssa. She looked at Trevelyan. “You’ve been laughing at me again.”

  Trevelyan looked a bit like a man trapped. He opened his mouth to speak but Nyssa interrupted him.

  “I asked him not to tell. He taught me English on the trip back from Pesha.” Nyssa took Claire’s hands in her own. “Frank says that I have you to thank for saving me. I don’t like Jack Powell. He wanted to make a prisoner of me. He wanted to take me around the world and show me to people. There was no one to help me, as I thought Frank was dead.” Nyssa smiled at Claire. “Will you forgive my little joke? I so liked to see you fight for Frank. I have never seen anyone or anything that could take his mind from his writing.”

  Claire looked at Trevelyan in question. “I have taken your mind from your work?”

  Trevelyan shrugged. “Now and then. When I have to play the vicar and rescue people, or sit and watch you learn to dance, or take you to the houses of old men and watch you flirt with them. I also have to entertain your little sister and—”

  Claire smiled at him and he looked away. “Why don’t you two children run off and play together?” Trevelyan muttered.

  Both Claire and Nyssa laughed at that.

  “What shall we make him do?” Nyssa asked. “Shall we make him tell us stories or take us outside into the sunshine?”

  “We’re in Scotland,” Trevelyan growled. “There is no sunshine. And in case you’ve forgotten, my presence here is supposed to be a secret.”

  Claire looked from one to the other of them and realized how well the two of them knew each other. It made her more jealous than thinking that Trevelyan had slept with the woman. “I have to go back to the house,” Claire said. “They will miss me.” She turned away and started down the stairs.

  Trevelyan followed her but didn’t say a word until they reached the floor below, the floor where Claire had fallen through the rotten boards. Trevelyan caught her arm and turned her toward him. “There’s no reason to be jealous of Nyssa. She’s nothing to me.”

  “But she’s so beautiful and you’ve spent the night with her.” She couldn’t look at him because she didn’t want him to see the tears in her eyes.

  “Yes, I have.” He paused and when he spoke again, there was anger in his voice. “Damn you! I may have made love to her but I’ve never said that I love her.”

  She didn’t know what he meant and it took her a moment to realize that he was referring to the way that she said she loved Harry. Did she love Harry? How could she love Harry and want to be with Trevelyan? How could she love one man and spend the night with another? But Trevelyan had said that he’d spent the night with a hundred women, a thousand, yet he seemed to distinguish sex from love.

  Trevelyan saw the confusion on her face and pulled her into his arms, where she hid her face against his chest. “Shall we do what Nyssa suggested and spend the day outside?”

  “The three of us?”

  “Yes, the three of us,” he said. “No, the four of us. We’ll invite your little sister.”

  Claire sniffed. “My beautiful little sister. I’ll be the ugly one.”

  Trevelyan chuckled, then put his hand under her chin and lifted her face to his. “You will be far and away the prettiest one to me. Do you know that I’m beginning to think that you’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen?”

  “Really?” She looked up at him, tears sparkling in her eyes.

  “Yes, truly.” He kissed her softly, then his kiss became more passionate, more demanding. He put his hand on her thigh and began to pull her skirts up. “Why do you wear so damn many clothes?”

  “Trevelyan, we can’t do anything here. There are people and—”

  He cut her off with his lips. “Damn the others.”

  “But there’s no bed,” she murmured.

  Trevelyan gave a little laugh that was so full of innuendo that Claire could feel her scalp tightening. She didn’t think much after that as he pulled her skirt up, lifted her leg so that it was about his hip, then took two steps, stopping when her back was against the wall. Her big underpants that reached to her knees were not sewn in the center seam. He parted them easily.

  In the next minute his own robe was open and his trousers were about his knees. He entered her quickly and Claire gasped, startled. She had already forgotten what this new experience was like.

  She put her head back and Trevelyan ran hot kisses down her throat as he held her hips in his hands and guided her in their quick, stolen lovemaking.

  Claire’s passion built and built as he slammed into her. Her weight was supported by him and she felt his body move against hers, in and out, building until she wanted to cry out. But his lips on hers kept her quiet until at last they exploded together.

  She clutched at him, weak and spent, feeling helpless and powerful at the same time. “Trevelyan,” she whispered against his neck.

  “Yes,” he said. “Tell me.”

  Claire shook her head. She wasn’t going to say anything. Nothing at all, in fear of what she would say.

  He held her there, against the wall, both of them fully clothed, yet joined so very intimately. “Give me my days,” he said. “Give me these few days, that’s all I ask. No promises. No regrets. Live for the moment and the moment alone. Don’t think about tomorrow or about what anyone else wants of you. Can you do that?”

  She nodded her head against his neck. What an extraordinary idea to think about living for the moment, to think of no one but herself. For an unknown number of days, she could stay with Trevelyan and not think about what her parents wanted her to do, about what she must do in the future. She could stop worrying about her sister’s future. She could stop worrying about her own future under the rule of Harry’s odious mother. She could laugh and talk to someone about things that interested her rather than pretend to like shooting and horses and dogs. For a few days she could stop trying to understand Trevelyan, stop trying to figure out who he was and what he was.

  “You don’t touch Nyssa,” she said. When he didn’t say anything, she looked at him.

  “Not
one touch? Not even kisses?”

  For once she realized he was teasing her. “It’s enough that I’m allowing you to look at her. And no comments to my sister about sitting on your lap, either.”

  “Only if you sit on my lap,” he said huskily.

  “I think I’d rather like sitting on you.” She kissed him, then he disconnected them and stood her in front of him. Gently, he tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Vellie?” she said. “Are there lots of ways to do…this?”

  His eyes were bright when he looked at her. “Lots.”

  “I guess you’ve tried them all,” she said bitterly and looked away.

  “I have merely practiced for the real game.”

  She looked up at him and smiled. “I will give you your days. No, I will give myself the days. For the next few days, for as long as we have, I will think only of the present, not of the future or the past. Not your past or mine.”

  He caressed her cheek. “My past need not concern you—ever.” He took her by the hand and led her toward the stairs.

  “It’s your future that concerns me now. What do you plan to do with Nyssa?”

  “My only plan for the future is to show you every position, every nuance of lovemaking that I have ever learned.”

  Claire blinked at him. “I have always loved school.”

  He laughed and led her up the stairs.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  They had four days before Harry returned. The four most heavenly days Claire had ever experienced in her life. More than that, they were days such as she’d never dreamed could have existed.

  As far as she could tell, Trevelyan didn’t sleep. At least not enough to count. She thought that perhaps he made do with three or four hours of sleep a night, but that was all. He spent hours in bed with her, making love to her, keeping his promise to show her what he knew. He showed her positions. He touched parts of her body that she hadn’t even known she had.

  But their actual coupling was the least of their lovemaking. It was the things he did before he touched her that nearly drove her mad. He used words to make her ready. He told her erotic stories. The stories weren’t vulgar; they always had funny little morals to them. They were just incredibly sexy.