by Joan Wolf
“Oh, I see” The girl looked bewildered. “Shall I bring your breakfast, then. Your Grace?”
Tracy gave it up. “No, thank you—what is your name?”
“Emma, Your Grace.”
“No, thank you, Emma. I think I will dress and breakfast with the Duke. Or has he eaten already?”
“No, Your Grace.”
Tracy’s face brightened as an idea struck her. “Would it be too much trouble to have breakfast brought up to the sitting room?”
Emma blinked. She had had no previous experience with duchesses, but she was quite sure they did not ask their servants if anything would be “too much trouble.”
“Of course not, Your Grace,” she said now.
“Good.” Tracy looked around the room. “Who unpacked for me yesterday? Where did my yellow morning dress get stowed?” Tracy had a habit of using nautical expressions in decidedly non-nautical situations.
“I unpacked for you. Your Grace,” Emma said faintly. “Mrs. Map only sent me and Robert and Nancy and, of course, Alphonse, from the Castle. Mr. and Mrs. Allen are the caretakers here, but they of course won’t serve you.”
“Who is Mrs. Map?” asked Tracy.
“Mrs. Map is the housekeeper at Steyning Castle, Your Grace,” said Emma. “She said you would have your own personal maid with you, but, as you didn’t, I ...” Emma stopped abruptly, afraid she sounded like she was criticizing.
Tracy smiled engagingly. “I foresee that I am going to prove a sad disappointment to Mrs. Map, Emma. I don’t have a personal maid. In fact, I’ve never had a personal maid. What on earth does a personal maid do for one?”
Emma found herself smiling back. She had never met a member of the Quality who was at all like the Duchess. “Why, a personal maid looks after your clothes and your jewels, Your Grace, and does your hair, and helps you dress...”
“I see.” Tracy looked thoughtful. “Do all ladies—duchesses and countesses and so forth—have personal maids?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Emma had been in service for several years and she was certain of that.
“I’ll tell you what, Emma, would you like to be my personal maid?” As the girl stared at her, stunned, Tracy went on, “You don’t have to if you’d rather not, of course. You may very well prefer your present position.”
To be a lady’s maid was just about the summit of any girl-in-service’s ambition, so Emma hastened to reply, “It’s not that I don’t want the position, Your Grace. In fact, I’d love it,” she added in a candid rush. “It is just that I’ve no training for it. I wouldn’t suit you, I’m sure.”
“I think you’ll suit me just fine,” Tracy said decidedly. “To be honest, you probably won’t have a whole lot to do. You can look after my clothes, I guess, and help me with buttons and so forth.” Tracy wrinkled her nose. “You don’t seem to be a fussy sort of person. I can’t stand people fussing over me.”
“I will remember that, Your Grace. Thank you, Your Grace. Your yellow dress is hanging in the wardrobe in the dressing room, Your Grace. Shall I get it for you?”
“Yes, please. And then you can go see about breakfast.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Emma, and Tracy made a comical face behind the girl’s back as she went into the alcove off the bedroom that was designated the dressing room.
When the Duke arrived back at the house, he was informed by Robert that breakfast was being served upstairs in the family sitting room and that the Duchess was waiting for him. The Duke washed up and entered the sitting room to find his wife looking like a ray of sunshine in a lemon-yellow morning dress, sipping coffee and looking at the paper. She looked up as the door opened and gave him a flash of very white teeth. “Good morning, Your Grace. How are you, Your Grace? I hope Your Grace enjoyed your ride. What would Your Grace like for breakfast? I told the help We Graces would like to breakfast in the sitting room. Isn’t it lovely and sunny? Your Grace.”
The Duke laughed and, sitting down opposite her, said, “What was that all about? Your Grace.”
Tracy’s eyes were brilliant with mirth. “Adrian, the girl who came to help me dress this morning called me Your Grace at least twenty times—in five minutes! I couldn’t believe it.”
He accepted a cup of coffee from her and helped himself to grilled kidneys and bacon. “You will have to get used to it, I fear. It is a term of address you will hear with some regularity from now on.”
Tracy snorted. It was not a genteel, ladylike sound and her husband put down his cup and stared at her. “What was that?” he asked.
“That was a snort,” she said sweetly. “A good, solid, healthy American snort. It manages to convey disbelief, derision and amusement all at the same time.”
His eyes narrowed a little. “Does it, indeed?”
“Yes. Oh, and I understand from Emma—she is the girl I was telling you about—that I shall be expected to have a personal maid.”
“Most certainly you should have your own maid.”
“Well, I expect Emma can do the job for me. I’ve no idea what I ought to pay her, though.”
He looked thoughtful. “I can’t tell you, I’m afraid. I know what I pay my valet, but the two may not be comparable. I suggest you ask Aunt Georgina when we return to London.”
She nodded. “Good idea. Oh, they sent the papers up with breakfast. Do you want the Post?”
“Yes, please.” He took the paper from her and silence descended as they made their way through the coffee and a plate of buttered muffins.
“What would you like to do today?” he asked finally, folding his paper and smiling at her across the table.
“I would love to see some of the countryside,” she replied promptly. “It looks such a lovely day.”
“It is. I had the phaeton brought down. Shall we take that?”
“Oh, yes. I don’t want to be cooped up inside a carriage on a day like this.” She gave him a slanting look from under lowered lids. “Did your brother tell you my disgraceful secret?”
He frowned a little and then as her meaning struck him, he looked amused. “Do you mean the fact that you don’t ride?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t let it worry you,” he said easily. “It’s not important.”
She remembered the vision she had had of him that morning. “I should like to learn,” she said tentatively. “I’m not afraid, you know. I just never had the opportunity.”
Her husband grinned. “So Harry told me. He also said you informed him you could sail anything that floats.”
“Well . . .” Her wide mouth quirked up a little at the corners. “Maybe not anything .. .”
He laughed.
They had a lovely day together. It could have been extremely awkward; they were two people who hardly knew each other and they were thrown almost entirely into each other’s company with little distraction in the form of other people. But it was not awkward at all.
First they took a long and leisurely drive about the estate and the neighborhood. Tracy was interested in everything and noticed everything. Most of all, she noticed people. “What a marvelous-looking old man,” she said at one point, as they drove past a man working in a field. The man had turned toward the road when he heard the horses and had taken off his hat in respect as they went by. The Duke had nodded at him graciously and Tracy had smiled, but only one of them had really seen him.
They had passed a group of children playing in the front yard of a cottage, and Tracy had given them a friendly wave. “Did you notice that dark-eyed little boy?” she asked the Duke. “What a beautiful child!”
He had noticed the children in the mass. but not as individuals. He looked at his wife with interest. It seemed remarkable to him that she should be so observant.
In the afternoon the Duke took out a gun and Tracy settled down to read in the garden. He was surprised, and pleased, by her independence. He had not expected to be able to get off by himself.
“I would just love to sit in the sunshine and read,”
she had said, half apologetically. “Unless, of course, there is something you want me to do?”
He had replied that she must do whatever she wished to do and that he would be very happy to go out with a gun for a few hours. She was still reading when he returned and, instead of going directly into the house, he detoured to the garden. She was so absorbed she did not hear him coming and it wasn’t until he spoke her name that she looked up.
“Oh, Adrian!” She looked at his shooting jacket, gun and the leather pouch he carried. “Are you back so soon?”
“It’s after five o’clock,” he said.
“Is it? Good heavens, I had no idea it was so late. I have been reading a new novel called Persuasion by Miss Austen,” she explained. “It’s marvelous.”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything by Miss Austen,” he said.
“She is a genius,” Tracy said enthusiastically. “And hilariously funny as well, although this book is rather different from her previous novels.”
“Do you read a great deal, Tracy?”
“Constantly. I brought six books with me to Thorn Manor.”
He threw back his head and shouted with laughter. When he had got his breath back, he said, “Promise me solemnly, ma mie, that you won’t reveal that fact to a soul. Think of my reputation! My wife found it necessary to bring six books on her honeymoon. I should never live it down.”
Tracy had been regarding his mirth with good-humored bewilderment, but now her own rich laugh rippled out. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She gave him an impish look. “It will be our secret.”
“Thank you, darling,” he said fervently. “Do you think you could tear yourself away from your book for long enough to have dinner?”
“Certainly,” she replied and, rising, accompanied him to the house, chatting companionably all the while.
Chapter 10
Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit.
—Shakespeare
Alphonse, the Duke’s chef who had been sent up from the Castle, outdid himself at dinner. Tracy, who was a very good cook herself, was deeply impressed. The food she had had on her visit to Steyning Castle and the last evening’s meal as well had been superlative, but on those occasions her mind had been too distracted to allow her to truly appreciate it.
“Is Alphonse French?” she asked the Duke, reverently regarding a morsel of squab before she put it into her mouth.
“Yes. I brought him from Paris with me when I came home last winter. I had to bribe him shamelessly, but he was worth it.”
“He certainly was,” said Tracy, mentally planning to see if she could extract some of the chef’s secrets from him.
After dinner they went into the library and the Duke proposed a game of chess. Tracy looked at him measuringly. “Only if you give me a handicap,” she said at last.
He looked disappointed. “I did not know you were so poor spirited.”
“I don’t mind losing, but I hate to lose badly,” Tracy said frankly. “You may be the image of a British gentleman, but I’ll bet you’re a killer. Give me a queen and a rook.”
“A queen and a rook!”
“Tsk, tsk, Adrian. I didn’t know you were so poor spirited.”
“I hate to lose, period,” he said ruefully and Tracy smiled triumphantly.
“I knew it.”
He looked at her, dark blue eyes narrowed. “All right. A queen and a rook.”
Silence descended as they bent over the chessboard. Tracy was quite a good player, but the Duke excelled. Without the handicap she would not have had a chance. As it was, the game was very nearly even as they came down toward the end with the edge going to Tracy as she had both her knights and he had only one. She had lost her queen a few moves before.
She stared at the board intently. “I should win this,” she muttered. “I’m ahead.” She moved a knight and next move lost her rook. It didn’t take the Duke long to checkmate her. “Damn,” said Tracy disgustedly.
“Shame on you, ma mie,” he said. “You should have put up a better end game than that.”
“I know. I never play a decent end game. I do fine until I have to finish it off. I just can’t seem to figure out how to go about it. I dither.”
He was smiling at her. “You don’t have the killer instinct.” His voice was softly amused.
“I guess not.”
He reached out and covered her hand with his. “I shouldn’t at all like a wife who had the killer instinct.” Her eyelids dropped a little in a kind of acknowledgment.
The tea tray came in and, after, the Duke said, “You go along to bed, Tracy. I am going to read for a bit. I’ll see you in the morning.” Her eyebrows raised a little in surprise and he said levelly, “I am going to be very noble tonight. I don’t want to hurt you again. Let’s give it another day.”
“Oh.” She looked at him for a moment, her eyes serious, then she smiled. “So noble a noble,” she said mockingly, blew him a kiss, turned her beautiful back and left.
The following day they went fishing. There was a small but secluded lake on the Thorn Manor estate, and the Duke had told her that it was well stocked with fish. To Tracy’s mind, nothing equaled saltwater fishing, but the lake had looked inviting and freshwater fishing was better than no fishing at all. They left the house in the afternoon, and it was warm and sunny when they arrived at the smooth, clear expanse of water that was Thorn Lake.
Tracy was dressed in a blue cotton shirt-dress and thin blue leather slippers. She took her fishing rod from the Duke, put it down on the grass and proceeded to roll up the sleeves of her dress. She then took her shoes off. “Ah, the grass feels wonderful,” she said, and he noticed that her feet were bare. She baited her hook with professional detachment and looked at him expectantly.
His blue eyes glinted at her. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll move off onto the rocks over there.”
She nodded and expertly cast her line into the water. He did not move immediately but stood regarding her. He was, as his aunt had often remarked, a very fastidious man, and the sight of his wife barefoot and dressed in a plain cotton dress with the sleeves rolled up ought not to have appealed to him. But it did.
For one thing, Tracy didn’t look even remotely disheveled. She could have spent hours rolling her sleeves in just that way, arranging her collar in just that fashion, so perfect did they look on her. She had a way with clothes, he reflected, that was more French than English. Whatever she wore, it looked marvelous. It was the way she wore it—as if, under the circumstances, it was impossible for anyone to wear anything else. She began to pull in her line and he moved over to the rocks he had pointed out and began to fish himself.
They had quite a successful afternoon, and the Duke’s bucket was respectably full when he decided to call a halt. Tracy had stopped fishing about fifteen minutes before and was lying back on the grass, sleepy from the sun, her eyes closed, her hands behind her head. He put the fishing gear into the phaeton and sat down beside her. Her lashes, a darker brown than her hair, lay on her cheeks. Her skin was honey colored, not the white-white of an Englishwoman’s. Damp brown-blonde curls clustered at her temples. There was a faint beading of moisture on her upper lip. The outline of her breasts against the thin cotton of her dress was beautiful.
She felt him looking at her and the knowledge of his gaze awoke a memory of the feelings he had stirred in her the other night. She felt his finger on the inside of her bare arm, gently rubbing. “Are you awake?” he said and she opened her eyes.
All during the drive home, and all during dinner, she felt as if she were waiting. They took a walk together in the garden after dinner and watched the light die away from the sky. Then he sent her upstairs. She put on a thin silk nightdress and told Emma she would not need her any more that night. Her husband, coming into her room, found her in bed this time. When his lips came down on hers and his beautiful, narrow hand touched her breast, she knew that this was what s
he had been waiting for. “Adrian,” she whispered in wonder, “Adrian.”
He didn’t go back to his own bed that night, or any other night of their stay at Thorn Manor. In loving Tracy he had discovered a heady combination of tenderness and eroticism that he had never known before. Her innocence, her total trust, called forth from him feelings of protectiveness and care. He wanted to cherish her. But, at the same time, he felt he could not get enough of her, of her beautiful body, which she put totally at the service of his desire, of the small cries of astonished pleasure she gave when he thrust deep within her, of the feeling he had of absolute possession.
This was his wife. There was a feeling of permanency about his lovemaking with her that he had never felt before. He thought not only of the present, but of the future. He thought of filling her with children—sons who would have her brightness and who would bear his name and carry on his line. Six centuries worth of dynastic and possessive instincts had been bred into the Duke; in his relationship with his wife, all of those instincts had come strongly into play.
Tracy felt herself plunged into a world she hadn’t known existed. She was bound to her husband by an intimacy of intense passion that left her with awareness of little else. She felt totally, absorbingly, married. Adrian’s least movement, his smallest glance, engrossed her. She was like wax in his hands. He could do what he would with her. For five magic days, the outside world, as far as she was concerned, ceased to exist.
Of course, they did continue to go places and do things. They went back to the lake several times and one day Tracy brought large towels and they swam. Tracy had learned to swim almost as soon as she had learned to walk. She was as at home in the water as the Duke was on a horse. He watched her sliding strongly and cleanly through the clear lake water with an athlete’s appreciation of a physical feat performed with exceptional skill and grace. The Duke could swim, but he did not swim like his wife. She went straight across the lake and back and when she reached his side again she was only slightly out of breath.