The Duchess

by Jude Deveraux

  Assuming the stables were at the back of the house, she started walking. Ten minutes later she was still walking as she tried to find the end of the house. Even with the gloves, she was rubbing her hands together for warmth, and she was concerned about frostbite of her frozen toes. When at last she came to the edge of the house, she took a left and kept walking. Altogether it took nearly thirty minutes to reach the stables. “I should have looked for a bathroom,” she muttered as she reached the stables.

  It was barely growing light now and she could see a lantern lit inside the stables; she could hear voices.

  A young man coming out of the stables nearly ran into her before he saw her, and when he did see her, he looked as though he’d seen a ghost. With her old-fashioned clothes, Claire imagined that she did look a bit like a ghost.

  “Hello,” she said to the young man. “May I have a horse? I’d like to go riding.”

  The man didn’t speak but nodded his head and started back toward the stables. A moment later an older man came out and asked her questions about whether she wanted a man’s saddle or a sidesaddle and if she could ride or not.

  “I can ride whatever you have,” Claire said with confidence.

  She stood on the cobblestones of the stableyard and waited while the horse was being saddled. One by one all the men who worked in the stables came out to stare at her with undampened curiosity, and Claire began to feel as though she were a circus performer come to town. Twice she turned and gave the men weak smiles, then turned away again.

  At last the horse was brought to her and the older man gave her a leg up. He watched her critically until he saw her firmly seated, then stepped back.

  “There’s a path to the east,” he said, and Claire nodded her thanks to him. As she started off she turned back and waved to all the men standing and watching her. They smiled back and some of them waved in return.

  Once off the cobblestones, she urged the horse into a faster pace. She didn’t dare break into a gallop, for she didn’t know the path and was concerned with sharp turns and tree branches. Once in the trees, she dismounted and made use of the bushes, then she stood on a tree stump to remount.

  Gradually the sun rose and she could see ahead of her. She broke through the trees and came to a long, open track, actually a carriage road, and she could see that there were no dangers ahead.

  “Come on, boy,” she said to the big gelding. “Let’s get warm.” She applied her heels to the animal and it leaped forward, apparently as glad as she to be moving.

  Claire put her head down and urged the animal forward into a run that could have won a race. She was feeling wonderful, more free than she’d felt since crossing the ocean, when everything happened at once. From out of the trees to her right, just as she was cresting the little hill, stepped a man. He was walking very quickly and for some reason didn’t seem to have heard a horse pounding across the hard-packed earth.

  Horse, man and, most of all, woman were startled.

  The horse reared and Claire went flying over the top of its head, landing hard on her left arm. The horse went left, toward what looked to be a marshy pond. The man, after putting his arm up to protect himself from flying hooves, started toward the woman.

  “Not me,” Claire managed to gasp out as she tried to sit up. “Catch the horse before it falls in that swamp.”

  The man just stood there for a moment, as though he didn’t understand the language she spoke.

  “Go on,” Claire said, waving him toward the horse. She was cradling her left arm as she tried to sit upright. Rubbing her arm, she watched the man drop the stick he was carrying and begin to run after the horse.

  Run in a fashion, she thought as she watched him. The man limped, barely able to move his right leg, and there was a way he held his shoulders that made her think every step he took was painful. She felt a wave of guilt for having sent an old, crippled man after her horse, but then pain shot through her arm and she hugged it to her chest.

  She watched as the man caught the reins of the horse and managed to calm it. Painfully, Claire got up, her arm held close to her body, to await the arrival of the man with her horse. She walked toward the field to meet him.

  When she got close enough to be able to see him she realized with a start that he was ill. He was looking at the horse and she couldn’t see his eyes, but only great illness could cause a person to look as he did: his skin was an unpleasant-looking greenish yellow.

  “I am so sorry,” she began. “Had I known you were—” She broke off. What could she say? Had she known he was at death’s door she would not have ordered him to chase her horse?

  The man opened his mouth to speak, but then his face lost its odd color and turned paper white. His eyes rolled back into his head and his knees began to bend.

  With horror, Claire realized the man was about to faint. “Sir!” she gasped, but he just kept sinking toward the ground.

  She quickly ran forward, putting her right arm out to catch him, but he fell forward onto her. She staggered backward under the weight of him, her left arm, which hurt so much, held out to the side. She spread her feet wide apart, trying to brace herself against his weight. She looked about for help, but all she saw was the horse calmly munching grass.

  “Now what do I do?” she asked herself aloud. The man was a dead weight against her, his arms hanging down to the sides of her, his face pressed into her shoulder.

  With great difficulty, and very slowly, she managed to lower herself to the ground, going first on one knee, then on the other. She tried to talk to the man, even tried smacking him on one cheek, but when she felt how thin his cheek was, just skin over bone, she didn’t tap him again.

  For all that there didn’t seem to be much meat on him, he was a large man, broad shouldered and tall, so she couldn’t lower him with her good arm. At last she managed to extend one leg and then the other. She was now sitting with him lying prone on her, his head on her breast, his body between her legs. She offered a silent prayer that no one would come along and see her like this, then used all of her one-armed strength to roll him off of her and onto his back.

  When at last he was lying beside her, Claire found she was panting from the exertion. “Sir,” she called to him a few times, but he didn’t move. She put her hand to his neck to feel his pulse, praying that she hadn’t killed him. He was alive and in fact he seemed to have gone from a faint to being soundly asleep.

  Claire, sitting beside him, gave a sigh. Now what did she do? She didn’t dare go off and leave him there alone. For all she knew wolves still roamed the Scottish woodlands. As she glanced at the man she saw he was beginning to shiver.

  With another sigh, she removed her ancient wool jacket, being careful not to hurt her arm. After she put the jacket over him, she gently smoothed his sweat-dampened hair from off his forehead.

  She looked at him then and saw that he was an older man, probably in his late fifties or early sixties, and from his color, he didn’t look to have much longer to live. There were two old scars on his cheeks, one on each side, long, dreadful-looking scars, and she wondered what horrid thing had happened to him to cause such scars. She traced the scars with her fingertips.

  Despite his age, his hair was thick and dark and a heavy dark mustache almost covered his upper lip. She noticed his lips were still full.

  “You must have been quite handsome in your day,” she whispered to him, again smoothing his hair from his face. She looked down at the rest of him. He was quite tall, probably taller than Harry, but not built as Harry was. This man didn’t have Harry’s thick muscle; he wasn’t compact as Harry was, but more drawn out, tapering down to slim hips from wide shoulders.

  As Claire looked down the length of him, she had to smile, for the man was dressed as oddly as she was. He wore an old shirt, a shirt that was much, much too thin for this cold morning, and she could see that he wore nothing beneath it, for the dreadful color of his skin showed through the thin fabric. His legs were encased in dirty, greas
y, worn buckskin trousers that were torn in a few places. They were the type of buckskin trousers a Regency gentleman might have worn to his club. Oddly enough he had on a pair of the most beautiful boots Claire had ever seen. She always recognized quality in clothing when she saw it, and these boots were indeed the best.

  Perhaps he was a gentleman fallen on hard times, she thought. He shivered again, but then so did she. She looked up and saw that the sky was covered with gray clouds. It was then she realized that a mist of rain was falling. It wasn’t real rain, not rain as she knew it in America, rain that announced itself with thunder and lightning, but a soft, cold rain that was more like a very wet fog. She rubbed the upper part of her injured left arm to try to warm herself, but it was no use. All she could do now was wait for the man to wake up and hope they didn’t both die of pneumonia. Feeling rather protective of him, wanting to make sure he was going to be all right, she moved around him, leaned back against a tree and watched the misty rain coming down. Perhaps if she thought about crackling fires and…and the house her family sometimes rented in Florida, she would get warm.

  Trevelyan opened his eyes slowly and blinked away the mist that covered his lashes. He lay still for a moment while he remembered the events that had led up to his lying on the cold, wet ground. He remembered coming out of the woods, nearly colliding with a rearing horse, then seeing a girl flying through the air. He had started toward her, but then, in an autocratic way, and in a flat accent that could only be American, she had issued an order to him as though he were one of the stable boys.

  It had been easy to catch the horse, as the creature associated people with food and shelter, but, even so, the activity had been too much for him. Just as he reached the girl and opened his mouth to tell her what he thought of her, he felt his knees give way under him and there was nothing but blackness before his eyes.

  Now he woke to find himself on the ground, and on his chest was a garment that looked as though it belonged to a child. The sound of a sneeze to his left made him turn his head.

  Leaning against a tree, shivering from the cold and looking thoroughly wretched, was the girl. As he lay there, blinking against the eternal Scottish rain, watching her sneeze three times in succession, he studied her face. He was sure he’d never seen such wide-eyed innocence in a human being before. She’s barely more than a child, he thought. She rubbed her nose with her hand, then turned to look at him.

  She was pretty, but he’d seen prettier women—if you could call her a woman. He would have guessed her age to be about fourteen had it not been for a rather splendidly developed bosom that the combination of the rain and the thin blouse was showing off to its advantage.

  “You’re awake,” she said, and looked at his intense, dark eyes. And when Claire looked into those eyes, she thought she might have to revise her first impression that he was a harmless old man. She had never seen eyes like his: dark, compelling, yet frightening at the same time. His eyes showed intelligence, complexity, and knowledge. He was looking at her so intently, with such unblinking fervor, she felt as though he were reading her mind. She frowned and looked away.

  As for Trevelyan, he thought she had the most guileless, innocent eyes he had ever seen.

  He started to raise himself on his elbows. At his movement, she was instantly at his side, leaning over to assist him. At one point that fine bosom of hers was pressed against his cheek. When she had helped him to her satisfaction she leaned back, and he smiled at her.

  Again, Claire frowned at him. There was something about the way he looked at her that she didn’t like. He had looked at her…her mid-chest with a Machiavellian smile that made her want to smack him. He is capable of all manner of bad deeds, she thought. He is as completely unlike Harry as one human can be from another. This man’s dark, dangerous eyes weren’t like Harry’s innocent blue ones.

  She straightened her shoulders. She was not going to let the man frighten her.

  “Whatever is a man like you doing out in weather like this?” she asked, sounding like a schoolteacher scolding one of her pupils. “You should be home in bed. Don’t you have people to take care of you? A wife? Daughters?”

  He blinked away the water accumulating on his face. “I was taking a walk,” he said, frowning. “And what do you mean, a man like me?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, it’s just that it’s cold and wet and from the look of you, you’re none too healthy. Will you be all right while I fetch help?”

  “Help for what?”

  “Why, for you, of course. Perhaps the men can bring a stretcher and they can carry—”

  At that Trevelyan got off the ground as quickly as possible—and he would have died before he let her see that he was dizzy from the quick motion. “I can assure you, miss, that I am capable of walking on my own and I don’t need a stretcher.” To Trevelyan’s absolute disgust, in spite of his firmest self-control, he felt himself sway on his feet, but then, to his delight, the girl slipped her right arm about his waist and moved his arm about her shoulders.

  “I can see that you need no help at all,” she said sarcastically. She felt much better when she wasn’t looking at his face. At least she had succeeded in wiping that smug look off his face, that look that seemed to insinuate that he knew every thought she had before she had it.

  He leaned against her. She barely came to his shoulder, but he thought her to be the perfect height. Of course had she been six feet tall or four and a half feet he realized he probably would have still found her to be perfect. “Perhaps I do need a bit of help,” he said, trying both to sound weak and to keep his amusement out of his voice.

  “Let me get my horse so you can ride back to your home.”

  “And what will you do if I ride?”

  “Walk,” she said, then, under her breath, added, “Maybe it will get me warm.”

  Trevelyan smiled down at the top of her head. “Horses terrify me. Vertigo, you know. Perhaps you could walk with me. Just for a while, until I’m feeling a bit stronger.”

  Claire tried to hide her grimace. She had no desire to spend her morning playing nursemaid to this man. She knew she should have sympathy for him, after all, he was obviously ill and he had fainted, but she had no sympathy for him. She found him unsettling, annoying. He made her feel angry and she didn’t know why. Maybe it wasn’t the man. Maybe it was that she was wet and cold and hungry. By now, surely, the household would be stirring and there would be food, nice, hot food, and she could find her own clothes and—

  Trevelyan saw her expression. “You do not have to go with me,” he said, pulling away and bending to pick up her damp jacket from the ground. “Please allow me to assist you to your horse. I’ll be fine on my own.”

  She looked up at him, but not as far as his eyes. She avoided his eyes. She looked at the scars on his cheeks and at the color of his skin and knew she had to help him. As she slipped her arms into the cold jacket, she was tempted to leave him there, but her conscience wouldn’t allow her to leave a man who was as sick as he was. If he had another fainting spell and lay in the rain and caught some terminal infection, it would be her fault.

  “No,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll help you get to shelter.”

  Again she slipped her right arm about his waist and again he leaned heavily on her, making sure that he limped now and then to show her he did indeed need her help. They started walking down the path, the horse docilely following them.

  “Who are you?” Trevelyan asked.

  “Claire Willoughby,” she snapped, then cursed herself for being so ridiculous, but the man’s touching her bothered her. He made her feel strange: angry and restless in a way that she didn’t like.

  “And what, Claire Willoughby, were you doing out before it is full dawn, riding a horse at a neck-breaking speed and wearing clothes that don’t fit you? Have you escaped your governess?”

  Claire was too wet, too cold, too hungry, and in much too much pain from her arm to be polite. And, too, the man was making her
more uncomfortable by the minute. “I would like to know why a man of your age and obvious ill health is allowed to roam these woods unattended. Have you escaped your nurse?”

  Trevelyan blinked a few times at her words. He was used to women finding him physically attractive and he didn’t like that this pretty young thing didn’t. He decided to try again. “I take it you’re staying at Bramley. Why?”

  “Could you put a little less weight on me?”

  “Yes, of course.” He straightened a bit and for a moment didn’t lean on her quite so much, but within seconds he was again pressed against her as they slowly walked down the path. Trevelyan was so much enjoying the feel of her that he thought he might lead her the long way about, taking her through the Wild Wood. There was an old gardener’s cottage at the far end of the wood, and it was at least five miles away.

  “Are you going to answer me?” he asked.

  Claire, for all that he seemed to think she was fresh out of the schoolroom, realized he was enjoying leaning on her. Horrid old man, she thought, and wished with all her might that she had left him back there in the rain while he was lying on the ground asleep. Right now her objective in life was to get away from this man. “Perhaps you should tell me who you are. Is your house very far away?”

  “Not far.” He moved his cheek down to the top of her head. She’d had on a little hat when he first saw her, but it was gone and now there was only her dark, damp hair.

  “Do you mind?” she snapped, then winced when pain shot up her arm.

  “You’re injured,” he said in a firm voice that was different from the helpless tone he’d been using.

  “No, I’m not. I merely bruised my arm. What I am is hungry and wet and cold, so I’d very much like to get back to the house.”

  “You’ll be even colder once you’re inside.”

  “I thought so,” she murmured.

  “You thought what?”

  “That you would know about the house. You’ve lived there, haven’t you? Do you know the duke?”