The Duchess

by Jude Deveraux

  He took a moment before answering. “I know the duke rather well.”

  She smiled at the mere thought of Harry. “We’re to be married,” she said softly.

  Trevelyan was quiet for a moment. “Ah, little Harry. Has he grown up then? The last time I saw him he was just a boy.”

  “He has grown into a splendid man,” she said, then cleared her throat in embarrassment. “I mean he’s…he’s…”

  “I understand. True love.”

  The way the man said it, with so much cynicism in his voice, made Claire stiffen. “You don’t have to make fun of something you know nothing about.”

  “But I know everything about true love. I have been in love hundreds of times.”

  She gritted her teeth, all the while knowing that she had no reason to be so angry at the man. “A person experiences true love only once in a lifetime. If she is lucky. I don’t think most people find it at all. If you have been in love hundreds of times, then I don’t believe you’ve ever been in love, not really, truly in love.”

  “As you are in love with young Harry?” He could not keep the amusement out of his voice, and when he felt her stiffen he almost laughed out loud. “How very young you are.”

  “And how very old you are,” she snapped.

  That made Trevelyan stop laughing. Perhaps he was old. Perhaps all that he had seen and done and heard in his life had made him old before his time. “I beg your pardon, Miss Willoughby,” he said. “I am Trevelyan.”

  She didn’t feel like forgiving him. He was a cynical old man and she wished she’d not had the misfortune to run into him. “Trevelyan what?”

  For some reason that seemed to make him think. “Just Trevelyan, that’s all. Nothing else.” He knew he’d hurt her feelings so he tried to tease her. “I was born before people were given two names.”

  She didn’t laugh at his joke. “Are you related to the duke’s family?”

  “Perhaps I’m the second gardener. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re probably Harry’s uncle or maybe his cousin. Whoever you are, you are not anyone’s servant.”

  That pleased him more than he was willing to let her know. “And what makes you think I’m not a servant?” He was hoping to hear her say that in spite of the fact that he was recovering from a serious illness, there was a bearing about him that was almost regal.

  “Your boots. No working man would have boots of that quality.” Under no circumstances was she going to tell him that he was not anyone’s idea of a servant. If he looked at a prospective employer with his dark, questioning eyes, he’d never be hired. Or maybe he would, Claire thought, but he wouldn’t be hired to do a servant’s work.

  “Oh,” he said, disappointed with her answer.

  They walked in silence for a while, neither of them speaking, Claire wanting only to get away from him. She didn’t like him so near her. “I’ve been away for some time. Perhaps you could tell me the news of my…relatives.” His tongue fairly tripped over the word.

  Claire was silent, struggling along the damp path, supporting him and her painful arm.

  “Do you know much of the duke’s family? Or are you marrying into the unknown?”

  “I know rather a lot, actually,” she said, implying that Harry had told her. She wasn’t going to tell this man that in between being fitted for dresses and dancing with Harry, she had spent a great deal of time researching the history of her future husband’s family.

  “I believe there have been some recent deaths,” he said.

  “Harry’s father and the eldest son died less than a year ago in a boating accident. When Harry’s father and oldest brother died that made Harry’s other brother, the second son, the duke. Up until then he had been the earl of…” She paused as she thought, then looked up at him. “The earl of Trevelyan.”

  He glanced down at her widened eyes. “There’s no need to look at me like that. Trevelyan is a common enough name in England and I can assure you I’m no earl.”

  “Mmmmm,” she said thoughtfully. “True enough, I guess. Harry’s brother would have been younger than you.” She paused. “The second son was killed but two months ago.”

  “Killed? Surely you mean he died.”

  Again there was that infuriating amusement in his voice, as though he thought her stupendously stupid. “I don’t think you should make jokes. Why don’t you know of a man who is in your family?”

  “The family and I have never been close. Tell me about this son who was killed. I sense something in your voice, something I don’t understand.”

  She was amazed at his perception. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. She shouldn’t tell him what she knew, but then she so wanted to tell someone. She had tried once to talk to Harry about his brother, but Harry had not wanted to discuss the subject. She could understand that, could understand his grief at losing three family members in close succession. Twice she’d tried to talk to her father, but he hadn’t wanted to hear either.

  Trevelyan nudged her with his shoulder. “Out with it. Tell me what you’ve heard. All lies, I’ll wager.”

  “They are not lies,” she said emphatically. “I have my information from the best of sources and I plan to do something about it.”

  “Do something about what, and who told you these lies?”

  His hand was slowly moving down her shoulder until it was just at the top of her breast. She pushed it away and gave him a hard look but he ignored her, just kept that little smirk on his face. Curse him, she thought. She didn’t want to say a word to him; she wanted to get away from him and that’s all, but there was something about him that made her want to talk. And besides that, there was her need to talk to someone, somewhere, about what she thought about. Not since she’d left America had she had anyone who could understand what she read. She had met no one in England who was interested in anything besides the latest party.

  “The Prince of Wales told me,” she said, and smiled when the smirk vanished.

  “The Prince of Wales told you what?”

  “Have you ever heard of the explorer Captain Frank Baker?” She had his attention now. He stopped walking and stared at her. It was heady to have someone listen to her with such intensity, with such depth of feeling. It made her feel as though she were more than her money and her pretty face and what she wore to a party.

  “I’ve heard of him,” Trevelyan said softly. “But what does an innocent creature like you know of someone like him?”

  “How you do presume to know about me,” she said with more smugness than she thought possible. It felt wonderful to have wiped that smirk off his face. “For your information I have read every word Captain Baker has written about his travels and what he’s seen all over the world.”

  She had more than wiped the smirk off Trevelyan’s face. He gaped at her. He was truly and genuinely shocked at her announcement.

  “All of his writing?”

  “All of it,” she said, feeling very pleased with herself.

  He didn’t speak for a while as they started walking again. “Except for the chapters written in Latin,” he said at last. “Not the chapters on…”

  “On the sexual habits of the people in other countries? The chapters written in Latin? I’ve read those, too. When I was sixteen—”

  “A great long time ago,” he said sarcastically.

  She acted as though he hadn’t spoken. “I told my mother I could not consider myself educated unless I had an in-depth knowledge of Latin, so she hired an old man to be my tutor. Thankfully, he believed that all knowledge was good, so he helped me translate Captain Baker’s Latin chapters. There are some very unusual words in those chapters.”

  “Unusual, yes,” he said thoughtfully, then recovered himself. “And what does the Prince of Wales have to do with all of this?”

  “The prince told me it was believed that Harry’s brother, the second one, the one who was killed, might have been Captain Baker. Of course it’s not known for sure, because Cap
tain Baker went to great lengths to keep his identity a secret.”

  “But I heard his desire for secrecy was because he was wanted for criminal acts, that he would have been hanged if his real identity were known.”

  “I don’t believe that,” she said fiercely, turning on him, moving so quickly out from under his arm that he almost fell. “I don’t believe that for a second! You couldn’t have read a word of his work if you could even repeat that dreadful rumor. It was created and spread by men who weren’t half the man he was. He was a great man.” This Trevelyan quite simply infuriated her. Perhaps her anger was irrational, but it was there just the same. At the moment she was sure that if he dropped dead in front of her, she’d put her foot on his chest, throw back her head, and laugh in triumph.

  “Was he, now?”

  “You can stop laughing at me,” she hissed. “It’s ignorant fools like you who make fun of what you know nothing about. Captain Baker was—” She broke off, for she didn’t like the way he was smiling at her, as though he knew everything and she could never possibly know anything. “Oh, come on,” she said, not bothering to disguise the disgust in her voice. “I’ll take you back to wherever you’re staying.”

  Trevelyan put his arm back around her shoulders and they started walking. “What do you mean, you plan to do something about this information?”

  “After Harry and I are married, I plan to write Captain Baker’s biography.” To Claire’s disgust, this seemed to amuse the man a great deal.

  “Do you, now? And have you told Harry about this?”

  “Yes.” She had no intention of telling him any more than that simple yes. It was one thing to tell a stranger of her intention to write a biography of a great man, but quite another to tell him of what went on between her and the man she loved.

  “I see. You do not plan to speak more of what goes on between you and young Harry. The privacy of lovers and all that, is that it?” He smiled when she refused to answer him. “All right then, tell me of this Captain Baker. What has he done to make you think so highly of him?”

  “He is—was—an explorer. No, he was more than that. He was an observer. He went where no literate men have gone before and he looked and he saw and he wrote of what he saw. He was fearless in his travels. He was a man hungry for knowledge of all the peoples of the earth. He was good and kind and loyal to his friends. When he died, the world lost a great man.” Her voice changed, betraying her bitterness. “While he was alive, he was ignored by the world. Ignored and unappreciated. I plan to change that. After I’m married to Harry I plan to write a book about Captain Baker that will let the world see what a great man it has lost.” She paused and calmed herself. “I believe that most of the captain’s private papers are at Bramley.”

  Trevelyan was quiet for a while. “You’re planning to marry the young duke in order to gain access to these papers?”

  Claire laughed. “Do I seem so callous? I’m marrying Harry because I love him. I was already considering marriage to Harry when I learned that his brother was—”

  “Might be,” he corrected her.

  “Yes, might have been Captain Baker. To write of him is a plan I have formed since accepting Harry’s proposal.”

  “And when shall you do this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He smiled at her. “How do you plan to discharge all of your duties as duchess and still find time to write this book? Surely it will take a great deal of research?”

  She laughed. “That it will. The man never stopped writing. I’ve read a dozen or so volumes of his and Harry says there are boxes full of his journals and letters moldering away in trunks in the house. Besides writing all those books and hundreds of letters to the people who may or may not have been his family, Captain Baker also wrote to his many, many friends all over the world. At one time he was blind and he still managed to write. He fastened two parallel wires down the side of a board, affixed the paper to the board, then put another wire across the paper and used it as a guide for his hand. Nothing stopped him from writing.”

  With each word she spoke Trevelyan stiffened. “I thought you revered the man. I thought you said he was a great man.”

  “He was.”

  “Yet you complain that he wrote too much.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You said that he wrote to everyone, thereby making his letters common. Some biographer you will be if you have such disdain for him.”

  “Disdain? Common? Are you trying to put words in my mouth? I think the man was magnificent, but I’m a realist about him. I know his strengths as well as his weaknesses.”

  “And how do you know that? Did you ever meet him?”

  “No, of course not, but…” She searched for the right words to explain herself. “When you read a book that you love, a book that is close to you, you feel you know the person who wrote it. The writer becomes your friend.”

  “And you feel you know this man in a personal way?” he asked stiffly.

  She was glad of his anger, glad she was getting to him. Men like him hated the idea of a woman doing anything except gracing a drawing room. “Yes I do. He was a man of great humor, of great physical strength, of great—” She stopped.

  “Yes, go on. Tell me about this man who is beyond reproach yet who bored his audience with his volumes of writing.” When he spoke, there was anger in his voice.

  “You have such an ability to twist what I say,” she said, pleased at having caused his anger. “He was a man of great personal attraction.”

  “Ah. Attraction to whom? Paper-eating insects?”

  “To women,” she said quickly, then could feel her face turning red.

  “I guess he attracted them by drowning them in written words.”

  She grimaced. “No, he knew things. Things about women.”

  “Such as?”

  She didn’t say a word.

  He recovered his composure and he was once again the smirking man she had met. “I can see you’re going to be the perfect biographer for a man like Baker. You’ll write lovely, sweet, flowery passages to describe what he wrote about the women of foreign lands. Or do you plan to ignore that part of his life altogether and write only about the parts of him that make for acceptable drawing room conversation?”

  “I plan to write about all of him, but I don’t intend to give you, a man I don’t know, vicarious pleasure by telling you the details of Captain Baker’s love life.” She stopped and pulled away from him. “Now, sir, I think that—” She broke off as she heard a noise to her left, and turned to see Harry approaching. He was still some distance away, but there was no mistaking the way Harry sat a horse.

  Trevelyan watched her with interest, saw the way her face changed from anger to a soft, almost melting look when she saw her fiancé.

  “It’s Harry,” she said in a whisper, and there was an altogether different tone to her voice than the one she’d been using. He saw her change from an angry little spitfire to a wide-eyed, adoring simpleton. She didn’t so much as notice the sneer of disgust on Trevelyan’s face.

  “You have not heard my name,” Trevelyan said, wondering if she’d heard him, as he stepped into the trees and managed to disappear from sight completely. But he stood in the shadows and watched.

  Claire lifted the long edge of her riding habit, the part that was made for riding sidesaddle, and ran a few feet toward Harry, but he’d kicked his horse forward as soon as he saw her. When he dismounted the horse was still moving.

  Harry put his strong hands on Claire’s shoulders and she leaned toward him. He seemed so fresh and clean, so simple after that other man, she thought, then corrected herself. No, Harry wasn’t simple. Harry was just different.

  “Where were you?” Harry asked, bending toward her. There was genuine concern on his face and in his voice. “No one knew where you’d gone and I was worried.” He held her at arms’ length and looked at her. “You’re wet through.”

  She smiled at him and rubbed her
cheek against his hand. “I couldn’t sleep. I was cold and so I went for a ride. I fell and hurt my arm.”

  To Claire’s surprise, Harry pulled her close to him, against his warm body, as he took her left forearm in his strong hands. She gritted her teeth against the pain as he applied pressure to it.

  “It doesn’t seem to be broken. I think it’s just bruised.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I would have gone with you if I’d known you wanted to ride.”

  She snuggled against him and he held her tightly. “You’re so warm.” And so uncomplicated and so good, she thought. You’re so different from that other man, that Trevelyan.

  He laughed at that. “I’ll take you back to the house, we’ll get a doctor to look at your arm, then you’re to spend the day in bed. I don’t want you catching cold.”

  “May I have a fire in the fireplace?”

  “I will see that you have a roaring fire. And we’ll put fifty pounds of blankets on the bed if that’s what it takes to keep you warm.”

  “Harry, I do love you.”

  He bent forward as though to kiss her, but Claire pulled away. As well as she knew anything in the world, she knew they were being watched.

  Harry chuckled as he lifted her into the saddle of his horse and mounted behind her.

  Neither of them heard Trevelyan walk away through the woods.

  Chapter Three

  Low moaning woke Harry from a very sound sleep. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. There was an eerie red light in the room, and standing at the foot of his bed was a monster. The creature was at least eight feet tall, draped in black, and had the most hideous face ever seen.

  Groggily, Harry half sat up and moved his head forward a bit to get a better look at the thing that was groaning as though it had been lately killed and had come back to haunt the living. He yawned. “Uncle Cammy, if that’s you, you’d better get back to bed. You’ll miss breakfast.”

  At that the monster quit groaning, stepped down from the footstool, walked to the side of the bed, and removed its mask. What the disguise could not do the unveiling did: Harry came awake fully.