The Duchess

by Jude Deveraux

  “And it’s my guess your grandfather never gave her another penny.”

  “Why must you always be cynical? When my grandfather died he left her the interest from some money, but he said he wanted to ensure that she wasn’t the target for another gigolo.”

  “Liked to control people, didn’t he?”

  “He gave my parents their money free and clear,” she said fiercely, then was silent.

  “So now you have two penniless parents and a sister who has never had any money. Who gets your money if you don’t marry a man of whom they approve?”

  “My parents get it,” she said softly.

  “I guess they approve of Harry.”

  “Oh, yes. My mother says no money on earth could buy society like that of having a daughter who’s a duchess. And my father says all Harry’s friends know how to live.”

  “You mean they spend their days killing animals and their evenings eating?”

  “Harry also runs this house and three others. It takes a great deal of work to manage these estates.”

  “My dear industrious little American, Harry doesn’t any more manage these estates than I do. He hires people to run them. What managing that’s done is done by Harry’s mother.”

  “That’s not true! Harry is always going away on business.”

  “Harry’s ‘business’ is buying things. Have you looked at this place? Pictures, furniture, ornaments, horses and carriages in the stables. In succession each duke has married the woman with the most money and spent his life buying things and enjoying himself. It’s what Harry’s been trained for.”

  “You’re saying Harry is marrying me only for my money.”

  “And aren’t you marrying him because you want to be a duchess?”

  “No. I love Harry. And I love this house and this way of life. I love the people and the country.”

  “You love the romance. You love what you think is real. You so very conveniently love exactly what your parents want so you can become a duchess, get your grandfather’s money, and give your parents the kind of life they want.”

  “I don’t like you very much.”

  “You like Harry better?”

  “Much. He’s sweet and kind and gentle and—”

  “Lovely to look at.”

  “Yes,” she said defiantly, putting her chin in the air.

  “Harry’s family’s good looks have enabled generations of MacArran dukes to marry wealthy women.”

  Claire was silent for a moment. “After these rich women married the dukes, were they happy?”

  “For the most part I believe they were. I’ve heard that all the MacArran dukes are renowned lovers and, surprisingly, for all their self-indulgences, they are generally faithful to their wives.”

  “A woman couldn’t ask for more, could she?” she asked softly, looking at him.

  “Were I a woman I’d ask for a great deal more,” he practically shouted at her.

  She moved away from him; she didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. “I must return to the house. Harry will be home today and I want to see him.” She straightened a cushion on the window seat. “I think you’ll be all right now. I’ll tell Oman—”

  He caught her hand as she walked past him and held it for a moment. “Don’t go,” he whispered.

  For a moment Claire looked into those black eyes of his and for just that one second, she saw inside him. For just that tiny moment she saw beneath his outer coldness and she thought, He’s lonely. He’s lonely, as I am lonely. And he’s an outsider, just as I am.

  The moment was gone nearly as quickly as it came and the mocking look returned. It was as though he refused to allow anyone to see beneath his mask. He tossed her hand away, as though he could no longer bear to touch her. “Go on. Go to your duke. Harry will want to show you the horse he’s bought you.” Trevelyan turned away and looked at the far wall.

  Claire stared at the back of his head for a moment and quickly made a decision. She told herself she was going to stay because Trevelyan was ill, because he needed a nurse, because he was lonely. But somewhere deep inside her, she knew the truth: she wanted his company, wanted his quick mind that made her think. True, he laughed at her, he was snide and cynical, but he was so very alive and he made her feel alive.

  Without saying a word, Claire left the room and went to speak to Oman. She wrote a note to her sister, telling her she wouldn’t be back until dinner tonight, and Brat was to stall Harry and everyone else who could be stalled.

  When Claire returned to Trevelyan’s room and told him she had arranged to spend the day with him, he didn’t bother to so much as say thank you. For a moment she thought she might reconsider her stay, but the mere thought of another dreary day spent in that house with all of Harry’s relatives made her ready to try most anything else.

  “What shall we do?” she asked. “Play cards?”

  “I shall write for three hours, then I—”

  “You get out of bed and I leave.”

  He came quite close to smiling at that, but he managed to control himself. “I will beat you at chess,” he said.

  “Oh? Do you think so?”

  Later, Claire was to think of this day as one of the most unusual days of her life. It was one thing to spend the day with Trevelyan when he was otherwise occupied, another to spend the day with him when there were other people about, but it was an utterly unique experience to be the sole and foremost object of Trevelyan’s attention.

  They played chess—in a manner of speaking. Trevelyan never bothered to look at the board. She told him where she had moved her pieces and he instantly, without the slightest hesitation, without the least amount of time to think about the move, told her where he wanted to move which of his pieces.

  While they played the game, they talked. Actually, Trevelyan asked her questions and she answered. What little experience of men Claire had had consisted of men who more than anything else in the world liked to talk about themselves. But Trevelyan wanted to know all about her. He didn’t just want to know about her life in New York and what she’d read and where she’d been, he wanted to know what she thought.

  He asked her what she thought of Englishmen and how they differed from American men. He asked her opinion of English women. He asked her how the American way of life differed from the British.

  Claire thought for a moment. “I don’t understand how the English nobleman thinks of money. If an American needs money he earns it. He finds a way to invest or invent something or he gets a job. He does something for which he gets paid.”

  “And the Englishman is different?”

  “I don’t know how the common man is—isn’t it odd to still have a class system in our modern world?—but the upper-class man doesn’t seem to even think of earning money. I heard that the earl of Irley was nearly bankrupt and everyone was talking about how he was selling his land and his houses. I happened to say I’d heard the earl owned some very good farmland and why didn’t he do something with it.”

  She moved her first piece on the chessboard then looked up at him. “Everyone in the room stopped and looked at me as though I’d said something obscene.”

  Trevelyan kept his eyes on her as he told her which chess piece to move for him. He didn’t bother to move his own pieces, as though the whole idea of playing was a great bore to him. “And yet you are going to marry into this upper class, as you call it.”

  “I am marrying Harry because I love him,” she said, and by her tone she let him know she wasn’t going to say any more on the subject.

  “And what do the English think of you?”

  At that Claire laughed. “They seem to look upon me as a cross between a Red Indian and a Gaiety Girl. I shock them rather often.”

  “I imagine you do. I don’t think a prim and proper young miss would spend days in a man’s rooms as you have done.”

  His words didn’t bother her in the least. “True enough. But we are chaperoned and you are—” Out of habit, she started
to say he was old enough to be her father, but Trevelyan raised one eyebrow at her and she looked away, her face pink. “Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”

  She’d learned days ago that although Trevelyan asked questions, he did not answer them. He didn’t tell her how old he was. Instead, he asked her more about her family, and how her pretty little sister could be called Brat.

  “Sarah Ann’s prettiness is a curse to her,” Claire said with some feeling. “She was born beautiful and there has not been a day in her life that someone hasn’t told her she was lovely. When she was about three she climbed onto the lap of one of Father’s rich, fat friends and asked him to give her the diamond off his watch chain. The old man thought it was a great joke, gave her the diamond, and started her on the road to ruin. She’s learned she doesn’t have to do anything for anyone without getting paid for it.”

  “That seems to be the American way.”

  “Don’t you dare say anything against my country. Compared to America this place is—” She broke off, not saying what she had intended to.

  But Trevelyan had a way of making her talk. He fixed her with that look of his and it was obvious he meant to outwait her.

  She started to tell him, slowly at first, some of the things she had observed in England and in Scotland. “It is a land of the past.”

  “But I thought you liked that. You fairly drooled over old MacTarvit. And poor Harry is freezing his backside in a kilt merely to impress you.”

  At that she gave a pointed look to the tartan draped over the back of a chair. He, too, had worn a plaid. Had he frozen in it merely to impress her?

  For the first time Trevelyan looked down at the chessboard with great concentration. “So now you don’t like the past?” he asked.

  “I do. I love history. But I also know that time cannot stand still. There has to be progress or a country becomes like a stagnant pond. There has to be growth and change or a country cannot survive.”

  “I can’t see how you can reconcile your love of kilts with your American ideas of changing everything for the sake of change. What is wrong with things as they are? You sound like one of those damned missionaries, always wanting to convert people to another religion. The one the poor savages had wasn’t good enough for them.”

  She gave him a confused look. “I’m not talking about religion. I’m not even talking about philosophy. I’m talking about bathrooms.”

  Claire was pleased to see that shuttered, protective look in his eyes disappear. He looked completely bewildered.

  Claire stood up and walked to the window. “Look at this lovely house. Look at all the people living in it. This is the late nineteenth century. It’s almost the twentieth century, yet this house has seventeenth-century plumbing. That is to say, it has no plumbing at all.”

  She raised her hands in exasperation. “All the people in the house use chamber pots. The water for tubs is hauled by men up flight after flight of stairs.” She looked toward the window then back at him. “Yes, I like history. I love it. If I were in charge of…of, I don’t know what, Scotland maybe, I’d make sure every man, woman, and child in the country knew the story of their ancestors. It saddens me that so many Scots I meet know nothing about their own history. Many of the children have never heard the old ballads. Few of the adults know of the blood that has been shed in trying to gain independence from the English.”

  “What does all this have to do with bathrooms?”

  “Everything. It’s all very well to know about the past, but it’s not all right to live in it. It seems that the people have lost the traditions and the ancient stories, but they’ve retained their ancient plumbing—and transportation and all the other things that keep them from entering this century.”

  “I gathered that you didn’t think there was anything bad about Scotland.”

  “For all that you smirk at me as though I’m a child, I can see what is going on around me. MacTarvit lives in a hut just like the one his ancestors lived in three hundred years ago.”

  “I thought you liked the black cottage.”

  “I do, but I didn’t like the poverty of the people. Lord MacTarvit steals cows. He risks the wrath of Harry’s mother when he takes what he needs and no doubt gives most of it away. He—”

  “MacTarvit give anything away? Ha!”

  “He stole three cows. Do you think that one little man ate all of those cows before they spoiled?”

  “Maybe he killed them one at a time.”

  She glared at him. “All right then, do you think he could have eaten one whole cow all by himself?”

  Trevelyan leaned back on his elbow and looked at her with some interest. “What do you think will take these people out of their poverty? American factories? American railroads running through the hills? Will you dynamite the mountains away? Will you have tourists coming to see the quaint Scotsmen in their national dress?”

  Claire sat down hard. “I don’t know.” She looked at her hands in her lap.

  Trevelyan watched her for a long while. “What does it matter to you what happens to the people of Scotland? You’ll have your money and you’ll have your duke. What more do you want?”

  “You still don’t understand, do you? Becoming a duchess is a great responsibility. It will be my duty to take care of these people. When they go hungry I will have to see that they’re fed.”

  Trevelyan gave a nasty little laugh. “You are talking feudalism. These people merely rent lands from you. No longer is a duke the one who judges courts and decides the fate of people.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “You want to have twentieth-century plumbing and sixteenth-century clans.”

  “Maybe I do,” Claire said softly. “It does all seem so complicated.”

  She sat pondering the question for a while, then looked up at him and smiled. “I don’t know how to do what I want to do because I’m not sure what I want to do, but I mean to try.”

  He laughed at her, then frowned. “Do you think Harry’s mother will allow you to do what you want?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Harry has told me I’ll be able to do what I want.”

  Trevelyan grunted in disbelief.

  Claire looked down at the chessboard and realized that while they had been talking he had been playing chess, with himself as an opponent. “Did you win or lose?” she asked.

  “I won, of course,” he said, eyes sparkling.

  She laughed and for a moment they shared a flash of something between them. Friendship, Claire thought. They were beginning to form a genuine friendship. In spite of a few times better not remembered, they were becoming real, true friends.

  “I’ve told you things that I’ve never told anyone,” she said softly. “I’ve told you about my mother and I’ve told you opinions I’ve never shared with anyone else.” She paused. “It’s not easy being rich. It’s not easy having grown up as the Commander’s granddaughter. In my life—” She stopped and put up her hand. “I know, I know, you’re going to say, In your very short life, and it’s true that I’m not very old, but I have lived a great deal. My parents are not…” She didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound as though she were complaining about them.

  “Not always as adult as you’d like them to be,” Trevelyan supplied.

  “Yes, exactly. There have been many times when I’ve felt I was the adult.”

  Trevelyan’s impression of her parents, from what he’d heard of them, was that they had the emotional maturity of six-year-olds. He could imagine the two spoiled, rich parents depending on this young girl for all kinds of things, such as marrying whom they wanted her to marry so they could get what they wanted. They’d had a chance in life, a chance such as very, very few people ever got, yet they’d wasted it. And now they were expecting Claire to give them a second chance.

  “You were telling me about your life.”

  “Yes.” She turned to look out the window. “There have been many people in my life who wanted to be near me for what they thought I was rather than f
or what or who I am.”

  “People who wanted your money,” he said bluntly.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  When she didn’t say anything else, he tried to figure out what she was trying to tell him. “Are you asking me if I want your money?”

  “Maybe I am,” she whispered. “I guess I’m suspicious when people are nice to me.”

  “Except Harry.”

  She turned to smile at him at the mention of Harry, but right now she couldn’t seem to remember Harry. Trevelyan’s dark eyes seemed to fill the room.

  She looked down at the watch pinned to her breast. “I must go. It’s nearly time for dinner, and I don’t want to miss the surprise of my horse or the ladies with the silverware.”

  “Don’t tell me those two old ladies are still alive?”

  “Alive and happily thieving.”

  She walked toward the bed. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?”

  “Yes, of course. I have Oman.”

  “A great lot of help he is. He was going to let you lie in bed without any nursing whatever.”

  “I must admit that being in bed with pretty girls always makes me heal much faster.”

  Claire blushed to the roots of her hair. “You are wicked. Now I want you to eat a good dinner and go to sleep.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he teased.

  She started to leave the room, then turned back toward him. “Vellie, thank you for being my friend.”

  His eyes widened a bit at her use of his nursery name, but he didn’t say anything. When you’d nursed someone as she had him, you had a right to call a person anything you wanted. He gave her a little smile, then she was gone.

  Claire ran down the old stone stairs but when she got halfway down she remembered she’d meant to ask Trevelyan if she could borrow a book. She thought she’d reread one of Captain Baker’s books. She ran back up the stairs and into the sitting room. Oman was nowhere to be seen and when she peeped into the bedroom, she saw that Trevelyan was sleeping.

  Claire got the book she wanted from the cabinet mounted in the wall then turned to leave. But at the last moment she turned and looked at the eleven tables, each with writing paraphernalia on it.