The Duchess Read online

  “Won’t you have some of this roast beef? It’s cooked perfectly.”

  Claire sat down at the table and Harry put a slice of beef on her plate, but she didn’t eat. “Tell me about him. What has made him so cold, so much without feeling?”

  That startled Harry. Trevelyan a man without feeling? Trevelyan was the angriest, most emotional man alive.

  “Why is he here? Why have you taken him in?”

  “What did he tell you about his kindred to my family?” Harry held his breath, waiting for her answer. Trevelyan said that he didn’t want the dukedom, but all he had to do was change his mind and Harry would be out in the cold. He would have some money from his mother, but not much else. That is, he would have nothing if he lost his heiress—which he did not mean to do.

  “He says he’s a cousin of sorts.”

  “Yes, he is. He is related to me, just as the other people in this house are.”

  “And you take care of them,” she said, looking into Harry’s beautiful eyes.

  “I do my best,” he said modestly.

  Claire left the table to start pacing again. “Explain his name to me. Why does he keep his identity a secret?”

  Harry took his time in answering. “He was sent away from his home when he was nine years old.”

  “To school?”

  “No. As far as I know, Trevelyan has never been to a formal school.”

  “Then why was he sent away?”

  Harry gave a little shrug. “It was only a couple of years after I was born, so I don’t really know. I’ve been told he was a difficult child. He and his older brother used to get into scrapes, always at the instigation of Trevelyan.” Harry smiled. “One time the two boys were in France with their father and there was a disease in the town, a plague or something, I don’t know what, and there were men with carts who came and picked up the dead bodies. Trevelyan and his brother bribed the cart driver to let them accompany him on his nightly rounds. I was told that inside the pit where they threw the bodies was a blue flame.”

  “Yes, that sounds like something he would do. He was sent away by his father for pulling such boyish pranks?”

  “His mother sent him away. She sent him off to live with her father.” Harry swallowed. “The old man was called the Admiral. He was said to be a stickler for discipline and it was hoped he could teach Trevelyan some discipline.”

  “But he couldn’t.”

  “No. Trevelyan never would do anything anyone else wanted him to do. I think he and the Admiral fought a great deal. I know they came to hate each other. When Vellie was sixteen he left the Admiral and went into the army on commission.”

  “As Frank Baker?”

  “Yes. The Admiral wanted Trevelyan to go into the navy but Trevelyan didn’t like ships or water. In the end Trevelyan bought his own commission in the army. So his grandfather wouldn’t find him, he enlisted under another name. I think his disguise started out as just another prank, but later became something important to Vellie. He wanted to make his grandfather eat his words when he’d said that Vellie would never amount to anything, that if he didn’t have his attachment to our family name, he would be nothing, that he could never attain anything. I think Vellie wanted to prove his grandfather wrong.”

  “I think he did that. Captain Baker has proved himself to be a great man.”

  “To some, maybe.” Harry was frowning. This woman was his. Not his brother’s. He turned in his chair and smiled at her. Harry knew how to use his looks to advantage.

  With a smile, Claire went to sit on a chair near him.

  “Now tell me, why have you been spending so much time with my…cousin? Isn’t there enough here in this house to keep you occupied?”

  “I guess I have been a bit bored.” She looked down at her hands. She didn’t want Harry to think she was a complainer; she didn’t want to do anything to make him think less of her. “Just a little bored.” She looked up at him. “Oh, Harry, when am I going to meet your mother?”

  “Anytime you want,” he said with confidence. But he didn’t feel confident inside. When it came to stubbornness, his mother made Trevelyan seem like a child.

  “Harry, I want to spend more time with you. I want us to be as we were in London. I want us to go places together and do things together and to have conversations. I want us to be the couple in love, as we really are.”

  “Well, of course.” Harry thought that he ought to call Trevelyan out over this. To Harry, he had done his courting in London and now he was free to live his own life again. The work was done. He had gone to London because he had heard there was a pretty little American heiress up for grabs and he’d gone and won her. Now, because of the interference of his brother, he was going to have to do more courting.

  “And I want to spend some time with your sister.”

  Harry brightened at that. “Leatrice? Why, of course, spend all the time you want with her. She loves all the things that you like.”

  She moved to look at him. “What are the things that I like?”

  “Books. History. You like the Scots a lot.”

  She smiled and Harry breathed a sigh of relief. Women and their damned tests of love! Every one of his mistresses was the same. They weren’t content with a man’s presence, they repeatedly wanted him to prove he loved them.

  “I know Leatrice likes books. What else does she like?”

  Harry reached for his wineglass. He’d eaten few meals in his life without someone nearby to serve him and one of the worst aspects of it was having to fill one’s own glass. “You mean besides James Kincaid?”

  Claire sat up on his lap. “Who is James Kincaid?”

  Harry could have bitten off his tongue. “No one. I was merely making a joke. Believe me, he’s no one. He’s probably dead by now. In fact I’m sure he is.”

  “Who was he then?”

  Harry drained the glass and reached for the bottle in the silver bucket on the stand by the table. He couldn’t reach it unless he turned his back on Claire, but he thought he’d better not do that at the moment. Women who were in a state of distress sometimes thought the oddest things. If he turned away from Claire to get at the wine bottle she just might think he liked wine better than he liked her.

  “Lee fell in love with him when she was a girl. Or maybe she had always been in love with him, I don’t know. I was just a kid when it happened and I don’t remember very well.” He didn’t remember what had happened before his sister had for the one and only time defied their mother, but he certainly remembered what happened afterward. He imagined there were rooms in the old house that still echoed with Leatrice’s screams.

  “What happened?”

  “Kincaid was entirely unsuitable. Lee is a duke’s daughter, you know. Kincaid was—” He didn’t say any more, because Claire was getting that look on her face that women got when they thought they smelled romance in the air. “Kincaid really is—was, if he’s dead—the most dreadful person. Very strange. Walked around talking to himself. Always had papers falling out of his pockets. The village children used to follow him and jeer at him. Mother was right in not allowing her daughter to marry the man.”

  “But Leatrice didn’t marry anyone else?”

  Harry shook his head. He wasn’t about to tell Claire of the war that had gone on between mother and daughter. Lee had said that if she couldn’t marry the man she wanted then she wouldn’t marry any man. Mother had said that if Lee didn’t obey her and marry a man the duchess had chosen for her, then she’d make Leatrice’s life a living hell. Lee had said, “Better that than to marry a man I hate, as you did, and live the life you have led.” It was the last bit of defiance Leatrice had shown toward anyone. Harry knew his mother had long ago broken Lee’s spirit, for, as far as Harry could tell, his mother was stronger than anyone else on earth.

  Claire left the chair and Harry immediately reached for the wine bottle. “Harry, I must have something to do. In America I was always busy.”

  It was Harry’s opi