The Duchess Read online

  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