The Duchess Read online

  “You are a child,” he said softly. “You are the most beautiful grown-up child in the world.”

  She wasn’t sure whether to be pleased by his description or not. “I’m not as pretty as your moon pearl or as pretty as my little sister.”

  He kissed the corner of her lip. “You don’t even know what I mean by beauty.” He leaned back and smiled at her. “Have you ever done a truly selfish act in your life?”

  She didn’t know why this question should bother her so but it did. He made her sound like a do-gooder who was always suffering for a cause. “I’ve done many selfish things. At home in America I was quite indulgent with myself.”

  “You receive an allowance from your grandfather’s trust. Tell me, have you ever lent your parents money?”

  “Only a few times,” she snapped, and when he smiled in a know-it-all way, she started to get out of bed. “I didn’t like you when I first met you and I still don’t like you.”

  He pulled her back to the bed then moved so that he was half on top of her. “What don’t you like? That I see you as you are? That I don’t just see you as a beautiful little American heiress whose money is the most important thing in the world? Or does it bother you that I see your parents as they are? Or maybe it’s that I’m a realist and you’re a romantic? Maybe you think you like Harry because he’s as romantic as you are. Harry sees only what he wants to see. He thinks his mother is good because he wants to think the woman is good. He thinks he’s in love with you because he wants to be.”

  “Leave Harry out of this! Harry is a good, kind person.”

  “Yes, he is. Harry hasn’t a bad-tempered bone in his body. He’s incapable of hurting anyone.”

  “Unlike you! You hurt everyone. You hurt everyone who tries to get close to you.”

  At that Trevelyan’s eyes changed and he rolled off of her. “Yes,” he said. “That’s true.”

  She lay beside him, not touching him, angry at what he’d said about her, angry at herself for what they had said to each other and for what they had done together. She should not have allowed him into her bed. She should have told him to leave when he walked into her room and stood over her, but instead she’d welcomed him.

  She felt him move as though to get out of the bed and immediately she turned and threw her arms around him. “Don’t leave, Vellie,” she said. “I am so very tired of being alone.”

  He held her to him very tightly, and in ways his holding of her was more intimate than their lovemaking. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

  “Feel what?” She pressed her cheek against his chest.

  “The isolation. The loneliness.”

  She started to say that someone as famous as Captain Baker could never be lonely, that he had friends all over the world, but right now the man in her arms didn’t feel like Captain Baker. This man felt like Trevelyan, the man who had fainted when she’d first met him, the man who had introduced her to whisky and had given her books to read.

  Claire put her face up to his to be kissed, and after that they didn’t say any more as he began to make love to her again.

  When Claire awoke her little sister was sitting on a chair beside the bed. “You sleep like you were dead,” Brat said.

  Claire turned to look at the other side of the bed but it was empty.

  “He’s gone.”

  Claire sat up in bed, keeping the sheet about her nude body. “I know. Harry left yesterday. He went to Edinburgh on…on business.”

  Brat gave a little laugh. “Rogers broke her leg.”

  Claire gasped. “She what?” Trevelyan had said that he’d take care of Miss Rogers. He couldn’t have broken her leg, could he?

  “Last night she went to sleep in her own bed in her little room and this morning she woke up in a bed in the butler’s room and she had a plaster cast on her leg. The cast reaches all the way from her hip to her toes. She also had a terrible headache and she remembers nothing whatever of what happened during the night. The butler told her that she was sleepwalking and fell down the stairs and broke her leg. The doctor came and set it for her while she was still asleep. The butler said that the doctor gave Rogers some awful medicine that made her forget everything that had happened to her.”

  Claire grimaced. “And where did the doctor get such a medicine?”

  Brat smiled. “I think it came from Pesha.”

  Claire laughed. “I can imagine that it did.”

  Brat gave her sister an intense look. “Who’s the woman with Vellie? I couldn’t see her very well this morning, it was still dark, but she looked to be rather pretty. She was walking so close to him, had his arm tucked into her side and—”

  Brat looked at her sister in astonishment as she leaped out of bed. She’d never seen her sister naked before and she was surprised that Claire would so forget herself as to appear so before another person.

  “Help me get dressed,” Claire commanded. “I have to…to…”

  “Save Trevelyan?” Brat asked slyly.

  “Something of that nature,” Claire answered, drawing on her corset.

  It was a mere twenty minutes later that Claire was storming up the stairs of Trevelyan’s tower. She didn’t know what she expected to find, but she’d had enough time to imagine some dreadful things. She rather expected to find that horrid Nyssa sitting on Trevelyan’s lap. Instead, he was sitting quietly at one of his tables and writing with his usual concentration. He didn’t look up when she came in, but held out his empty whisky glass in her direction. She guessed that he thought it was Oman who had entered the room.

  Claire went to the cabinet where the bottle was, took it out, then went to refill his glass. As she poured, he looked up at her.

  “I thought you’d be asleep,” he said softly.

  Claire’s hand trembled as she set the bottle down on the table. One second they were looking at each other, Trevelyan’s eyes black with intensity, Claire’s eyes questioning and shy as she remembered all they had done to each other’s bodies during the night. The next second she was in his arms and they were kissing with passion, kissing in a frantic way, as though they had been separated for years rather than hours. Trevelyan lifted her skirts, then pulled her into his lap as he began to untie the drawstring of the trousers he wore under his silk robe.

  Claire was aghast when she realized what he meant to do. She started to protest, but he put his mouth over hers and she forgot all about protesting. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him hungrily.

  At first she didn’t hear the woman’s voice to her left. If Trevelyan heard it he made no sign. He kept kissing Claire and tossing aside three of her petticoats.

  Claire pushed at Trevelyan, trying to pull away from him. The woman spoke again. “Trevelyan!” Claire said sharply, pushing at him. She was trying to get off his lap.

  Trevelyan said something under his breath. Claire couldn’t understand it but she recognized it as Peshan. She heard the woman laugh and say something else.

  Claire gave a mighty push at Trevelyan. He released her and she landed with a loud thunk on the stone floor. Claire looked up to see Nyssa standing two tables away from them. The woman looked to be even more beautiful in the early morning light than she had the night before. She wore a robe of yellow silk that made her brown eyes look almost golden. Claire remembered every word of what Trevelyan had told her about making love to Nyssa. Had he left her, Claire, in the middle of the night and gone to this pearl of beauty? If he’d made love to twenty-five women in one night, surely he could handle a mere two.

  Claire got up and started for the door. “I have to go,” she said.

  Trevelyan caught her skirt before she could take a step. “You don’t have to go anywhere.”

  Nyssa said something and Trevelyan replied in Peshan.

  “What did she say?” Claire asked stiffly.

  “Nothing of interest.”

  “What did she say?” Claire demanded.

  Trevelyan gave a great sigh of weariness. “She said th