The Duchess Read online

  “But then something happened to change her life. Mother went to a ball, and since her young officer was there, she was happy and lively and beautiful and the young duke of MacArran—my father—fell in love with her. The duke was an impetuous man and the next day he went to my mother’s father and offered for the hand of Miss Eugenia Richmond.”

  Leatrice paused. “You’d have to know my grandfather to appreciate what an odious man he was. I don’t think he had a bone of kindness or softness in him. He thought there was only one way to do anything: his way. He told his daughter of the offer and told her the date he’d set for the wedding. He didn’t so much as ask his daughter’s opinion of the match. Mother, who had some stubbornness of her own, told her father she planned to marry her young officer. My grandfather didn’t even get angry. He merely told his daughter that if she did not accept the duke’s offer and act as though she were in love with the man, he’d see that her young officer was killed.”

  Leatrice smiled at Claire’s expression. “The old man didn’t want to risk allowing my mother to spend time with the duke. He allowed them to see each other seldom and never alone. It whet my father’s appetite. He thought the woman he was marrying was modest and sweet tempered.”

  Leatrice’s mouth turned into a straight line. “She married my father, but at the wedding she decided that since she couldn’t take her anger out on her father, she would take it out on the man she’d married. On her wedding night she told my father she hated him, and would always hate him.”

  Leatrice paused and took a breath. “I think that at first my father thought he could win her love, that he could make his wife love him, but he soon found out that in stubbornness she was just like her father. She hated her husband as much as she loved her officer.”

  Leatrice’s face began to show anger. “She bore my father three children. I think that I, the youngest of the three, was unplanned. I think there was an argument, and afterward, my father went to my mother’s room in a rage. Nine months later I was born. After that night I don’t think my parents had much to do with each other. I think they lived separate lives.”

  Leatrice paused and looked as though she were thinking. Her voice calmed. “But then, when I was about three years old, my mother’s officer came back into her life. I think they met by accident the first time, but she found that she loved him just as much as she always had. He had never married. He told her he had loved her and her alone and always would.

  “My mother felt she’d done her duty to her husband and had given him his required two sons, and so she planned to leave him.”

  Leatrice took a breath. “And us. She planned to leave her husband and her children because she hated us as much as she hated her husband. We were dark like all the Montgomerys, and the man she loved was blond.”

  The anger came back into Leatrice’s voice. “My mother schemed with her lover and planned for the day they would leave. She secretly removed treasures from the house, things that could be sold, for she knew that when she divorced my father she would get nothing, and if anything her officer was poorer than he had been.

  “The day arrived and everything went all right. My mother escaped the house easily enough and met her lover some ten miles away where he had a coach waiting. They hadn’t gone very far when a dog or something ran across the road, the coachman lost control of the horses, and the wagon overturned. My mother’s lover was killed instantly, as was the driver. But my mother was pinned under the wagon and lay there for several hours before she was found. Her leg was crushed.”

  Leatrice paused. “Six months later Harry was born. My father knew the child couldn’t have been his, and by then he knew all about the family treasures she’d taken from the house.

  “When Harry was about a week old, my father went to see his wife and her blond son. He looked into the crib, then went back to the bed and tossed a packet of bills onto her bed and left the room. The bills were charges made by my mother’s lover for horses and gambling debts and clothes. The security for the debts was that he was marrying the duchess of MacArran.”

  Leatrice turned to look at Claire, saw the way Claire’s eyes were wide. “I think my mother’s mind was affected by all that had happened. Between losing her lover and her mobility, then learning that the man she’d loved all those years might have been the scoundrel her father said he was, her mind was unhinged. She divided her hate and her love into two parts: she hated anything and anyone that had to do with the MacArran name, and she gave all her love to her pretty blond son.”

  Leatrice stopped there while Claire absorbed what she had been told. “If Harry isn’t your father’s son, then he has no right to the title,” Claire said softly.

  “None.” Leatrice’s eyes were so intense that they again reminded Claire of Trevelyan’s.

  “Did your father disown Harry in his will?”

  “My father was a good man and he would never have done that. He liked Harry. He liked all of us children, but his favorite was his eldest son, Alex. I think he made an error in spending so much time with Alex, because his second son and I were left too much alone. Alex had Father, and Harry had Mother, while—” She paused and stared at Claire. “Vellie and I had each other.”

  Claire gave Leatrice a look of astonishment, started to speak, then stopped. Suddenly everything made sense. She understood all of it. She understood Trevelyan’s hostility toward the duchess, the woman who was his mother. She understood the crofters’ attitude toward Trevelyan. “Do all the people in this house know that Trevelyan is the duke?”

  “Most of them. When he was a child he was sent away to live with my mother’s father.” Leatrice swallowed. “Vellie was not treated well as a child.”

  There were too many thoughts running through Claire’s head. She knew that he had told her very little about himself, but she had not realized the depth of his deception. He had said that he loved her, but he hadn’t loved her enough to tell her anything about himself. If he had told her he was the duke then her parents would have approved their marriage. Claire would have been given control of her grandfather’s money and all their problems would have been solved.

  But he hadn’t done that. He had shared nothing of himself with her.

  Claire stood up and went back to her packing.

  “You have nothing to say?” Leatrice said. “I’ve just told you that the man you love is the duke and that the man you plan to marry isn’t related to the Montgomery family, but you say nothing.”

  “What is his name? What is Trevelyan’s name?”

  “John Richmond Montgomery. His childhood title was the Earl of Trevelyan and Trevelyan seemed to fit him. I was the one who started calling him Vellie, since I couldn’t pronounce Trevelyan.”

  Claire continued packing.

  Leatrice clutched Claire’s arm. “Is that all?”

  When Claire looked at Leatrice, her eyes were blazing. “He didn’t even tell me his name. Such a simple thing. He asked that I love him, that I spend my life with him, yet he couldn’t so much as tell me his name.” She looked back at the trunk.

  “You don’t understand. Vellie is—”

  “A cold man,” Claire said, and when she looked at Leatrice, there was rage on her face. “I loved him. I fell in love with him in spite of his bad temper, in spite of his pessimistic outlook on life. I forgave him for not telling me he was Captain Baker. I forgave him for laughing at me, for using me as one of his subjects. I forgave him and I loved him, but he doesn’t know how to give love in return.”

  Leatrice opened her mouth but Claire continued. “He stood by and watched Nyssa die without even attempting to stop her. He always stands on the outside of the world and watches it. He said he loved me, but he doesn’t. He confuses sexual pleasure with love. They aren’t the same thing. He has ‘loved’ thousands of women all over the world, and I was fool enough to think that I was different.”

  “You are different,” Leatrice said. “Vellie has never told a woman he loved her.”