The Duchess Read online

  “My mother—”

  “Ha!” Claire said. “You cannot lie to me now. I know too much about you. I think that if I’d spent more time with that woman I would have realized she was your mother. You two have a sameness of temper about you. You are both the personification of selfishness. She uses her lost love as her excuse and you use…”

  “Yes,” he said softly, “what do I use?”

  “Whatever is available. May I go now? You have tried to win my pity and you have failed. All of you have failed in your attempt to make me feel sorry for the poor, unwanted duke.”

  Trevelyan walked to a high-backed chair and sat down. “Did I fail in my attempt to make you love me?”

  “No. I loved you for a while, but that was before I knew you.”

  Trevelyan sighed. “So now you will marry Harry and breed blond brats.”

  She took a deep breath. “No, I don’t intend to marry Harry. I think I’m too much of a romantic. I want to marry a man I love. I know that will be difficult, especially since I have—”

  “Have what?”

  She looked at him in defiance. “Loved you. Loved someone like you,” she said softly. “You will be a difficult memory to supersede.”

  He gave a smile of irony. “I am thankful for any praise from you.”

  They were silent a moment.

  “Have you said what you wanted to say to me?” Claire asked. “I have things to do.”

  “Claire,” Trevelyan said softly. “I love you. I have loved you for a long time. I…I believe that I need you.”

  Claire’s lips tightened. “Yes, you need me. I am the only person on earth you cannot intimidate. I’m not afraid of you. I don’t cower when you look at me or shout at me. How refreshing—and infuriating—that must be for you. The great Captain Baker, the man who can make men tremble merely by looking at them, cannot put fear into a mere nineteen-year-old American.”

  Trevelyan smiled at her. “How right you are. From the moment I met you you were ordering me about. The first thing you said to me was that I was to fetch your horse for you. You have told me I was wrong on every count. You have criticized my books, my clothes, what I say and how I say it. Do you know how well matched we are?”

  Claire turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears that sprang to her eyes. She knew how well matched they were. She knew very, very well. Trevelyan was the only person in the world who was as curious as she was, who wanted to learn, who wanted to know about the world and what was in it.

  When she looked back he had risen and was standing behind her, close enough to touch, but he didn’t touch her. “Is your love for me completely dead?”

  “No,” she said honestly. “I think I will go to my grave loving you, but I will not live with you. I will not live with a man who can stand outside of life and not participate in it.”

  “I participate enough to—”

  She turned on him, furious. “No, you don’t! You make excuses. You say that you love me but that you can’t interfere in my marrying someone else. You make excuses as to why you can’t take your rightful place as the duke, but the truth is, if you were the duke, you’d have to involve yourself with other people, like the crofters and your mother. It’s much easier for you to stand back from the world and watch it.”

  She took a deep breath. “You know what I think? I think you asked me to marry you, but you didn’t really want me to. You told me how I’d hate you in a few years so I wouldn’t marry you.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, just stood there looking at her. “What would make you know that I love you? What would make you believe that I want you with me forever?”

  Claire gave a nasty laugh. “Show me that you’re not a man who can stand by and watch a young woman die. Show me that you’re human. Show me that you’re the man who wrote those letters. I haven’t seen that man.”

  Trevelyan didn’t say anything for a moment, then he walked to a tapestry along one wall and pulled it aside. She heard a door open.

  Claire heard Nyssa’s voice before she saw her.

  “You have left me in there too long,” Nyssa complained. “I am blue with cold. You—” Nyssa broke off as she looked at Claire’s face, her eyes wide in astonishment. “You have not told her,” Nyssa said to Trevelyan. “You could not have left her untold.”

  “I did,” Trevelyan said, smiling down at Nyssa. “She would not allow me to tell her, so you are my gift to her.”

  Claire turned on her heel and started toward the door, but Trevelyan caught her arm.

  “I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “Pleased that you tricked me? How you must have laughed when I begged the men to put the emerald on the cup for a woman who wasn’t dead.”

  Trevelyan’s face hardened. “Do you always believe the worst of me?”

  Claire jerked from him and started toward the door.

  Nyssa blocked her way. “I am most tired of this,” she said to Claire. “The man is insane with love for you. You must forgive him whatever you think he has done.”

  Claire glared at Nyssa. “I believed you were actually committing suicide. I didn’t know it was a joke, but then I have never been told anything about him.”

  Nyssa’s laugh trilled out. “But I did die. The Pearl of the Moon died as she was to have died. Frank decided to wake me and ask if I did not have second thoughts.”

  Claire frowned and Nyssa pulled her toward a chair. “Come, and I will tell you all of it.”

  Claire allowed herself to be pulled to the chair and began to listen to Nyssa’s story. She did not look at Trevelyan, who stood with his back to them, looking out the window.

  Nyssa told how she had meant to die when she had taken the poison—at least she thought it was poison, but Trevelyan had suspected that it was merely something to make her sleep. When the men from Pesha had been so anxious to burn Nyssa’s body, he thought that perhaps the burning was what killed her. Trevelyan knew that the two Peshans were merely messengers and that they might not know that the drink was not poison. Trevelyan gave the two men enough gold coins to persuade them to part with Nyssa’s lifeless body. He gave them ashes from MacTarvit’s fireplace to take back with them to Pesha.

  After Trevelyan had possession of Nyssa’s body, he and Angus spent three days waking her from her drugged stupor. Nyssa told of the bad-tasting drinks they had given her, how she had wanted to sleep but Trevelyan had made her walk. She told how Trevelyan had not slept for three whole days because he was afraid that if he slept, then Nyssa would, and she might not awake.

  Nyssa told how Trevelyan had said that if Claire wanted Nyssa alive, then he was going to bring her back from the dead.

  “I have died, as the Pearl of the Moon was to die,” Nyssa said. “And now I may live as I want. Frank says that I may stay here with his family for as long as I want.” She turned to look at the back of him. “I may go now?”

  Trevelyan nodded and Nyssa left the room.

  Claire stayed in her chair for a moment, then rose and went to him. “Why did you do it? Why did you save her?”

  “Because I wanted you.” He turned to her and his eyes were burning. “I wanted to go away. I wanted to leave that day of Nyssa’s death. I wanted to be able to shrug and say that it was the will of Allah if we were not to be together.”

  Suddenly, he grabbed her shoulders. “Claire, if you marry my brother, I will kill both of you. If you want a woman who wants to die to live then I will do all in my power to make it happen. If you want to be a duchess, then I will be a duke. Claire, don’t leave me.”

  It took her a long while before she smiled at him. And as she smiled at him, she slid into his arms, and she knew that it was the right place for her to be.

  “No, I won’t leave you,” she whispered. “I will never leave you again.”

  Epilogue

  Claire confronted her parents with the news that she was marrying a man other than Harry and they, predictably, said they would not approve her marriage to an expl