The Duchess (Montgomery/Taggert 16)

“A few weeks.”

She understood what he was saying. He had been there for some time, but for some reason he had not come to see her. She wondered if he’d meant to come to her at all. She wondered if this was the first time he’d stayed there. Had there been other times when he’d stayed in that old, uninhabited, unvisited part of the house and not come to her?

“What brings you here now?” she asked, trying to sound easy and carefree, as though her feelings weren’t hurt.

But Trevelyan knew exactly what she was thinking—he always had—and he laughed at her. Laughed in a way that made her furious.

She pulled away from him, grabbed a pillow, and began pummeling him. “How could you let me believe you were dead? Do you have any idea what I’ve suffered? Your letters have been the only thing I have in my life. I have all of them, every last one of them.”

He was lying on the bed, grinning up at her. She hadn’t seen him in years but she would have recognized that grin anywhere. It was that same defiant, devil-may-care grin of the nine-year-old boy. “They must fill a room.”

She smiled back at him. “Four trunks.” She reached out and touched his cheek. “Oh, Vellie, are you really, truly here? Are you sure you aren’t a ghost? Aunt May said she’d seen your ghost.”

“I ran into her early one morning as I was slipping through the corridors. Haven’t any of those old relics died? They were ancient when I was a boy. I can’t imagine how old they are now.”

“Mother would like for them to die, I’m sure, but they don’t seem to. Uncle Cammy has enlisted Harry’s fiancée’s sister in his plays. I wonder if they fight over the costumes?”

“From what I’ve heard of the Brat I would imagine she wins.”

At that Leatrice narrowed her eyes. She was beginning to get over the shock of his return and beginning to realize what his appearance here meant. “What do you know of the child? Have you met Claire? Have you seen Harry?”

Trevelyan turned on his back, put his hands under his head and looked up at the ceiling. “What do you think of Harry’s little American?”

Leatrice hit him smack in the face with a pillow and tried to hit him a few thousand more times, but he grabbed the pillow from her and held her arms to her side.

“What is wrong with you?”

“You’ve been here weeks and you’ve seen Harry and probably his fiancée but you’ve allowed me to believe you were dead. How could you do that to me? I’ve loved you more than anyone else in the world has. For twenty-two years I wrote you at least once a week, sometimes five and six times a week. I told you everything that happened in my life. I poured out my soul to you. For all those years you were my closest and at times my only friend. But then you go off to find your beloved Pesha and I hear nothing from you. Not one letter for over two years, then I read in the newspaper that you’re dead. I believed it! Do you know how much I’ve grieved for you? Do know how much I’ve cried over you? And now I find that you aren’t dead. Not only aren’t you dead, but you’ve been living but a few feet from me and you’ve been sneaking about the tunnels talking to daffy old Aunt May, talking to Harry who doesn’t even really know you, at least not the way I do, and now—”

She broke off as he sat up, leaned against the headboard, and pulled her into his arms, for she had begun to cry again.

“I thought it would be better for everyone if they went on believing I was dead.”

“What a very stupid thing to say,” she said, sniffing against his chest. “How could you think it would be better if we thought you were dead?” Even as she said it, she knew the answer. She hadn’t thought of it until this moment, but their elder brother’s death made Trevelyan the duke.

She pulled away to stare at him, wide-eyed. “Your Grace,” she whispered.

“Exactly.”

Leatrice put her head back on his shoulder. This did indeed change things. “She won’t like this,” Leatrice said softly and they both knew “she” meant their mother. “She won’t like that Harry is no longer the duke. But I guess he never was, was he?”

“I don’t want it,” Trevelyan said softly. “I never did. Harry is a perfect duke. He shoots and he gives parties and he can sit in the House of Lords and snooze with the best of them. I would never fit in. I don’t want the responsibility of the title.”

“But Vellie—” she began.

He pulled her head back to his chest and stroked her hair. “No, I don’t want it and I don’t mean to take it. Harry’s said he’ll fund all my expeditions and that’s all I want. I have much more to do in my life and it doesn’t include moldering away in one of these houses while married to the richest heiress I can find.”

It was the second time he had referred to Claire. “Have you met her? Have you met Claire?”

Trevelyan took so long to answer that Leatrice pulled away to look at him. Always, even as a child, he’d had those eyes. Sometimes she thought that those eyes of Trevelyan’s were what so infuriated their mother. They were intense and bright and unreadable. They were unreadable unless you knew him, as Leatrice did. When Trevelyan was twelve their father had allowed his second son to return home. But the return had lasted only two weeks, for Trevelyan had been caught breaking into the church cellar one night. He’d said he was searching for tombs. The next week Trevelyan had climbed a ladder and entered the second floor of a widow’s boarding house, a house that was reputed to be one of illicit dealings. Their father did not forgive his son the second time and sent him back to his grandfather. There had been other visits, but on each one Trevelyan had managed to anger his father so that he was quickly sent away again.

She may not have seen him very often while they were growing up, but she’d received thousands of letters from him and he’d sent her hundreds of photographs. She’d watched Vellie grow up, for he rather liked dressing in what he called his disguises and having his photo taken.

Now she looked into his eyes and saw that he was hiding something. “What has made you come to me now? Had you planned to come at all? Or had you planned to leave here without even seeing me?” The answer was in his eyes.

She resisted the urge to call him every vulgar name she knew, and, thanks to him, she knew several in some very unusual languages.

She put her head back down. It was no use screaming at him. He had been screamed at by the best and all the noise had had no effect on him. “Tell me everything from the beginning, and I mean everything. I don’t want any of it left out.”