Claire, still standing by the bedpost, smiled at the butler when he reached the door. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he gave her a wink before he left.
An hour and a half later she was bathed and dressed for dinner in a warm wool dress. Harry was waiting for her outside her room and he offered her his arm as they went down the stairs to dinner. She knew she had pleased him today, pleased him as she never had before. For the first time since she’d met him, he talked to her. Usually he didn’t have much to say, but tonight he had a great deal to say—and every word of it was about hunting.
He talked to her of killing birds and ducks and deer. He spoke of going to India to hunt tigers and to Africa to kill elephants. “And you, darling, shall be right there with me.”
At dinner, he gave her Leatrice’s seat on his right-hand side, and all through the long meal, he talked to her of their future life together. He told her he’d teach her to shoot. He told her he’d teach her to ride to the hounds, chasing after a pack of
excited dogs who were trying to kill a fox. He spoke of blooding her, which Claire came to understand was having the blood of a poor dead fox smeared on her forehead. “It all sounds marvelously exciting,” she murmured and didn’t finish her fish course.
After dinner, after the men and women had separated, women to the drawing room for coffee and men to the library for port and cigars, Harry walked Claire to her room.
He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I like you better than I thought I would,” he whispered. “You were good company today.”
“But I didn’t say a word all day. I just sat there in the rain and sneezed.”
“You’ll get used to it. Once you have your own shotguns you’ll enjoy yourself even more than you did today. There’s nothing like bringing down an animal. It’s the thrill of it, you against them.” He kissed her again. “As for not talking, I like a quiet woman. Women who are too clever can be a bore. Thank heaven you’re not like that.”
“True,” she said softly. “I don’t think I’m clever at all.”
Harry heard no sarcasm in her voice. “Good,” he said, then kissed her forehead. “Now I want you to get your rest. Remember that tomorrow it’s partridge.”
Claire nodded at him, then went inside her room. As Miss Rogers helped her dress for bed, Claire didn’t listen to the woman’s complaints. Instead, Claire’s mind seemed to be numb. Shotguns, she thought. Dead birds. Dead tigers. Dead elephants. Captain Baker had written about elephants in his two books about his travels in India. They had seemed like rather nice animals and quite useful.
When Miss Rogers was gone, Claire sat at the dressing table and began to cream her face. Her skin was chapped from the wind and the cold. Slowly, she rubbed cream into her face and looked at herself in the mirror.
Duchess, she thought. She was going to marry Harry and become the duchess.
She wouldn’t allow herself to think anymore as she got up from the dressing table and walked to the bed. Thanks to her exhaustion and the cold of the day she fell asleep quickly.
She was awakened before dawn by an angry Miss Rogers, who informed her that she had to get dressed because the men were leaving early to go hunting.
Claire dressed in her habit, which was still damp from the day before, without saying a word and made her way downstairs. The men were already mounted and waiting for her. Harry looked radiant with happiness and slapped her on the back when she was atop her horse.
She spent a second day crouched in a wet butt with rain pouring down on her. Every hour or so Harry would smile at her and tell her more about the wonderful shotguns he was going to give her for a wedding gift.
When she got back to the house, there was a hot bath waiting for her and a teapot set on a tray with a cup and saucer. When Miss Rogers entered the room, Claire was sedately sipping whisky from her cup.
On the third day she was again up before dawn. When she was downstairs Harry informed her that today they were going after rabbits and quail. That meant Claire got to walk across marshy land in the cold drizzle and watch the men slaughter a couple of hundred rabbits. Harry promised to buy her her own bird dog as an additional wedding present.
By the time Claire returned to the house, she was so cold she wasn’t feeling anything. But more important, she wasn’t allowing herself to think anything either. Harry had talked about shooting deer the next day. Claire was afraid that the sight of the death of one of those soft-eyed deer she sometimes saw wandering about might make her cry.
She creamed her face, then climbed into bed and tried to go to sleep, but a noise made her jump. In the dim light of the room she saw the big portrait on the wall move and knew that the door to the tunnel was opening.
She forgot her exhaustion as she leaped out of bed and ran toward the door. “Trevelyan!” she gasped.
The door opened but, instead of Trevelyan, there stood her bratty little sister holding a candle.
Claire turned away. “You should be in bed,” she said tiredly and went back to her own bed.
Brat shut the tunnel door, put the candle on the bedside table, and climbed up on the big four-poster bed. “I hear you’ve become a hunter.”
“A regular Diana,” Claire murmured, then grimaced at Brat’s puzzled look. “If you’d ever bothered to open a book, you’d know that Diana is the goddess of the hunt.”
Brat smiled at her sister. “I’ll bet Harry knows all about gods and goddesses. Is that what the two of you talk about all day? Or do you practice your Italian and French on each other? Maybe you discuss politics or religion, or maybe you talk about the history of the Scots. Maybe you talk about all the things you plan to do around this place when you’re the duchess.”
Claire’s lips tightened. “Would you please go to bed?”
“What do you and Harry talk about?”