The Duchess (Montgomery/Taggert 16)

“Then I shall call for a doctor.” She started to leave the room.

“No!” he said sharply.

She turned back to look at him. “It’s either me or a doctor. Those are your only choices.”

He didn’t answer, but he lay back against the pillows as though in surrender.

Claire went to him. Next to the bed Oman had put out surgical instruments, hot water, and rolls of cotton cloth for bandages. Very carefully, she cut away Trevelyan’s shirt and looked at the wound. It was clean except for the blood around it, no gunpowder, no dirt or gravel in it, and, thank heaven, the bullet had gone through. The wound was in his upper arm, through the muscle but missing the bone.

Carefully, she began to clean the blood from the wound and from his chest. “Who shot you?” she asked softly.

“Could have been any number of people. I have angered a few people in my life.”

“You? That’s difficult to believe.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. There was a faint smile about his lips. “You’ve been crying,” he said.

“When I heard you were injured I was in torrents. I cried all the way here.”

He leaned back against the pillows as she began to bandage his arm. “I heard that it was Harry who was making you cry. I heard that he shot a buck and you got very angry.” He looked at her and his voice lowered. “I heard that he told his mother he couldn’t marry you.”

Claire’s hands stilled. “Did he?” She tried to keep her voice from trembling but she couldn’t. “You shouldn’t listen to gossip. Who shot you? One of the hunters? Some of them are very bad shots. In the last few days I have seen many animals that were only wounded: birds missing legs or wings, rabbits without feet hopping away, a buck that wasn’t dead, a—” She broke off, sure that she was going to start crying again.

Trevelyan was looking at her intently, watching her as she bandaged his arm. “What have you been doing in the two and a half weeks since I’ve seen you?”

“Has it been that long? It seems like only yesterday that I was sitting in this room drinking whisky and talking to you. Surely it’s only been a few hours since I was dancing with the crofters and…and…Angus MacTarvit.”

Just the sound of that name was too much for her. She sat down hard on a chair and began to weep again, her hands covering her face.

Trevelyan leaned against the pillows and watched her, his face betraying little emotion, but he knew what was wrong with her. He knew it because he had lived it. He knew very well what this house could do to a person’s spirit. You either conformed or your spirit was killed.

In the long, long two and a half weeks since he had seen her, he had been kept informed of what she was doing by her beautiful little sister. Sarah Ann had daily come to his rooms and told him all the gossip of everyone in the house. He’d heard how Claire was trying to be what Harry wanted in a wife, but, more important, he’d heard how Claire’s greedy mother was already spending the fortune that Claire was to inherit upon her marriage—marriage to the right person.

“I’m starving,” he said loudly, over her crying. “I think Oman cooked a kettleful of something. Maybe you’d get me something to eat.”

Claire began to sniff and looked about for a handkerchief. Finding none, she blew her nose on a piece of bandage. Feeling listless and miserable she left the bedroom and we

nt to the outside room. Oman was waiting for her, and in his hand was a big tray bearing two plates heaped with food and two large glasses of whisky. Claire started to take the tray but he waved her aside and followed her back into the bedroom, where he placed the tray on the foot of the bed, then left.

Claire reached for a piece of chicken, but Trevelyan’s voice stopped her. “I can’t eat with you wearing that thing. You smell worse than a goat. Open that door and take out a robe, then get that dress off. Don’t look at me like that! I’m not trying to molest you, I’m trying to eat my dinner without the perfume of that garment.”

Claire didn’t have the spirit to disobey him. She opened the left door of the wardrobe and saw inside a variety of loose robes. There was a blue one that was especially lovely and she took it out of the closet. Holding it, she looked about for some place to change, then Trevelyan motioned toward a tapestry. She walked over to it and found the door to what had to be the ancient medieval garderobe, the outdoor toilet that was indoors. She stepped inside the little room.

“And take off that corset,” Trevelyan yelled from the bedroom. “I can’t bear to hear you gasping for breath.”

Claire thought she should protest, but she didn’t, and in the next second she was tearing at her clothes, anxious to rid herself of the hated habit. And she took off her corset too. Then, when she realized that her undergarments were damp, she removed them too. She felt downright decadent and definitely sinful as she slipped the soft silken garment over bare skin. She unpinned her hair and tried to comb it with her fingers.

She ran her hands over the silk gown embroidered with little green butterflies and felt as though for the first time in days she could breathe again. In the house and with Harry she had to behave herself, but not with Trevelyan. Nothing she did or said ever shocked him.

She walked out from behind the tapestry and had the satisfaction of seeing Trevelyan pause with food on the way to his mouth. His eyes widened as he looked from her face down to her bare feet then, very slowly, back up to her face.

Claire felt herself blushing as she looked down at her hands.

“Come over here and sit by me,” Trevelyan said in the sweetest voice imaginable. “Sit on my lap if you want.”

Claire looked back at him and laughed, and the embarrassment was gone. She sat on the end of the bed, took a deep drink of her whisky, then began to eat. The food that Oman had made was so different from what she had been eating for the last two weeks. Some of the food was hot—spicy hot—some cold, some soft, some crunchy.

“Tell me what you’ve been writing,” she said eagerly, her mouth full. “Tell me every word. Tell me everything you’ve been thinking and doing. And I want to know who shot you. Oman said that someone tried to kill you.”