The Duchess (Montgomery/Taggert 16)

He smiled at her. “How do you plan to discharge all of your duties as duchess and still find time to write this book? Surely it will take a great deal of research?”

She laughed. “That it will. The man never stopped writing. I’ve read a dozen or so volumes of his and Harry says there are boxes full of his journals and letters moldering away in trunks in the house. Besides writing all those books and hundreds of letters to the people who may or may not have been his family, Captain Baker also wrote to his many, many friends all over the world. At one time he was blind and he still managed to write. He fastened two parallel wires down the side of a board, affixed the paper to the board, then put another wire across the paper and used it as a guide for his hand. Nothing stopped him from writing.”

With each word she spoke Trevelyan stiffened. “I thought you revered the man. I thought you said he was a great man.”

“He was.”

“Yet you complain that he wrote too much.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You said that he wrote to everyone, thereby making his letters common. Some biographer you will be if you have such disdain for him.”

“Disdain? Common? Are you trying to put words in my mouth? I think the man was magnificent, but I’m a realist about him. I know his strengths as well as his weaknesses.”

“And how do you know that? Did you ever meet him?”

“No, of course not, but…” She searched for the right words to explain herself. “When you read a book that you love, a book that is close to you, you feel you know the person who wrote it. The writer becomes your friend.”

“And you feel you know this man in a personal way?” he asked stiffly.

She was glad of his anger, glad she was getting to him. Men like him hated the idea of a woman doing anything except gracing a drawing room. “Yes I do. He was a man of great humor, of great physical strength, of great—” She stopped.

“Yes, go on. Tell me about this man who is beyond reproach yet who bored his audience with his volumes of writing.” When he spoke, there was anger in his voice.

“You have such an ability to twist what I say,” she said, pleased at having caused his anger. “He was a man of great personal attraction.”

“Ah. Attraction to whom? Paper-eating insects?”

“To women,” she said quickly, then could feel her face turning red.

“I guess he attracted them by drowning them in written words.”

She grimaced. “No, he knew things. Things about women.”

“Such as?”

She didn’t say a word.

He recovered his composure and he was once again the smirking man she had met. “I can see you’re going to be the perfect biographer for a man like Baker. You’ll write lovely, sweet, flowery passages to describe what he wrote about the women of foreign lands. Or do you plan to ignore that part of his life altogether and write only about the parts of him that make for acceptable drawing room conversation?”

“I plan to write about all of him, but I don’t intend to give you, a man I don’t know, vicarious pleasure by telling you the details of Captain Baker’s love life.” She stopped and pulled away from him. “Now, sir, I think that—” She broke off as she heard a noise to her left, and turned to see Harry approaching. He was still some distance away, but there was no mistaking the way Harry sat a horse.

Trevelyan watched her with interest, saw the way her face changed from anger to a soft, almost melting look when she saw her fiancé.

“It’s Harry,” she said in a whisper, and there was an altogether different tone to her voice than the one she’d been using. He saw her change from an angry little spitfire to a wide-eyed, adoring simpleton. She didn’t so much as notice the sneer of disgust on Trevelyan’s face.

“You have not heard my name,” Trevelyan said, wondering if she’d heard him, as he stepped into the trees and managed to disappear from sight completely. But he stood in the shadows and watched.

Claire lifted the long edge of her riding habit, the part that was made for riding sidesaddle, and ran a few feet toward Harry, but he’d kicked his horse forward as soon as he saw her. When he dismounted the horse was still moving.

Harry put his strong hands on Claire’s shoulders and she leaned toward him. He seemed so fresh and clean, so simple after that other man, she thought, then corrected herself. No, Harry wasn’t simple. Harry was just different.

“Where were you?” Harry asked, bending toward her. There was genuine concern on his face and in his voice. “No one knew where you’d gone and I was worried.” He held her at arms’ length and looked at her. “You’re wet through.”

She smiled at him and rubbed her

cheek against his hand. “I couldn’t sleep. I was cold and so I went for a ride. I fell and hurt my arm.”