The Duchess (Montgomery/Taggert 16)

“Come or go, I don’t care,” he called after her, then turned back into the room. What a very, very odd way for a woman to act, he thought. From the first day he’d met her all he’d heard was how wonderful, how great…Yes, that was it, how great Captain Baker was, yet now that she’d found out she was in the same room with the man she thought to be great, she acted as though he were poison.

His head came up. Perhaps she was in awe of him. He’d encountered that in people before. They had heard of him and knew of his work and when they spoke to him their voices quivered. He smiled and bounded down the stairs two at a time.

He reached her just as she reached the door to the outside. He caught her arm. “There’s no reason to be afraid of me,” he said. “You’ve seen that I’m a man like any other. You’ve seen that I’m flesh like any other man. You may continue to visit me.”

“May I?”

“Yes,” he answered, completely missing the irony in her voice.

She stood still for a long while and looked at him. “The scars on your cheeks are from the lance in Africa? It went through one side of your jaw and out the other.”

He nodded.

“The scars on your back, they’re from a lion, also in Africa?”

He smiled broader. It was quite soul satisfying that this woman knew so much about him. Many men knew about what he had done in his life, but not many women were allowed to read what he had written. And, right now, had he been given a choice, he would rather Claire know what he had done in his life than any other person on earth.

“And the knife wounds on your ribs?” she asked.

He didn’t answer right away.

“You are a Master Sufi,” she said softly.

He was very impressed with her knowledge of him.

Claire gave him a humorless smile. “Now I know what others don’t. You wrote that you had become a Master Sufi, but one critic said that was impossible, that to pass the…graduation I guess you’d call it, you’d have to go through a ceremony. It is, I believe, a ceremony in which you are put into a trance and you inflict—” She broke off, not liking to think of what he had done, but then he was a scholar as there had never been a scholar. He wasn’t content with researching a subject, he wanted to experience what he saw. To become a Master Sufi, a priest of what has been called the Religion of Beauty, he would have had to put himself in a trance and, while singing and dancing, stab himself with a knife. It is said that initiates’ wounds would later be healed by the touch of their master.

Trevelyan gave her a bit of a bow to acknowledge that she was right.

Claire looked at him a moment longer, then put her hand on the door.

He covered her hand with his. “It doesn’t matter what’s gone before. You may still visit me. I will…” He smiled. “I will teach you Peshan.”

She pulled her hand away from his. “And what will I teach you?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I know all the languages you know. I—”

“Perhaps I can teach you more about being an American heiress. Perhaps I can teach you what it feels like to be

an American who is about to become a duchess.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her anger was beginning to show now. She had hoped she would be able to make it out of the old wing of the house before she exploded, but she wasn’t going to make it. “Will you write a book on your observations of me? Will I see your cartoons in every bookstore in the world?”

It took Trevelyan a moment to understand what she was talking about. “As you have said, I write about everything.”

“Including your friends.” She smiled at that. “Now that I see it I don’t know how I didn’t know who you were from the beginning. The scars. The cold eyes that look at everything and everyone as though they were biological specimens that should be cataloged and categorized. Will you give me a Latin name for having discovered me? Americanus bakerus. I assume you do want the credit for having made the identification. Do I get the great privilege of having a male Latin name? Or is it Americana bakera?”

“I have never done anything to make you believe I am as you describe. I—”

“Haven’t you? At every opportunity you have asked me questions about myself and my family. You’ve asked how I feel about people I know.” Her mouth tightened. “You have asked me questions about Captain Baker, about—” She looked him up and down. “You have asked me about yourself. It was rather like eavesdropping wasn’t it, Captain Baker? Or should I call you Trevelyan? Or maybe I shouldn’t call you at all.”

Again she reached for the door, but he blocked her way.

“I didn’t mean to lie to you,” he said. “There are reasons that force me to keep my identity a secret.”

“So you can spy on people?”