The Duchess (Montgomery/Taggert 16)

When at last he was lying beside her, Claire found she was panting from the exertion. “Sir,” she called to him a few times, but he didn’t move. She put her hand to his neck to feel his pulse, praying that she hadn’t killed him. He was alive and in fact he seemed to have gone from a faint to being soundly asleep.

Claire, sitting beside him, gave a sigh. Now what did she do? She didn’t dare go off and leave him there alone. For all she knew wolves still roamed the Scottish woodlands. As she glanced at the man she saw he was beginning to shiver.

With another sigh, she removed her ancient wool jacket, being careful not to hurt her arm. After she put the jacket over him, she gently smoothed his sweat-dampened hair from off his forehead.

She looked at him then and saw that he was an older man, probably in his late fifties or early sixties, and from his color, he didn’t look to have much longer to live. There were two old scars on his cheeks, one on each side, long, dreadful-looking scars, and she wondered what horrid thing had happened to him to cause such scars. She traced the scars with her fingertips.

Despite his age, his hair was thick and dark and a heavy dark mustache almost covered his upper lip. She noticed his lips were still full.

“You must have been quite handsome in your day,” she whispered to him, again smoothing his hair from his face. She looked down at the rest of him. He was quite tall, probably taller than Harry, but not built as Harry was. This man didn’t have Harry’s thick muscle; he wasn’t compact as Harry was, but more drawn out, tapering down to slim hips from wide shoulders.

As Claire looked down the length of him, she had to smile, for the man was dressed as oddly as she was. He wore an old shirt, a shirt that was much, much too thin for this cold morning, and she could see that he wore nothing beneath it, for the dreadful color of his skin showed through the thin fabric. His legs were encased in dirty, greas

y, worn buckskin trousers that were torn in a few places. They were the type of buckskin trousers a Regency gentleman might have worn to his club. Oddly enough he had on a pair of the most beautiful boots Claire had ever seen. She always recognized quality in clothing when she saw it, and these boots were indeed the best.

Perhaps he was a gentleman fallen on hard times, she thought. He shivered again, but then so did she. She looked up and saw that the sky was covered with gray clouds. It was then she realized that a mist of rain was falling. It wasn’t real rain, not rain as she knew it in America, rain that announced itself with thunder and lightning, but a soft, cold rain that was more like a very wet fog. She rubbed the upper part of her injured left arm to try to warm herself, but it was no use. All she could do now was wait for the man to wake up and hope they didn’t both die of pneumonia. Feeling rather protective of him, wanting to make sure he was going to be all right, she moved around him, leaned back against a tree and watched the misty rain coming down. Perhaps if she thought about crackling fires and…and the house her family sometimes rented in Florida, she would get warm.

Trevelyan opened his eyes slowly and blinked away the mist that covered his lashes. He lay still for a moment while he remembered the events that had led up to his lying on the cold, wet ground. He remembered coming out of the woods, nearly colliding with a rearing horse, then seeing a girl flying through the air. He had started toward her, but then, in an autocratic way, and in a flat accent that could only be American, she had issued an order to him as though he were one of the stable boys.

It had been easy to catch the horse, as the creature associated people with food and shelter, but, even so, the activity had been too much for him. Just as he reached the girl and opened his mouth to tell her what he thought of her, he felt his knees give way under him and there was nothing but blackness before his eyes.

Now he woke to find himself on the ground, and on his chest was a garment that looked as though it belonged to a child. The sound of a sneeze to his left made him turn his head.

Leaning against a tree, shivering from the cold and looking thoroughly wretched, was the girl. As he lay there, blinking against the eternal Scottish rain, watching her sneeze three times in succession, he studied her face. He was sure he’d never seen such wide-eyed innocence in a human being before. She’s barely more than a child, he thought. She rubbed her nose with her hand, then turned to look at him.

She was pretty, but he’d seen prettier women—if you could call her a woman. He would have guessed her age to be about fourteen had it not been for a rather splendidly developed bosom that the combination of the rain and the thin blouse was showing off to its advantage.

“You’re awake,” she said, and looked at his intense, dark eyes. And when Claire looked into those eyes, she thought she might have to revise her first impression that he was a harmless old man. She had never seen eyes like his: dark, compelling, yet frightening at the same time. His eyes showed intelligence, complexity, and knowledge. He was looking at her so intently, with such unblinking fervor, she felt as though he were reading her mind. She frowned and looked away.

As for Trevelyan, he thought she had the most guileless, innocent eyes he had ever seen.

He started to raise himself on his elbows. At his movement, she was instantly at his side, leaning over to assist him. At one point that fine bosom of hers was pressed against his cheek. When she had helped him to her satisfaction she leaned back, and he smiled at her.

Again, Claire frowned at him. There was something about the way he looked at her that she didn’t like. He had looked at her…her mid-chest with a Machiavellian smile that made her want to smack him. He is capable of all manner of bad deeds, she thought. He is as completely unlike Harry as one human can be from another. This man’s dark, dangerous eyes weren’t like Harry’s innocent blue ones.

She straightened her shoulders. She was not going to let the man frighten her.

“Whatever is a man like you doing out in weather like this?” she asked, sounding like a schoolteacher scolding one of her pupils. “You should be home in bed. Don’t you have people to take care of you? A wife? Daughters?”

He blinked away the water accumulating on his face. “I was taking a walk,” he said, frowning. “And what do you mean, a man like me?”

“I didn’t mean to offend you, it’s just that it’s cold and wet and from the look of you, you’re none too healthy. Will you be all right while I fetch help?”

“Help for what?”

“Why, for you, of course. Perhaps the men can bring a stretcher and they can carry—”

At that Trevelyan got off the ground as quickly as possible—and he would have died before he let her see that he was dizzy from the quick motion. “I can assure you, miss, that I am capable of walking on my own and I don’t need a stretcher.” To Trevelyan’s absolute disgust, in spite of his firmest self-control, he felt himself sway on his feet, but then, to his delight, the girl slipped her right arm about his waist and moved his arm about her shoulders.

“I can see that you need no help at all,” she said sarcastically. She felt much better when she wasn’t looking at his face. At least she had succeeded in wiping that smug look off his face, that look that seemed to insinuate that he knew every thought she had before she had it.

He leaned against her. She barely came to his shoulder, but he thought her to be the perfect height. Of course had she been six feet tall or four and a half feet he realized he probably would have still found her to be perfect. “Perhaps I do need a bit of help,” he said, trying both to sound weak and to keep his amusement out of his voice.

“Let me get my horse so you can ride back to your home.”

“And what will you do if I ride?”

“Walk,” she said, then, under her breath, added, “Maybe it will get me warm.”