The American Duchess (8 page)

 He had noticed the children in the mass. but not as individuals. He looked at his wife with interest. It seemed remarkable to him that she should be so observant.

In the afternoon the Duke took out a gun and Tracy settled down to read in the garden. He was surprised, and pleased, by her independence. He had not expected to be able to get off by himself.

“I would just love to sit in the sunshine and read,” she had said, half apologetically. “Unless, of course, there is something you want me to do?”

He had replied that she must do whatever she wished to do and that he would be very happy to go out with a gun for a few hours. She was still reading when he returned and, instead of going directly into the house, he detoured to the garden. She was so absorbed she did not hear him coming and it wasn’t until he spoke her name that she looked up.

“Oh, Adrian!” She looked at his shooting jacket, gun and the leather pouch he carried. “Are you back so soon?”

“It’s after five o’clock,” he said.

“Is it? Good heavens, I had no idea it was so late. I have been reading a new novel called
Persuasion
by Miss Austen,” she explained. “It’s marvelous.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything by Miss Austen,” he said.

“She is a genius,” Tracy said enthusiastically. “And hilariously funny as well, although this book is rather different from her previous novels.”

“Do you read a great deal, Tracy?”

“Constantly. I brought six books with me to Thorn Manor.”

He threw back his head and shouted with laughter. When he had got his breath back, he said, “Promise me solemnly,
ma mie,
that you won’t reveal that fact to a soul. Think of my reputation! My wife found it necessary to bring six books on her honeymoon. I should never live it down.”

Tracy had been regarding his mirth with good-humored bewilderment, but now her own rich laugh rippled out. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She gave him an impish look. “It will be our secret.”

“Thank you, darling,” he said fervently. “Do you think you could tear yourself away from your book for long enough to have dinner?”

“Certainly,” she replied and, rising, accompanied him to the house, chatting companionably all the while.

Chapter 10

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit.

—Shakespeare

Alphonse, the Duke’s chef who had been sent up from the Castle, outdid himself at dinner. Tracy, who was a very good cook herself, was deeply impressed. The food she had had on her visit to Steyning Castle and the last evening’s meal as well had been superlative, but on those occasions her mind had been too distracted to allow her to truly appreciate it.

“Is Alphonse French?” she asked the Duke, reverently regarding a morsel of squab before she put it into her mouth.

“Yes. I brought him from Paris with me when I came home last winter. I had to bribe him shamelessly, but he was worth it.”

“He certainly was,” said Tracy, mentally planning to see if she could extract some of the chef’s secrets from him.

After dinner they went into the library and the Duke proposed a game of chess. Tracy looked at him measuringly. “Only if you give me a handicap,” she said at last.

He looked disappointed. “I did not know you were so poor spirited.”

“I don’t mind losing, but I hate to lose badly,” Tracy said frankly. “You may be the image of a British gentleman, but I’ll bet you’re a killer. Give me a queen and a rook.”

“A queen and a rook!”

“Tsk, tsk, Adrian. I didn’t know you were
so
poor spirited
.
”

“I hate to lose, period,” he said ruefully and Tracy smiled triumphantly.

“I knew it.”

He looked at her, dark blue eyes narrowed. “All right. A queen and a rook.”

Silence descended as they bent over the chessboard. Tracy was quite a good player, but the Duke excelled. Without the handicap she would not have had a chance. As it was, the game was very nearly even as they came down toward the end with the edge going to Tracy as she had both her knights and he had only one. She had lost her queen a few moves before.

She stared at the board intently. “I should win this,” she muttered. “I’m ahead.” She moved a knight and next move lost her rook. It didn’t take the Duke long to checkmate her. “Damn,” said Tracy disgustedly.

“Shame on you,
ma mie
,
”
he said. “You should have put up a better end game than that.”

“I know. I never play a decent end game. I do fine until I have to finish it off. I just can’t seem to figure out how to go about it. I dither.”

He was smiling at her. “You don’t have the killer instinct.” His voice was softly amused.

“I guess not.”

He reached out and covered her hand with his. “I shouldn’t at all like a wife who had the killer instinct.” Her eyelids dropped a little in a kind of acknowledgment.

The tea tray came in and, after, the Duke said, “You go along to bed, Tracy.
I
am going to read for a bit. I’ll see you in the morning.” Her eyebrows raised a little in surprise and he said levelly, “I am going to be very noble tonight. I don’t want to hurt you again. Let’s give it another day.”

“Oh.” She looked at him for a moment, her eyes serious, then she smiled. “So noble a noble,” she said mockingly, blew him a kiss, turned her beautiful back and left.

The following day they went fishing. There was a small but secluded lake on the Thorn Manor estate, and the Duke had told her that it was well stocked with fish. To Tracy’s mind, nothing equaled saltwater fishing, but the lake had looked inviting and freshwater fishing was better than no fishing at all. They left the house in the afternoon, and it was warm and sunny when they arrived at the smooth, clear expanse of water that was Thorn Lake.

Tracy was dressed in a blue cotton shirt-dress and thin blue leather slippers. She took her fishing rod from the Duke, put it down on the grass and proceeded to roll up the sleeves of her dress. She then took her shoes off. “Ah, the grass feels wonderful,” she said, and he noticed that her feet were bare. She baited her hook with professional detachment and looked at him expectantly.

His blue eyes glinted at her. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll move off onto the rocks over there.”

She nodded and expertly cast her line into the water. He did not move immediately but stood regarding her. He was, as his aunt had often remarked, a very fastidious man, and the sight of his wife barefoot and dressed in a plain cotton dress with the sleeves rolled up ought not to have appealed to him. But it did.

For one thing, Tracy didn’t look even remotely disheveled. She could have spent hours rolling her sleeves in just that way, arranging her collar in just that fashion, so perfect did they look on her. She had a way with clothes, he reflected, that was more French than English. Whatever she wore, it looked marvelous. It was the way she wore it—as if, under the circumstances, it was impossible for anyone to wear anything else. She began to pull in her line and he moved over to the rocks he had pointed out and began to fish himself.

They had quite a successful afternoon, and the Duke’s bucket was respectably full when he decided to call a halt. Tracy had stopped fishing about fifteen minutes before and was lying back on the grass, sleepy from the sun, her eyes closed, her hands behind her head. He put the fishing gear into the phaeton and sat down beside her. Her lashes, a darker brown than her hair, lay on her cheeks. Her skin was honey colored, not the white-white of an Englishwoman’s. Damp brown-blonde curls clustered at her temples. There was a faint beading of moisture on her upper lip. The outline of her breasts against the thin cotton of her dress was beautiful.

She felt him looking at her and the knowledge of his gaze awoke a memory of the feelings he had stirred in her the other night. She felt his finger on the inside of her bare arm, gently rubbing. “Are you awake?” he said and she opened her eyes.

All during the drive home, and all during dinner, she felt as if she were waiting. They took a walk together in the garden after dinner and watched the light die away from the sky. Then he sent her upstairs. She put on a thin silk nightdress and told Emma she would not need her any more that night. Her husband, coming into her room, found her in bed this time. When his lips came down on hers and his beautiful, narrow hand touched her breast, she knew that this was what she had been waiting for. “Adrian,” she whispered in wonder, “Adrian.”

He didn’t go back to his own bed that night, or any other night of their stay at Thorn Manor. In loving Tracy he had discovered a heady combination of tenderness and eroticism that he had never known before. Her innocence, her total trust, called forth from him feelings of protectiveness and care. He wanted to cherish her.  But, at the same time, he felt he could not get enough of her, of her beautiful body, which she put totally at the service of his desire, of the small cries of astonished pleasure she gave when he thrust deep within her, of the feeling he had of absolute possession.

This was his wife. There was a feeling of permanency about his lovemaking with her that he had never felt before. He thought not only of the present, but of the future. He thought of filling her with children—sons who would have her brightness and who would bear his name and carry on his line. Six centuries worth of dynastic and possessive instincts had been bred into the Duke; in his relationship with his wife, all of those instincts had come strongly into play.

Tracy felt herself plunged into a world she hadn’t known existed. She was bound to her husband by an intimacy of intense passion that left her with awareness of little else. She felt totally, absorbingly, married. Adrian’s least movement, his smallest glance, engrossed her. She was like wax in his hands. He could do what he would with her. For five magic days, the outside world, as far as she was concerned, ceased to exist.

Of course, they did continue to go places and do things. They went back to the lake several times and one day Tracy brought large towels and they swam. Tracy had learned to swim almost as soon as she had learned to walk. She was as at home in the water as the Duke was on a horse. He watched her sliding strongly and cleanly through the clear lake water with an athlete’s appreciation of a physical feat performed with exceptional skill and grace. The Duke could swim, but he did not swim like his wife. She went straight across the lake and back and when she reached his side again she was only slightly out of breath.

She stood beside him, the sun glinting off the drops that clung to her hair and lashes, and laughed for sheer joy. “I love to swim,” she said.

“You must be part mermaid,” he answered and, bending, picked up one of the towels.

“No, I’m just a girl from Salem, Massachusetts.” She smiled and reached for the towel he held. But he shook his head and proceeded to dry her himself, after which he laid her down in the shelter of two old trees and made love to her.

That was the afternoon of their last day at Thorn Manor. When at last they returned to the house, Tracy was met by a very upset Emma. “Oh, Your Grace! Alphonse fell down this afternoon and hit his head and the doctor has been and says he must stay in bed for at least two days!”

“Good heavens.” Tracy had hardly walked in the door; the Duke had taken the horses around to the stables. “However did he come to fall?”

“There was a wet spot on the kitchen floor. He hit his head on the table.”

“Is he all right?” Tracy asked with swift concern. “The doctor didn’t think it was serious?”

“No, Your Grace. A concussion, he said.”

“Well, that’s all right then.”

“But, Your Grace,” Emma almost wailed, “I don’t know who is to cook your dinner for you. Mrs. Alien boils everything, she says. And I can cook eggs and fry bread, but I don’t think His Grace.. .”

The corners of Tracy*s mouth indented. “No,” she said, “a boiled dinner or eggs certainly will not do for His Grace. I suppose it’s too late to find someone else?”

“Mrs. Allen doesn’t have any suggestions.”

“Well, don’t get into such a pucker, Emma. I guess I’ll just have to cook dinner myself.”

“You,
Your Grace?”

Tracy laughed. “Me. Before I became a duchess, I was just an American girl, Emma, and American girls learn to cook. I’ll have a look in the kitchen to see what’s available, and then I should very much like to wash my hair.”

So it was that on the last evening of her honeymoon, Tracy ate a dinner she had cooked herself. So did the servants, for whom she had done a roast beef, refusing to allow them to dine on the eggs that would otherwise have been their fate.

The Duke had had no idea that his wife was in the kitchen until she arrived in the drawing room clad in an apron that she proceeded to remove and place on the back of a chair as she announced with aplomb, “Dinner is served.”

There was a lovely clear soup, fillets of the fish they had caught that afternoon served in herb butter, and tender, succulent chicken. Emma, who had had strict instructions on when to turn things over and when to take them off the heat, was in charge in the kitchen. Robert, serving, couldn’t help but look with amazement at the Duchess, who sat serenely eating her food and sipping her wine, giving no sign at all that she had been chopping vegetables in the kitchen an hour ago.

The Duke was scarcely less amazed. “Did you actually cook this?” he asked, as he tasted the delicious fish.

“I did,” said Tracy. “My mother was an excellent cook—although not in the same category as Alphonse. She taught me to cook when I was still a little girl.”

“But did you cook in America?” clearly he couldn’t quite understand how his wife had come to acquire such a skill.

“We had a cook, of course, but either Mother or I took over on her day off. And we often did the baking.” Tracy smiled at his expression. “It is not that easy to find help in America, Adrian. Most good households only have three or four people. There is nothing like the number of people you have working for you in England. Except in the South, and that is only because of slavery, a situation we all disapprove of deeply.”