Duchess For A Day

“Your duties,” said Lord Northway, “if you choose to accept the position, will be to hire a small staff and have the Saratoga residence made ready for the arrival of the duchess herself. She’ll be coming to the Springs in mid-August for the summer racing season.

“It is,” said Northway, “entirely up to you. If you wish to accept this offer, all the necessary arrangements will be made for you.”

“Yes, of course, I accept!” said Claire, excited. “I can think of nothing I’d like better than to…to…” She stopped speaking and frowned suddenly. She couldn’t go. She couldn’t leave the poor old woman known as Green Tooth behind. She owed the woman her life. She couldn’t be ungrateful and turn her back on the poor creature.

Claire looked up at the tall, imposing man and said, “On one condition, milord.”

“Which is?”

“I’ve a friend who must accompany me to America.”

His eyebrows raised. “A male?”

“No, female.”

“I see no difficulty. Your friend can serve in some capacity as part of the staff.”

“Actually, it’s not quite that simple,” Claire said. She took a deep breath and informed him, “She’s presently a prisoner in Newgate. But she’s good-hearted. She saved me from a terrible physical attack and I will take responsibility for her.”

“What’s her crime?”

“I honestly don’t know, but I would guess petty theft or some such minor charge. I beg you, Lord Northway, find a way to free the poor woman and allow me to take her with me.”

Lord Northway reluctantly agreed to look into the charges and see what he could do. The astonished Green Tooth was freed that same afternoon.

The next morning Claire went directly to the bank and withdrew what meager funds she’d managed to save over the years. Then she requested entrance to her safe-deposit box. She took the box into a small private room, opened it and lifted from it a small velvet drawstring bag.

Claire loosened the tasseled drawstrings and looked inside. She smiled, as she always did, when admiring the sparkling treasures inside. After only a few seconds, she reluctantly drew the strings tight once more.

Then she lifted her full skirts and pinned the velvet pouch in among the folds of her full petticoats. She dropped her skirts, patted the concealed treasure, and left the bank with a spring to her step.

With the money she’d withdrawn, Claire promptly sent the woman who had saved her life to the dentist and to have her hair cut and buy some new clothes. And Claire bought her frail friend a fine-looking hickory walking cane with a gleaming silver head.

Days later Claire Orwell and Olivia Sutton—Olivia Sutton looking nothing like the unkempt woman dubbed Green Tooth and Claire vowing she’d have Olivia speaking like a proper lady by the time they reached New York—happily set sail for America on a bright, clear June morning.

Four

Virginia City, Nevada

Friday, July 5, 1895

Strong alpine sunlight streamed in through the open bedroom windows of an imposing three-story mansion perched on the cliffs high above the little mining city.

The sunshine had slowly marched across the spacious upstairs room until finally, at midmorning, it reached the bed. And the bed’s occupants.

A man and a woman.

The man groaned when the penetrating light shone through his closed eyelids, disturbing him, annoying him. Without opening his eyes, he grabbed a feather pillow, stuck his dark head under it, muttered a curse and promptly fell back to sleep.

The woman slowly awakened, stretched and raised up onto an elbow. Shoving her tousled dark hair out of her eyes, she yawned sleepily, then began to smile like the cat that got the cream. She gazed at the ruggedly handsome man stretched out naked on his belly beside her.

The darkness of his lean, bare body was in striking contrast to the whiteness of the silky sheets. Admiring him, she let her lazy gaze travel downward from his wide, sculpted shoulders and over the long, deeply clefted back to his trim waist. Her eyes brightened when they reached his firm buttocks, the smooth flesh of the rounded cheeks as deeply tanned as his leanly muscled arms. The sight of those strong arms and powerful thighs made her heart flutter pleasantly.

Recalling last’s night tempestuous loving, she sighed with pleasure, laid back down, and was soon asleep again.

Another hour passed before the man began to stir. Slowly he pulled his head out from under the pillow, lifted it and looked warily around. He saw the sleeping brunette beauty and made a face. He had forgotten she was here. He wished that she weren’t. Wished now that he hadn’t insisted she come home with him last night. Then again, he wasn’t sure he had. It might have been her idea.

Hank Cassidy made a face.

He tried to remember exactly what had happened at last night’s rowdy Fourth of July celebration. He vividly recalled the earlier part of the evening. The food and fireworks and the six-shooters discharging in the air. The music and the street dance and pretty little Patricia Ann Vance, the young woman he had escorted to the festivities.

Hank turned his head, looked again at the naked woman beside him. She wasn’t Patricia Ann. Patricia Ann was petite and had auburn hair and fair skin. This woman was tall and voluptuous and her hair and skin were almost as dark as his own.

Hank felt his head began to mildly throb. Then it dawned on him. He had, at the good-natured dares of his boisterous buddies and over Patricia Ann’s strong objections, made several visits to the makeshift outdoor bar for shots of rotgut whiskey. It was coming back to him now. He’d had one too many bourbons and Patricia Ann got huffy and warned as they danced, “Henry Columbus Cassidy, so help me if you have one more drink, I am leaving!”

“Well don’t let us keep you,” said a seductive long-legged beauty with dark hair, deftly stepping between him and the furious Patricia Ann to offer him a drink.

And herself.

Hank couldn’t remember seeing Patricia Ann after that. He did remember drinking and dancing and laughing with this brazen beauty. And, he vaguely recalled, much later in the evening, the two of them moving their little party on up the hill to the privacy of his home. Articles of discarded clothing had left a telltale trail from the room’s closed door to the bed.

He glanced again at the woman. In last night’s haste to get undressed and into bed, she had missed one sheer stocking. It still enclosed her long left leg enticingly. A saucy black lace garter rested just above her knee.

Hank eased over onto his back and scratched his stubbled jaw in puzzlement. What the hell was her name? As he recalled she was visiting from California; he’d never seen her before last night. They had not been formally introduced, but surely she’d told him her name at some point in the evening. Nonetheless, he couldn’t bring it to mind. Whoever she was, it was time she left.

He had a train to catch.

Hank drew a deep breath, reached out, touched the woman’s shoulder and gave her a firm shake. “Darlin’, time for us to wake up.”

Her dark eyes slowly opened. She saw him and began to smile. “Good morning, Hank, my love.”

“Mornin’…ah…honey.” He turned away, sat up and threw his long legs over the edge of the mattress. “Get dressed and I’ll have Brady drive you home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” she said, hastily sitting up and stripping off her lone stocking and black garter. Before Hank could rise to his feet, she scrambled across the mattress and looped the stocking around his waist from behind. Playfully biting his left ear, she murmured, “Have you forgotten what you promised last night, Hank?”

Hank screwed up his face. What could he have possibly promised this woman whose name he did not know? Had he mentioned Saratoga to her? Surely not. “No, of course I haven’t forgotten.”

“Then you’ll take me with you to Saratoga Springs?” she shrieked happily, releasing the sheer stocking. It whispered down to Hank’s lap and fell to the floor. She wrapped her arms around him and, lowering her face to press butterfly kisses to his tanned shoulder, said, “I can be ready in no time and—”

“Hold it, baby,” Hank interrupted, freeing himself from her arms. He stood up, lowered his hands to modestly cup himself, then turned to face her. “Now we both had a little too much to drink last night and we had us some fun together and I like you a whole lot, really I do. But we’ll have to continue this party when I return.”

“No!” she firmly protested. “I want to go with you,” she whined, desperate to make him want her so much he’d give in and take her to Saratoga.

He was everything she’d ever wanted—handsome and charming and fun and virile and the thrilling lover of her wildest dreams. And he was, she had heard the minute she arrived in Virginia City, one of the richest men in America.

“Now listen…ah…I…” Hank shook his head. “All right, I admit it. I can’t recall your name, you’ll have to remind me.”

“Paula. Paula Gentry,” she said with a hurt look. “How could you possibly forget?”