What the Duke Doesn't Know (3 page)

“Pr-precisely.” She passed quite close to him on her way out. Her long fall of black hair swayed seductively with each step. Was he really throwing her out of his room? Her initial words came floating back. She'd come up to thank him. Perhaps with something warmer than words? Some marvelous island custom? No. She hadn't meant that. Clearly, obviously. No sign whatsoever of any such thing, despite her unembarrassed mention of bedding. Besides, it would be an awkward complication, as they were living together in his brother's house. Not together. As fellow guests. Strangers, in fact.

“Good night,” said Kawena.

“Good night,” James replied, shutting the door firmly behind her.

He leaned against it, listening to her soft footsteps retreat along the corridor. Perhaps helping her wasn't quite such a burden. It would give him a chance to become better acquainted with one of the loveliest, and most unusual, girls he'd ever encountered. Her courage and fire drew him—now that she'd stopped calling him names. How many women, how many people, would have done as she had, sailing halfway around the world to find justice?
Very few, hardly any, really
, he thought. She'd looked positively intrepid, stepping out of the shrubbery with her gun. And under his hands, on the turf, she'd felt… James fell into a pleasant reverie. It was some time before he returned to his letter.

* * *

Kawena was wakened the next morning by a young maid bringing her a cup of tea and pushing back the draperies on the windows. Kawena didn't really like tea, but she took a polite sip and suppressed a grimace at the bitterness. Her father, who had been inordinately fond of the dark beverage, claimed it was much more palatable with milk added, but milk had never agreed with Kawena's digestive system. When the maid went out, she set the cup aside.

Sunshine streamed through the windows. Apparently it did not rain all the time in England, as she'd been told. She could see a corner of the garden below, bright with unfamiliar flowers. It was a comfortable house, the largest she'd ever been inside. And her hostess, Ariel, seemed very far from hidebound and prim. Had her father been prejudiced by his decision to abandon his home country? Immediately, Kawena felt disloyal. Ariel Gresham was probably not a typical Englishwoman.

Surely James Gresham must be an odd sort of Englishman. Mustn't he? Last night, in his room, he'd been clucking over her behavior like the circle of watchful old women at home on the island. In her experience, young men did quite the opposite. They were always on the lookout for ways to circumvent rules and get you to go off alone with them into the trees. Were they so different here on the other side of the world?

Kawena stretched and threw back the bedcovers. No doubt she had much to learn about her father's homeland. She only hoped it would all end well.

Dressed in her borrowed gown once more, Kawena found Ariel and James at the breakfast table in a bright room at the back of the house. “I've made a list of the crew from my ship,” James was saying.

“But there's no sense doing more until we see if Nathaniel knows an admiral,” Ariel replied.

As Kawena sat down, James nodded.

Ariel picked up the teapot and gestured toward the cup beside Kawena's plate. “No, thank you,” Kawena said.

“Would you like coffee? Cook could make some.”

Kawena shook her head. Coffee was even more bitter than tea. She didn't see how anyone could stand to drink it.

“You must be used to quite different foods,” Ariel added, setting down the pot. “Perhaps I could order—”

“I am in England. I will eat English food.” Kawena smiled to show that it was no hardship. She was deeply grateful for their hospitality.

“Fruit,” said James.

Both ladies turned to look at him.

“They eat a deal of fruit on the Pacific islands.”

Ariel smiled and nodded. Kawena examined the man, wondering why he seemed uneasy. Then she gave up wondering and went to fill a plate with the items on the side table. The eggs were familiar, and she had eaten sausages in the course of her travels. Some she had found palatable, others revolting, with no way that she could see to tell the difference beforehand. Bread was safe. She liked bread, though they did not eat it on Valatu. And jam—jam was a welcome addition to her life indeed. This on the table was raspberry, her newly discovered favorite.

Silence fell as they ate. They were, after all, three strangers thrown together by family ties and circumstance. “Have you been to Oxford before?” Ariel asked James after a while.

“No. Never had the occasion to come.”

“You should look around. There are a great many lovely buildings. You could take Kawena about,” she suggested. “Show her something of her father's country.”

“You'd be a far better guide,” James answered. “And Alan best of all.”

“He's gone off to his laboratory. And I have an appointment this morning. I'll come with you another day, but you should go out exploring.”

James shrugged. “I don't know anything about the colleges, but I could use a bit of exercise.”

“I'd like to see this place,” Kawena agreed. And so the matter was settled.

Lord Alan Gresham kept no personal carriage, preferring to hire a vehicle if he needed one and save the expense. James and Kawena found this no hardship when they set out on foot a little while later. Less than half a mile down the green lane, they came to a place where three roads met at a bridge across the River Cherwell. On the other side, they were immediately among Oxford colleges. “I don't know the names of any of these places,” James said. “They're hundreds of years old, most of them. And, er, architectural.” He was very conscious of her vibrant presence by his side, though she didn't take his arm as an English girl might have. He'd offered it as they'd left the house, but she obviously hadn't understood the gesture. She'd marched off like an explorer on an expedition instead.

He watched her gaze at the intricate stonework and leaded windows that surrounded them. She was far more fascinating than any fusty carvings. And it wasn't just her unfamiliar style of beauty that made it so difficult to tear his eyes away. He'd thought that was it, of course. She
was
one of the loveliest creatures he'd ever seen. Then, as they walked and talked, he'd started to notice an air, a manner, unlike anything in his previous experience. Kawena's lively presence brimmed with…the unexpected, with an exhilarating whiff of adventure.

Some of the buildings loomed as large as mountains to Kawena, and as unlike her island home as anything could be. She felt squeezed by narrow passageways under heavy arches. “I've never seen anything so old,” she said. “Not built things, I mean.” Beaches and oceans and cliffs were far older, she noted. And yet not oppressive at all. “Your brother went to school here, but you did not?”

“No. I couldn't wait to escape the classroom. The idea of going on to university…” James shook his head. “Never in the cards. There are two kinds of Gresham brothers, you see. Randolph and Alan, and Nathaniel a bit, took to their books like fish to water. Sebastian and Robert and I could hardly sit still long enough to turn a page. We'd far rather be doing other things.”

For no good reason at all, the phrase reminded Kawena of their recent conversation in his bedroom, and all the “other things” a man and woman might do together, besides walking under great burdens of stone. Her errant mind offered up the moment when he'd thrown her over his shoulder and carried her off.

Of course, that had been outrageous. She'd been angry—and rightly so! She wasn't the least bit sorry that she'd pummeled him. And yet… Briefly, Kawena lost herself in his vivid blue eyes. Everyone she'd grown up with, even her father, had had brown eyes. She'd glimpsed other hues on her travels, while keeping her head well down. Now that she no longer had to duck under the brim of a cloth cap, she could look her fill. There was something particularly compelling about this man's gaze. Each time she met it, she felt an odd little shock.

Kawena realized that the silence had stretched too long. What had he said? Oh yes. “What other things?” she said.

“What…?” He blinked. “Oh. Ah, for me, captaining a sailing ship. Riding and cultivating his side-whiskers and waving his saber about for Sebastian. He's a cavalryman, you know. Robert's addicted to high society, cares more about the cut of his waistcoats than the written word.” James paused, then added, “Though I hear that may have changed lately. Which is dashed odd.”

Kawena didn't understand all of this, but she let it pass. It was tiresome to be questioning every unfamiliar phrase. And this was not the time to be staring into a man's eyes. She had important things to accomplish. She walked on, feeling a tiny twinge of gratification when he automatically followed.

“What about you? How were you…educated? Is there a school on Valatu?” James acknowledged that he knew nothing about the place, beyond the quality of its fruit. He'd thought ten years ago that he would explore the far corners of the world when he went to sea. But the navy gave you little time to look about the countries where you stopped, unless you counted the dockside establishments designed to separate sailors from their money, which he did not.

Kawena strode past another massive stone structure. “My father and mother taught me. As did others, sometimes, if they had some skill I wished to know. That is the way we learned.”

Thinking of his formidable parents, James decided that the exigencies of Eton hadn't been so very bad.

“My father taught me English things. Like how to read and write.”

“Your…people on the island don't read?”

“There is nothing to read in our language. And no reason to.” Kawena smiled at the confusion on his face. “We can all talk to each other.”

“But if you want to send a message…?”

She shrugged. “We can ask a child to run and find someone. Or just wait. The English don't like to wait, I think.”

“No Latin, or thrice-damned Greek,” James mused. How cheerfully he would have skipped those onerous subjects. “What did your mother teach you?” he asked, curious.

A tremor of loneliness shook Kawena. She missed her mother and her home. It was harder than she'd imagined to be so far away from every person she knew. “Useful things,” she said. “How to plait palm leaves and make bark cloth and gut a pig.”

“You can gut a pig?” he wondered.

“Of course.” She didn't see why this should be surprising. “And how to judge people's words by the look in their eyes and the way they move. How to hear the silence. How to care for your…property.”

“Property?” It seemed a grand word for the village he'd seen on the island.

Kawena didn't seem satisfied with it either. “The homes and gardens on Valatu belong to the women. They tend the earth. I know it is not so here. My father told me. Island men own their boats. They take the canoes out to fish and sometimes make long voyages to trade or explore. Women hold the trust of the land.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” It was true that the idea didn't sound right in English. This happened to her so often, and the other way around as well. Kawena considered how to explain. “Years ago, when I was small, my father wanted to build a bigger trading center out of timber, to impress the foreigners who anchored in our harbor. He said they would respect such a building more than one made of palm and bamboo. And my mother asked, ‘What if it is blown down in a storm?' As it would have been, of course, sooner or later. Nothing can stand against the great storms. And my father said, in that case, he would rebuild it. My mother asked about the next storm and the next. He got impatient then, as if she was being stupid, and said he would rebuild each time. ‘And when the trees are gone?' my mother asked. ‘For storms come faster than trees can grow.' And so, we do not have a trading center made of timber.”

James puzzled over this tale. It took him a while to work it out, rather like one of those parables vicars liked to pose. “Bamboo grows more quickly,” he concluded finally.

“Much.”

“Sounds like your mother knows her own mind,” he said then.

“Oh yes,” replied Kawena, with feeling. “She's wise and funny and very smart.”

He was much struck by her choice of words. “Mine's like that, too.”

“When I'm with her I often feel four years old again. It seems she can see right through me.”

“Exactly.” How odd that two people from opposite sides of the globe, and completely different families, should feel just the same, he thought. It was like meeting an old friend in the street, and yet not like that at all.

“She didn't want me to come here,” Kawena continued. “Because it was dangerous, of course. But I think sometimes she's afraid of my outlander half.”

“Outlander?”

She looked up at him, her dark eyes fathomless under the brim of a borrowed bonnet. Ariel had gotten her to wind her cascade of black hair into a braided knot at the nape of her neck. James found he missed that shining fall. It suited her so much better.

“I have an island part, her part, and an English part from my father. They fight each other sometimes.” She pressed the palms of her hands together and pushed back and forth. “I think my mother was afraid that the English part would win me over if I traveled here,” she added. “But the strange thing is, I feel the pull of all she taught me far more from this great distance. I miss her,” she finished, her voice melancholy.

James didn't know how to respond to the sadness in her expression. Long naval voyages gave one very little opportunity to talk to young ladies about personal subjects. Or any subjects, really. But he was driven by a desire to comfort her. “You'll inherit her house, though,” he tried finally. And cursed himself for a clumsy idiot. How was that helpful, to make her think of her one remaining parent's death?

Kawena shook her head. “It will go to my half sister. My mother had a husband who died before my father came to the island. I will always have a place in my sister's home, of course, but… That is why my father promised to provide for me.” Kawena had forgotten her problems for a while as she saw new sights and spoke with this interesting man. Now they came rushing back. “England is so large,” she said. “Perhaps I was a fool to think I could recover his fortune.”

The mournfulness of her words, in her face, shook James. “If someone on my ship stole those jewels, we'll find them,” he responded. His former reluctance had somehow evaporated. The grateful look she threw him sealed the change.

They came out of a twisting lane into a more open space, with a wider sky above. In the center of a square stood a circular domed structure, embellished with columns and balconies. “I do recognize that building,” James said in an effort to lift the mood. “Alan's mentioned it. It's the Radcliffe Camera.”

“Camera?” wondered Kawena.

“It means ‘room' in Latin. Scholarly types love their Latin. This one's not as old as some of the other places we've passed. A fellow—Radcliffe, I suppose—left them money to build it about sixty years ago. It's a library.” They stood gazing at the ornamented brick and stone. “Would you like to go in and see the books?” James dutifully asked. Alan had raved about the collection, declaring it was not to be missed.

Kawena shrugged. “I would rather walk. The building is pretty, though.”

James laughed with delight.

Kawena turned to blink at him.

“You don't have the least interest in staring at a bunch of loaded shelves, do you?” James said.

She looked vaguely guilty. “I'm sorry, did you want to look…?”

“No more than you. Less, perhaps. Alan's dragged me through a library before. And I can tell you they're deadly dull. Just leather spines and flaking gilt and dust.”

“But why did you laugh?”

“Because you made no bones about it,” he answered.

“Bones? What do bones have to do with it?” Kawena appeared quite bewildered.

“It's an expression.” James thought about it. “It's a deuced odd expression, isn't it? What
do
bones have to do with…anything, really? And who ‘makes' bones? Butchers? No, that can't be it.”

“I don't understand,” said Kawena.

She was gazing at him dubiously. “Can't blame you,” James responded. “Nor do I. But what I meant was, you don't pretend to be interested in things when you're not.”

“Why would I?”

“There's a question.” In James's limited experience, polite society did little else, as well as pretending
not
to be interested in what actually fascinated them. He'd always had a devil of a time navigating the resulting shoals.

“Are you feeling quite well?”

James couldn't help laughing again. “Actually, I am. Very well indeed. Shall we abandon our pursuit of architecture?”

Still frowning at him, Kawena nodded.

He led her up Catte Street, then turned down Holywell toward the deer park. The route would loop them back toward Alan's house, with a look-in at the water meadows on the way.

As Kawena walked, she tried to decide if he'd been laughing at her in that strange exchange about books and bones. All in all, she thought not. There'd been no mockery or contempt in his voice. She'd experienced instances of both on her travels and had come to know the tone. Still, it was hard having so little common ground. Here in England, she felt as if she were floating on the surface of things. She knew just enough to be aware that she had no understanding of the depths. Every so often, things popped up to startle and confuse her. Her natural assumptions were often wrong. It could be quite tiresome. And perhaps more. She realized that she felt a strong desire to understand James Gresham. He was so far from what she had expected when she set out to find him, and the more she learned, the more attractive he appeared.

They crossed another bridge. The little river made a soft gurgle below, nothing like the surge and hiss of waves. “Do you miss the sea?” Kawena said. “I've never been away from it for so long.”

“I do,” admitted James. “It's been ten years since I was ashore more than a couple of weeks.”

“And more than the sound,” she went on, her voice gone dreamy, “the sea is a…presence. On my island, it's all around, in all the colors of blue, stretching out forever, full of life and…mystery. You should see some of the strange things that have washed up on the beaches.”

“And its dark moods can take you down like the flick of a giant's finger,” he replied.

Kawena stopped and looked up at him. “It's told that in the days of my mother's grandmother, a wave as high as a mountain rose out of the sea and swept the island. The old people say there was a roar like thunder, and then water crashing over everything, breaking houses like so many twigs. Many people were killed.”

James nodded. “I've watched my ship ride up waves higher than the main mast, rising so fast your breath catches. A moment on top of the world, then you're plunging just as far into the trough, falling, it seems, into the very maw of the sea. You can't imagine you'll ever come out again. Then it starts all over again.”