Nan Ryan - Duchess For A Day

Lord Northway smiled, reached into his weskit pocket and extracted a large gold hunter-case watch. He gave the stem a slight twist and the case opened, revealing a yellowing enameled miniature.

The judge gasped audibly.

“Yes,” acknowledged Lord Northway, “an exact likeness of Claire Orwell.”

“Painted years before Claire was born,” the judge said.

Lord Northway nodded. “My father handed me this watch on his deathbed.” He looked at the faded miniature. “She was the love of his life.”

“I see,” the judge sat back in his chair.

“Father instructed me to help her daughter, Claire, if ever she needed me.”

“How did you hear about her being in trouble?”

“A timely missive from a miscreant in Newgate known as Green Tooth,” said Lord Northway.

Claire looked up, smiled and rose from the bench in the corridor as Lord Northway approached. Still puzzled that he had come to her defense, she was even more puzzled when the stately lord handed her an envelope.

“My dear,” he said in that rich baritone voice, “I’ve a bit of good news for you.”

Claire listened and learned that she was being offered the opportunity to sail to America to open up the Saratoga Springs, New York, summer house of Britain’s flamboyant Duchess of Beaumont. The young, blond widow was one of Britain’s more colorful royals, a woman who cared not one whit what the gossips said about her.

Claire had read of the duchess’s exploits and her photograph had often appeared in the London Times.

“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.

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.