The American Duchess by Joan Wolf

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