The Ugly Duchess (5 page)

“Do not ever speak about my future wife in such a manner,” James hissed.

“No doubt you’re feeling short-tempered. It must be a shock. Yesterday you were a carefree bachelor, squiring that luscious young opera dancer about the town, and now you’re on the verge of being leg-shackled.”

James ground his teeth but remained silent.

His father burbled on but kept coming back to James’s adroit brilliance in compromising Theo in front of the Prince.

As they rounded the corner of their street, James felt his control snap. He reached out and grabbed his father’s neck cloth, crushing the elegant concoction of starch and linen topped by the duke’s weak chin. “You will never say a word about this night to me, ever again. Do you understand?”

“No reason to be so violent about it,” the duke said. “Not the proper attitude for a son, may I point that out?”

“I consider myself to be addressing not a father but an embezzler,” James said, his voice icy. But at the same time he knew that for all he blamed his father, it was
he
who was the real villain.
He
had betrayed Daisy.

“Well,” Ashbrook huffed. “I don’t see why you would wish to characterize my ill luck in such a harsh fashion, but I assure you that I have no mind to discuss this night with you. I merely wanted to offer my congratulations. The fact that I expressed a need for help, and you responded within the day, doing precisely what I asked you to . . . well, it makes up for many of life’s smaller blows.”

And then he sat back and beamed at his son and heir until the carriage door opened.

James waited until his father descended before leaning forward to empty his stomach onto his own shoes, not that there was anything in his stomach but cognac and bitterness.

Seven

June 14, 1809

T
he wedding of James Ryburn, Earl of Islay, future Duke of Ashbrook, to a little-known heiress, Miss Theodora Saxby, drew the kind of breathless attention usually reserved for royal nuptials. The scandal rags, in particular, had latched onto the story of a true love match.

The account of Miss Saxby’s care of James during his childhood illness had been told, retold, and embellished until, by a fortnight before the wedding day, most of London believed she had read to him on his deathbed, and her voice alone kept him from drifting into an eternal sleep.

By one week before the wedding, the young Miss Saxby had actually revived James as he swooned into that “dark night from which there can be no recovery” (as the
Morning Chronicle
put it).

And the wedding itself promised to be as lavish as that of a princess. Not only had it been orchestrated in a matter of mere months, but no expense had been spared. The Duke of Ashbrook had declared that nothing was too good for the wedding of his ward to his only son and heir.

On the grand day itself, Miss Saxby was delivered to St. Paul’s in a lavishly gilded open carriage that made its way through crowded streets, most of London having turned out in hopes of catching a glimpse of the bride.

Reporters for London’s papers, from the august
Times
to rags like
Tittle-Tattle
, were clustered together by the door of the cathedral. As the carriage approached, they crowded forward, pressing against the barricade erected to keep out hoi polloi.

“
The bride
,” scribbled Timothy Heath, a young reporter for the
Morning Chronicle
, “
looked like a French confection, her skirts a veritable cloud of silk and satin. She wore flowers in her hair and held a bouquet in her hands as well.
” He paused. Miss Saxby wasn’t a pretty girl, which made it all a bit difficult. “
The future duchess,
” he finally wrote, “
has a profile that is worthy of the peerage. Her features speak to the generations of Englishmen and women who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with our monarchs.
”

The reporter from
Tittle-Tattle
had a simpler and considerably more brutal summary. “She’s an ugly duchess and I’ll be damned if she’s ever going to turn into a swan,” he exclaimed, watching as the Duke of Ashbrook held out his hand to help his ward from the carriage.

Although he was likely speaking to himself, every reporter in the vicinity heard him and rejoiced.
Tittle-Tattle
put out a special evening edition whose headline screamed, “The Ugly Duchess!” Editors all over London took one look at that catchy précis and swapped their morning headline for a version of
Tittle-Tattle’
s.

All the young ladies who had sighed over James’s broad shoulders and handsome face giggled into their morning tea. And all the gentlemen who had ever contemplated dancing with Miss Saxby felt virtuously satisfied that they hadn’t lowered their standards in exchange for her dowry.

The received idea that James was wildly in love with his “ugly duchess” turned overnight to a ridiculous myth that no one believed. Obviously the Earl of Islay had married for money: there could be no other explanation. And what the press declared to be fact, England believed.

“I’m that surprised,” a young opera dancer named Bella confided to another member of the corps the morning after the nuptials. She had found herself the recipient of a large emerald and a formal good-bye a few months earlier. “I would never have picked him for the sort who’d go all sober when he got married, especially if he was marrying a woman like
that.
”

She pointed to an illustration in their favorite theatrical gossip page, which had dashed out a quick approximation of an “ugly duchess.” It was more of a caricature than a portrait, with a few scattered feathers showing under her bonnet.

“He’ll be back,” her friend Rosie replied. Rosie was more cynical, and wiser. “Give him six months.”

Bella tossed her curls. “I shan’t wait six months for anyone. There are gentlemen lined up at the door waiting for
me
, I’ll have you know.”

“Well, I feel sorry for her,” Rosie said. “She’s being called ugly in every paper in London. She’s bound to find out. And when one of
them
”—by which Rosie meant the gently born—“gets a nickname like that, they have it for life.”

Staring at her reflection in the glass, Bella adjusted the emerald necklace and thought about how her pink and cream loveliness must provide a terrible contrast with James’s new bride. “I’m sorry for him. I heard she hasn’t any curves. He loved my apple-dumplings, if you know what I mean.”

“She hasn’t,” Rosie confirmed. “I got a good look when she got out of the carriage. She’s as thin as a clothespin, and flat down the front. You know Magis down in the box office? He reckons she is a man, and it’s all a big hoax.”

Bella shook her head. “This emerald says it’s no hoax.”

A
t precisely the same time, in a very different part of London, Theo woke the morning after her wedding, feeling confused. The wedding itself was a blur of smiling faces . . . the grave eyes of the bishop . . . the moment she heard James’s strong voice promise to be hers
til death do us part
, the moment when she herself said
I
do
and saw a lightning-quick smile touch his lips.

Later, after they had returned home, her maid, Amélie, had divested her of the despised puff of lace and silk that her mother had identified as the perfect fairy-tale gown—and which twelve seamstresses had worked on day and night for a month in order to finish—and put her in a sheer pink negligee. With ruffles.

Her new father-in-law had vacated the matrimonial chambers, and she had undressed in the bedchamber belonging to the former duchess, a room so large that it could contain her former bedroom three times over.

And then James had entered from the duke’s—now his—bedchamber next door, looking rather pale and stern around the mouth.

After that the night had been a blur of nervousness and flashes of desire and just plain awkwardness. It wasn’t exactly what she had expected, but what had she expected? When it was over, James had kissed her, very precisely, on her brow. And that was the first time she realized that if
she
had felt a little dizzy at various points, her new husband appeared to be remarkably collected. Not at all as hungry as he’d been before, at the musicale, when they were merely kissing.

Before she could say a word, he had quietly closed the door between their adjoining rooms.

Of course, his departure was to be expected. She knew that no one but the poor actually slept together in the same bed: it was unhygienic, and led to restless sleep. Not only that, but one of her governesses had briskly told her that men smelled like goats in the morning and that if a woman didn’t put a door between herself and horrors of that nature, she might find herself pressed under an evil-smelling male body.

It didn’t sound nice when she first heard it, and it didn’t sound nice now. Perhaps it was all right, then, that James slept in his own room. But did he have to leave so quickly? While she was still feeling as if she could barely remember the day of the week?

Then it occurred to her that he might well have retired because after he achieved satiety, for want of a better word, the evidence was left on her sheets. Who wants to sleep on soiled sheets? Not she. Maybe in the future she would visit his room and then retire to her own clean bed.

That idea made her smile, even though she was now aware that her body seemed to have some new twinges in place where there had been no twinges before. Luckily, her mother had been thorough in explaining what happened in the marital bed.

It was all the way she had described, more or less. Her mother had said that a husband touches his wife down there, for example, but James hadn’t. And she’d implied—though she didn’t say it directly—that a wife might do the same for her husband. But since James hadn’t . . .

They had kissed for quite a long time, and then he rubbed her breasts, and he braced himself over her (a happy tingle coursed up her legs at the memory), and finally he pushed inside, which wasn’t all that comfortable. After that, it was over quickly.

She did like it, almost all of it, particularly the part where he kissed her so urgently that they were both moaning, because that made her feel like a bit of paper about to go up in flames.

Though she hadn’t, of course.

And now she was a married woman on the very first morning of her married life. Which meant, among other things, that she would never wear a string of pearls, or a ruffle, or a white dimity gown again in her life.

Amélie had carefully draped Theo’s monstrosity of a wedding dress over a chair. She climbed out of bed and wandered over to take a look. It was the last, the very last, piece of clothing that her mother would have the pleasure of choosing for her.
That,
if nothing else, deserved a celebration. With a grin, Theo pushed open the tall windows looking down onto the formal garden that stretched behind the Duke of Ashbrook’s town house, and snatched up the gown.

At that moment there was a brisk knock, and the door between her and James’s bedchambers opened. He was fully dressed in his riding habit, complete with boots and a whip, and she was barefoot in her negligee, her hair loose and billowing down her back.

“What on earth are you doing?” he asked, nodding at the wedding gown in her arms.

“Throwing this horror out the window.”

He reached her shoulder just in time to watch it fall. The top layer caught a little wind on the way down. “I hope that wasn’t a symbolic representation of your attitude toward our marriage?”

“Even if it were, it’s too late,” Theo said. “You’re too heavy for me to tip out the window. Just look at that. It looks like a drunken meringue.” The dress settled with a flourish of lace on top of the boxwood hedge below.

“I suppose there’s no call to wear such a thing more than once,” James commented, a familiar note of wry amusement in his voice.

Theo felt a wash of relief. If they could just go back to being
themselves,
to being comfortable together rather than all this . . . this hotness and awkward feelings, it would be so much more agreeable to be married.

“I intend to change the way I dress,” she said, grinning at him. “I may throw everything I own out this window.”

“Right,” James said. He sounded utterly uninterested.

“Including the garment I’m wearing at the moment,” she said with distaste.

At that his face brightened a little. “Do you intend to toss your negligee this minute? I could help you disrobe.”

Theo grinned at him. “Fancy a look at your bride in the daylight, do you?”

But he had a little frown between his brows. Theo had to stop herself from reaching up to soothe his forehead. “What’s the matter?” she asked instead.

“Nothing.” The corner of his mouth twitched, so she reached out a finger and touched him there, just enough to make it clear that she knew his expressions so well that lying to her was of no use. Then she leaned back against the windowsill and crossed her arms, waiting.

“I was wondering if you could spend a few hours with me and Mr. Reede, the estate manager, before luncheon.”

“Of course. How can I help?”

“My father has turned over the estate to me. After my ride, I’m going with Reede to the docks, as we have a ship there, but we should be back in an hour or two.”

“Your father did what?” Theo repeated, scarcely believing her own ears.

James nodded.

“How in the bloody hell did you talk him into that?” she demanded.

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I asked your mother to insist on it in the marriage contract. She understood absolutely; she’d heard about various rash investments of his.”

“But you never said anything about that to me! Nor did my mother!”

“I had made Father promise that I would inherit the estate on my marriage, rather than on his death. But I wasn’t sure he would actually follow through unless it was legal. Your mother was entirely in agreement, so she played along.”

Theo nodded. “And she specified that you had to bring me into conversation about the estate.”

“No, she said nothing of the sort. I had the papers drawn up so that you and I are both executors.”

This time Theo’s mouth actually fell open. “You did
what?
”

“It’s entailed, of course. You cannot sell it, any more than I can.”

“This was my mother’s idea?”

“No. Actually, she wasn’t enthusiastic, and my father was apoplectic, to put it mildly. But I forced it.” A gleam of satisfaction shone in his eyes. “You know I’m hopeless when it comes to numbers and the like, Daisy. But you’re not. We can think together about what’s to be done. We used to come up with all sorts of ideas, remember?”

Theo gaped at him. She’d never heard of an estate administered by a woman. Well, at least by a woman who wasn’t a widow.

“I’m at my best out-of-doors,” James continued doggedly, “and if you tell me to pick the best horse in a race, I can do it with a fair degree of accuracy. If you think we should improve the breeding stock of the sheep on the estate, I can certainly do that. But sitting in the library and listening to a string of numbers? I’ll go mad.”

“I’m happy to come,” Theo said. She felt almost as if she were going to cry. “I’m just—I’m so
honored
that you wish me to help.”

“No reason to be,” James said, a trifle sharply. “You might as well know now that my father’s nearly driven the estate into the ground. It’s your inheritance that has to get it solvent again. So it’s only fair that you be part of it all.”

Theo blinked at that revelation but pushed the thought away for the moment. “I don’t think there are many men who think as you do,” she said a little mistily. “As long as you know that I didn’t learn double-entry bookkeeping or anything truly useful from my governesses.”