The Ugly Duchess

  She seemed to carry James with her as a silent audience of one. Over time she had forgotten (more or less) about the unpleasant aspects of their marriage and just remembered what a friend he had been, and how he had encouraged her during her debut as a wallflower with a hopeless adoration for Lord Geoffrey Trevelyan.

  Her closest friend now was Cecil, though he bore no resemblance to James in character or figure. He had grown quite plump, particularly around the place where his waist used to be. He had learned to care more for a turbot in a good wine sauce than the height of his collar, and he was steady and devoted in his new passion.

  He had also dropped the excesses of fashion that characterized him as a younger man, though he had not deserted fashion altogether: these days he frequently wore Ryburn silks. In particular, Cecil benefited from a colorful cravat—a new style in Paris—because it drew attention away from the fact a second chin had joined his first.

  “Is that a new cravat?” Theo asked now, taking tea with him.

  “Indeed,” he said now, his smile emphasizing the rather charming laughter lines around his eyes. “My man didn’t care to pair a pink cravat with a violet coat, but I cited your example and he gave in. I must say, there’s something wonderful about watching a Frenchman accede to an Englishwoman’s dictates. I would never be able to face him down without you to back me up.”

  Theo poured him another cup of tea. “I do appreciate the fact that you haven’t been in the least forceful about asking me to do something formal regarding the dukedom.”

  “Lord knows I don’t want the title,” Cecil said with a shrug. And he meant it. He was cheerfully indolent and viewed with horror the duties associated with the duchy. “The only thing I would find even remotely interesting about becoming a duke would be if one of my fellow peers murdered someone and we got to sit in judgment. But frankly, that happens all too rarely.”

  “Bloodthirsty wretch,” Theo said affectionately.

  “I have more than enough money of my own. It’s my father-in-law who’s chuffed at the prospect.”

  “We cannot declare James dead,” Theo said, the words coming in a rush, “without making another effort to find him first. I’ve been thinking that I had better return to England and see what’s happened to all those Bow Street Runners I sent out. After Christmas, in time for the season, perhaps. I can’t stay in Paris forever.”

  Cecil cleared his throat. “My father-in-law also hired a runner two years ago.”

  “The man found nothing?”

  “I saw no point in telling you unless we had been able to find James. There are statutory regulations, you know . . . the duke has to be missing for seven years.”

  “It will be seven years come June after this,” Theo said, scowling into her teacup. “Did your man travel to India? I remember James talking of that country.”

  “I will ask,” Cecil said, heaving himself out of his chair.

  The 1814 Christmas season was lovely; the city danced, as only Paris can. But Theo found herself increasingly aware of a bleak fear in her heart. Could it be true that something frightful had happened to James?

  It would be awful if she had forced him to leave England and he had died on some foreign shore. Or worse, aboard a sinking ship. She found herself waking in the night, unable to sleep as she imagined the Percival capsized in a storm, James’s last gasp as he slid under the waves. She would push the image away, sleep—only to wake again with the realization that death would explain why James never contacted his father.

  It was bewildering to discover that she cared so much for an absent, less-than-truthful spouse.

  Finally, she sat up one morning and found she was weary of the guilt, the grief, the pesky longing that wouldn’t go away.

  “He is dead,” she told herself, trying the words aloud in the chilly morning air. It was a painful thought, but not an overwhelming one. Six years, almost seven, is a long time, after all, and they had been married all of two days. She missed her childhood friend far more than she missed his brief incarnation as her husband.

  She summoned Cecil to her house. They were both planning to return to England in February.

  “We’ll give it one more year,” she told him. “At that point, we’ll do whatever necessary to shift the title to you.”

  “And then you must marry again,” Cecil said. “Claribel and I both wish to see you in a happy marriage.”

  What sort of man to marry? That was a real question.

  She kept coming up with the same list of desired qualities. She would like a man with a singing voice, because she’d never forgotten the way that James sang to her in the dawn, after they’d made love all night long.

  She wanted someone with blue eyes. She would like him to have a generous smile and a sense of humor and a deep kindness.

  It didn’t take much of an intellect to add up her list of requirements and discover they pointed toward a man who was absent and almost certainly dead. So she redoubled her efforts to convince herself of James’s perfidy. Would she really want to take back a man who had married her when commanded to do so by his father?

  The answer was dismal. Yes. Yes, she would.

  As long as he would make love to her, and sing to her afterward.

  Eighteen

  April 1815

  The opening ball of a given season is the most interesting for any number of reasons, some of them obvious, and some more esoteric. Not only do all the young ladies entering society for the first time make their debut appearance, but the composition of the ton becomes clear. Who is in mourning and staying in the country? Whose marriage has fallen into such disarray that husband and wife are living in separate establishments? Who has lost so much money at the races that he appears in a coat that is dismally old-fashioned?

  It was at a first ball that Beau Brummell made his appearance, immaculate in black and white. It was at a first ball that Petunia Stafford exhibited the cropped curls that made her look like a giddy yet dazzling child; at another, Lady Bellingham appeared in dampened petticoats (and there were those who questioned to this day whether she had worn a chemise).

  Theo chose to skip the opening ball of the 1815 season. It would be too obvious, and she considered it an unspoken rule that the Countess of Islay never did what was obvious.

  Of course she had been invited. Once it was seen that the knocker had been replaced on the door of 45 Berkeley Square, signifying that Theo was in residence, invitations poured in the door.

  There were many who barely remembered her, as she was married halfway through the season of ’09 and never again glimpsed in polite London society. They longed to make a judgment about her ugliness themselves.

  But there were also those who had visited the French capital, or had heard the news from there, and they confidently reminded all and sundry that ugly ducklings—and duchesses—sometimes turn into swans.

  In fact, Theo elected not only to skip the opening ball, but to wait out the first three weeks of the season as well. She had decided to make her first appearance—her reentry into British society—at a ball being thrown by Cecil and Claribel.

  Claribel was just as dazzlingly empty-headed as she had been a decade before. Her milk-and-water prettiness had not aged well: she was beginning to resemble a wilted rose, the kind that goes blowsy before all its petals drop. And like Cecil, she had broadened considerably around the waist.

  Theo’s angular slimness and strong features, on the other hand, had come into focus in her twenties. She knew that she had never looked better—but each time she allowed herself the thought, it was followed by a tinge of regret: her mother would have abhorred such a vain and self-regarding observation. It was truly astonishing that one’s mother can pass away and yet one constantly hears her talking in one’s ear.

  When Mr. and Mrs. Pinkler-Ryburn opened their ball, the subject on everyone’s lips was the Countess of Islay. The news had spread that her ladyship had accepted her relatives’ invitation.

  “Did we invite Lord
Tinkwater?” Claribel asked her husband, watching as the butler ushered in a fantastically drunk lord, who had the wisdom to have developed a method of walking that didn’t require a sense of balance.

  “We did not,” Cecil said. “All sorts of people have come whom we didn’t invite, darling.”

  He squeezed Claribel’s arm and turned away to greet Lord Tinkwater.

  But by the time they decided to close the receiving line, there was still no sign of Lady Islay. They had barely made their way down the steps into the ballroom when a terrific noise erupted behind them.

  “That’ll be Theo,” Cecil said, turning to look back up the stairs. “She planned her entrance perfectly, of course.” And then: “Damn!”

  Claribel was about to reprimand him for using a profanity in her presence, but her jaw dropped instead.

  The woman poised at the top of the stairs, looking down at all of them with a little smile that indicated absolute self-confidence, looked like a goddess who happened to come down to earth by way of Paris. She radiated that sort of ineffable glamour that simply cannot be learned—as Claribel knew to her sorrow, having made multiple efforts.

  The fabric of Lady Islay’s gown certainly cost as much as Claribel’s entire quarterly allowance. It was a pearly pink silk taffeta shot with threads of silver. Her breasts were scarcely covered, and from there the gown fell straight to the ground in a hauntingly beautiful sweep of cloth.

  The pink brought out the color of her hair—burnt amber entwined with brandy and buttercup. If only she had left it free around her face and perhaps created some charming curls! Claribel made up her mind to tell her privately about the newest curling irons. She herself had lovely corkscrew curls bobbing next to her ears.

  Even so, there was something magnificent about the countess tonight, almost hypnotic. The pièce de résistance of her costume was a formal cape that gleamed under the light, soft and lustrous, almost as if it were made of fur.

  “Damnation,” Cecil said again, scarcely under his breath.

  She glanced at him and saw to her astonishment that his eyes were gleaming with an appreciation that she recognized—and was used to reserving for herself and her own rather generous figure.

  “I see no reason for profanity,” she observed. Then she started forward to greet her guest.

  “You look lovely, Lady Islay,” she told Theo earnestly, a moment or so later. “Your gown is exquisite. Would you like Jeffers to take your cape? I’m afraid it must be rather hot, beautiful though it is.”

  Cecil was bending over Theo’s gloved hand. “Oh no,” he said, before Lady Islay could even answer. “I’m quite certain that Theo plans to wear her cape for at least part of the evening.” There was a note of amusement in his voice.

  “If you’re quite sure that you won’t grow overwarm,” Claribel said uncertainly, eyeing the cape. It sprang out from Lady Islay’s shoulders and then swirled to the ground, managing to look surprisingly light. The inside was lined with a gorgeous rosy silk, and the outside . . .

  “What on earth is that made of?” Claribel couldn’t help asking as she reached out to touch it.

  “I can guess,” Cecil put in, the thread of amusement in his voice even stronger.

  “Oh, can you?” Theo remarked. “Then tell me this: am I being altogether too obvious?”

  Claribel hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant. But Cecil, clever Cecil, obviously did, because he bellowed with laughter.

  “Swansdown,” he said. “Gorgeous swansdown, and every man and woman in this room has taken note of your swanlike triumph.”

  “I could not resist,” Theo said, with that smile that was all the more attractive for being so rarely seen. “How lucky you are in your husband,” she said to Claribel. “It’s a rare man who knows his fairy tales.”

  “I know, of course, I know,” Claribel said, babbling a bit. There was something about Lady Islay that was rather daunting. She was so elegant, for one thing. And that severe hair, which should by rights look positively awful, looked sensual, though it wasn’t a word Claribel cared for.

  Plus, now she realized that her gown was scandalously thin. No wonder she wasn’t worried about being overly warm. Why, when Lady Islay turned away to greet Lord Scarborough, Claribel clearly saw the line of her bare calf.

  She suppressed a sigh. Of course she loved her three darling children, but carrying them had had a deleterious effect on her figure. She felt like an overstuffed pincushion in comparison.

  “Looks marvelous, doesn’t she?” her husband remarked.

  “I think she’s a trifle underdressed,” Claribel said. Despite herself, her tone was a little hurt.

  Cecil took one of her gloved hands and raised it to his lips. “You cannot possibly imagine that I find Theo as attractive as you?”

  “Her figure is perfect,” Claribel said wistfully. “Just perfect.”

  He leaned closer. “A man doesn’t care about that, my sweet buttercup.”

  Claribel rolled her eyes.

  “She’s chilly,” he said, more quietly. “I do adore her, but I don’t envy the man she marries. Just look at her.”

  They both turned, to find the countess surrounded by a gaggle of men as tightly pressed together as ha’pennies in the church box.

  “They’re fascinated, intrigued, even adoring,” Cecil said. “But I saw the same reaction in Paris many a time. If you ask me, that’s why there’s never been even the faintest whiff of scandal about her in the last six years. No one would want to actually bed her.”

  “Cecil! What a thing to say!”

  He gave her a twinkling glance. “Now you are a different story. Alas, my figure is not what it once was.”

  “As if I cared about that!”

  “Then why would you think that I do not relish every one of your curves?” he said, and the look in his eyes confirmed his words. “But even more, Claribel, I love the fact that you come to our bed with pleasure. You are my —”

  “Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn!” Claribel exclaimed. “You forget yourself.” But her cheeks were hot, and her fingers trembled in his. “We are fortunate,” she added, as softly as he. Then she whisked her hand away. “Enough of this foolishness. What on earth was Lady Islay saying about fairy tales?”

  “All those people who called her ‘the ugly duchess’ are eating their words,” her husband said. “The countess has turned into a swan, and she’s dropped them all on their arses by making fun of it.”

  “I’d forgotten all that,” Claribel said, wrinkling her nose. “My mother said it was all frightfully ill-bred and wouldn’t let us read the papers for a week.”

  Cecil bent over and dropped a kiss on her nose. “I know, darling. That’s why you are the sweet tartlet that you are, and Theo is the rather stern and magnificent cake that she is.”

  “I am not a tartlet.” But she couldn’t help smiling.

  Nineteen

  The Pinkler-Ryburn ball reminded Theo of nothing so much as a host of sparrows perched on a railing. They would descend from a tree in a huge group, chattering madly. One bird would take wing and the rest would hysterically soar up after, the whole group coming down almost immediately on a railing all of ten yards to the left. Or to the right.

  The key to controlling the evening, she decided, was to be the sparrow that determined the behavior of the flock. When the ballroom became intolerably crowded, Theo drifted onto the terrace, taking with her a core group of gentlemen glued to her side by a pleasing mixture of lust and admiration. What’s more, they were men who conformed to her sense of elegance.

  When Mr. Van Vechten joined them, his velvet coat an aggressive shade of purple striped with peach, she was just dismissive enough that he retreated as quickly as he had come. The same went for Mr. Hoyt, who was rumored to have a fortune in gold, but unfortunately had a penchant for displaying his treasure in the form of garish buttons.

  Glimpsing her little group, convulsed with laughter as Theo sparked jokes with her coterie, the ballroom emptied on
to the terrace.

  Feeling nearly as constricted as she had inside, Theo decided, rather mischievously, to go for a walk in the gardens. There was no question as to her companion; she tucked her arm under that of Lord Geoffrey Trevelyan.

  They had both grown older. She learned that he had married that first season (though not, obviously, to Claribel), and that his wife had died some two years after. There were creases at the corners of his eyes now, and a lean cast to his cheeks. But everything else was the same: the dark, slanting eyes and the wicked little smile flickering around his lips. And her heart still gave a little thump at the sight of him.

  By the time she and Geoffrey had returned to the terrace, Cecil’s guests were rocketing tipsily down dark paths, pretending that they were in Vauxhall.

  Theo led the way into the ballroom, now thin of company, and allowed Geoffrey to sweep her into a waltz. She was besieged when that waltz drew to a close and another followed; it seemed that everyone wanted to dance with the swan, and they didn’t want a quadrille.

  No, they wanted that low husky laugh at their jokes, and those slender, coltish legs thrillingly near their own.

  “There’s something about the look of her,” Colonel MacLachlan told Cecil, longing tangible in his voice. “She’s not my usual type at all, I don’t mind saying. I like small and round. Plus, she mocked me, and I know she would no more consider bedding me than the Regent himself!”

  But his eyes still followed Theo down the length of the ballroom. She was in the arms of a man old enough to be her father, and yet anyone could see that when she smiled at him, the man straightened, took the turn of the waltz a bit more dashingly.

  “Theo is like the huntress Diana,” Cecil said, rocking a little on his heels. He was thoroughly enjoying the burst of popularity his cousin-by-marriage was experiencing. “Beautiful and yet slightly deadly, ready to whip out a bow and arrow, or turn a man into a squealing swine. Sensual, and yet with just a snowy touch of the virginal about her.”