The Ugly Duchess

  “Just give me a moment until my head clears,” he murmured. “What on earth are you thinking? You have the most peculiar look on your face.”

  “I’m smelling you,” Theo said. “I never realized how nice you smell, James.”

  “Huh.” James didn’t seem to know what to make of that, but at least he didn’t seem quite as wobbly as he had a few seconds ago.

  “Perhaps we should find you a cup of tea,” she suggested. For some reason—could it be that odd encounter they had had in her bedchamber the day before?—she was having some trouble thinking of James as casually as she ought. He was hopelessly beautiful. He had all the elegance of his father, but his jaw was measurably stronger, and his eyes were steady—even though he was tipsy. Just then his face came much closer.

  “Are you about to fall over?” she squeaked.

  But he wasn’t.

  Instead, he did the one thing that she had never imagined James doing: he kissed her. His lips came even closer, and then they touched hers.

  His lips were very soft, Theo thought dimly. That surprised her, though it shouldn’t have. It was her first kiss, after all. Yet it was so unlike the kisses she had imagined.

  She had imagined kisses as a delicate brushing of one pair of lips against another. But what was happening now was nothing like that. It wasn’t the part about his lips, but that he put his tongue straight into her mouth, which was strange and yet intimate at the same time. In fact, the whole kiss was like that: a mix of the James she knew and a James she didn’t know at all, a wild James. A manly James. It was all odd, and yet her knees went weak and she found her arms twining themselves around his neck.

  James stood back from the wall, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her against his chest. “Kiss me back,” he demanded, low and fierce.

  “How drunk are you?” Theo asked. “What are you doing?”

  “You’re my Daisy,” he said, staring down at her. His voice was unsteady, his breathing harsh.

  His eyes burned with an emotion that she didn’t recognize, but it sent an instant thrill through her whole body. She started to speak, but he bent his head again and silently demanded that she kiss him back. The problem was that she wasn’t sure how. At the same time, she rather desperately wanted to do whatever he asked, so she touched his tongue with her own. She expected it to be revolting, but instead . . .

  Dimly, she knew that she should have laughed, or pushed him away, or called for help. Her mother—not to mention the Prince of Wales himself!—was only a matter of feet away, on the other side of the screen.

  She should slap him, really. That’s what a well-bred young lady would do after being grabbed by an inebriated gentleman and kissed in public. Or in private, for that matter.

  But she wanted more of the taste of James, more of the melting fire that was sweeping her body, more of the irresistible longing that made her move closer and closer to him.

  “That’s it,” he said, his voice a thread of sound.

  Giddy heat seared what little logic Theo had left. She took his face in her hands. She could kiss the way he wanted. It wasn’t really about tongues. It was a matter of possessing him. The way he was possessing her.

  Once she realized that, kissing him was easy. Her tongue tumbled over his, and her fingers clenched his hair, knowing that the same flame that touched her singed him.

  James made a kind of inarticulate noise, almost a groan, and pulled her closer. The sound of his growl was so heady that Theo shivered all down her body, a direct response to his tight grip and the sensual touch of his tongue. She had never thought of herself as particularly feminine—no girl who grew up with such pronounced features could do so—but in James’s arms she suddenly felt feminine, not in a delicate way, but in a wild, erotic way.

  It was intoxicating. It made her tremble with desire, from an almost savage feeling of wanting more of him. She pressed closer and felt her breasts flatten against his chest; he made that sound deep in his throat again. And then he bit her lip.

  She gasped and—

  Found herself reeling backward, thanks to a hand pulling her free as if she were a dog in a fight. To her profound dismay, it was her mother. “James Ryburn, what in the name of heaven do you think you’re doing?” Mrs. Saxby demanded.

  Theo stood still, breathless, her eyes fixed on James, feeling as if he’d somehow passed his intoxication on to her.

  “And you, Theodora,” her mother cried, rounding on her, “what in God’s name do you think that you’re doing? Have I taught you nothing?”

  A deep, cultivated voice said in a rather amused fashion, “They don’t call it the marriage mart for nothing, Mrs. Saxby. Looks like your girl will be the first of the season to tie the knot.”

  James made a choking noise and Theo turned around, only to find a group of fascinated spectators that included the Prince of Wales, Lord Geoffrey Trevelyan, and the despised Claribel, who for once was not ogling Geoffrey but had a look of stark envy on her face.

  Theo looked at James and saw confusion in his face at the same moment that she realized that her lips felt puffy and her hair was falling around her shoulders. She must look like one of those ravished maidens in a bad melodrama.

  But she had to say something. “I— We were just—”

  James interrupted, his voice overriding hers. He no longer sounded tipsy. “I love Daisy. I am going to marry Daisy.”

  Theo’s mouth fell open. James was glaring at her mother, his voice grating a little. “You want to marry her to another man, but she’s mine, she’s always been mine.”

  Theo drew in a breath, and he swung to her. “Do you remember when I had an eye inflammation when I was twelve and you were ten? And you read to me all that summer in a darkened room because my eyes were weak?”

  She nodded, looking up at him in a daze, aware of their audience, and yet trying to ignore them.

  “I didn’t know it, but you were mine,” he said, staring down at her almost as if he hated her.

  “But I came out three weeks ago,” she whispered, her words falling into the utterly still drawing room. “You didn’t go to a single event until last night.”

  “I thought you were just dancing,” he said, his voice ragged. “I didn’t think about it seriously. But if you are going to marry anyone, Daisy, it will be me. I don’t want you to even think about other men.” He shot a virulent look at Geoffrey, who fell back a step.

  James turned back to Theo. A flash of uncertainty crossed his eyes. “I know you have other . . .”

  “I do not know what I was thinking,” Theo said slowly, feeling a tremendous sense of rightness settle about her shoulders like a warm blanket. She reached out and took his hand in hers—his familiar, utterly dear hand. “You’re right. You are the only one.”

  “Well,” her mother said firmly, from somewhere behind her. “I’m sure we can all agree that that was a most romantic proposal. But I think that’s enough for the night.”

  Theo didn’t move. Her oldest friend, her near-brother—that person was gone. Instead there was a desirable, powerful man looking down at her. And the look in his eye made her flush straight down to her toes.

  “It isn’t enough,” James growled, his eyes fixed on hers. “She has not accepted. Daisy?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice breathless and trembling in a fashion that she despised when other girls used it. “Yes, I will.”

  “I suppose that’s settled,” the Duke of Ashbrook said from behind James, the cheerful approval in his voice making them both look up. “Very convenient, what? My son marrying my ward. Keeps it all in the family, so to speak. Mind you, it wouldn’t be proper unless it was a real love match.”

  Mrs. Saxby said briskly, “I certainly agree with you.”

  “But it looks as if we haven’t much to say about it,” the duke continued.

  James met his father’s eyes, and his heart dropped into his shoes. He had lost his head, and what’s more, he lost it in service to the devil.
>
  He had never experienced a kiss like that, never thought to feel such a searing wave of possessive passion in his life. But he had done it only because his bombastic, embezzling father had demanded it. That kiss . . . that kiss happened because he had been ordered to do it.

  He felt like the dirt under his own shoe. And the aching pain in his heart said something even worse: that he had warped what could have been—would have been—one of the most precious moments of his life. He would give anything to have entered into that kiss with a pure heart and a clean conscience.

  Mrs. Saxby drew Theo away, and his father came up to slap him on the back with a stream of inconsequential, patently false remarks directed at the people gaping at them. “I had no idea he was looking in that direction,” he told the prince. “I suppose parents are always the last to know. But Son”—this with a tone of genial disapproval—“I hope I’ve trained you better than to snatch a lady and kiss her in public. A gentleman doesn’t go about declaring himself in that sort of manner.”

  “Indeed,” Geoffrey Trevelyan chimed in. He waved his hand with that dilettantish, amused air that Theo appreciated and James loathed. “Wouldn’t have thought you had it in you, Islay. All that ardor and whatnot.”

  The reminder that Theo had wanted Geoffrey crashed into James’s mind like a great wave. He turned to look at her, but she was gone.

  The next few minutes passed like some sort of dizzy nightmare. James found himself bowing to the prince, who was genially cheerful about the whole thing. “Passions of the heart, what ho! They say polite society doesn’t have passion, but I’ve always disagreed.” And he threw a lustful glance at Mrs. Fitzherbert, standing to his right.

  James flinched, and bowed his way out of the room. His father’s effusive congratulations spilled out the moment they were in their carriage.

  “I had no idea you’d go straight for the prize like that!” Ashbrook bellowed. “Proud of you! I’m proud of you! You’re as randy as I am, and you used it to perfection. I would never have thought of doing it myself. She looked at you as if you were King Arthur and Lancelot rolled into one.”

  “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

  The 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 lik
e 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.”

  At 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.