The Ugly Duchess

Page 10

“You wouldn’t know true love if it hit you on the side of the head,” James said, folding his arms over his chest.
“Well, you are no more of an expert. Don’t tell me that you feel true love for Bella, because I know perfectly well you don’t. You are infatuated with those enormous bubbies that she was displaying to everyone on Oxford Street.”
“Look here,” James said, looking a bit alarmed. “You mustn’t start using that word. It’s not polite.”
“Bubbies!” Theo repeated, just stopping herself from sticking out her tongue at him. She was seventeen, after all. She had to act like a lady. “I know what you see in Bella,” she contented herself with saying. “And it isn’t love.”
“Bella’s attributes are not a matter for our conversation,” James retorted.
Theo laughed. “Then her pretty face? I don’t think so!”
“No more!”
“Who’s going to talk to me about this sort of thing, if not you?” she said, relaxing back into the corner.
“Not me.”
“Too late. You’re the closest thing I have to a brother,” Theo said, feeling a little sleepy. “Can you wake me up when we’re home?”
James sat rigidly in his own corner and stared at her. Even with the dim lantern that lit the carriage he could see the line of her thigh. Not to mention her bubbies, breasts, whatever.
Trevelyan had certainly noticed them. James had to stop himself at the ball from reaching over and jerking the man’s head out of Daisy’s décolletage.
She would not marry Trevelyan. Not under any circumstances.
Even—even if he really did have to marry her himself to prevent it.
Six
The next evening
Carlton House
Residence of the Prince of Wales
To Theo’s extreme annoyance, James not only didn’t accompany her to the Prince of Wales’s private musicale, but also didn’t bother to show up until it was almost time for supper.
“Where have you been? You were supposed to be here hours ago,” she hissed at him, pulling him away from the group to the other side of the drawing room, out of earshot. “Claribel has turned herself into a plaster and applied herself to Geoffrey; he’s hardly had a moment to breathe, let alone notice I am in the room.”
“Well, I’m here now,” James said.
Theo took a closer look. He wore a beautiful indigo coat with dark green velvet lapels, entirely appropriate for a private musicale hosted by the Prince of Wales. But there was something about his face, and his eyes . . .
“You’re tipsy!” she exclaimed, with some delight. “I’ve never seen you three sheets to the wind. Are you about to cast up your accounts, or will you just sway gently all night? You look like a hollyhock that someone forgot to stake.”
“I never sway!” He sounded indignant.
“You’re swaying now. For goodness’ sake, look at that,” she cried, nodding toward Claribel, who was leaning on Geoffrey’s arm. “You’d think they were already betrothed. Or that she was as bosky as you are. I don’t suppose you got a chance to mention my dowry to Geoffrey at White’s this afternoon?”
“Funny, that,” James said. “Trevelyan wasn’t at the club, or in my carriage . . . wait . . . because he was here making sheep’s eyes at Lady Claribel. How in bloody hell do you think I had the chance to drop your inheritance into the nonexistent conversation I’ve had with him? Besides, I mentioned it yesterday. That’s good enough.”
“He’s not making sheep’s eyes; she is. Oh well, it’s probably better, since you’re drunk anyway and would make a hash of it.”
“What’s better?” James said, looking more than a little owlish.
Theo looked up at him and felt a wave of affection. “I do adore you, James. You know that, don’t you?”
“Don’t say that I’m like a brother to you. Because I’m not your brother, and you should keep that in mind. We should both keep that in mind. That is, we’re not siblings, even though we may feel like siblings. Sometimes.”
“Perhaps you should take my arm,” Theo suggested. “You’ll be embarrassed tomorrow if you fall at the royal slippers like a chopped tree.”
“Just back up a trifle,” James said, looking distinctly inebriated. “I’ll lean against the wall and pretend I’m speaking to you for a minute. I may have drunk a bit more cognac than was ad . . . ad . . . advisable. Is my father here?”
“Certainly he is,” Theo said. “And he’s peeved that you didn’t come home to escort us here. You’re lucky he hasn’t seen you yet.”
They stood to one side of Carlton House’s music room. Most of the company was grouped in straight-backed chairs, listening raptly to the command performance of the evening. No one seemed to have noticed the two of them at the other end of the room.
“That fellow is pounding the keys in a way that will give everyone a headache,” James complained, too loudly. “He sounds as awful as you used to, back when your mother still thought you might have a musical bone in your body.”
“You mustn’t say such a thing! That’s Johann Baptist Cramer,” Theo exclaimed. But she instantly realized there was no point in being shocked that James didn’t recognize the celebrated pianist. He would never willingly sit through an evening of music.
If she didn’t do something, he would create a scene. She took his hand and pulled him around the far side of a tall Chinese screen carved in lotus blossoms; at least anyone casually turning about wouldn’t see him collapsing into an inebriated heap. Then she backed against the wall, tugging him over to her.
James swayed gently toward her, bracing himself by putting his hands against the wall, one on either side of her, creating a little cave that smelled like the best cognac and the outdoors, with just a note of soap.
“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.