The Ugly Duchess

Page 13

“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.
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.”