The Ugly Duchess

Page 17

Some time later, his valet knocked softly and entered the room again.
James pushed himself upright. “I suppose it’s time to dress for supper.”
“Yes, your lordship. I have your bath ready. But Mr. Cramble thought you should know . . . ,” Bairley began and then seemed to lose steam.
“What is the problem?” James asked. “Has my father returned from the races?”
“No, your lordship. It’s the papers.”
“What about them?”
“Mr. Cramble told her ladyship at breakfast that most of them had not been delivered, though he did put them in the library for you to read.”
“Right. I didn’t get to them. Why on earth did Cramble say such a thing to my wife?”
“It was because of what they wrote about your wedding, that is, about Lady Islay. He meant to show them to you as soon as he had a chance.”
James shook his head. “What in God’s name did the papers say about my wife? Why were they bothering with our wedding?”
“It was the wedding of the season,” Bairley said reproachfully. “The descriptions of the ceremony and reception are quite laudatory. The gilded coach and footmen in cloth-of-gold were universally admired.”
“I feel as though I’m pulling teeth here, Bairley,” James said, stripping off his waistcoat. “Have you chosen something I should put on for the evening?”
“Mr. Cramble thought he would send a meal to her ladyship’s room,” Bairley said, stammering a bit. “And you might dine with her there, private-like. When you ring for it, that is.”
His valet’s English was generally better than James’s own, so that colloquial “private-like” was a sign that something truly was wrong. A flare of anger ignited by fear swept over James. “What in the bloody hell are you getting at, Bairley?” he said sharply.
“The papers are all calling her the ‘Ugly Duchess,’ ” his valet replied miserably.
“What?”
“The ‘ugly duchess,’ a play on that fairy tale ‘The Ugly Duckling.’ My lord, please keep your voice down. Her ladyship is next door. She retired to her room directly after returning from the modiste.”
“When you say the ‘papers,’ which ones do you mean, precisely?” James pulled off his shirt and tossed it on the bed. Daisy must be devastated. They were all blasted liars. He’d kill the scribblers himself. He’d have the presses shut down by the next morrow. He discovered his fingers were shaking slightly with rage.
“All of the dailies,” Bairley replied. “All except the Morning Chronicle, which said that she had the profile of a king.”
“That’s all right,” James said, deciding to spare the Morning Chronicle. He tore open his breeches and a button skipped across the floor.
Bairley scurried after it.
“I’ll have a retraction and apology from every one of them tomorrow morning,” James said through clenched teeth, “or by God I’ll torch their buildings myself. There’s some power in a dukedom yet, and I’ll use every iota of it to destroy them.”
“Yes, your lordship,” his valet said, having found the button. He turned to pull evening clothing from the wardrobe and lay it carefully on the bed. “Unfortunately, her maid reports that her ladyship saw the papers when she visited the modiste today. It’s not only the papers—there are prints in the stationers’ windows already. They did them overnight because of all the excitement about the wedding.”
“Oh, for—” James broke off. “Lady Islay went out and saw all that, and now she’s . . . where?”
“Next door,” Bairley said. “She went straight to her chamber, her face white as a winding sheet, that’s what Mr. Cramble said.”
“Where’s her mother?”
“Mrs. Saxby left early this morning for Scotland, before the papers were delivered.”
James threw his breeches and smalls on the bed. “I’ll have a quick bath and then pay a visit to my wife. Tell Cramble that I want no one interrupting us until I ring. Not even her maid,” he said to Bairley over his shoulder. Five minutes later he pulled on a dressing gown and headed for the door to Daisy’s room.
Ten
Theo was in the grip of a desolation so vast that it swallowed any tears she might have felt like shedding. On the way to the modiste’s in Piccadilly, she had caught sight of a cluster of people around a new print in Hatchards window, but it would never have occurred to her that the print had anything to do with her.
Until she was on the way home and the carriage drew to a halt in front of yet another stationery store—and she saw the illustration. Though she only knew the extent of it after sending a groomsman into the store to buy the papers, the same papers that the butler swore hadn’t been delivered.
She would never have imagined that anyone could be so cruel. Let alone ten or twenty someones, or however many had written all those articles, and edited them, and approved them. And then there were the people who stayed up all night etching her likeness wearing that horrendous dress. But of course it wasn’t the dress.
She had only to turn her head to see her face in the glass. It was angular, with the high cheekbones that James liked so much. But she also had a straight nose, and a strong chin, and something indefinable about the cast of her profile, and it all added up to . . . to an ugly duchess, that’s what it added up to.
When the adjoining bedchamber door burst open, Theo didn’t even look up. “I’d rather you left me alone at the moment,” she said, swallowing a lump in her throat even though she wasn’t crying. “I’m absolutely fine. I haven’t shed a tear over those silly articles. Just nonsense, that’s all.”
Of course, James didn’t obey her. From the corner of her eye, Theo caught a blur of movement, and suddenly she was tucked against his chest and he was sitting down. “I’m too big to sit in your lap,” she gasped, realizing that his dressing gown had fallen open and the chest in question was quite bare. “And you are not properly attired.”
James ignored that as well. “They’re all insolent bastards and I’m going to chop their printing presses into shards tomorrow morning.” His voice vibrated with anger, an emotion that he was exceptionally good at.
“Destroying the presses won’t help now,” Theo said. But she leaned her head against his bare chest and let him rage on. It was definitely comforting. James, like her mother, truly didn’t see her the way the rest of the world did.
He actually saw her as a daisy, for goodness’ sake. A daisy. Theo didn’t care to think overmuch about her profile, but she had concluded long ago that the best adjective that could be applied to it was severe.
There was no such thing as a severe daisy.
“Do you suppose I could be carrying a child?” she asked when he paused for breath.
James made an odd sound, somewhere between a gulp and a cough. “What does that have to do with anything? I certainly hope not. I’m not ready for fatherhood. Just look at what a miserable job my father has done of it. I may never be ready.”
“I know we’re young,” Theo said. “But if I were carrying a child, my figure would change. I would have more in front. Maybe we should try again tonight.”