The Ugly Duchess

Page 30

The hell with it.
He had stopped dreaming of Daisy, but that didn’t mean he’d stopped thinking of her altogether. He still did, though mostly alone in his bunk, when recovering from a knife wound.
If he were given the chance to do it over, he wouldn’t have fled England. He would have carried his wife upstairs and thrown her on the bed, and made her understand how he felt about her. But it was too late for that: those dreams were as dead as his father.
There was nothing in England for him. He had to be gone seven years before they could declare him dead. Well, in a mere month or two, he would have been at sea for two years. Pinkler-Ryburn was a decent fellow; he’d assume the title in five years if James failed to return. Then Daisy could marry again. Severing all ties to England would extinguish, for once and all, this odd and shameful longing to return home to her.
He could hear Daisy’s voice as clear as a bell in his ear when she had told him their marriage was over. And when she had said that another man would fall in love with her, a better man than he.
That was easy enough to imagine. James had never loathed anyone as much in his life as he loathed himself.
He shouted, and his man popped in the door. “Throw that lot overboard,” he ordered, nodding at the cloth. The man gathered the cloth into his arms and scurried from the cabin.
An hour later, James had a shaved head and a small poppy tattooed beneath his right eye. He appropriated a name from Flibbery Jack, the pirate captain who would no longer be needing it, and gave it to himself.
Long live Jack Hawk.
Because James Ryburn, Earl of Islay and Duke of Ashbrook, was dead.
Fifteen
June 1811
Ryburn House,  Staffordshire
Duchy of Ashbrook
Theo ran a hand through her short hair, loving the fact that her head felt light and free. She’d cropped her hair the day after her marriage fell apart, and she had never regretted it. “What did you say, Mama? I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.”
“May I offer you a piece of apple cake?”
“No, thank you.”
“You must eat,” Mrs. Saxby said rather sharply, handing Theo a piece of cake nonetheless. “You do nothing but work, darling. Work, work, work.”
“There’s a great deal of work to be done,” Theo said reasonably. “And you must admit that it’s all going quite well, Mama. We are producing our very first ceramics sometime this month. And the Ryburn Weavers has fourteen new orders. Fourteen!” She couldn’t help a triumphant grin at the very thought.
“That’s all very well,” Mrs. Saxby said, “but you look almost gaunt. It’s not becoming.”
Theo let that pass. After a few months that she still hated to think about, she had settled into acceptance of her “ugly” status. When James had fled London, the ton assumed, quite naturally, that he couldn’t contemplate more than two days of marriage to an ugly duchess-to-be. No one talked of anything else for a good month, evidenced by what gossip filtered its way into the newspapers. Theo had not been there to experience the firestorm in person; she had left the city the same day James did, retreating to Staffordshire, where her mother had joined her after returning from Scotland.
By the time people discovered that James had taken the Percival and set off for foreign parts, she was safely ensconced in the country and, though occasional sorties to London were unavoidable, she hadn’t ventured back into polite society—the very word made her lip curl—since.
“Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn’s wedding is approaching,” her mother insisted. “We must both look our best.”
“As I said when the invitation first arrived, I see no reason why I should attend the wedding of my husband’s putative heir to the cretinous Claribel. Besides,” she added more reasonably, “it would take nearly a week, since the nuptials are being held in Kent. I couldn’t possibly spare the time; August is a very busy month.”
Mrs. Saxby’s teacup joined its saucer with a bit more force than necessary. “Darling, I hoped not to have to say this to you, but you are growing rigid.” Her hair had turned a little gray, and she’d lost some of the bounce in her step after her son-in-law’s dramatic departure, but she had never weakened in her adherence to courtesy. “You must attend as a representative of the duchy. And because Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn is a very good man.”
“His worth has nothing to do with it,” Theo said. “I simply cannot hare off to a wedding when I need to be here.” She could be quite as stubborn as her mother.
“You have taken a very pinched view of life,” Mrs. Saxby continued. “You may have had an unhappy experience of marriage, but is that a reason to turn into a sharp-tongued, unhappy woman?”
“I’m not unhappy,” Theo said, adding honestly, “most of the time. Besides, happiness is not something one can control.”
“I disagree. Life dealt you a few blows. But what happened to the daughter I used to know? Where is your list of style rules? You always said that as soon as I stopped dictating your apparel, you were going to throw your pearls to the swine, and so on. I didn’t always agree, but I was very interested to see what you would make of yourself.”
Theo glanced down at her gown defensively. “There’s nothing wrong with my gown. We’re in mourning for the duke, after all.”
“It was made in the village. The only thing that can be said in its favor is that the seams are reasonably straight.”
“I am not interested in adorning myself; that was a girlish dream that I put aside. Besides, I spend almost all my time in the study. Why would I need a gown created by a modiste, especially one in mourning colors, when I have no one to display it for?”
“A lady does not dress for an audience.”
“I beg to differ. As a debutante she dresses in order to find a husband, God help her—”
“That’s just the sort of comment I mean,” her mother put in.
Theo sighed. “I suppose I could order a gown or two from London once we’re out of mourning, if it would make you happy. But I’m certainly not traveling back for fittings, and I shall not attend Pink’s wedding.”
“Happiness,” her mother said, returning to the subject, “is a matter of self-control. And you are not exhibiting enough of it.”
For the first time during the exchange, Theo felt a prickle of real annoyance. How could anyone, least of all her mother, claim she did not exhibit self-control? In the last years, she’d stayed in the study for hours after the household went to bed, poring over books describing Italian ceramics and Elizabethan furnishings.
She had traveled around the entire estate once a week in a pony cart, to ensure that the sheep herds and the conditions of the cottagers were improving. Her trips to London were taken up not with theater and the shops, but with visits to Cheapside and a building full of clanking looms. “I think I show self-control,” she said, making an effort to prove it by not allowing her annoyance to show.
“Oh, you work,” Mrs. Saxby said dismissively.
“The estate is now profitable, even after all the allowance we had to pay the embezzling duke,” Theo snapped. And then, hearing the hectoring edge in her own voice, she felt a wave of remorse. “Please forgive me. I certainly didn’t mean to turn into a virago. And it wasn’t a kind statement as regards His Grace, given that he’s dead.”