The Ugly Duchess

Page 32

But Mrs. Saxby straightened her back and said firmly, “I can certainly climb the stairs by myself, dearest. I’ll have a nap and be right as rain.” But she did not leave immediately; she put a hand on Theo’s cheek and said, “Having you has been my greatest joy in life. I merely wish the same for you: a child of your own with the husband you love, though you may deny it as often as you wish.”
Theo wrapped her arms around her mother. “This will make you happy, Mama. I’ve resolved to have a wardrobe made in London all the better to pay a call on the newly wedded Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn, not to mention the delightful Claribel.”
Her mother laughed at that. “And I can’t wait to see your new gowns. I do love you, darling.” And with that, she turned and retired to her chambers.
Mrs. Imogen Saxby never woke from that nap. Theo moved through her mother’s funeral and the attending visitations as if she were in a dense fog. Weeks passed before Theo accepted the truth of it: her mother was truly gone. The house echoed. She sat alone at meals and wept.
Unfortunately, business does not stop merely because there is a death in the family. It was inconvenient to cry in meetings with the estate manager. It was inconvenient to cry in church, at breakfast, and on the way to London.
It was also undignified, but she did not care; the emptiness in her heart was so consuming that what people thought of her was of no importance.
Yet Theo carried on, somehow, knowing that a great many people were depending upon her and she could not let them down. Would not let them down.
At last the mourning year was at an end. She had thought often of the conversations she had with her mother about her marriage, and she gradually reconciled herself to the idea that she and James couldn’t go on like this, without resolution of any kind. Four years had now passed since he’d left, with no word from him, or indeed of him. She made up her mind to find him. After all, it had been her mother’s express wish not only that Theo return to society but that she return to James as well.
Without further ado, Theo instructed her solicitors to engage as many Bow Street Runners as necessary and send them out into the world searching for news of her husband. The success of the estate’s businesses meant that the cost of their search—and it might take them a year or more to return with news—was of no object.
And then she did her best to put James out of her mind. There was nothing she could do about him for the time being.
Theo had employed her taste in the last years in shaping Ashbrook Ceramics into a thriving business that made the finest ceramics for a very select few who shared her interest in ancient Greek pottery. And she had poured her love of color into Ryburn Weavers, guiding its focus on reproductions of French and Italian textiles from the previous two centuries.
But now the weavers and the ceramics factory were on a steady keel. They no longer needed Theo’s daily involvement. What they could most use, in fact, was a highly visible patron: a person whose taste and discernment were uncontested throughout the ton, someone who would spur desire for Ashbrook wares.
It was a brilliant idea in every respect but one: Theo was still in self-imposed exile from the very people she most needed to impress.
She had learned to trust herself and her taste, even if she hadn’t bothered to apply her dictates to her own attire. Style, after all, is a harmonious arrangement of parts that, in Theo’s opinion, was better than physical beauty. What’s more, it was often mistaken for it.
She didn’t think it would be terribly difficult to transform herself into the imagined ideal client. She even unearthed her list of style rules, written carefully all those years ago in round schoolgirl hand and particularized with a passion that made her smile. Rereading them, she was delighted to find that not one caused her to wince with embarrassment. That settled it. She would become her own best patron.
After some thought, she decided to visit Paris for a few months before she conquered London. The papers were full of the welcome news that the Treaty of Fontainebleau (and Napoleon’s abdication) meant that France would once again be welcoming English visitors. No nationality more than the French understood that while beauty is a matter of birth, art—the art of dressing oneself—is available to all who care to learn.
In May 1814, the Countess of Islay (for James had yet to take up the title of duke) closed up her country estate and moved to a magnificent town house on the Seine, opposite the Palace of the Tuileries. She intended to apply herself to the study of elegance with all the passion she had devoted to ceramics and to weaving.
And she had every expectation of success.
Seventeen
Paris, 1814-1815
Within a month of entering Parisian society, the Countess of Islay was considered an “interesting” Englishwoman; by the end of a very few months, she was an honorary Frenchwoman. No one referred to her by such bland words as ugly or even beautiful: she was ravissant and—above all—élégant.
It was widely known that the duchesse d’Angoulême, the niece of King Louis XVIII himself, consulted Lady Islay when it came to tricky questions regarding fans and other accoutrement. After all, a lady’s bonnet, gloves, slippers, and reticule were the most important elements of a truly elegant appearance. Parisians gasped when Theo paired brown with black—and then found themselves even more shocked when she wore a black corded silk evening gown sewn with amethysts, and later, a purple riding habit with sour-green gloves.
They gasped . . . and rushed to imitate.
What the French loved most were Theo’s epigrammatic rules. They were collected like precious jewels, and even the poorest shopgirls ripped the lace from their Sunday frocks when she was reported to have remarked, “Wear lace to be baptized. Period.”
It caused a sensation when she was reported to have declared that discretion is a synonym for intelligence. By the time everyone deduced that she had been commenting not on fashion, but on the Marquis de Maubec’s decidedly indiscreet adoration for his father’s third wife, a number of Parisians had leapt to the conclusion that a “discreet” woman would not wear lashings of jewels. In fact, the countess had remarked, of a particularly ostentatious lady, that “she was wearing so many carats she looked like a vegetable garden.”
Attention to her words was at such a fever pitch that Theo was visited by a delegation of three diamond sellers who begged her aid. That very evening Lady Islay appeared at a ball wearing a necklace that featured no fewer than eight strands of diamonds, caught together by an extraordinary pear-shaped diamond pendant, and casually remarked that she thought a woman should rival the Milky Way at night: We give babies milk, but ladies? Diamonds.
By the time Theo turned twenty-three, her husband had been missing for close to six years, and none of the Bow Street Runners—though some had not returned to London—had yet reported news of him. She always told people, whenever they asked, that her husband had been misplaced, rather as one might misplace an abhorrent silver candelabra given by a great-aunt.
But inside, she didn’t feel so nonchalant. Silence wasn’t like James. Or was it? He had the most ferocious temper of anyone she’d ever known, except perhaps his dead father. Anger at her—or at himself—could drive him to live in a foreign country without giving a thought for his old life. But would he really brood for this long? Wouldn’t he want to come home and have it out with her?