The Ugly Duchess

Page 4

The first man who asked her to dance, addressing her as Miss Saxby, would be treated to her slightly weary yet amused smile. “Call me Theo,” she would say, and all the matrons would be so scandalized they would squeak about nothing else the whole night long.
Theo was key: the name played to all those infatuations men formed on each other, the way their closest relationships were with their friends rather than with their wives. She’d seen it with James. When he was thirteen he had positively worshipped the captain of the cricket team at Eton. It stood to reason that if she wore her hair sleeked back, along with a gown that faintly resembled a cricket uniform, all those men who had once adored their captains would be at her feet.
She was so caught up in a vision of herself in a severely tailored jacket resembling the Etonian morning coat that at first she didn’t even hear the pounding on her door. But an insistent “Daisy!” finally broke through her trance, and she pushed herself up from the settee and opened the bedchamber door.
“Oh hello, James,” she said, unable to muster much enthusiasm at the sight of him. The last thing one wants to see when in a melancholic fit is a friend who refuses to attend balls even when he knows perfectly well that all three weeks of her first season had been horrific. He had no idea what it was like. How could he? He was devastatingly handsome, rather charming when he wasn’t being a beast, and a future duke, to boot. This embarrassment of riches really wasn’t fair. “I didn’t realize it was you.”
“How could you not realize it was me?” James demanded, pushing open the door and crowding her backward, now that he knew she was decent. “I’m the only person in the world who calls you Daisy. Let me in, will you?”
Theo sighed and moved back. “Do you suppose you could try harder to call me Theo? I must have asked you a hundred times already. I don’t want to be Theodora, or Dora, or Daisy, either.”
James flung himself into a chair and ran a hand through his hair. From the look of it, he’d been in an ill humor all morning, because half his hair was standing straight up. It was lovely hair, heavy and thick. Sometimes it looked black, but when sunlight caught it there were deep mahogany strands, too. More reasons to resent James. Her own hair had nothing subtle about it. It was thick, too, but an unfashionable yellowy-brown mixture.
“No,” he said flatly. “You’re Daisy to me, and Daisy suits you.”
“It doesn’t suit me,” she retorted. “Daisies are pretty and fresh, and I’m neither.”
“You are pretty,” he said mechanically, not even bothering to glance at her.
She rolled her eyes, but really, there was no reason to press the point. James never looked at her close enough to notice whether she’d turned out pretty . . . why should he? Being only two years apart, they’d shared the nursery practically from birth, which meant he had clear memories of her running about in a diaper, being smacked by Nurse Wiggan for being smart.
“How was last night?” he asked abruptly.
“Terrible.”
“Trevelyan didn’t make an appearance?”
“Geoffrey was indeed there,” Theo said gloomily. “He just never looked at me. He danced twice—twice—with the cow-eyed Claribel. I can’t stand her, and I can’t believe he can either, which means he’s just looking for a fortune. But if he is, then why doesn’t he dance with me? My inheritance must be twice as large as hers. Do you think he doesn’t know? And if so,” she said without stopping for breath, “can you think of some way of bringing it up that wouldn’t be terribly obvious?”
“Absolutely,” James said. “I can hear that conversation now. ‘So, Trevelyan, you flat-footed looby, did you know that Theodora’s inheritance comes to thousands of pounds a year? And by the way, what about those matched grays you just bought?’ ”
“You could think of a more adroit way to bring it up,” Theo said, though she couldn’t imagine it herself. “Geoffrey isn’t flat-footed. He’s as graceful as a leaf. You should have seen him dancing with cretinous Claribel.”
James frowned. “Is she the one who was brought up in India?”
“Yes. I can’t understand why some helpful tiger didn’t gobble her up. All those plump curves . . . she would have made a lovely Sunday treat.”
“Tsk, tsk,” James said, a glimmer of laughter coming into his eyes for the first time. “Young ladies in search of husbands should be docile and sweet. You keep coming out with these appallingly malicious little remarks. If you don’t behave, all those matrons will declare you unfit, and then you’ll be in a pickle.”
“I suppose that’s part of my problem.”
“What’s the other part?”
“I’m not feminine or dainty, nor even deliciously curvy. No one seems to notice me.”
“And you hate that,” James said with a grin.
“Well, I do,” she said. “I don’t mind admitting it. I think I could attract a great many men if I were simply allowed to be myself. But pink ruffles and pearl trim make me look more mannish than ever. And I feel ugly, which is the worst thing of all.”
“I don’t think you look like a man,” James said, finally inspecting her from head to foot.
“You know that opera dancer you’ve been squiring about?”
“You’re not supposed to know about Bella!”
“Why on earth not? Mama and I were in Oxford Street when you passed in an open carriage, so Mama explained everything. She even knew that your mistress is an opera dancer. I have to say, James, I think it’s amazing that you got yourself a mistress whom everyone knows about, even people like my mother.”
“I can’t believe Mrs. Saxby told you that rot.”
“What? She’s not an opera dancer?”
He scowled. “You’re supposed to pretend that women like that don’t exist.”
“Don’t be thick, James. Ladies know all about mistresses. And it isn’t as if you’re married. If you carry on like that once you are married, I’m going to be terrifically nasty to you. I’ll definitely tell your wife. So beware. I don’t approve.”
“Of Bella, or of matrimony?”
“Of married men who run about London with voluptuous women with hair the color of flax and morals that are just as lax.”
She paused for a moment, but James just rolled his eyes. “It’s not easy to rhyme extempore, you know,” she told him.
He obviously didn’t care, so she returned to the subject. “It’s all very well now, but you’ll have to give up Bella when you marry. Or whatever her replacement’s name is by then.”
“I don’t want to get married,” James said. There was a kind of grinding tension in his voice that made Theo look at him more closely.
“You’ve been quarreling with your father, haven’t you?”
He nodded.
“In the library?”
He nodded again.
“Did he try to brain you with that silver candlestick?” she asked. “Cramble told me that he was going to put it away, but I noticed it was still there yesterday.”
“He demolished a porcelain shepherdess.”