The Ugly Duchess

Page 42

There was one more thing that she needed to clarify. Well, there were many, but this one would not wait. Once in the entrance, she nodded to Maydrop, and he instantly opened the door to the drawing room.
James followed her, and when she turned to face him he merely looked at her, waiting, an eyebrow raised. She remembered that look. Years ago, his raised eyebrow had evidenced the curiosity of a boy; now it clearly signaled the supreme arrogance of a man.
For a moment her heart quailed: what was she to do? She would not live with a pirate, with a scarred, uncivilized excuse for a duke. She was probably the most controlled—if you like, the most refined—woman of all her acquaintance, but now her heart was beating so fast it felt as if it might fly from her chest. Still, she pulled herself together.
“The Bow Street Runner who hypothesized that you were the Earl was quite certain that you couldn’t be Jack Hawk,” she said, stripping off her gloves so that she didn’t have to look at him.
But she could see him through her lashes. He was lolling back against the wall as no gentleman would. “Your Runner was wrong there.”
“One of his reasons for that conclusion was that Hawk had, if I caught his meaning correctly, left illegitimate children all over the East Indies.” She did meet his eyes then, dropping all pretense of civility and making sure that her own eyes expressed the contempt she felt for a man who had not bothered to return for years, not even to console his aging father; for a man who, given what she knew about pirates, not only stole for a living but had ordered people down a plank to a watery grave. For a man who had betrayed his marriage vows and then deserted his own children, uncivilized and illegitimate though they may be.
James was silent for a moment. The boy she remembered would have yielded to her glare, but the man just crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her thoughtfully. “You seem rather angry. When I left England you were in this state, and I had hoped that time had changed your displeasure.”
“I was angry then because you married me under false pretenses. Our marriage has been irrelevant to me for many years, though not, it seems, as irrelevant as it was to you. Still, I can assure you that I no longer feel more than mild pique at your deceit with regard to our marriage. However, I will ask you again, Duke, did you indeed leave children behind? Or did you bring them home with you? Are your offspring the baggage that you mentioned?”
The silence that fell over the drawing room was like the crack of a whip: it had ferocity, as if the air had been sliced in half.
“Your Bow Street Runner was incorrect,” James repeated, just before Theo was about to go investigate the nursery herself. “I have no children, illegitimate or otherwise.”
“Really?” she said coolly. “Are you quite certain? Am I to believe that you bothered to check on me nine months after you left England?”
“I sent a man to do so.”
“A pity you didn’t ask that man to assure the duke of your safety.” Ashbrook’s last thought had been of his long-lost son, though even in the deepest rage of her life, she did not say that. It would be too cruel.
“I did not think of my father as old. Stupidly, I never imagined that he might die before we managed to reconcile. It is one of my many regrets.” But James said it lightly. “In fact, the news of his death transformed me from the Earl into Jack Hawk.”
She waited, but he did not elaborate. Apparently he felt no obligation to explain anything more to her. She walked from the room and up the stairs without another word.
A half hour later, in her bath, Theo thought of the obvious solution to this unimaginable turn of events. She sat up so quickly that water sluiced from her shoulders and slopped onto the floor. “I need Boythorn,” she said aloud.
“Beg pardon, Your Grace?” Amélie turned from where she was folding stockings.
“Please ask Maydrop to send for my solicitor, Mr. Boythorn,” Theo said, standing up. “I should like him to attend me first thing in the morning.” Of course one could dissolve a union if a spouse returns from a years-long absence with a reputation for walking people down the gangplank. In ordinary circumstances, it was difficult—nearly impossible—to obtain a divorce. This was not an ordinary circumstance.
In fact, she was quite certain her arguments would triumph. The Regent himself would dissolve the marriage, if no one else. He had done so for the wife of Lord Ferngast, after Ferngast joined the Family of Love and demanded that she share her bed with all and sundry. Lord Ferngast hadn’t killed people.
London might be temporarily dazzled by the wholly unexpected return of the Duke of Ashbrook, but everyone knew what happened to captured pirates: they were hanged.
As she was contemplating that, the door opened and her maid turned around with a squeak. Theo turned more slowly.
But she turned, naked and wet as she was. James’s absurdly large body filled the doorway. Infuriatingly, he took a leisurely look up and down at her.
“Amélie,” she said a bit sharply, “may I have a towel, please?”
With something like a sob of excitement, her maid pressed one into her hands and threw another around her shoulders.
James’s eyes were still blue. But they were utterly expressionless, the eyes of a stranger.
“In civilized society,” Theo said as she wrapped the towel around herself, “it is de rigueur to knock on the door of a shared chamber before entering.”
Then she walked through the door that led into her bedchamber and closed it behind her.
Twenty-four
James walked down the stairs, his mind whirling like a windmill in a gale. He’d forgotten how pink and white Daisy was. Her skin was like the heart of a delicate English rose. He’d forgotten the curve of her hip and the length of her legs.
He’d forced himself to forget those things, but now they all crashed back into his mind, all the things he’d loved about her from the time he was a boy. Her exquisite bone structure . . . the arch of her bottom lip . . . the dark sweep of her lashes. His soul sang at the sight of her, and not just with carnal desire.
Damn.
Obviously, he had never truly forgotten.
There was one thing about her that made the breath catch in his chest. It was the look in her eyes when she saw him. There was surprise and anger; he had expected that. But there was also fear. Fear? From Daisy, his Daisy?
He’d thrown this fascinating woman away, sailing off to bask under a foreign sun. He reached the bottom of the stairs when he realized with utter certainty that he would—could—never sail away from Daisy ever again.
She was his heart, his other half. She filled all the empty places in his soul that he had desperately tried to paper over with pirate escapades and merry women.
And she feared him.
He’d been confident about his ability to overcome her rage. Now he felt as if the universe had given him a leveler. Daisy knew him. How could she possibly feel threatened by him?
His brain supplied the answer. Because he had hurt her, if only emotionally. Surely she didn’t think he could ever hurt her physically. He felt undone at the thought and clenched his fists to stop his fingers from trembling.
Of course other people feared him: he was a pirate. He was big and tattooed and kept his head shaven—though his hair was now growing back. But it never crossed his mind that Daisy could fear him.