The Ugly Duchess

Page 49

Yet no one could glance at the unmistakable aura of tightly controlled power that hung around James like a cloak and ever, ever think of him as unmanly.
It was the first time in over a year that Theo found herself riveted by a bolt of pure sartorial lust. “Your coat,” she said finally, “was made by Monsieur Bréval, was it not?”
James strolled toward her holding a glass of champagne. “That sounds familiar,” he said amiably. “A round little man with very small feet and a propensity for gilt?”
“His waiting list is two years long,” Theo observed, accepting the glass.
“Every man has his price, and, if I remember correctly, Bréval found himself dazzled by a garnet set in silver. If I had realized he was so sought after, I would have been less abusive when he wanted to decorate this coat with tassels.”
Theo laughed and sipped her wine. A wash of relief hit her, so strong it made her feel a bit unsteady. James no longer resembled a pirate. His neck cloth fell in an expertly tied cascade; his short hair was tousled into a Brutus. True, he was large, but as always, in the right clothes, a man took on his best self. He looked every inch a duke.
“What exquisite silk,” she said, running her fingers down his sleeve. It was only stupidity that had her noticing the contained power beneath the silk.
“How awkward,” James said, after a tiny pause. “It’s difficult to know where to begin with a spouse one hasn’t seen in seven years. The weather doesn’t seem an appropriate subject for conversation, somehow.”
Theo walked away from him and sat down on a small settee. For a moment she thought he would take the spot beside her; there was something intense, almost lit-from-within, in his eyes. But instead he sat, most appropriately, in a chair opposite her.
“Will Sir Griffin join us for supper?”
“No. He had meant to leave in the morning to join his wife in Bath, but journalists crawling through the back garden changed his mind. He has already left, and asked me to give his apologies for not thanking you personally for your hospitality.”
“His wife!” Theo exclaimed, distracted by the thought that there was another gentlewoman in her position. “Did she know he was a pirate? And that he was alive?”
“She knew he was alive,” James said. “I’m not sure about the piracy.”
“Well.” She pushed away the fact that Sir Griffin Barry didn’t leave his wife in the dark about his safety. Presumably they had not parted on such unpleasant terms as she and James had. “I would like to hear about the life of a pirate,” she said, taking another sip of the champagne, and then putting it aside. She preferred not to drink overmuch.
“Ah, the life of a pirate,” James said musingly. He put down his glass as well, permitting Theo to glimpse a narrow starched ruffle at his wrist, trimmed with metallic gold thread.
“Oh!” she cried, interrupting him. “Your ruffle is superb!”
He held out his arm, staring at it. “You don’t think it’s a trifle overdone? I thought so, but then a princess on the island of Cascara shared your enthusiasm.”
From his smile, Theo surmised that James had pleasant memories of the princess. She straightened her back.
“She was quite bent on assuring me that my galleon would always have a warm welcome in her harbor,” he went on. “Not that I chose to dock my ship in that port.”
“Why ever not?” Theo said coolly. “Too fatiguing for a man of your years?”
“Too crowded,” he replied, his eyes shining with wicked humor. “Pirates prefer to find an island so small that no man has walked her sand. We like to find a small haven that lies dreaming in the sun. Waiting.”
Despite herself, she felt a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. James had loved punning nonsense when he was a boy. He used to make her laugh until her ribs ached. Perhaps he hadn’t changed that much.
“So you’d like to know about the life of a pirate,” James said, stretching out his legs.
Theo jerked her eyes away from his thighs and looked at his face instead. When he was a young boy, James’s face looked as if a master sculptor such as Donatello had carved it. She was never surprised that his mother considered him angelic: he had looked and sounded like a cherub, the kind who would spend his life singing hymns so joyful that birds would weep with envy.
No longer. His face had broadened along with the rest of him, and what had been elegant cheekbones had become more spare and brutal. His nose had clearly been broken in some conflict. And there was the tattoo, of course.
“What did you enjoy so much about that life?” she asked and held her breath. Despite herself, there was a silent addendum in the air: so much more than you liked me. Damn it, this was no time for vulnerable Daisy to make an appearance.
Yet it hurt to be hurt.
Twice, she had felt as if her heart was torn from her chest: when she realized that James had lied about his reasons for marriage, and when her mother died. The memory steadied her.
“You know what I’m like,” James said lazily, ignoring, or not catching, the question she didn’t ask. “As a boy, I was forever dashing out of the house, trying to calm myself by tearing around the garden. The first three or four years, I stayed in motion. Every day, all day. Sailing is hard work; taking down pirate ships is even harder.”
“I can only imagine,” Theo said. She got up and walked to the bell cord. She couldn’t take much more of this intimacy. It would be better to be in the dining room, where she would have something to do with her hands and be flanked by footmen. “And what did you see?” she asked, seated once again.
He told her about huge fish that leapt from the water to smile at them, the long arms of an octopus, the dawn breaking over the ocean when all around there was nothing to be seen but blue water, bending gently to hug the curve of the earth.
When they moved to the dining room, James dismissed the footmen behind their chairs with a jerk of his head. Theo was about to protest that her household ran smoothly because . . . and realized it wasn’t her household any longer.
But then he asked a question about the weavers, and it was such a pleasure to talk to someone interested—to whom she didn’t pay a salary.
The candles guttered, and still they talked, on and on. A few times she reiterated that she would leave the house in the morning. But James seemed entirely reasonable in response, not at all like the ferocious brute who had snatched her in the hallway earlier that day.
In point of fact, he escorted her up the stairs and ushered her into her bedchamber, bowed like a perfect gentleman, and withdrew.
It wasn’t until Amélie had put her in bed that she realized that she felt a little sad. Flying fish had been enough to keep him from her?
She had been such a fool. Somehow she had preserved the idea of her childhood friend. And now, even as a grown-up version of that friend smiled across the table, urbane and charming, she wanted more. She wanted him to adore her, the way she remembered.
Obviously, he had changed.
In the end, she lay for hours staring into the dark, feeling a little maudlin from a surfeit of champagne. For all James said that he didn’t sail into that princess’s harbor, he probably did. And judging from his smile, the harbor had been seductive.
Curved, no doubt.