The Ugly Duchess

Page 65

At some point the duke decided to make a point about just how beautiful his wife was, and before she could stop him, he tossed a Parisian-designed cape worth a small fortune out the window, where it fell into the garden and became stuck on a hedge, rosy silk lining shining in the sunshine.
“Just like it was before,” one of the footmen told Maydrop. “Her wedding dress went out that same window seven years ago.” Neither of them could make head nor tail of that.
Maydrop summoned back the staff, and the duke told him—sotto voce—that he could pay off all those extra men he’d bribed to act as journalists.
By the end of the week, the duchess was almost used to being disheveled and imperfectly groomed, at least part of the time. She had resigned herself to the fact that her husband stubbornly considered her to be just as beautiful now as she was at seventeen, as well as to the fact that James would never really understand what clothing did for a woman—or a man. Though he was an expert on the lack of clothing.
She was very, very happy.
She was still married.
A Rather Long Epilogue
The Regent’s Ball
May 1817
As every married couple in the history of married couples has discovered, married life is not always a bed of roses.
It was the afternoon on the day the Regent was to bestow the Order of the Bath on James. Hours earlier, Theo had screamed at him because he’d knocked over a jasperware fish, which had been delicately balanced on its tail in a positive marvel of Ashbrook Ceramics craftsmanship.
James had shouted back that positioning a slender marble column next to the library door was a daft thing to do, because someone might easily enter the room and then move to the side as he had done, with calamitous consequences. “My life was a damn sight easier when the only fish in view had scales!”
“Fine,” Theo had shouted in return. “Feel free to join your fishy friends once again!”
At the sound of raised voices, Maydrop had whisked his staff away from the library door. Experience had taught him that the duke and duchess sometimes required privacy outside the matrimonial bedchambers.
Sure enough, when the duchess had emerged an hour or so later, her hair was tousled rather than sleek, and the clasp of her necklace was hanging over her bosom. She didn’t emerge on her own two feet, either.
The duke loved to carry his wife about. “Putting those muscles of his to good use,” the maids whispered to each other, giggling madly.
Marriage was not easy, but neither was it unrewarding. In fact, James had grinned all afternoon following the demise of the china fish, even though he was dreading the evening. He was to receive a commendation for meritorious duties to the Crown in the unfortunate matter of the slave trade, and the ceremony was to be followed by a ball. He loathed that sort of occasion, but if putting on a sash and wearing an absurd costume for one evening would help him win the upcoming vote on abolishing slavery (rather than just the slave trade) throughout the British empire, it was the least he could do. At least they’d waived the ritual purification by bathing; that was something for which to be grateful.
Besides, Theo wanted him to accept it. And what Theo wanted, James gave her, to the best of his power. Even when it meant he felt as ridiculous as a peacock draped in a velvet stole.
Thus, he was now standing in his bedchamber while his valet, Gosffens, fussed over him. He had already put James in a doublet sewn all over with pearls, and then a surcoat of red tartarin, lined and edged with white sarcenet. That was followed by a white sash, which was bad enough, but now Gosffens had brought out boots adorned with huge golden spurs, practically as large as wagon wheels.
James peered down at them with distaste. “Where did that vulgar rubbish come from?”
“Specially made for the Knights of the Bath,” his valet stated.
James jammed his feet into the boots.
“And now the Mantle of the Order,” Gosffens said in a hushed voice. He reverently shook out a mantle of the same color as the surcoat and tied it around James’s neck with a length of white lace.
James glared at the mirror as if daring it to crack in two. “White lace, Gosffens? White lace? I look like a horse’s arse.”
Gosffens was lifting the lid from yet another box. James glanced over—and realized his valet was removing a red bonnet. A bonnet?
He put up with a lot in the area of dress. His wife had decided opinions, and she loved nothing more than to dress him in velvet and silk, in colors not generally seen on men and sometimes embroidered with flowers; she said that the more extravagant his clothing, the more piratical he appeared. Once James discovered just how seductive his duchess found that piratical look, he had even been known to wear a coat in a subtle shade of pink.
But a bonnet was going too far. James held out his hand without a word. Gosffens handed it to him, and then watched with a tragic expression as James ripped it straight down the middle and tossed it out the window.
“Your ceremonial bonnet,” the valet wailed.
“I’ll let you put on a wig,” James said, by way of compromise.
Gosffens came at him next with a stickpin topped with a diamond the size of a large grape.
“Where did that monstrosity come from?” James said, waving it away.
His valet gave him a smug smile. “It is a gift from Her Grace, in honor of your investiture as a Knight of the Bath.”
James sighed, and Gosffens stabbed it into the crimson mantle. “After all, you are the pirate duke,” his man said. “We must not disappoint your followers.”
For his part, James would be perfectly happy to disappoint anyone stupid enough to give a hang about what he was wearing. “I suppose the duchess will be particularly magnificent this evening?”
“I believe they began the dressing process at one o’clock,” Gosffens affirmed. James’s valet received a good deal of his sense of self-worth from the fact that he lived under the roof of the most stylish woman in London. One o’clock was three hours ago, and James thought it likely that Daisy wouldn’t be ready for another hour.
In the end, the ceremony wasn’t too intolerable. The Regent was mercifully brief in bestowing the Order of the Bath. At the ball that followed, James accepted the congratulations of eleven fatuous knights who were convinced that the twelve of them were the cream of the kingdom. Successfully suppressing the impulse to laugh aloud, he used his new knightly influence to push Sir Flanner (knighted for service in the war) toward support of his anti-slavery bill, so that was a night’s—or knight’s—work well done.
By then James had long since lost track of his duchess. Theo was in high demand among the ton. The papers described her every opinion and new gown; he himself never seemed to be able to leave his own front door without brushing up against members of the penny press waiting to see his wife.
Far too often for his own taste, a bored reporter would amuse himself by writing up another description of the pirate duke, with his “brutal” tattoo. Those articles invariably ended with some variation on the same theme: no one could understand how the most elegant woman in London tolerated marriage to the most uncouth man in the peerage.
But at the same time, no one could argue with the fact Her Grace obviously adored her husband. The duchess didn’t smile often, but she smiled for the duke.
Personally, James thought her face in repose was lovely, but when she smiled—especially at him—it was extraordinary.