The Ugly Duchess

Page 66

Thinking of that, he began to look for her with more purpose. They’d been here at least two and a half hours, and he and Theo had negotiated a three-hour limit for social occasions involving more than ten persons. (The duchess may have abandoned her Rules in the bedchamber, but she was still given to them in other aspects of her life. One of these days he was going to stop dropping the newspapers on the breakfast room floor.)
He poked his head into the drawing room, but there was no sign of his wife. He looked in the card rooms, and the ballroom, and she didn’t seem to be there, either. There was nothing for it but to extend his search to the floor above.
He was dawdling in the long gallery, looking at the portraits of pompous royalty, when he heard Geoffrey Trevelyan’s drawling voice around the corner. For all James despised the man, Theo insisted on dancing with him now and then. James was of the considered opinion that she did it because she knew that it drove him mad.
Just as he turned on his spurred heel to head in the other direction—he took the avoidance of Sir Geoffrey to the level of art—he made out what Trevelyan was saying in that arrogant manner of his.
“The Ugly Duchess might as well be wearing the Emperor’s new clothes.” This, with a snigger. “All the fine clothing in the world can’t give her the figure of a woman, or the profile of one. I really think that she might be a man. You know the reputation that pirates—”
At that precise moment James rounded the corner. Trevelyan, aghast, snapped his mouth shut.
Just because a man has learned to control his temper doesn’t mean that he isn’t capable of losing it when circumstances demand. James twisted his former schoolmate’s cravat around his hand, hoisted him into the air, and slammed him against the wall, bellowing at the top of his lungs. “How dare you say such a thing about my wife? You foul, malicious piece of garbage. You cur, unfit to be in her presence.”
Trevelyan’s face was turning an interesting color of plum, and he seemed disinclined to answer, possibly because the cravat was cutting off his air supply. That was all right: James’s question was rhetorical.
He slammed Trevelyan against the wall again. “She is the most beautiful”—slam!—“exquisite”—slam!—“woman in all of London.”
By now James could hear people rushing up the stairs, but he didn’t care. “I never saw a woman more beautiful, not in China,”—slam!—“not in the Indies,”—slam!—“and certainly not in the British Isles. Even more important, she is incredibly kind. Witness the time she wastes talking to you, you spiteful, shriveled worm.” Slam, slam, slam!
A hand touched his sleeve, and he turned, teeth bared. It was Theo.
“Dear heart,” she said, and with just those two words, the rage drained from him and he dropped Trevelyan like a piece of discarded laundry.
The spiteful worm instantly began to crawl away. “You!” James said, in precisely the same voice with which he used to roar some version of “Time to die!” as he leapt over a ship’s rail.
Trevelyan heard and understood; he froze.
“If you ever utter a word about my wife that is less than complimentary, I will not slam you against the wall again. I will instead send you through a window. And not on the ground floor, either.”
James didn’t wait for an answer; who expects garbage to answer back? Instead, he held out his arm to his wife.
When they turned, they saw that the gallery was now crammed with people.
“My duchess,” James stated, his eyes sweeping the crowd with the air of a man who has ruled the waves. “She is not a swan, because that would imply she had once been an ugly duckling.”
He glanced down at Theo. Her eyes were painted with an exotic tilt at the corners. Her cheekbones were regal and her bottom lip was colored a perfect red that made it more kissable than it already was. Small but lush breasts, skin the color of clear moonlight, rose above a waist the size of a man’s hand.
But none of that mattered compared to the innate kindness in her eyes, the joyful turn of her lip, the wild intelligence with which she greeted every day.
That was beautiful.
Without another word, they walked down the long gallery, Theo’s fingers poised on his sleeve, the crowd parting like the Red Sea as they approached. James saw approval on their faces, and then someone began to clap. It may even have been the Regent himself.
Two hands clapping became several, and then more, and finally they descended the stairs to the sound of a ballroom full of peers applauding.
Safe in the carriage while being driven home, Theo managed to stop herself from crying. James asked her if she was all right, but words were so bundled in her heart that she couldn’t utter them, and she just nodded and held his hand very, very tightly.
Once inside the house, she handed her cape to Maydrop, caught James’s hand before he had removed his greatcoat, and wordlessly led him to the foot of the staircase. He followed her up, his coat still on, with a bellow of laughter.
She remained silent when they were in her bedchamber, and the door was closed behind them. For a precious moment she allowed herself to just look at her pirate. James’s elegant features were still there. His tattoo only emphasized the sweep of his lashes, the curve of his lip, the arch of his cheekbones.
As he shrugged off his greatcoat, she reached up to pull off his wig, then tossed it aside. He was huge, and beautiful, with a contained power about him that had made a shipful of pirates—and a crowded room of lords—acquiesce to whatever he proposed.
He was hers.
“Are you angry that I slammed Trevelyan about a bit?” James asked, even though in this one matter he obviously didn’t give a damn what she thought, and would do it again in a heartbeat.
She took a moment to find the right words. “You told the whole world that I was beautiful to you.”
“You are,” he said simply. “Not just to me, either.”
Tears threatened to fall again, but again she willed them away. James was lounging back against the door like the pirate king he was, his expression wicked and tender, both at once.
“I always thought,” she said haltingly, “that you started loving me when you were blind, when you were twelve. Because you couldn’t see me.”
His eyebrow shot up. “Rubbish. I loved you long before.”
“You did?”
“The year before, when my mother died. You came to me that night. Don’t you remember? You were still in a small bed in the nursery, and I had graduated to a larger bed next door. You came to my room without a word, after Nurse retired for the night, and you crawled in bed with me. I started crying then, and I sobbed until I didn’t have another tear in me.”
“I’d forgotten that,” Theo said, remembering now.
“But do you know why I fell in love with you?”
There was a shining glint of impious laughter in his eyes. She shook her head.
“Because you brought eight handkerchiefs to my bed with you. Eight. And precisely eight starched handkerchiefs later, I felt able to live another day.”
She couldn’t stop her smile. “I like to be prepared.”
“You knew me.” His eyes were naked and vulnerable. “All through my life, you’ve been my lodestone, the key to my heart. I lost you for a while, Daisy.” He straightened and went to her. “I couldn’t bear it if I lost you again.”