The Ugly Duchess

Page 9

It would be very easy to resent James. Wherever he went, people liked, if not loved, him, and he didn’t even bother to be witty.
“In truth,” Geoffrey was saying, “Her Royal Highness is by all accounts discreet, of admirable temper, and guilty of not a single vice.”
“When someone is said to have no vices,” Theo said, before she could lose her courage, “it generally turns out that they have as many sins as hairs on their head.”
“You think that the Princess of Imeretia has that many sins?” Geoffrey drawled. “Do tell us more, Miss Saxby.”
Theo was aware that the entire group was listening, and her heartbeat grew even faster, though she managed to keep her expression casual. “Avarice is one of the seven deadly sins, and Her Highness bathes, it is said, in a solid silver bathtub,” she said with a careless wave of her fan. “She has a private quartet that lulls her to sleep on restless nights. And surely you have noticed that she has a lover? Baron Grébert, the man with drooping mustaches and too much hair. He looks like a lion pretending to be a lion-tamer.”
Claribel tittered nervously, but Geoffrey’s eyebrow shot up and he looked at Theo more closely, a little smile curling his lips.
“And Her Highness,” he asked. “How would you describe her?”
“A fox terrier in skirts,” Theo said.
Geoffrey threw back his head and laughed, and all the other young men echoed him. Except James. He scowled, because he never liked it when she was malicious, even when the malice was funny.
“I think I’m rather afraid of you,” Geoffrey said. His eyes were warm and admiring.
“Yes, you should be,” James stated.
“Lord Islay, you know Miss Saxby better than anyone,” Claribel put in with a girlish squeal. “Surely she is not dangerous!”
Claribel was so dim that Theo thought there was a good chance she wasn’t even joking.
“Theodora has a tongue as sharp as a cracked mirror,” James said.
“Pish. I have sweet moments!” Theo said, flirting with Geoffrey over the edge of her fan.
“Yes, and they’re about as convincing as Marie Antoinette pretending to be a shepherdess,” James retorted. “It’s bloody hot in here.” He yanked at his neck cloth again, this time managing to untie it.
“Perhaps you should take yourself off, Islay,” Geoffrey murmured. “You are looking conspicuously ungroomed; it quite reminds me of school, and not in a good way, either. Miss Saxby, that is a remarkable pendant.”
Theo met his eyes just as he raised his from her cleavage—a moment they both enjoyed. “A gift from my grandmother,” she murmured.
“The same grandmother who turned Theodora into an heiress,” James said with the air of someone getting an unpleasant duty over with. “Well, I think it’s time to leave, darling.”
Geoffrey’s eyebrow shot up at this, and he took a step back.
“Oh, but James,” Theo said, “I’m not ready to leave.” She smiled at Geoffrey, but she could see James’s face from the corner of her eye. He looked as if he was going to explode, and she hastily decided that perhaps she had made sufficient inroads on Geoffrey’s attentions for one evening.
She had the feeling that he would look for her the next night, and the one afterward.
Feeling magnanimous, Theo dropped a curtsy in the general direction of Claribel and the unpleasant Althea, and allowed James to tow her away.
James strode through the crowded ballroom like one of those Greek gods in a bad mood.
Theo trotted along beside, feeling too happy to protest.
Five
“I think that went very well,” Theo said, once they were in the carriage on the way home.
“No, it did not,” James said shortly.
“How can you say that? Geoffrey was quite taken with me!”
“He might have been taken with your bubbies.”
“Bubbies? Bubbies? James, you really shouldn’t be using that sort of slang around me,” Theo said with some delight. “Bubbies. I love that word.”
He leaned forward, and she realized with a start that he was furious. “Don’t ‘James’ me. You could not have been more obvious flirting with Trevelyan.”
“That’s true. I meant to be obvious.”
“Well, do you want to know something? You don’t belong with your darling Geoffrey. Not at all.”
“Why not?”
“His tongue is even more spiteful than yours. He used to poke at me, just for fun, and if I had paid him any mind, he could have proved a pain in the ass.”
Theo broke into a laugh. “You, upset?”
“I said, if I paid him any mind. You’re not me, Theo. You would listen to him, and he would cut you to pieces.”
“He will love me,” Theo explained. “I shall quite enjoy watching him dissect our fellow man, but because he will love me, I’ll be out of bounds.”
“Nothing and no one is out of bounds for Trevelyan. I’ve heard him make jokes about his own mother. To be utterly frank, Daisy, he’s the kind of man who is most himself when he is dressed as a woman.”
“What!”
“Just what I said.” James leaned back and looked at her with an insufferably smug expression. “I know him and you don’t.”
“Are you saying that he’s interested in men?”
“Is there anything you don’t dare to say aloud?” James yelped. “No, I am not! I’m just saying that he’s an odd bird, that’s all. Very odd. Not for you. I won’t let you marry him.”
“You won’t let me marry him? You?” Theo was incensed. “Well, let me remind you that you have absolutely nothing to do with whom I marry. Nothing!”
James narrowed his eyes. “We’ll see about that.”
“There is nothing to see,” she snapped. “If I want Geoffrey, I’ll marry him.”
“Not unless you want to share your silk stockings.”
Theo gasped. “You’re being unspeakably rude, and you should apologize. I don’t know why you would say such a thing of Geoffrey.”
“Because it’s the truth. I lived with him. Only when he put on skirts—which he did at the slightest pretext—did he stop being so nervy that he bit at someone every five minutes. But go ahead. I gather you think you know him best.”
“I do know Geoffrey best. You may have played at charades when you were at school. But he’s grown up now, even if you haven’t.”
“Right. It’s all my fault.”
“Not your fault,” Theo said. “But I think I understand men a bit better than you do, James. After all, you’re still thinking of Geoffrey as a boy. I see him with a woman’s eyes.”
James scowled at her. “Woman’s eyes! Piffle.”
“If you accompany me just one more time,” Theo coaxed him, “just to the royal musicale tomorrow night, after that I’m certain I will not need the attention I get from dragging you with me. Geoffrey has noticed me now, you see. One more encounter will be enough.”
“For what? True love?”
“Perhaps,” Theo said, thinking of the way Geoffrey’s mouth curved up on one side and not the other. “Maybe.”