The Ugly Duchess Page 7

  “Right,” Theo said, seating herself beside James and trying not to think about how much she liked feeling the brush of his shoulder against hers. “How bad is it?”

  “It’s hellish,” James stated. “My father has managed to come near to bankrupting the entire estate. He’s sold everything that he could put his hands on, and only the entail has saved the rest from disappearing into his pockets.”

  Theo put a hand on his arm. “Then it’s an excellent thing that you have assumed control, James. Remember those ideas we used to have for making the Staffordshire estate self-sustaining? We have a chance to put them into practice.”

  He cast her a look that was half despair and half exasperation. “We were children, Daisy. We had stupid, quixotic ideas that were probably about as practical as my father’s wretched plans.”

  It was clear to her that James was on the verge of combustion. “Mr. Reede, could you give me a précis of what is left in the estate, and what debts are encumbered thereto?” Theo asked.

  Mr. Reede blinked at her, clearly startled.

  “I told you,” James said to him with a hollow laugh.

  Mr. Reede found his tongue. “The Staffordshire estate is entailed, of course, as is this town house and the island in Scotland.”

  “Island?”

  “Islay,” James put in. “No one has visited it in years; I gather it’s nothing more than a heap of rock.”

  “I’m afraid that there are debts against the country estate totaling thirty-two thousand pounds,” Mr. Reede said.

  “What about income from the sheep farm, and the rest?”

  “The income is approximately the amount that has been agreed upon as His Grace’s annual allowance. There are also debts against the town house totaling five thousand pounds.”

  “And against the island?” Theo asked.

  “No one would lend him money against it,” James said. “It has nothing but a meadow and a hut.”

  “His Grace does own a ship that has, in the past, made successful runs to the East Indies for spices. Lord Islay and I spent the morning at the Percival, which has been dry-docked as a result of nonpayment of customs fees.”

  “I thought ships were generally named after women,” Theo said.

  “His Grace named the vessel after himself. With fines,” Mr. Reede said, moving smoothly on, “the duties attached to the Percival added up to eight thousand pounds. We secured payment and the ship is no longer impounded. His Grace had continued to pay the crew’s wages, but the captain left for a better post.” Mr. Reede turned over a page in his ledger.

  “We’re up to forty-five thousand pounds in debt,” Theo said. “That really is rather a lot.”

  “There is a small firm of weavers located in Cheapside,” Mr. Reede said. “Ryburn Weavers has made a steady profit of around three thousand pounds per annum.”

  “Why didn’t the duke sell it?”

  “I believe he forgot about its existence,” Mr. Reede said, adding rather hesitantly, “I used the income to pay for the staff wages in the various houses, as well as the crew of the Percival.”

  “So naturally you did not remind him of the existence of the weavers,” Theo said admiringly. “That was exceptionally shrewd of you. Thank you, Mr. Reede.”

  She elbowed James, and he muttered something. But he started up from the table as if he could no longer bear to sit, and began ranging about the room, running his hands through his hair.

  Theo ignored him for the time being and turned back to Mr. Reede. “My preference would be to pay down the debt from my dowry, and then work toward a goal of making the estate self-sustaining. Is that possible, in your estimation?”

  “I have often thought,” Reede offered, “if a reasonable investment were made in the sheep farm, we could bring the income up twenty percent within a short period of time, say two to three years.”

  “I would be more comfortable if we received income from various sources. One thing that Lord Islay and I discussed in the past was the possibility of building a ceramics business. Wedgwood has had remarkable success using Staffordshire clay, and half our estate seems to be clay. I find Wedgwood’s patterns stultifyingly boring. I’m sure that we could do better.”

  “It would take a considerable outlay to establish a profitable concern. My guess is that you would have to try to lure someone away from Wedgwood.” Mr. Reede cast a nervous glance at James, who was staring out the window, his shoulders tight.

  “I’ll explain any plans we might make to my husband,” Theo said.

  “Just do whatever you want,” James said, not turning to face them. “I’m useless at this stage.” He had never been happy with facts and figures, but once they were tramping around the estate, he would probably have a hundred ideas about how to increase the wheat harvest.

  And once they got the ceramics business up and running, Theo had no doubt that he could handle any contingency. He had a true gift for talking to laborers, likely because he envied their lot.

  “What do you think about the idea of establishing a ceramics industry on the estate, Mr. Reede?”

  The estate manager glanced over his shoulder again. James had one arm up against the window, and he was leaning his forehead against it, the very portrait of despair. “In conjunction with improvements to the sheep farm, I think that would serve very well indeed, my lady.”

  Nine

  By the time the meeting was drawing to a close, James felt like jumping out the library window and running into the street, screaming. He was an idiot who would never be able to manage his own estate because he couldn’t bear thinking or talking about numbers. As Reede prosed on, his entire body tensed with the fervent wish to get the hell out of the library.

  So it had been Daisy—Daisy, whom he had betrayed—who spent two hours going over figures, coming up with idea after idea to repair their finances. At one point he had sat down at the table again, but the numbers had flowed past him as relentlessly as when he paced the room.

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t do mathematics or accounting; he’d learned both in school. But his concentration constantly slipped in the face of such calculations, and he found himself thinking not about selling horses for profit but about the ways he planned to repair the stables. Daisy and Reede talked about the tons of hay produced by the south field compared to the west, and whether the disparity had to do with runoff from the stream; his only contribution was the comment that scything the west field was difficult because it was on the slope of a hill.

  He knew that only because he had joined the workers on the estate the previous summer, reveling in the simplicity of learning to lean into the sweep of the scythe, the pleasure of a day spent doing physical labor, even the ache of his muscles at bedtime.

  The truth of it was that he was a fool who was really only good for scything, because if he didn’t get into the fresh air and exercise hard every day, he couldn’t control his bloody, bloody temper. And he’d be damned if he ended up endangering his household with airborne china statuettes.

  Even so, he could have lived with the brutal truth of his own ineptitude. After all, Daisy—Theo—had made fun of him for years, and her cheerful affection had always smoothed over the fact that he would rather hang himself than attend an opera.

  The only time he had sat still long enough to listen to a book being read aloud (let alone read one to himself) was during the bout of ophthalmia, when the doctors banished him to a dark room, threatening that he’d go blind. Even then, he suspected that he would have been up and running about, and be damned with his eyesight, except that Daisy made him laugh, and petted him, and fed him. When Daisy read him Shakespeare, he was fascinated. When he tried to read it to himself, the words jumbled on the page and his mind slipped off to other things.

  Finally all the bookkeeping and talking and planning were over, and Daisy said good-bye to Mr. Reede in the prettiest manner possible, James grimly standing at her side in the entryway. Then she pulled him back into the library.

>   “What?” he said flatly. “I must go for a ride, Daisy. I didn’t have time earlier, and my head is pounding.” He still couldn’t believe that he had a wife. Let alone that the wife was Daisy. His Daisy. He reached out and ran a finger down her face. “You have the most beautiful bones of any woman I’ve ever seen. Like a Russian princess, I think.”

  She liked that; he could read it in her eyes. “Kiss me,” she said. “That kind of kiss.”

  He kissed her.

  The damned thing about it was that James had discovered that he actually meant all those things he had said in front of the Prince of Wales that night back in March. Daisy was his, and he was possessive, and he did want her more than anything or anyone in the world.

  But now it would never be pure or true between them. And so he kissed her with such a mixture of lust and despair that he fancied he could taste his own misery, so he tore himself away with a muttered comment about his headache.

  After riding his horse too fast—which took care of his headache, but not his heartache—he had luncheon in his club and then returned to the house. But rather than enter that blasted library, he fell onto his bed, staring up at the canopy, unable to think or move or even sleep.

  His valet, Bairley, appeared after a few hours and inquired about supper. Apparently her ladyship was paying a visit to a modiste and had not yet returned.

  “Later,” James said dully. He was in the grip of the kind of guilt and despair that murderers presumably feel. More than anything, he longed to knock his father against the wall with a leveler to the jaw: for ruining his marriage, his love for Daisy, his future. His whole body vibrated with hatred for the man who had so selfishly and carelessly ruined their lives.

  Some time later, his valet knocked softly and entered the room again.

  James pushed himself upright. “I suppose it’s time to dress for supper.”

  “Yes, your lordship. I have your bath ready. But Mr. Cramble thought you should know . . . ,” Bairley began and then seemed to lose steam.

  “What is the problem?” James asked. “Has my father returned from the races?”

  “No, your lordship. It’s the papers.”

  “What about them?”

  “Mr. Cramble told her ladyship at breakfast that most of them had not been delivered, though he did put them in the library for you to read.”

  “Right. I didn’t get to them. Why on earth did Cramble say such a thing to my wife?”

  “It was because of what they wrote about your wedding, that is, about Lady Islay. He meant to show them to you as soon as he had a chance.”

  James shook his head. “What in God’s name did the papers say about my wife? Why were they bothering with our wedding?”

  “It was the wedding of the season,” Bairley said reproachfully. “The descriptions of the ceremony and reception are quite laudatory. The gilded coach and footmen in cloth-of-gold were universally admired.”

  “I feel as though I’m pulling teeth here, Bairley,” James said, stripping off his waistcoat. “Have you chosen something I should put on for the evening?”

  “Mr. Cramble thought he would send a meal to her ladyship’s room,” Bairley said, stammering a bit. “And you might dine with her there, private-like. When you ring for it, that is.”

  His valet’s English was generally better than James’s own, so that colloquial “private-like” was a sign that something truly was wrong. A flare of anger ignited by fear swept over James. “What in the bloody hell are you getting at, Bairley?” he said sharply.

  “The papers are all calling her the ‘Ugly Duchess,’ ” his valet replied miserably.

  “What?”

  “The ‘ugly duchess,’ a play on that fairy tale ‘The Ugly Duckling.’ My lord, please keep your voice down. Her ladyship is next door. She retired to her room directly after returning from the modiste.”

  “When you say the ‘papers,’ which ones do you mean, precisely?” James pulled off his shirt and tossed it on the bed. Daisy must be devastated. They were all blasted liars. He’d kill the scribblers himself. He’d have the presses shut down by the next morrow. He discovered his fingers were shaking slightly with rage.

  “All of the dailies,” Bairley replied. “All except the Morning Chronicle, which said that she had the profile of a king.”

  “That’s all right,” James said, deciding to spare the Morning Chronicle. He tore open his breeches and a button skipped across the floor.

  Bairley scurried after it.

  “I’ll have a retraction and apology from every one of them tomorrow morning,” James said through clenched teeth, “or by God I’ll torch their buildings myself. There’s some power in a dukedom yet, and I’ll use every iota of it to destroy them.”

  “Yes, your lordship,” his valet said, having found the button. He turned to pull evening clothing from the wardrobe and lay it carefully on the bed. “Unfortunately, her maid reports that her ladyship saw the papers when she visited the modiste today. It’s not only the papers—there are prints in the stationers’ windows already. They did them overnight because of all the excitement about the wedding.”

  “Oh, for—” James broke off. “Lady Islay went out and saw all that, and now she’s . . . where?”

  “Next door,” Bairley said. “She went straight to her chamber, her face white as a winding sheet, that’s what Mr. Cramble said.”

  “Where’s her mother?”

  “Mrs. Saxby left early this morning for Scotland, before the papers were delivered.”

  James threw his breeches and smalls on the bed. “I’ll have a quick bath and then pay a visit to my wife. Tell Cramble that I want no one interrupting us until I ring. Not even her maid,” he said to Bairley over his shoulder. Five minutes later he pulled on a dressing gown and headed for the door to Daisy’s room.

  Ten

  Theo was in the grip of a desolation so vast that it swallowed any tears she might have felt like shedding. On the way to the modiste’s in Piccadilly, she had caught sight of a cluster of people around a new print in Hatchards window, but it would never have occurred to her that the print had anything to do with her.

  Until she was on the way home and the carriage drew to a halt in front of yet another stationery store—and she saw the illustration. Though she only knew the extent of it after sending a groomsman into the store to buy the papers, the same papers that the butler swore hadn’t been delivered.

  She would never have imagined that anyone could be so cruel. Let alone ten or twenty someones, or however many had written all those articles, and edited them, and approved them. And then there were the people who stayed up all night etching her likeness wearing that horrendous dress. But of course it wasn’t the dress.

  She had only to turn her head to see her face in the glass. It was angular, with the high cheekbones that James liked so much. But she also had a straight nose, and a strong chin, and something indefinable about the cast of her profile, and it all added up to . . . to an ugly duchess, that’s what it added up to.

  When the adjoining bedchamber door burst open, Theo didn’t even look up. “I’d rather you left me alone at the moment,” she said, swallowing a lump in her throat even though she wasn’t crying. “I’m absolutely fine. I haven’t shed a tear over those silly articles. Just nonsense, that’s all.”

  Of course, James didn’t obey her. From the corner of her eye, Theo caught a blur of movement, and suddenly she was tucked against his chest and he was sitting down. “I’m too big to sit in your lap,” she gasped, realizing that his dressing gown had fallen open and the chest in question was quite bare. “And you are not properly attired.”

  James ignored that as well. “They’re all insolent bastards and I’m going to chop their printing presses into shards tomorrow morning.” His voice vibrated with anger, an emotion that he was exceptionally good at.

  “Destroying the presses won’t help now,” Theo said. But she leaned her head against his bare chest and let him rage on. It was defi
nitely comforting. James, like her mother, truly didn’t see her the way the rest of the world did.

  He actually saw her as a daisy, for goodness’ sake. A daisy. Theo didn’t care to think overmuch about her profile, but she had concluded long ago that the best adjective that could be applied to it was severe.

  There was no such thing as a severe daisy.

  “Do you suppose I could be carrying a child?” she asked when he paused for breath.

  James made an odd sound, somewhere between a gulp and a cough. “What does that have to do with anything? I certainly hope not. I’m not ready for fatherhood. Just look at what a miserable job my father has done of it. I may never be ready.”

  “I know we’re young,” Theo said. “But if I were carrying a child, my figure would change. I would have more in front. Maybe we should try again tonight.”

  James frowned down at her. “You mean you want to develop that bovine look that some women have? Udders?”

  His shudder was obviously genuine and highly satisfactory. “This is the perfect size,” he added, putting a hand directly on her breast. “Just right for a man’s hand. My hand.”

  Theo was wearing a walking dress that flattened what little she had in the front, but even so, James’s hand seemed to curve around her breast quite nicely. She felt somewhat calmer, until it all flooded back into her head. “I don’t think I can ever leave this house again. Everywhere I go people will be calling me the ugly duchess, you just know they will. Even if they don’t say it to my face, they’ll be thinking it. I cannot bear it. I don’t have the courage.”

  His hand tightened on her breast for a moment and then he wrapped his arms around her again. “They’re all idiots,” he said into her hair. “You are beautiful.”

  “I’m not,” Theo said miserably. “But it’s nice of you to say so.”

  “I’m not just saying it!” He was at a near bellow again.

  “Remember how you resolved to control your temper now you’ve turned the grand age of twenty?”