The Ugly Duchess (25 page)

“I never eat in bed.” But she was ravenous.

The amusement on his face vanished. “You will tonight. You’re not to even think about leaving that bed. I’m not touching those damned sheets again.” Annoyingly, he seemed to be showing more emotion over the bed than anything else. Such as the almost naked woman lying between the sheets.

The emotions in Theo’s chest were so turbulent that she didn’t even frown at his blasphemy and the set of his jaw. There was a naked man in her room. Staring at her belligerently over his folded arms.

She started that train of thought over. There was a naked
pirate
in her room, and she wasn’t frightened by him in the least. What’s more, she let her eyes drift over his scarred, muscled body and didn’t shy away from the fact that the sight of him made her own body feel needy. For some reason, every scar sent a little thrill to her toes. She glanced at his scandalous tattoo. It made her feel a melting rush of desire.

James—make that Jack Hawk—was glaring at her as if she were no more than a pirate’s captive. Theo found that a little smile was curling her lips at the thought. She had been a prisoner, of a sort. Not to James, but to her own fear.

She ran over that old memory of the library again, testing it with the detachment of seven years. It
was
embarrassing. But all of a sudden, she remembered the utter beauty of James’s young, lean body. The way he had thrown back his head in utter bliss. The groans that broke from his lips when she caressed him.

“Well?” he demanded.

Her husband was a pirate. But he was also a man who had loved her deeply. Who had pleasured her, and then happily succumbed to
her
seduction.

“Well, what?” she asked, unable to remember what he was talking about. Her mind was reeling. For a moment, she remembered the pain of being called ugly, and then it melted away like soap washing down a drain. She had told herself a hundred times that she could be humiliated only if she allowed it: now she needed to believe it.

The same was true for intimacy . . . for marriage. She
had
been a prisoner, but not to a pirate. She had been trapped by her own fear. In fact, she’d been something of a coward.

Without a second thought, Theo shrugged off her wrapper, taking her time since the sheet slipped below her breasts in the process.

James watched her, his face impassive, but she thought she caught a glimpse of something deep in those blue eyes: shock, perhaps, and a touch of hopefulness.

She handed the wrapper to him with her sweetest smile. “You wouldn’t mind hanging this up, would you? Since there’s no one else here to do it for me?”

The sound he made might have been a growl. It made Theo feel a little better, even more so when he took one look at her sitting up in bed with the sheet barely covering her nipples, and then stalked out of the room.

“Put on some clothes,” she called. “I don’t want you to horrify Maydrop with all those scars.”

The only answer was a soft thump as the door pulled firmly shut. She instantly hopped out of bed and brushed her teeth. Then she combed out her hair.

When she heard footsteps walking up the stairs, she got back into her bed, dismissing the unease she felt about crawling into a rumpled bed. Who would have thought that making a bed was so much work? James entered with a hamper and set it on her dressing table. Then he grabbed the bottle of wine and took a swig straight out of the bottle.

Theo would have liked a drink, but she could hardly say so now.

He poured her a glass straight from the same bottle. “I couldn’t,” she said politely.

“It’s been a hell of a day,” James said, pushing the glass into her hand. Then he narrowed his eyes. “You’re saying no because I drank from the bottle, aren’t you?”

“We all have different standards of hygiene,” she said, sounding prim even to her own ears.

“Are you afraid of my mouth? Of my
spit?
”

“It’s just—”

He leaned over, fast, put a hand behind her neck, and pulled her toward him. Theo closed her eyes reflexively when his mouth met hers. But the kiss wasn’t what interested him: his tongue thrust into her mouth, warm and wet and aggressive.

She couldn’t summon any interest in the lesson he was doling out about spit and wine bottles. She wanted him to look at her with eyes that glittered, the way they used to, years ago, so she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. She was chasing the promise of his tongue, the way it reminded her whole body of deep pleasure.

A while later, she took a deep, shuddering breath. James straightened, seemingly reluctantly, and turned away. His back was to her, so she savored the curve of his buttocks and the thick muscled weight of his thigh. And the fact that he was shaking slightly.

By the time he turned around again, he clearly had himself in check.

“Well,” he said genially, “how about a piece of chicken?”

Theo eyed the wine bottle and thought about how satisfying it would be to knock him on the side of the head with it and chase away that maddeningly amiable expression. Instead, she did something that was as foreign to her character as throwing a ruby overboard would be to a pirate.

She reached over, grabbed the bottle, and brought it to her mouth. The wine was wonderful. It tasted of peaches and summer and the sharp smell of crushed flowers.

It was probably the best wine she’d ever had in her life. She had lost her grip on the sheet during their kiss, and when she lay back, she felt her breasts slip free. She didn’t bother to pull the sheet back up. Instead, she lolled against the pillows and took another swallow of the ambrosial wine. With her eyes closed.

For once, she didn’t have to watch her guests, waiting to see if the vintage would be pleasurably received. She didn’t have to analyze the flavor to ascertain whether it agreed with the course before them.

Instead, she drank for no other reason than delight. The cold wine slid down her throat as if it had been pressed from fallen stars.

Thirty

J
ames had experienced pain, of course, but he couldn’t remember ever being in as much agony as he was at this moment. Theo was lolling back against a mound of pillows, her gorgeous, pink-tipped breasts beckoning to him like the finest sweetmeats heaven could offer, and he had to stay on his side of the bed. He had to.

This was a siege, a long-term battle. He made himself think about how long it had taken to put on those damned sheets; his desire cooled an infinitesimal amount. Though, of course, his cock-stand was going nowhere, and his balls would probably fall off by tomorrow morning.

After a while he reached over and pulled the bottle away from her. Her eyes were a bit glazed. He suspected that she hadn’t had more than a sip of wine in years. If that much.

“Chicken,” he said, pushing a piece into her hand. “Eat this.”

Watching her lush lips close around the chicken leg like a sailor gulping fresh water after months at sea, he reached down and gave himself a hard flick. The flare of pain at least kept his self-control somewhere within grasp.

“Doesn’t it hurt to do that?” she asked. She was ogling him from top to bottom, and he made sure he was lying on one side, like one of those decadent Romans in a bath. He felt like an idiot, but if she liked what she saw, it was worth it.

She would find her desire again. He knew she would find her desire. It couldn’t have permanently disappeared, not the huge well of sweetness and joy that had filled both of them when they made love years ago.

“Not really,” he replied.

“Tell me more about being a pirate,” Theo said. Chicken leg demolished, she now reached for a ham tartlet.

James swallowed hard. He had to stop thinking about her breasts and the color of her lips and how unbearably desirable she was with her hair slicked back like that, all cheekbones, plump mouth, and silky eyelashes.

“I told you I was never was a pirate,” he said, almost apologetically. “That’s why I’m not worried about an arrest. When we recovered items from royal treasuries, we gave them back, and in so doing were granted documents which permitted us to fly Spanish, Dutch, and Sicilian flags.”

“Isn’t it twice as dangerous to attack hardened pirates?” She had finished the ham tart and was making progress on another. He’d forgotten what an appetite she had: the way she was able to eat a grown man under the table and not gain an ounce.

“It was rather like being a member of the navy.” He dragged his eyes away from her glossy lips. “Once we identified the target, generally because they made themselves known by putting up the skull and crossbones, we took them down.”

“A navy of two ships,” Theo said musingly. “What were the most difficult ships to defeat?”

“Slave ships,” he said without hesitation.

“
Slave ships?
Pirates are
slave dealers?
” Her mouth formed a perfect circle.

This was never going to work. Sooner or later he’d find himself begging her to do that thing she never wanted to do again.

“Pirates take over slave ships,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Because the booty is human, they don’t simply transfer the slaves to their own ship. Instead they transfer some crew over to the slave ship, who sail it to a port where the cargo can be converted into cash. We attacked any vessel we could identify as a known slave ship, pirate or no.”

Theo’s mouth was a thin, hard line now, and she put down her half-eaten tart. “Absolutely reprehensible. Revolting. I hate the whole business. It’s a crime that so many countries have hesitated to follow England in abolishing the trade.”

“I agree.”

Her eyes lit with amusement. “I’m glad to hear that, because the Duke of Ashbrook, or rather his estate, has supported efforts to make the owning of slaves illegal, not just trading in them. Sad to say, it has cost us hundreds of pounds in bribes.”

James nodded. But there was something he had been wanting to say. “Theo”—he used that name deliberately—“I can see how well you’ve run this household. But can you tell me how in God’s name you managed to get that sorry excuse for an estate to the point where we could spare hundreds of pounds even for the best of all causes?”

“I began with the weavers,” she said, smiling. “Do you remember that I had the idea of asking them to reproduce cloth from the Renaissance, the old figured fabrics that are so hard to find these days?”

“Yes, but as I recall Reede was unsure that the looms would be able to create such complicated patterns.”

“One of the first things I did was let Reede go,” Theo said, without apology. “And it was only partially because of that mess with your father and my dowry. He simply didn’t have the guts for it, James. He didn’t.”

“What kind of guts do you mean?”

“We had to take risks in the beginning.” Theo picked up her tart again, and began telling him the story of how she discovered that the weavers at Ryburn Weavers were all women, but the managers were all men. “I was always having to talk to the weavers about colors, you understand, James. Florentine blue is a very hard color to achieve, for example. If we wanted to create proper copies of Medici fabrics, we had to create it. Reede couldn’t stomach it.”

“Couldn’t stomach what?”

“I finally let the men go,” Theo said, a spark of mischief in her eyes. “Instead, I put one of the weavers, a redoubtable woman by the name of Mrs. Alcorn, in charge. It was one of the smartest things I ever did, but it nearly gave Reede apoplexy.”

“What was so wonderful about Mrs. Alcorn?”

“Well, for one thing, she arranged for a loom to be smuggled from Lyons.”

“
Smuggled?
”

“We were unable to make shot silk. It turned out she had a cousin, who had a friend, who had a French brother . . . before I knew it, we had just the right loom.”

James laughed suddenly. “So neither of us made our money entirely on the side of the law.”

“Ryburn Weavers are far from being
pirates,
” Theo said loftily.

“What about the ceramics company? How on earth did you get that off the ground? Did you steal someone from Wedgwood, the way Reede suggested?”

“Oh no. There was no need for theft.”

James leaned forward, loving the combative look in her eyes and the smugness in her voice. “Tell me.”

“I offered them a proper wage,” Theo said with a grin. “They came to me with no need for stealing or bribes. I’m afraid that some people at Wedgwood were
dreadfully
upset, but really, I had nothing to do with it. It was a decision made entirely by the men in question. I didn’t contact a single soul at Wedgwood. But if their workers discovered what I was paying, and shared that information with their friends, it was hardly something to blame me for.”

James burst into laughter.

“From the very beginning, I had the best craftsmen working on our kilns,” she said, finishing her tart. “I decided that we should specialize in ceramics with Greek and Roman patterns, and luckily those pieces have proved very popular in London.”

“It’s not far from your idea for the weavers,” James said, fascinated. “Renaissance fabrics, Greek ceramics . . .”

Theo hopped out of bed and ran across the room. James instantly forgot the subject of conversation. Theo from the back was a revelation: long graceful legs, a sweet, tight rear, shoulders that were as elegant as the rest of her.

Lust swept up his body as if he were nothing more than a bundle of twigs hit by a forest fire. He could feel his eyes glazing as she climbed back onto the bed, clutching a large leather folio.

She curled her slender legs to the side, twitching the sheet over herself, and opened the book. “Here are the fabric samples from Ryburn Weavers this year,” she said. “See this?” She pointed to a fabric and he made an effort to pay attention. It was a black cloth. Just beyond the edge of the book the sheet had slipped and he could see her thigh and a patch of skin so sweet and delicate that he longed to lick it.

“It’s a pattern of birds in flight,” Theo told him. “You can’t see the repeat unless you look very, very closely.”

“Lovely,” James managed.

“One of my weavers lost her baby,” Theo said softly. “She designed this because she wanted to think that her daughter flew to a better place.”

“Truly lovely,” James said. And this time he meant it.

“We sold thirteen bolts in one week after the Prime Minister was shot,” Theo said, her voice reverting to brisk practicality.

“He was?” James raised an eyebrow. “What was his name? When?”

“Spencer Perceval,” Theo replied, looking surprised. “He was assassinated in ’13. Didn’t you get any news while abroad, James?”

“Very little. I’m looking forward to reading the newspapers every day.”

“It shows a grim side of owning a business concern,” Theo said, “but the truth is that the poor man had thirteen children, and his widow loved this design. Suddenly everyone was wearing our fabric. I felt sad and triumphant, all at the same time.” She hesitated. “You must have felt the same at times, James.”

He nodded. “The slave ships were heartrending, not because of the fight, but because of what we’d find on the ships once we’d overtaken them.”

“I’ve read about it. Filthy stinking holds crowded with humans, dead and alive, none of them fed properly or given light or even ventilation. Despicable!”

Her voice shook, and he loved her more in that moment than he had realized possible. His Daisy may be rigid, but she was ethical to the very core of her being.

The same second, it came to him that he might take advantage of that decency. “We would dispatch the slaver dealers during battle and then give the men and women on board the choice to sail their ship back where they came from—along with a good amount of gold coin—or continue with us, and we’d drop them at our next harbor, again with all the treasure we’d found on board the pirate ship.” He gave her a pious look and then held his breath, hoping.

Sure enough, Theo leaned over and put her lips to his, in a little girl’s version of a kiss. In response, James carefully rolled onto his back and, equally carefully, pulled her on top.

She looked down at him in surprise, but he opened his mouth and welcomed her in. Her velvet tongue tangled shyly with his. Though James felt as if his body was blazing, he managed to keep the kiss relaxed and easy.

“I like kissing you,” she whispered, some time later. Her lips had turned ruby red.

“Not as much as I love kissing you,” he said honestly.

She ran a finger along his eyebrow. “If that were true, you would never have stayed away for seven years.”

“I was on the verge of coming back after two or three years. I had a heap of fabric for you in my cabin that I’d confiscated from pirates. I couldn’t stop dreaming about you. I kept rethinking what I should have said after you overheard that conversation with my father. Most of my solutions involved locking the bedchamber and making love to you until we were both senseless.”

A smile trembled on the curl of her lips. “That wouldn’t have worked at the time.”

“But would it have worked if I had returned two or three years later?”

She was silent a moment, the brush of her finger unbearably tender as she traced the shape of his tattoo. “It might have. Why didn’t you return?”

“Father died, and I wasn’t with him.”

“Oh, I see.” She dropped a kiss where her finger had touched.

“I fell off some sort of cliff,” James said with a grimace. “I know my father was a fool and a swindler. I spent my boyhood dodging flying objects he’d launched at me, and trying to ignore his outlandish schemes. When I left England, I thought it would be blissful never to see him again. He had traded my happiness for stolen money, as I saw it.”

“But?”

“I would guess that he died grieving, because he didn’t know whether I was dead or alive. In his own way, he loved me.”

Her eyes fell.

“Did he die asking for me?” His voice scraped like iron on iron.

Theo ran a hand down his cheek. “He was confused. He did ask for you, so I told him that you had stepped out for a moment but you would be there when he woke. He fell asleep with a smile on his face. And he didn’t wake up.”

At this, James waited a second until he had control of himself again. “Father was a criminal, and a fool, and all the rest of it. But he loved me. I was his only child, and his only tie to my mother. He loved her too, for all he said it was merely a prudent marriage.”

Theo nodded, then bent her head and dropped another kiss very precisely onto his tattoo.

“I don’t know what happened to me,” James said. His hands instinctively rounded her bottom, settling her more snugly into the cradle of his legs. “I think I lost my mind. I shaved my head. I took a mistress, and then two more, because to my mind, I was such a worthless person that it was better to betray you than return to England.”

Her next kiss dropped onto his lips.

“I killed James Ryburn,” he said flatly. “I became Jack Hawk, and I swore I would never return.”

“Until your throat was cut.”

“Yes.” He looked at her and hesitated, the truth on the tip of his tongue. But she wasn’t ready yet. “When I survived against all probability, I realized that I wanted to come home. Of course, by then Griffin and I were very successful privateers. I do have a pirate’s treasure in the attic, and even more in various banks around the world. But I wanted to come back to England and not be in danger every single day.”

“To sum up your career at sea,” Thea said, smiling at him, “the British government is more likely to knight you for services to the empire than they are to arrest you for piracy.”

“Yes.” A great peacefulness was descending onto James’s heart.

“You could have been killed rescuing slaves,” Theo told him, her face taking on that queer seriousness that came so easily to her. “I’m proud to be your wife.”

He preferred her dimple, so he pulled her head down and gave her a hard kiss. It wasn’t until they were both gasping that he said, “Daisy, making love needn’t include the parts that you don’t like. Because there are parts that you do like.”

She bit her lip.