The Ugly Duchess (6 page)

“You can learn. From what my father has told me, my mother ran the estate while she was alive, and she wouldn’t have had any training, either. And I’ll be there, Daisy. I just don’t want to do it without you.”

“All right,” Theo said. She felt a burst of happiness so acute that she couldn’t say another word.

But her new husband merely stood there, looking rather awkward. Finally he said, “Was last night acceptable? You aren’t injured, are you?”

“James, you’re turning pink!” Theo exclaimed.

“I am not.”

“You really must stop fibbing,” she observed. “I can see through you every time. And to your question, yes, it was surprisingly nice. Although I have thought of one thing we should do differently.”

He instantly looked wary. “What?”

“I shall come to your bedchamber, rather than you coming to mine.”

“Oh.”

“How often does one do this marital business?” Theo asked, with some curiosity. James looked rather staggeringly delicious. In fact, she could quite imagine kissing him at that very moment. But, of course, one didn’t do that sort of thing spontaneously, and certainly not during the day.

“As often as one wants,” James replied. His cheeks were undeniably rosy now.

She dropped into a chair. “I realize that I do have a question about last night.” She waved her hand at the chair opposite. “Please sit down.”

He sat, if with obvious reluctance.

It was strangely wanton to sit opposite a man—her
husband
—while wearing nothing more than a light silk negligee. Early morning sunlight streamed over her shoulder and played on her hair, and even though her hair was an odd color, it always looked best in natural light, so she pulled it forward over her shoulder.

“Last night was the first time I made love to anyone,” she announced, rather unnecessarily, but she wanted to make the point.

“I know that.”

“I would like to know how many women you have made love to.”

James stiffened. “More than enough.”

“How many?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I just
do.
It’s my right to know, as your wife.”

“Nonsense. No one tells his wife that sort of thing. You shouldn’t even ask. It’s not proper.”

Theo crossed her arms again. She’d noticed that it made her breasts plump up. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s not proper,” James repeated, starting up from his chair. His eyes were fiery, and Theo felt a glow of excitement. She loved it when James lost his temper, even though she hated it when his father did. He bent over her, bracing his arms on her chair. “Why do you want to know? Was there something about last night that made you feel that my experience was insufficient?”

Enthralled by his darkening eyes, Theo fought the desire to pull him closer. Or break into laughter. “How would I know if last night was insufficient?” she said, choking back a giggle.

One hand closed around her neck with slow deliberation. “You’ll probably be the death of me.” A thumb nudged up her chin. “Were you satisfied last night, Daisy?”

She scowled at him and shook her head, dislodging his hand. “
Theo.
”

“How can I not think of you as Daisy when your hair is all about your face like the petals of a flower?” He crouched down on his heels before her chair and picked up a thick curl. “It’s glossy, like sunshine.”

“I prefer to be addressed as Theo,” she told him, once again. “And it was very nice last night, thank you. I asked about others because I want to know something about you that no other person knows.”

James was looking at the lock of hair he held with as much concentration as if he held strands of gold, but at that he met her eyes. “You know everything about me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re the only one who knows me,” he said quietly. “All there is to know about me that matters, Daisy—I mean, Theo. I’m rotten with figures. I’m good with animals. I detest my father. I can’t control my temper, and I hate the fact I inherited that trait from him. I’m possessive. I’m intolerable—you’ve said that many times.”

“You love your father, too,” Theo pointed out, “however much you rage against him. And I still want to know the answer to my question.”

“If I tell you, may I have a lock of hair?”

“Goodness, how romantic,” Theo breathed, a thrill going straight to her toes. But a pang of common sense intruded. “If you cut one from the back, where it won’t show.”

James pulled out a penknife and moved behind her. “Not too much,” she entreated him, pulling her hair up and then letting it fall down the chair back. “Amélie will be terribly cross if I have a bald spot.”

He ran his hands through her hair and then said, quietly, “You were the second, Daisy. And the last.”

The smile on Theo’s face came straight from her heart, but she thought the brevity of his list was probably not a matter for celebration, to his mind at least, so she said nothing. She tilted her head back and saw that he had cut off a thick lock of her hair. “What on earth are you going to do with that? I’m dazzled by this sentimental streak of yours, James.” She reached up toward him. “What about a good morning kiss, then? For the one person who knows you best and still signed on to a lifetime of tolerating intolerableness?”

His eyes were still dark and troubled, but he leaned over and dropped an upside-down kiss, a soft and sweet one, on her lips.

“Actually, I’d prefer the other kind.” She felt her heartbeat start a tattoo in her throat.

“The other kind,” James said slowly. He drew the lock of hair through his fingers, then put it on a side table and drew her to her feet. “One kiss. Then I must make my way downstairs.”

For all that, he took her mouth slowly, as if they had all day to do nothing but taste each other, come together like silk and velvet.

At some point the door opened, and a maid squeaked something. The door closed again, and still they kissed.

James’s mouth kept sliding to her jaw, to an eyebrow, to an ear, always coming back, taking her mouth again. Theo began a rambling sort of monologue, a shivering, breathy series of comments that made little sense, until she found herself saying, “I cannot believe I didn’t know I felt like this . . . What would have happened if you hadn’t realized in time, James? What if I had managed to entice Geoffrey to the altar?”

He pulled his mouth away. By now she was clinging to him, trying to fit all the curves of her body to the hard places in his, trying to climb up him like a cat, her breath coming in little sobs.

But he thrust her away, putting the chair between them for good measure. “James,” she said, her voice threaded with desire.

“Don’t.” His voice was hoarse too, but there was something strange in his expression, a kind of agonized rage in his eyes.

“What on earth is the matter?” Theo asked, suddenly aware that there really was something the matter; James wasn’t simply in an odd mood.

“Nothing,” he said, with patent falsehood. “I must meet the estate manager. I don’t want the man to think that the whole family is cut along my father’s pattern. He sometimes keeps Reede waiting for days after summoning him.”

“Of course,” Theo replied. “Still, I know you, James. There’s something really wrong, isn’t there? Please tell me. What is it?”

But he turned and fled, and she spoke to the closed door.

Eight

A
mélie’s horrified cry at discovering the wedding dress serving as a perch for a pair of London sparrows was matched by her despair as Theo tossed dress after dress behind her on the bed.

At the end of it, Theo had almost nothing to wear, but she had a growing sense of excitement.

When she finally managed to dress in one of the few gowns left to her name, she wandered down to breakfast. James had not yet returned from his trip to the wharf, and no one else was at home. “Where is His Grace?” she asked Cramble, allowing a footman to spoon scrambled eggs onto her plate.

“The duke went to the races in Newmarket and won’t be home until tomorrow.”

“And my mother?”

“Mrs. Saxby left early this morning for Scotland; I believe she is paying a visit to her sister.”

“Of course! I entirely forgot,” Theo said. “Yes, I would like two pieces of that ham, thank you. Cramble, would you please send a footman to Madame Le Courbier and inform her that I will pay a visit this afternoon? And since I am alone, I would love to see a newspaper.”

“Only the
Morning Chronicle
has been delivered, Lady Islay. I shall bring it to you immediately.”

Theo almost didn’t catch his answer, lost as she was in the surprising pleasure of being addressed by James’s title. She never thought of James as the Earl of Islay, but of course he was. Then the butler’s comment dawned on her. “No other papers? How very peculiar. Couldn’t you send someone out for them, Cramble?”

“I am very sorry, my lady,” he said. “I am afraid I am unable to spare anyone from the household at the moment.”

“Perhaps this afternoon,” Theo said. “Surely
Town Topics
will be delivered at some point?”

“I shall ascertain,” Cramble replied discouragingly.

Theo began to think about the whole vexing question of the estate. She had no problem believing that her new father-in-law had lost a great deal of the estate’s fortunes. He was an irascible, gambling fool, and even if she hadn’t reached that conclusion herself, her mother had said so, forcibly, at least once a day for as long as she could remember.

Still, she was rather surprised that Ashbrook had agreed to give over the reins to James. He must have been pushed to the wall, which suggested the estate was in truly bad straits.

Once James and the estate manager returned from their errand, she joined them in the library to find that the meeting had an air of crisis. James had clearly been tugging at his hair, as his short Brutus looked much more disarranged than was fashionable. The estate manager, Mr. Reede, looked both aggrieved and defensive.

“Gentlemen,” Theo said, walking into the room. “Mr. Reede, how kind of you to join us.”

“It’s his bloody
job,
” James snapped, “and if he’d been doing his job a bit more keenly, we might not be in the straits we are.”

“Begging your lordship’s forgiveness,” Mr. Reede said, “but may I remind you that I had no authority to stop His Grace from any of the decisions that you disparage.”

“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.”