The Ugly Duchess (13 page)

Sixteen

August 1812

M
rs. Saxby and Theo had just finished breakfast one morning when the subject of James arose once again.

“Someday you’ll take him back,” her mother said.

“I will not,” Theo said, nettled. “I don’t even think of him any longer.”

“Have you resolved never to have a child of your own?” Mrs. Saxby asked. It was typical of her parting shots. But this time she paused and leaned her head against the doorframe for a moment. “Oh dear, I have such a headache.”

Theo leapt to her feet and went to her mother’s side. “Would you like me to have a tisane made up? Let me help you to your bedchamber. A few hours in the dark with a cool cloth on your head and you’ll feel much better.”

But Mrs. Saxby straightened her back and said firmly, “I can certainly climb the stairs by myself, dearest. I’ll have a nap and be right as rain.” But she did not leave immediately; she put a hand on Theo’s cheek and said, “Having you has been my greatest joy in life. I merely wish the same for you: a child of your own with the husband you love, though you may deny it as often as you wish.”

Theo wrapped her arms around her mother. “This will make you happy, Mama. I’ve resolved to have a wardrobe made in London all the better to pay a call on the newly wedded Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn, not to mention the delightful Claribel.”

Her mother laughed at that. “And I can’t wait to see your new gowns. I do love you, darling.” And with that, she turned and retired to her chambers.

Mrs. Imogen Saxby never woke from that nap. Theo moved through her mother’s funeral and the attending visitations as if she were in a dense fog. Weeks passed before Theo accepted the truth of it: her mother was truly gone. The house echoed. She sat alone at meals and wept.

Unfortunately, business does not stop merely because there is a death in the family. It was inconvenient to cry in meetings with the estate manager. It was inconvenient to cry in church, at breakfast, and on the way to London.

It was also undignified, but she did not care; the emptiness in her heart was so consuming that what people thought of her was of no importance.

Yet Theo carried on, somehow, knowing that a great many people were depending upon her and she could not let them down.
Would
not let them down.

At last the mourning year was at an end. She had thought often of the conversations she had with her mother about her marriage, and she gradually reconciled herself to the idea that she and James couldn’t go on like this, without resolution of any kind. Four years had now passed since he’d left, with no word from him, or indeed
of
him. She made up her mind to find him. After all, it had been her mother’s express wish not only that Theo return to society but that she return to James as well.

Without further ado, Theo instructed her solicitors to engage as many Bow Street Runners as necessary and send them out into the world searching for news of her husband. The success of the estate’s businesses meant that the cost of their search—and it might take them a year or more to return with news—was of no object.

And then she did her best to put James out of her mind. There was nothing she could do about him for the time being.

Theo had employed her taste in the last years in shaping Ashbrook Ceramics into a thriving business that made the finest ceramics for a very select few who shared her interest in ancient Greek pottery. And she had poured her love of color into Ryburn Weavers, guiding its focus on reproductions of French and Italian textiles from the previous two centuries.

But now the weavers and the ceramics factory were on a steady keel. They no longer needed Theo’s daily involvement. What they could most use, in fact, was a highly visible patron: a person whose taste and discernment were uncontested throughout the
ton,
someone who would spur desire for Ashbrook wares.

It was a brilliant idea in every respect but one: Theo was still in self-imposed exile from the very people she most needed to impress.

She had learned to trust herself and her taste, even if she hadn’t bothered to apply her dictates to her own attire. Style, after all, is a harmonious arrangement of parts that, in Theo’s opinion, was better than physical beauty. What’s more, it was often mistaken for it.

She didn’t think it would be terribly difficult to transform herself into the imagined ideal client. She even unearthed her list of style rules, written carefully all those years ago in round schoolgirl hand and particularized with a passion that made her smile. Rereading them, she was delighted to find that not one caused her to wince with embarrassment. That settled it. She would become her own best patron.

After some thought, she decided to visit Paris for a few months before she conquered London. The papers were full of the welcome news that the Treaty of Fontainebleau (and Napoleon’s abdication) meant that France would once again be welcoming English visitors. No nationality more than the French understood that while beauty is a matter of birth, art—the art of dressing oneself—is available to all who care to learn.

In May 1814, the Countess of Islay (for James had yet to take up the title of duke) closed up her country estate and moved to a magnificent town house on the Seine, opposite the Palace of the Tuileries. She intended to apply herself to the study of elegance with all the passion she had devoted to ceramics and to weaving.

And she had every expectation of success.

Seventeen

Paris, 1814-1815

W
ithin a month of entering Parisian society, the Countess of Islay was considered an “interesting” Englishwoman; by the end of a very few months, she was an honorary Frenchwoman. No one referred to her by such bland words as
ugly
or even
beautiful
: she was
ravissant
and—above all—
élégant
.

It was widely known that the duchesse d’Angoulême, the niece of King Louis XVIII himself, consulted Lady Islay when it came to tricky questions regarding fans and other accoutrement. After all, a lady’s bonnet, gloves, slippers, and reticule were the most important elements of a truly elegant appearance. Parisians gasped when Theo paired brown with black—and then found themselves even more shocked when she wore a black corded silk evening gown sewn with amethysts, and later, a purple riding habit with sour-green gloves.

They gasped . . . and rushed to imitate.

What the French loved most were Theo’s epigrammatic rules. They were collected like precious jewels, and even the poorest shopgirls ripped the lace from their Sunday frocks when she was reported to have remarked, “
Wear lace to be baptized. Period.
”

It caused a sensation when she was reported to have declared that
discretion is a synonym for intelligence.
By the time everyone deduced that she had been commenting not on fashion, but on the Marquis de Maubec’s decidedly indiscreet adoration for his father’s third wife, a number of Parisians had leapt to the conclusion that a “discreet” woman would not wear lashings of jewels. In fact, the countess
had
remarked, of a particularly ostentatious lady, that “she was wearing so many carats she looked like a vegetable garden.”

Attention to her words was at such a fever pitch that Theo was visited by a delegation of three diamond sellers who begged her aid. That very evening Lady Islay appeared at a ball wearing a necklace that featured no fewer than eight strands of diamonds, caught together by an extraordinary pear-shaped diamond pendant, and casually remarked that she thought a woman should rival the Milky Way at night:
We give babies milk, but ladies? Diamonds.

By the time Theo turned twenty-three, her husband had been missing for close to six years, and none of the Bow Street Runners—though some had not returned to London—had yet reported news of him. She always told people, whenever they asked, that her husband had been misplaced, rather as one might misplace an abhorrent silver candelabra given by a great-aunt.

But inside, she didn’t feel so nonchalant. Silence wasn’t like James. Or was it? He had the most ferocious temper of anyone she’d ever known, except perhaps his dead father. Anger at her—or at himself—could drive him to live in a foreign country without giving a thought for his old life. But would he really brood for this long? Wouldn’t he want to come home and have it out with her?

Unless he had another life, another wife, in some foreign place . . . perhaps he had even taken another name.

It was an unpleasant thought, but it was better than what Cecil Pinkler-Ryburn, in line to be the next duke, believed. Her husband’s heir and his wife, Claribel, had appeared in Paris a few months after Theo, following a rush of fashionable people who deserted London for the Continent. Though Claribel was unfashionably maternal and preferred to stay at home with her little ones, Cecil had become one of Theo’s most frequent callers, as they found (rather to Theo’s surprise) that they enjoyed each other’s company very much.

But Cecil firmly believed that if James were alive, he would have returned to London as soon as he learned that he was now a duke; according to Cecil’s logic, because he did not return, James must be dead.

Theo tried not to think about it. She was having a wonderful time in France, rootling out antique fabrics and sending them back to her weavers; snatching up Greek designs wherever she could and sending those back to Ashbrook Ceramics; being fêted at the French court. Yet the sad truth was that behind every success was a faint mindful awareness of what James would think.

She seemed to carry James with her as a silent audience of one. Over time she had forgotten (more or less) about the unpleasant aspects of their marriage and just remembered what a friend he had been, and how he had encouraged her during her debut as a wallflower with a hopeless adoration for Lord Geoffrey Trevelyan.

Her closest friend now was Cecil, though he bore no resemblance to James in character or figure. He had grown quite plump, particularly around the place where his waist used to be. He had learned to care more for a turbot in a good wine sauce than the height of his collar, and he was steady and devoted in his new passion.

He had also dropped the excesses of fashion that characterized him as a younger man, though he had not deserted fashion altogether: these days he frequently wore Ryburn silks. In particular, Cecil benefited from a colorful cravat—a new style in Paris—because it drew attention away from the fact a second chin had joined his first.

“Is that a new cravat?” Theo asked now, taking tea with him.

“Indeed,” he said now, his smile emphasizing the rather charming laughter lines around his eyes. “My man didn’t care to pair a pink cravat with a violet coat, but I cited your example and he gave in. I must say, there’s something wonderful about watching a Frenchman accede to an Englishwoman’s dictates. I would never be able to face him down without you to back me up.”

Theo poured him another cup of tea. “I do appreciate the fact that you haven’t been in the least forceful about asking me to do something formal regarding the dukedom.”

“Lord knows I don’t want the title,” Cecil said with a shrug. And he meant it. He was cheerfully indolent and viewed with horror the duties associated with the duchy. “The only thing I would find even remotely interesting about becoming a duke would be if one of my fellow peers murdered someone and we got to sit in judgment. But frankly, that happens all too rarely.”

“Bloodthirsty wretch,” Theo said affectionately.

“I have more than enough money of my own. It’s my father-in-law who’s chuffed at the prospect.”

“We cannot declare James dead,” Theo said, the words coming in a rush, “without making another effort to find him first. I’ve been thinking that I had better return to England and see what’s happened to all those Bow Street Runners I sent out. After Christmas, in time for the season, perhaps. I can’t stay in Paris forever.”

Cecil cleared his throat. “My father-in-law also hired a runner two years ago.”

“The man found nothing?”

“I saw no point in telling you unless we had been able to find James. There are statutory regulations, you know . . . the duke has to be missing for seven years.”

“It will be seven years come June after this,” Theo said, scowling into her teacup. “Did your man travel to India? I remember James talking of that country.”

“I will ask,” Cecil said, heaving himself out of his chair.

T
he 1814 Christmas season was lovely; the city danced, as only Paris can. But Theo found herself increasingly aware of a bleak fear in her heart. Could it be true that something frightful had happened to James?

It would be awful if she had forced him to leave England and he had died on some foreign shore. Or worse, aboard a sinking ship. She found herself waking in the night, unable to sleep as she imagined the
Percival
capsized in a storm, James’s last gasp as he slid under the waves. She would push the image away, sleep—only to wake again with the realization that death would explain why James never contacted his father.

It was bewildering to discover that she cared so much for an absent, less-than-truthful spouse.

Finally, she sat up one morning and found she was weary of the guilt, the grief, the pesky longing that wouldn’t go away.

“He
is
dead,” she told herself, trying the words aloud in the chilly morning air. It was a painful thought, but not an overwhelming one. Six years, almost seven, is a long time, after all, and they had been married all of two days. She missed her childhood friend far more than she missed his brief incarnation as her husband.

She summoned Cecil to her house. They were both planning to return to England in February.

“We’ll give it one more year,” she told him. “At that point, we’ll do whatever necessary to shift the title to you.”

“And then you must marry again,” Cecil said. “Claribel and I both wish to see you in a happy marriage.”

What sort of man to marry? That was a real question.

She kept coming up with the same list of desired qualities. She would like a man with a singing voice, because she’d never forgotten the way that James sang to her in the dawn, after they’d made love all night long.

She wanted someone with blue eyes. She would like him to have a generous smile and a sense of humor and a deep kindness.

It didn’t take much of an intellect to add up her list of requirements and discover they pointed toward a man who was absent and almost certainly dead. So she redoubled her efforts to convince herself of James’s perfidy. Would she really want to take back a man who had married her when commanded to do so by his father?

The answer was dismal. Yes. Yes, she would.

As long as he would make love to her, and sing to her afterward.