The Ugly Duchess (14 page)

Eighteen

April 1815

T
he opening ball of a given season is the most interesting for any number of reasons, some of them obvious, and some more esoteric. Not only do all the young ladies entering society for the first time make their debut appearance, but the composition of the
ton
becomes clear. Who is in mourning and staying in the country? Whose marriage has fallen into such disarray that husband and wife are living in separate establishments? Who has lost so much money at the races that he appears in a coat that is dismally old-fashioned?

It was at a first ball that Beau Brummell made his appearance, immaculate in black and white. It was at a first ball that Petunia Stafford exhibited the cropped curls that made her look like a giddy yet dazzling child; at another, Lady Bellingham appeared in dampened petticoats (and there were those who questioned to this day whether she had worn a chemise).

Theo chose to skip the opening ball of the 1815 season. It would be too obvious, and she considered it an unspoken rule that the Countess of Islay never did what was obvious.

Of course she had been invited. Once it was seen that the knocker had been replaced on the door of 45 Berkeley Square, signifying that Theo was in residence, invitations poured in the door.

There were many who barely remembered her, as she was married halfway through the season of ’09 and never again glimpsed in polite London society. They longed to make a judgment about her ugliness themselves.

But there were also those who had visited the French capital, or had heard the news from there, and they confidently reminded all and sundry that ugly ducklings—and duchesses—sometimes turn into swans.

In fact, Theo elected not only to skip the opening ball, but to wait out the first three weeks of the season as well. She had decided to make her first appearance—her reentry into British society—at a ball being thrown by Cecil and Claribel.

Claribel was just as dazzlingly empty-headed as she had been a decade before. Her milk-and-water prettiness had not aged well: she was beginning to resemble a wilted rose, the kind that goes blowsy before all its petals drop. And like Cecil, she had broadened considerably around the waist.

Theo’s angular slimness and strong features, on the other hand, had come into focus in her twenties. She knew that she had never looked better—but each time she allowed herself the thought, it was followed by a tinge of regret: her mother would have abhorred such a vain and self-regarding observation. It was truly astonishing that one’s mother can pass away and yet one constantly hears her talking in one’s ear.

W
hen Mr. and Mrs. Pinkler-Ryburn opened their ball, the subject on everyone’s lips was the Countess of Islay. The news had spread that her ladyship had accepted her relatives’ invitation.

“Did we invite Lord Tinkwater?” Claribel asked her husband, watching as the butler ushered in a fantastically drunk lord, who had the wisdom to have developed a method of walking that didn’t require a sense of balance.

“We did not,” Cecil said. “All sorts of people have come whom we didn’t invite, darling.”

He squeezed Claribel’s arm and turned away to greet Lord Tinkwater.

But by the time they decided to close the receiving line, there was still no sign of Lady Islay. They had barely made their way down the steps into the ballroom when a terrific noise erupted behind them.

“That’ll be Theo,” Cecil said, turning to look back up the stairs. “She planned her entrance perfectly, of course.” And then: “
Damn!
”

Claribel was about to reprimand him for using a profanity in her presence, but her jaw dropped instead.

The woman poised at the top of the stairs, looking down at all of them with a little smile that indicated absolute self-confidence, looked like a goddess who happened to come down to earth by way of Paris. She radiated that sort of ineffable glamour that simply cannot be learned—as Claribel knew to her sorrow, having made multiple efforts.

The fabric of Lady Islay’s gown certainly cost as much as Claribel’s entire quarterly allowance. It was a pearly pink silk taffeta shot with threads of silver. Her breasts were scarcely covered, and from there the gown fell straight to the ground in a hauntingly beautiful sweep of cloth.

The pink brought out the color of her hair—burnt amber entwined with brandy and buttercup. If only she had left it free around her face and perhaps created some charming curls! Claribel made up her mind to tell her privately about the newest curling irons. She herself had lovely corkscrew curls bobbing next to her ears.

Even so, there was something magnificent about the countess tonight, almost hypnotic. The
pièce de résistance
of her costume was a formal cape that gleamed under the light, soft and lustrous, almost as if it were made of fur.

“Damnation,” Cecil said again, scarcely under his breath.

She glanced at him and saw to her astonishment that his eyes were gleaming with an appreciation that she recognized—and was used to reserving for herself and her own rather generous figure.

“I see no reason for profanity,” she observed. Then she started forward to greet her guest.

“You look lovely, Lady Islay,” she told Theo earnestly, a moment or so later. “Your gown is exquisite. Would you like Jeffers to take your cape? I’m afraid it must be rather hot, beautiful though it is.”

Cecil was bending over Theo’s gloved hand. “Oh no,” he said, before Lady Islay could even answer. “I’m quite certain that Theo plans to wear her cape for at least part of the evening.” There was a note of amusement in his voice.

“If you’re quite sure that you won’t grow overwarm,” Claribel said uncertainly, eyeing the cape. It sprang out from Lady Islay’s shoulders and then swirled to the ground, managing to look surprisingly light. The inside was lined with a gorgeous rosy silk, and the outside . . .

“What on earth is that made of?” Claribel couldn’t help asking as she reached out to touch it.

“I can guess,” Cecil put in, the thread of amusement in his voice even stronger.

“Oh, can you?” Theo remarked. “Then tell me this: am I being altogether too obvious?”

Claribel hadn’t the faintest idea what she meant. But Cecil, clever Cecil, obviously did, because he bellowed with laughter.

“Swansdown,” he said. “Gorgeous swansdown, and every man and woman in this room has taken note of your swanlike triumph.”

“I could not resist,” Theo said, with that smile that was all the more attractive for being so rarely seen. “How lucky you are in your husband,” she said to Claribel. “It’s a rare man who knows his fairy tales.”

“I know, of course, I know,” Claribel said, babbling a bit. There was something about Lady Islay that was rather daunting. She was so
elegant,
for one thing. And that severe hair, which should by rights look positively awful, looked sensual, though it wasn’t a word Claribel cared for.

Plus, now she realized that her gown was scandalously thin. No wonder she wasn’t worried about being overly warm. Why, when Lady Islay turned away to greet Lord Scarborough, Claribel clearly saw the line of her bare calf.

She suppressed a sigh. Of course she loved her three darling children, but carrying them had had a deleterious effect on her figure. She felt like an overstuffed pincushion in comparison.

“Looks marvelous, doesn’t she?” her husband remarked.

“I think she’s a trifle underdressed,” Claribel said. Despite herself, her tone was a little hurt.

Cecil took one of her gloved hands and raised it to his lips. “You cannot possibly imagine that I find Theo as attractive as you?”

“Her figure is perfect,” Claribel said wistfully. “Just perfect.”

He leaned closer. “A man doesn’t care about that, my sweet buttercup.”

Claribel rolled her eyes.

“She’s chilly,” he said, more quietly. “I do adore her, but I don’t envy the man she marries. Just look at her.”

They both turned, to find the countess surrounded by a gaggle of men as tightly pressed together as ha’pennies in the church box.

“They’re fascinated, intrigued, even adoring,” Cecil said. “But I saw the same reaction in Paris many a time. If you ask me, that’s why there’s never been even the faintest whiff of scandal about her in the last six years. No one would want to actually
bed
her.”

“Cecil! What a thing to say!”

He gave her a twinkling glance. “Now
you
are a different story. Alas, my figure is not what it once was.”

“As if I cared about that!”

“Then why would you think that I do not relish every one of your curves?” he said, and the look in his eyes confirmed his words. “But even more, Claribel, I love the fact that you come to our bed with pleasure. You are my —”

“Mr. Pinkler-Ryburn!” Claribel exclaimed. “You forget yourself.” But her cheeks were hot, and her fingers trembled in his. “We are fortunate,” she added, as softly as he. Then she whisked her hand away. “Enough of this foolishness. What on earth was Lady Islay saying about fairy tales?”

“All those people who called her ‘the ugly duchess’ are eating their words,” her husband said. “The countess has turned into a swan, and she’s dropped them all on their arses by making fun of it.”

“I’d forgotten all that,” Claribel said, wrinkling her nose. “My mother said it was all frightfully ill-bred and wouldn’t let us read the papers for a week.”

Cecil bent over and dropped a kiss on her nose. “I know, darling. That’s why you are the sweet tartlet that you are, and Theo is the rather stern and magnificent cake that she is.”

“I am not a tartlet.” But she couldn’t help smiling.

Nineteen

T
he Pinkler-Ryburn ball reminded Theo of nothing so much as a host of sparrows perched on a railing. They would descend from a tree in a huge group, chattering madly. One bird would take wing and the rest would hysterically soar up after, the whole group coming down almost immediately on a railing all of ten yards to the left. Or to the right.

The key to controlling the evening, she decided, was to be the sparrow that determined the behavior of the flock. When the ballroom became intolerably crowded, Theo drifted onto the terrace, taking with her a core group of gentlemen glued to her side by a pleasing mixture of lust and admiration. What’s more, they were men who conformed to her sense of elegance.

When Mr. Van Vechten joined them, his velvet coat an aggressive shade of purple striped with peach, she was just dismissive enough that he retreated as quickly as he had come. The same went for Mr. Hoyt, who was rumored to have a fortune in gold, but unfortunately had a penchant for displaying his treasure in the form of garish buttons.

Glimpsing her little group, convulsed with laughter as Theo sparked jokes with her coterie, the ballroom emptied onto the terrace.

Feeling nearly as constricted as she had inside, Theo decided, rather mischievously, to go for a walk in the gardens. There was no question as to her companion; she tucked her arm under that of Lord Geoffrey Trevelyan.

They had both grown older. She learned that he had married that first season (though not, obviously, to Claribel), and that his wife had died some two years after. There were creases at the corners of his eyes now, and a lean cast to his cheeks. But everything else was the same: the dark, slanting eyes and the wicked little smile flickering around his lips. And her heart still gave a little thump at the sight of him.

By the time she and Geoffrey had returned to the terrace, Cecil’s guests were rocketing tipsily down dark paths, pretending that they were in Vauxhall.

Theo led the way into the ballroom, now thin of company, and allowed Geoffrey to sweep her into a waltz. She was besieged when that waltz drew to a close and another followed; it seemed that everyone wanted to dance with the swan, and they didn’t want a quadrille.

No, they wanted that low husky laugh at their jokes, and those slender, coltish legs thrillingly near their own.

“There’s something about the look of her,” Colonel MacLachlan told Cecil, longing tangible in his voice. “She’s not my usual type at all, I don’t mind saying. I like small and round. Plus, she mocked me, and I know she would no more consider bedding me than the Regent himself!”

But his eyes still followed Theo down the length of the ballroom. She was in the arms of a man old enough to be her father, and yet anyone could see that when she smiled at him, the man straightened, took the turn of the waltz a bit more dashingly.

“Theo is like the huntress Diana,” Cecil said, rocking a little on his heels. He was thoroughly enjoying the burst of popularity his cousin-by-marriage was experiencing. “Beautiful and yet slightly deadly, ready to whip out a bow and arrow, or turn a man into a squealing swine. Sensual, and yet with just a snowy touch of the virginal about her.”

“Good Lord, man, you sound like a poet,” MacLachlan said, startled. “Don’t let your wife hear you talking like that about the countess.”

Cecil only laughed. He wasn’t worried about Claribel; they understood each other, and their happiest moments were their most intimate. That sort of bond meant that she knew damn well that he wouldn’t stray. Besides, he was of the private opinion that Theo would be remarkably uncomfortable to live with.

Her rules were enchanting to read about, but the same tendency to catalogue perfection could be seen throughout her life. She proclaimed, rather than suggested. She was too fierce in her opinions, too unforgiving, too witty.

Too much fuss. Too many feathers.

As befitted a swan, of course.

E
ven as Theo enjoyed her meteoric rise through the
ton
and the hushed attention that polite society gave to her every utterance as regards style, the constant mentions of
swans
(and never
ducklings
) was wearing.

By the fall of 1815, the papers were in the habit of asking for another of her “rules”;
La Belle Assemblée
never failed to include a detailed illustration of her every costume.

She thought that it would be quite nice if James returned to find his wife the talk of the
ton
and a force to be reckoned with.

And so it was that Theo had the ghost of one person—her mother—standing at one shoulder, and the ghost of another—James—at her other shoulder. And while she did not cast a romantic haze over the short days of her marriage, she had thought a great deal about where fault lay—and indeed, whether “fault” was a useful question in a marriage.

James, she concluded, had been pushed by his father into an action that he knew was morally objectionable. And yet, in his own way, he loved her. She was sure of that.

The limit she and Cecil had set was drawing near, and Theo knew she must accept the fact that it would be miraculous if any news of James emerged at this point.

Just after 1815 turned to 1816, she summoned Cecil to meet with the family solicitor, Mr. Boythorn, who prosed on at length about a “death in absentia” petition to the House of Lords, detailing Theo’s inability to enjoy either the duties and responsibilities of a wife, or the freedom and protections of a widow.

“We should have a memorial service for my husband,” Theo said when he paused for breath. “After we declare him dead in such a cut-and-dried manner. It would be absurd, I suppose, to wear mourning for a year. But I shall wear mourning for at least a short time. James was very young when he left England, but there are many who remember him.”

“When I was a boy, everyone called me Pink,” Cecil put in. “James never joined in.”

The solicitor cleared his throat. “A memorial service in St. Paul’s Cathedral would be most appropriate. It would indeed be fitting to hold a service after Lord Islay has been formally recognized as deceased. A small plaque could also be arranged, to commemorate the life of this courageous young man. It is my belief that the
Percival
foundered almost immediately.”

“Surely not,” Theo said, hating to think it.

“The vessel was headed to India, by all accounts, and never heard from again. The passage is besieged with pirates,” Mr. Boythorn observed. “More than one sailor has told me that it would be a miracle if the
Percival
escaped an unfortunate fate.”

Theo sighed. “Cecil, would it be acceptable to you if Mr. Boythorn began the proceedings to submit a death in absentia petition to the Lord Chancellor and the House of Lords? If we receive other news in the next month, of course, the petition would be withdrawn immediately.”

“Would you prefer to wait another year, my dear?” Was there ever a more reluctant duke than Cecil?

Theo looked at him with a faint smile. “I have quite enjoyed managing the estate, particularly with regard to the weaving and ceramics concerns. But I should like to move on with my life. I know I’m practically elderly—”

“You are not!” Cecil cried with a satisfying smack of indignity in his voice.

“But I intend to throw myself on the marriage market after the petition is approved,” Theo continued, “and another year would do me no good in that respect.”

“As it should be,” Mr. Boythorn intoned solemnly. “It is time to close this sad passage in the history of the Dukes of Ashbrook. Lord Islay was cut off in the prime of his youth, but life must go on.”

And with that rattling series of platitudes, the conversation ended.

Long live the new duke.