The Ugly Duchess Read Free

humiliation.”
    It was an implicit concession.
    “You see,” his father said, a smile spreading across his face now that the conversation was over, “it all came well. Your mother always said that, you know. ‘All’s well that ends well.’ ”
    James couldn’t stop himself from asking one more thing, though, God knows, he already knew the answer. “Don’t you care in the least about what you’re doing to me—and to Daisy?”
    A hint of red crept back into his father’s cheeks. “The girl couldn’t do better than to marry you!”
    “Daisy will marry me believing that I’m in love with her, and I’m not. She deserves to be wooed and genuinely adored by her husband.”
    “Love and marriage shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath,” his father said dismissively. But his eyes slid away from James’s.
    “And you’ve done the same to me. Love and marriage may not come together all that often, but I will have no chance at all. What’s more, I will begin my marriage with a lie that will destroy it if Daisy ever finds out. Do you realize that? If she learns that I betrayed her in such a callous way . . . not only my marriage, but our friendship, will be over.”
    “If you really think she’ll fly into a temper, you’d better get an heir on her in the first few months,” his father said with the air of someone offering practical advice. “A woman scorned, and all that. If she’s disgruntled enough, I suppose she might run off with another man. But if you already have an heir—and a spare, if you can—you could let her go.”
    “My wife will never run off with another man.” That growled out of James’s chest from a place he didn’t even know existed.
    His father heaved himself out of his chair. “You as much as called me a fool; well, I’ll do the same for you. No man in his right mind thinks that marriage is a matter of billing and cooing. Your mother and I were married for the right reasons, to do with family obligations and financial negotiations. We did what was necessary to have you and left it there. Your mother couldn’t face the effort needed for a spare, but we didn’t waste any tears over it. You were always a healthy boy.” Then he added, “Barring that time you almost went blind, of course. We would have tried for another, if worse came to worst.”
    James pushed himself to his feet, hearing his father’s voice dimly through a tangle of hideous thoughts that he couldn’t bring himself to spit out.
    “Neither of us raised you to have such rubbishing romantic views,” the duke tossed over his shoulder as he left the room.
    Having reached the age of nineteen years, James had thought he understood his place in life. He’d learned the most important lessons: how to ride a horse, hold his liquor, and defend himself in a duel.
    No one had ever taught him—and he had never imagined the necessity of learning—how to betray the one person whom you truly cared for in life. The only person who genuinely loved you. How to break that person’s heart, whether it be tomorrow, or five years, or ten years in the future.
    Because Daisy would learn the truth someday. He knew it with a bone-deep certainty: somehow, she would discover that he had pretended to fall in love so that she would marry him . . . and she would never forgive him.

Two
    T heodora Saxby, known to James as Daisy, but to herself as Theo, was trying very hard not to think about Lady Corning’s ball, which had been held the night before. But, as is often the case when one tries to avoid a topic, the only thing her mind saw fit to review was a scene from said ball.
    The girls she had overheard chattering about her resemblance to a boy weren’t even being particularly unkind. They weren’t saying it to her, after all. And she wouldn’t have minded their comments so much if she didn’t have the distinct impression that the gentlemen at the ball agreed with them.
    But what could she possibly do about it? She stared