An Affair Before Christmas (14 page)

“I hardly think he’s one of the world’s great scientists,” Poppy said. “He may be an expert on the three-toed sloth, but he makes frequent errors in his assessments of research. I suspect him of sloppy note-keeping.”

And then, when Jemma kept giggling, she said: “Truly, this is not an illicit flirtation.”

“No? I suppose you showed all your letters to Fletch?”

“He wouldn’t be interested. Fletch doesn’t care about sloths.”

“I suppose if the sloths were wearing little ermine-lined cloaks, it might be different,” Jemma said mischievously.

“You shouldn’t—” Poppy said, and then started laughing. “Fletch is rather ridiculous, isn’t he?”

“Delicious,” Jemma said. “But ridiculous.”

“He never used to be like that,” Poppy said a little sadly. “In the last year, he just became more and more polished.”

“No wonder you turned to the purveyor of two-toed sloths. I would have done the same. Well, if I had the faintest inclination to discuss such a topic.”

“Three-toed, not two-toed. You would be interested,” Poppy said. “Really, you would! Dr. Loudan can be quite fascinating.”

“I suppose he thinks you’re fascinating as well?” Jemma asked mischievously.

“No,” Poppy said.

“No?”

“You see, I have the sort of brain that simply can’t forget a tiny detail I read somewhere. I’m just like that.”

“I forget everything,” Jemma observed.

“But you remember every chess game you ever played. My brain works that way when it comes to articles about sloths and French marmoses. It’s terribly inconvenient,” she said feelingly.

“Why?”

“Unladylike,” Poppy said, wrinkling her nose. “I can’t help it, though. I see a new book or an article on a subject that interests me and I become simply feverish to read it. My mother loathes that propensity.”

“How strange,” Jemma said. “I don’t mean you, but the very idea of feeling feverish about a sloth, three-toed or not, is peculiar. You must know that.”

“I never tell anyone. And you must promise to do the same.”

“Why doesn’t this Oxford fellow simply embrace you and your detailed brain, then?”

“I find that scientists are not always excited to be reminded about details,” Poppy said, looking rather surprised. “Surely accuracy is of the utmost importance when it comes to natural study, but you would be surprised, Jemma, at how inexact some people can be. Dr. Loudan is occasionally quite reluctant to drop an idea, even when the evidence is against him.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a naturalist. There are very few of them wandering around Paris. So do you really think we could interest the inexact but Honorable George Loudan in Miss Fetlock?”

“The curious thing to me, Jemma, is why you are so interested in removing Miss Tatlock from your husband’s company. You acknowledge that he would never endanger his reputation. And she is a gently bred young lady. Your marriage is in no danger.”

“I already saw my husband in love with another woman,” Jemma said. “I left for Paris because I couldn’t bear to be around him in that circumstance. That’s one thing that Beaumont has never understood: marriage and reputation are not the most important things.”

“It’s a common problem,” Poppy said thoughtfully. “My mother would agree with Beaumont.”

She came back to herself with a start and stared down at the note. It was obviously written by a servant, and it stated that the Duke of Villiers would like her to pay a call. The Duke of Villiers? An unmarried man? How on earth could she do that? Why would he even expect that she would consider it?

And why would he want her to visit? He barely exchanged two words with her at the dinner party given by the Duchess of Beaumont, which was the only time they’d met. And finally, who was Benjamin, the name mentioned in the letter?

The problem, Charlotte thought, was that her life was boring. She’d been on the shelf more years than she cared to count. Her mother had always said that she had an intelligent countenance, and she knew that she was honest, fairly virtuous and chaste. Not that she’d ever had a chance to be less than chaste, but a virtue is still a virtue, even if untested. But none of those qualities made life interesting.

May entered the room. “Is that a letter from Beaumont?” her sister demanded.

“How did you know that I received a letter?”

“The maid told me, of course,” May said impatiently. “I see that Mr. Muddle shall indeed have to have a word with His Grace. He is toying with your reputation in a most unkind fashion, sending you private letters.”

“Mr. Muddle will have nothing to do with the Duke of Beaumont!” Charlotte cried, horrified at the thought of her sister’s fiancé muddling his way through a conversation with the duke. “You couldn’t possibly ask it of him, May!”

“I most certainly could,” May said, drawing herself up. “Mother would not have permitted the visit. And no one could have your welfare more at heart than my future husband, Mr. Muddle!”

Charlotte hated the way that May’s voice dropped when she said the word
husband.
And it wasn’t just jealousy either. It wasn’t.

“It’s not a letter from Beaumont,” she said flatly.

“Oh.” May sat down. “Well.”

“Beaumont has never written me and he won’t. You just don’t understand, May. He’s not interested in flirting with me.”

“But you are interested in flirting with him,” May said, with a sister’s shrewish perception. “And sometimes that’s even more dangerous to a woman’s reputation, Charlotte.”

Charlotte was too depressed to answer, so they just sat for a moment until May said, “Who’s the letter from, then?”

“It’s from the Duke of Villiers.”

“Oh!” May said. “Is it a deathbed confession?”

“Confession? Confession to what?”

“I don’t know!” May cried, clasping her hands together. “I believe he is already dead. Maybe it’s”—her voice lowered to a curdled whisper—“a letter from a dead man!”

“Villiers is dead?”

“So I heard this morning,” May said. “Dead. The coal man had it on the best authority from the fishmonger in Gatrell Street.”

“That’s awful,” Charlotte said, letting the letter fall from her fingers.

“But what did he want from you? I didn’t think you even knew him.” She reached for the foolscap.

“He attended the dinner party given by the Duchess of Beaumont that I was at last spring, but we hardly spoke. I think a mistake was made in the address.”

“No,” May said, with her usual brand of tiresome logic. “It’s plainly addressed to you, both on the overleaf and the letter itself.” She read the note. “How peculiar. Of course, I know what he’s talking about. And so do you, Charlotte. So do you.”

“I do?”

“Of course you do! It’s that mad Reeve whom you danced with all those years ago. The one you thought would offer you marriage and instead he hived off to the country, mad as a march hare.”

“You needn’t make me sound like such a fool!” Charlotte snapped.

“Be that as it may,” her sister said, “obviously His Grace is referring to Reeve. They must have been friends, and he wanted you to know that on his deathbed.”

“Except,” Charlotte said, “that Reeve’s given name is Barnabe, not Benjamin.”

“Close enough,” May said. “It’s obvious.”

“Well, it hardly matters if the duke is dead,” Charlotte said.

“You should drop off your card,” May said. “The duke was thinking of you—of
you
, Charlotte—practically on his deathbed. It’s the least you can do.”

“I’ve never understood that custom,” Charlotte said. “What ser vice does it do the dead person when I drop my card at his house? What good is that, pray? Suddenly all the carriages line up outside a house and small bits of paper fly back and forth, but does the dead person sit up in his coffin and count his visitors? No, he does not!”

“You are unaccountably strange,” May said. She’d said it many times before, so the sentence flowed with practiced ease. “All I can say is, thank goodness it isn’t the Duke of Beaumont thinking of you with his last breath. You’d never live that one down!”

“How many times must I tell you,” Charlotte said between clenched teeth.

“I know,” May said, “but you must admit that it’s all rather strange. Here you are, practically a spinster, Charlotte, if you don’t mind my saying so. Neither of us ever had a shard of interest from, well, the nobility. And suddenly you’re being chased around by dukes. It’s—it’s
odd
.”

Charlotte folded up the letter. “I’ll drop my card at Villiers’s house on my way to buy some physic for the downstairs maid. Her face is swollen again, and Cook wants mustard to make up a poultice.”

“You could send Roberts,” May observed. “It isn’t ladylike for you to traipse off to the market for herbs.”

“I’m an old maid, remember,” Charlotte said, with an edge. “And I need some fresh air. It’s quite odd to receive a letter from someone who just died.”

“I can’t imagine what everyone will think of it! I just hope they don’t think that you were as close to Villiers as you supposedly are to Beaumont!” She laughed shrilly at the very idea and trotted off.

Charlotte didn’t bother to change her dress. She was neatly attired in a simple blue sacque gown. It was neither particularly flattering nor particularly fashionable, but it served. She stared down at it for a moment, remembering how resplendent the Duke of Villiers always appeared, clothed in fantastically embroidered costumes. When he appeared at the party following that fatal duel, he looked white, but gorgeous.

It was so sad. And now she thought of it, sad for the Earl of Gryffyn as well. One had to suppose that he would have to flee the country now that his opponent had died.

Stupid men and their stupid duels. The butler was nowhere to be seen, so she had Roberts hail her a hackney. She wasn’t in a mood to wait for their ancient black carriage to be brought around from the mews so she could shamble down the street, all their genteel poverty revealed in every rusty spot on that carriage.

“Fifteen, Picadilly,” she told the driver. When they pulled up in front of Villiers’s town house she realized for the first time the problem with a hackney. There wasn’t a footman to deliver her card. “Here, driver!” she called. “Will you be so good as to deliver my card?”

He tugged his cap and took the card obediently enough. She watched through the window as he trundled up to the door, his driver’s cape blowing in a stiff wind. It wasn’t proper; one’s card should be delivered by a footman, but she couldn’t get over the fact that Villiers was dead. Dead men presumably didn’t care for niceties.

A butler answered the door and took the card, but when Charlotte expected the driver to trundle directly back to the carriage, he didn’t do so. Instead a footman slipped past the butler and came down the path. He opened the door of the carriage.

“If you please,” he said, bowing.

“I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood,” Charlotte said, feeling horribly embarrassed. Who knows what that foolish driver had told them? “I didn’t come to pay a call; I would never do that at this moment of turmoil. I didn’t mean to disturb the house hold, so we’ll be on our way.”

The footman bowed again. “Your presence is requested, madam.”

Charlotte pursed her lips. But who could see anything untoward in visiting the house of a
dead
unmarried man, after all? A man who wasn’t breathing could hardly be viewed as likely to steal one’s virtue.

So she climbed out of the carriage and marched up to the house. The wind was unseasonably nipping and cold, and she arrived feeling as if her cheeks were red and her clothes all in a twist.

“We are very grateful for your call,” a butler said, bowing.

“I’m not visiting—” she began, but before she quite knew what was happening, her pelisse was gone and she was being bundled up the stairs. “I don’t wish to view the body!” she said. And then, thinking the butler hadn’t heard her, she stopped on the stair and said, “I am not here for a viewing, if you please.”

The butler turned at the head of the stairs and peered down at her. “You wish a viewing? A viewing of what?”

“I
don’t
wish for a viewing,” Charlotte said loudly.

“A viewing?”

Charlotte sighed and climbed the rest of the stairs. The butler was obviously deaf, and likely under a great deal of pressure. She noticed, for example, that he hadn’t managed to swath the house in black, which surely needed to be done as soon as possible. “I’m not interested in viewing the dead body,” she said as loudly as she could, once she reached the top. “The duke’s body. I’m not here to view it.”

The butler’s mouth fell open, and through an open door at the right, she heard a low laugh. “I haven’t been put up for viewing yet, have I?” It was unmistakably the Duke of Villiers’s voice.

Charlotte clapped a hand to her mouth.

“If you please, Miss Tatlock,” the butler said, seemingly unperturbed. “His Grace is receiving visitors.”

She backed up a step. “No,” she whispered in a horrified voice.

A man with an anxious rabbity face popped out of the bedchamber and grabbed her by the elbow as she was about to retreat down the stairs. “Miss Tatlock, I really must insist. His Grace has been so very ill, you see, and he expressed a wish to see you.”

“I don’t know him!” she said, in a low voice, keeping an eye on the door. “I thought he was dead!”

“I’m not,” the duke said from inside. “So you might as well come in, whoever you are. I’m having a sane moment, thank God.”

“No!” Charlotte said.

But the rabbity man leaned close and said, “Please, Miss Tatlock, as an act of charity. He hasn’t requested a visitor in over a fortnight.”

And then Charlotte realized that of course the poor duke must be just on the verge of expiring. She had never been one for succoring the sick and dying. But obviously one could not refuse the opportunity when offered.

“I’ll send your carriage around the park,” the valet said, at least acknowledging the social rules that Charlotte was about to break by entering the duke’s bedchamber.

“It’s a hackney,” she said. “Just send it away, if you please.”

And she walked past him.