An Affair Before Christmas (17 page)

“No.”

“Well, then.”

“But you—you were in love with me!” For some reason, Fletch had the strongest desire to say it. To tell her again. To make her take back what she said before.

Her eyes were clear and blue. “I wasn’t really, Fletch. We already discussed that. Neither of us was really in love. And anyway, this is—this is different from all of that life.”

“
What
life?” Fletch felt as if he were desperately grasping at straws, trying to understand a foreign language.

“This—this is my plea sure,” Poppy said, looking around. “Don’t you see how interesting it is?”

Fletch looked around. The room was shabby and crowded, mostly with men but with a fair sprinkling of ladies. To the right several people were having a spirited discussion of flying squirrels.

“They don’t really fly,” a short plump man said, jutting his round plump chin forward. He had rusty colored hair that began somewhere around the middle of his head. If Fletch had ever seen a man in need of a wig, it was he.

“Yes, they do,” a big-boned man replied.

“That’s a
professor
,” Poppy whispered, nodding toward the second speaker.

Fletch noticed her eyes were shining and grunted.

“Dr. Fibbin proved without a shadow of a doubt that squirrels can fly a distance of forty to fifty feet.”

“Fibbin is a fool,” the half-bald one said.

Though he hated to admit it, Fletch agreed with him.

“They have a stuffed flying squirrel at the Ashmoleon Museum in Oxford,” Poppy said, settling back beside Fletch. “I have written for an appointment, and I’m going to the museum in December.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing?” Fletch said, dumbfounded. “I haven’t seen you at any parties. You’ve been going to museums?”

“Oh no,” Poppy said. “That is, I haven’t yet. But I mean to. You know, the only time my mother allowed me to visit Somerset House was for a lecture on the customs of polite society, even though the Royal Society was meeting here at precisely the same time!”

“You’re married,” Fletch said. “You could have visited a museum any damn day you please, Poppy.”

“Now I can,” she said. “Hush, Fletch. Mr. Belsize is going to speak.”

Mr. Belsize did speak. And speak. But Fletch just sat there, staring at the worn carpet and wondering why Poppy never felt free to go to a museum, and why he never knew that she wanted to go to a museum. A tiny thread in the back of his mind was also thinking about the upcoming debate in the House over Fox’s East India bill.

“You’re not traveling to Oxford with Jemma,” he said, as Mr. Belsize gulped a little water.

“Of course I am,” Poppy said.

“I’m not having my wife trot around outside London without me,” he said.

She looked at him with clear amusement in her eyes. “Fletch, if I want to go to Paris by myself, I will do so. Tomorrow.”

“I’ll take you to Oxford,” he said, folding his arms.

“No.”

“Poppy, if you don’t let me escort you to Oxford, I’ll tell your mother that you’re suffering from a rare blood disorder and you need her by your side.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I should have known this would all come back to my mother.”

“In more ways than one,” he muttered, and settled back into his chair. Mr. Belsize, refreshed, had launched into another lengthy tirade.

“Lord Strange,” she said, curtsying.

“What an honor that you came to speak to me,” Strange said. “I see so little of proper women these days.”

“I knew your wife,” Jemma said. “Sally was a dear friend.”

His eyes changed instantly. “Surely you were not sent to school?”

“No, but Sally’s godmother, Lady Fibblesworth, was a great friend of my family, and we happily visited as children.”

“Lady Fibblesworth was an admirable woman.”

“Yes,” Jemma agreed. “Sally used to visit us regularly until I married and then left for Paris. I wasn’t in En gland when she made her debut.”

“She never really debuted. I was too wild, so they married me off. It was the luckiest day of my life.”

“I am so sorry that she is no longer alive.”

He hunched a little. “I share your feelings.”

They appeared to have finished that conversation, so Jemma tried a different tack. “Do you play chess, Lord Strange?”

“Yes.”

She liked his brevity. Good chess players rarely squealed about their abilities.

“But”—he added—“when I last played Philidor, he told me that you were the only person who has beaten him three games in a row. I have only beaten him once or twice, so you might not wish to waste your time with me.”

“You played against Philidor?”

He nodded. “Last year in Paris.”

“We must have a game.”

“I only play when I’m at Fonthill or in Paris.”

Fonthill was famous for its beauty, three hundred acres that had been decorated at ruinous expense. Except that for a man with Strange’s fortune, nothing is ruinous. But she said: “Fonthill? You must forgive me; I’ve lived out of the country for the past eight years. Is that your residence?”

“It is. You know, you’re quite interesting, for one of your sex.”

“I make a habit of never returning compliments of that nature. Men are so prone to thinking they are more interesting than the common run of their sex, when invariably they are nothing out of the ordinary.”

His eyebrow raised in appreciation. “I suppose I deserved that.”

“I expect we all deserve a great deal that we are not served.”

“I would like to play chess with you. A shame. But it is one of my foibles: I don’t play a game of chess that doesn’t occur at Fonthill or Paris.”

“I shall have to live without the experience then,” she murmured, letting a little edge tell him what she thought of his foibles and his vanity.

But he surprised her and laughed. “I could invite you to Fonthill, of course.”

“A lovely prospect.”

“Virtuous married women never visit me. Let me see. Could it be that I’ve heard rumors implying that you are not quite so…virtuous?”

“Rumors,” she said sweetly, letting her eyes slide to the golden-haired lady standing to his right like a clothes-peg waiting to be animated. “They can be so imprecise.”

“And yet often so accurate,” he said, grinning at her. He was truly charming when he chose to be. “I leave for Fonthill tomorrow. Perhaps you’d like to pay a visit, Your Grace? I can promise you a great deal of entertainment, especially during the Christmas season.”

Poor Beaumont’s political reputation would never survive such a visit on her part. “While I’d never discount the pleasure of playing chess with you, I would like to discuss another matter. I bought a chess piece from Mr. Grudner.”

“You bought the queen, did you? The African Queen, I call her.”

“I should dearly love to buy her counterparts.”

He laughed and then swept a grand bow. “Has no one told you how remarkably obstinate I am? One doesn’t reach my place in life without nurturing stubbornness. When you visit Fonthill, Your Grace, they will be a gift from your host. In the meantime, I would suggest that you make the acquaintance of Mrs. Patton.” He nodded toward a tall woman standing in the middle of a group. “She is the only woman admitted to the London Chess Club. Presumably you could join her in those august ranks, and play chess whenever you wish.”

“I shall certainly introduce myself,” Jemma said.

“You do know what they say about reputation, don’t you?”

“They say so much. One can hardly catalog it.”

“A fair hit! I like to think of reputation as nothing more than a second maidenhead.”

Jemma smiled faintly. “As with virginity…the loss quickly suffered and the fruits enjoyed thereafter?”

“Precisely! I lost my reputation years ago. ’Twas naught but a word; the word is gone; the plea sure lingers.” He bowed.

He was devilishly charming. If it weren’t for her husband’s reputation and the promises she’d made, she’d go to Fonthill in a minute. Strange had thrown down the gauntlet and it nettled her not to take it up.

He didn’t think she’d visit Fonthill. She saw it in his eyes, the faint disparagement, the unnecessary compliment.

It fired her with the wish to throw societal rules to the wind and pay him a visit. But how could she possibly go to that estate, with its scandals and daily parties, if the stories were true? She couldn’t. She couldn’t do that to Beaumont.

Her French friends would have shrieked with laughter at her concern. They viewed husbands and honor subjects of interest to wives of the bourgeois. Somehow life was much more complicated in London than when she was gadding about the French court.

Jemma had lost the ability to be intimidated years ago. She had arrived in Paris as a young duchess without a husband, made her way to Versailles and began winning chess matches against Frenchmen. Any one of these three circumstances would be enough to daunt most ladies. But not, she was proud to think, a member of the Reeve family.

Thus it was quite interesting to discover that she felt just the slightest bit intimidated by Mrs. Patton. There was no obvious reason for it. Mrs. Patton was a slender woman with brown hair, rather eccentrically dressed, which fact alone ought to give Jemma a sense of superiority.

Most of the ladies in the room were wearing gowns with short ruffles and side bustles of one size or another, but Mrs. Patton had no curls, no ruffles and no bustles. Instead she was wearing a thigh-length jacket, shaped to her figure. Underneath the jacket was a periwinkle blue skirt that flared into long folds in the back. The final touch was the opening at the front of the jacket…which parted to reveal a waistcoat. A waistcoat! Jemma suddenly felt entirely too ruffled and belaced and beribboned.

The group surrounding Mrs. Patton turned out to be discussing bookplates and typefaces, none of which Jemma knew the faintest thing about. Finally the discussion of barth-cast fonts (what ever they were) ended, and Mrs. Patton turned to Jemma. “Your Grace, I have been longing to meet you,” she said with a roguish smile. “I have heard so much of your prowess at chess.”

“And I the same of you,” Jemma said, bowing slightly.

“I doubt I’m at your level. I was roundly beaten by Philidor last year when he visited London. But he told me of you, and fired my wish to have you be my compatriot at Parsloe’s. Rather than cede my place in the London Chess Club to you, I am hopeful that we could be the only two of our sex in the chosen one hundred.”

“Is it awkward being the only woman?”

“I don’t find it uncomfortable. Occasionally a topic is broached that I find tedious, such as the relative merits of a given opera dancer. I find that a quick comment about the difficulties of swollen breasts while nursing children will return gentlemen to awareness of my presence.”

“Since I have nursed no children,” Jemma said, “I shall have to echo you.”

“I am certain that you can come up with your own topics by which to distress their sensibilities,” Mrs. Patton said. “Men are so hideously sensitive, you know. It’s easy to throw them off their stride. I try not to do it while playing chess, of course, though sometimes one cannot help taking the advantage.”

“I would relish seeing you discomfit my husband. In fact, I would love to see you play him.”

“Ah, but the Duke of Beaumont is a politician. That’s another breed altogether.” Mrs. Patton’s smile was wry. “I doubt that he plays chess with mere mortals. If he is half as busy as the papers make him out to be, he has little time for games.”

“I am thinking of gathering a house party at Christmas time,” Jemma said. “I should dearly love to both play you at chess and watch you vanquish my husband. I believe I would bet on you over a politician.”

“I am honored by your invitation,” Mrs. Patton said, looking ready to refuse.

“Oh please,” Jemma broke in. “It is months away; you can hardly do me the discourtesy to cry an earlier invitation. I have just returned from eight years in Paris, you know, and I have discovered few people with whom to play chess.”

“Dear me,” Mrs. Patton said, “and here I was under the impression that you had monopolized the market when it came to chess masters. Your paired matches with your husband and Villiers are being rather widely celebrated.”

“I have never played a woman with ability at chess, and I must confess to an unbearable curiosity.”

“I fancy I shall find myself matched in cunning,” Mrs. Patton said.

“Then?”

“I travel with children. Children and—how could I forget—a husband as well.”

“You would all be welcome. One must have children about to truly enjoy Christmas, so yours will fill a need. We shall have a magnificent Twelfth Night party and put a bean in everyone’s slice.”

“There you show yourself to be no mother,” Mrs. Patton observed cheerfully. “It would be the Slaughter of the Innocents as they fought over who got the largest bean and thus got to be King for the Day.”

“In that case,” Jemma said, “I shall promise to manipulate things so that you, dear Mrs. Patton, are Queen of the Pea, if you will come.”

Mrs. Patton laughed. “The chance to play chess
and
be queen, if illicitly gained? It’s hard to resist. I expect my husband will be agreeable, but if he is not, I shall send you my regrets on the morrow.”

Jemma adored her utter lack of fawning attention. She swept a deep curtsy, a duchess-to-duchess curtsy. “It will be my plea sure.”