An Affair Before Christmas (26 page)

So she lay in her bed and examined the crystalline structure of her geode again. Then she picked up the little statue of Cupid and Psyche. When she bought it, she thought only of the outspread wings of the butterfly. It was a marvel, the way an insect made of stone could look so airy, as if it were on the verge of flight.

But now she looked at Cupid, kneeling before his beloved Psyche. This was no plump, pouting Cupid as is often depicted, but a lithe youth with tumbled hair and long, lean flanks. She found herself running a finger along his naked back, over the muscles in his legs. His wings were not stone lacework, but powerfully muscled, thickly feathered, ready to carry him straight from the ground to the sky.

She couldn’t help thinking that in choosing the piece because of the butterfly, she had overlooked something far more interesting than a stone insect.

Even when she put the statue and the geode away, she couldn’t sleep, but lay awake and had the most peculiar thoughts. It was as if she couldn’t live in her own skin. Her mind kept skipping off to Fletch’s room, and thinking of him without his shirt on, the way she saw him when he took a bath. And in her imagination he would stand up from the bath and shake himself, and water flew in all directions.

Poppy wiggled around in the bed, trying to get comfortable. Even thinking of Fletch made her feel most—

He would stand up and water drops would slide down his chest, down, down to that private place. In truth, she rarely looked at him, not for at least the first year of their marriage, because she was so afraid that she would throw up, the way her mother assured her she would.

But after all, what was there? An odd thing, a thing that stood out like—like a bar from his body. That looked pink and yet felt hard.

But remembering how it felt between her legs seemed utterly different now. It felt as if she were all melting there, and as if she would quite like Fletch to—

She turned over again. What was happening to her? Even licking her lips made her feel a bit feverish. And she was all damp under the covers. She pushed back all the quilts. She still felt boiling hot, so she pulled up her nightgown.

But that was all different too. For there her body lay in the moonlight. She stared down at herself. It felt almost as if a fairy had come along and exchanged her body for another, like the old stories about baby swapping. Those were definitely her breasts. Except they looked plumper, somehow. And her nipples were a very nice color, she thought. She’d seen the kitchen maid’s nipples because of the way her dress hung open and they weren’t nearly as nice.

Plus her legs were long and—she sat up—they were a nice shape, as these things go. Her mind kept skittering all over the place, and now she was remembering Fletch kissing a line up the inside of her thigh. Except when he did it her head was itching so much that she felt as if it was on fire, and all she could remember was staring down at his head and thinking,
please finish, kiss faster, please kiss faster!

Now…She let her leg fall open a little bit. She wished he was kissing her right now. Her hair was all loose and she’d brushed it out herself. She was developing a bit of an obsession there, and had to brush it over and over herself every night. But it wasn’t bad. She liked the way her hair felt soft and silky under her fingers, not the way it used to when her maid was crimping it every day and gluing things into it, and rubbing it with tallow to make it the right shape.

If Fletch were kissing her now, he would kiss right up the pale part of her leg, and then higher, by her knee. She shivered a little bit, thinking about it and wrapped her arms around her chest. Which made her breasts start tingling. And then he’d kiss higher, one had to think, and then…

Of course he would kiss her breasts. She touched where he would kiss her. And then…

And by the end of another hour, the night was turning itself inside out, into a velvet shell in which her body was lying as she thought of Fletch doing this, and Fletch doing that. And finally she kept thinking about one night, when her hair hadn’t been so terrible, and Fletch had been kissing her—there.

At the time she hadn’t thought of it as kissing, but in a coarser more embarrassed sort of way. But now she remembered it as kissing, and she couldn’t help remembering, again and again, what it felt like, and how she’d almost moaned once.

And then she couldn’t help making little noises; after all, she was all alone and snug under the covers, in the great blackness of the inn and it felt as if she wasn’t herself, not Poppy. She was some other woman, one of those women Fletch used to watch in Paris.

She had lived in Paris, after all. She knew exactly how a woman looked who wasn’t a lady. The kind of purr in her voice, and the invitation in her eyes.

Poppy just never realized that she wasn’t a lady either.

It made a great deal of sense to her that at the most bewilderingly lovely moment of the night, she found herself thinking in French.

The seat of the Duke of Beaumont was surrounded by miles and miles of formal park, from what Charlotte had seen on the way in, and the house itself was just as grand. It was so large it resembled a cathedral from the outside, at least to Charlotte’s mind. And inside the ceilings were so high one could hardly see them in the gloom and there were innumerable doors and corridors leading off here and there.

The butler was just as bad; he wore livery that was absolutely covered with red braid, and his hair rose in a stiff powdered peak above his forehead. He looked, Charlotte thought, rather like a bishop, but wearing his hair instead of a miter.

“I suppose the duchess has not assigned me a room?” Charlotte said meekly, half running to keep up with him. “I am sorry to put the house hold out.”

The butler, Mr. Blount, unbent a little and said, “Her Grace sent all her instructions ahead of time. She is most organized.”

They were walking along on the second-floor corridor when suddenly there was the most awful bellowing. Charlotte squeaked and dropped her knotting bag. It sounded like an animal was in pain, except that it was definitely a man.

The butler stopped as well. “I am most sorry for the disturbance, miss,” he said majestically. “One of the guests is less than well.”

“The Duke of Villiers?” Charlotte said, feeling her face break into a smile. “Is he here already?”

“Indeed,” the butler said, disapproval showing in every twitch of his hair.

Another shout broke out and this time she realized it was from just down the hall. It was like a call to arms: she couldn’t ignore it. Before the butler could stop her, Charlotte opened the door and walked in.

A horrible sight met her eyes. Villiers was bare to the waist, and being held down by two footmen while Finchley poured something that literally smoked onto a terrible wound in his side. Finchley turned and saw her; his hand wobbled and dark liquid fell on Villiers’s chest.

The duke was staring straight up at the ceiling but he snarled, “For God’s sake, get it over with Finchley! I can’t take much more of this.”

“Miss Tatlock,” Finchley stuttered.

“What are you doing,” she demanded, snatching the bottle out of the manservant’s hand. “Just what do you think you’re doing to him?”

Finchley’s mouth fell open but it was Villiers who answered her. “I’d love to say that he is slaying me, but he’s under doctor’s orders.”

“Well, what kind of doctor would suggest this!” She waved the black bottle. For some reason, she was boiling angry. She turned on the butler without a bit of the timidity she felt before. “Just who is this doctor?”

It took Villiers’s laughter, weak but present, to make her stop interrogating the butler. And Finchley.

“Damn it, you have to make me stop laughing,” he said, gasping a bit. “It hurts!”

“He’s that much better, Miss Tatlock,” Finchley said earnestly. “Truly. Dr. Treglown is a miracle, he is. He opened the wound and it was all infected there, like you wouldn’t believe. We’ve been treating it for days.”

“I might survive,” Villiers remarked. “I hope you’re ready to fall in love, Miss Tatlock.”

The butler drew in an insulted breath and rose to his full height. “In love! Is that it? I wondered at the temerity of this young person, the way she burst into a man’s bedchamber, the way—”

Villiers lifted his hand and shot him one icy look and the butler stumbled to a halt. “She’s not in love with me, Blount. Nor yet will she be. But you had better prepare yourself if you’re running some sort of puritan house hold here. You do realize that your mistress is the Duchess of Beaumont, don’t you?”

The butler drew himself up again, a strange mixture of pride and dismay struggling in his face. “Her Grace is our every thought,” he announced.

“Excellent. This is one of Her Grace’s most highly thought-of guests, Miss Tatlock.”

“I am aware,” the butler said, bowing with a snap. “If I may, I shall take Miss Tatlock to her chambers. I was just escorting her there so that she could clean off her travel dirt.”

I’ve made an enemy, Charlotte thought. She saw Villiers’s eyes on her shabby traveling costume and suddenly she realized for the first time that she was, indeed, inside a duke’s bedchamber—and he was unclothed.

“That mantua-maker,” Villiers said suddenly. “I brought her along. Miss Tatlock must see her immediately. The plan,” he said to Charlotte. “The plan!”

Oh lord. The butler was looking at her with positively virulent disapproval at this evidence that a young miss was allowing a duke to pay for her clothing. There could be no greater evidence of her status as the proverbial Whore of Babylon. “Mr. Dautry?” Charlotte ventured. “Surely his transformation is more important, Your Grace?”

“Damn, I’m tired,” Villiers murmured, closing his eyes again. “I forced Dautry to see the tailor and he protested like a sheep taken for shearing. You, Miss Tatlock, will be my masterpiece. And I’ve made certain there will be plenty of young men here for you to choose from.”

Finchley looked at her in an unmistakable signal, and she backed from the room.

The butler stalked ahead of her, every inch of his livery wiggling with indignation. Even from the back his hair could be seen cresting above his head, trembling with the shock of it.

He deposited her into a bedchamber with all the ceremony one might give a second house maid. “I will request the mantua-maker to attend you,
if
she happens to be free at the moment,” he said, staring over her shoulder.

“That would be most kind of you,” Charlotte murmured.

In the old days, Poppy wouldn’t have noticed or, if she had, she would have thrown him an annoyed look, quickly covered over with a sweet smile. But this time she blinked and gave a little gasp. In fact, Fletch thought he’d never seen anything quite as pretty as the way her cheeks turned rosy. What woman blushed these days?

So Fletch spent his time in the carriage planning the next twenty-four hours of his marriage like some sort of military campaign. Jemma, meanwhile, spent her time fretting about how long it had taken them to reach the house, due to a broken axle. “At this rate, not only my guests, but Beaumont will be there before me.”

“That’s a good thing,” Poppy said. “The duke can welcome everyone.”

Jemma opened her mouth but said, “That’s not—you don’t understand.”

“Even the most wonderful hostess is unavoidably late sometimes,” Poppy said encouragingly. “And you sent such detailed instructions beforehand. I’m sure—”

“I’ve never seen it,” Jemma said, her words hard like little acorns. “I’m hosting a Christmas party in a house that I’ve never seen, with a staff whom I don’t know from Adam. And now my secretary has left me.”

“You still have three maids and a personal maid,” Poppy said. “And I’m there, Jemma. Plus, Isidore is coming; she’s likely already there.”

“Everyone’s coming,” Jemma said, still looking flustered. “Louise will be there already, and Harriet, of course.”

They said it at the same moment. “Louise!”

And then Fletch could have cut his tongue out because Poppy shrunk back in her seat and suddenly she didn’t look like a rosy poppy anymore, but like a prim Englishwoman. He cursed silently, while Jemma obliviously totted up the guests who should arrive before her.

“Villiers, of course,” she said. “He’s been there for a few days at least; they decided to go to the country immediately. I just hope that the butler has done everything I instructed him to do for his care.”

“Of course he has,” Fletch said, feeling rather impatient.

“Oh, and the naturalist,” Jemma said. “Dr. Loudan.”

Fletch couldn’t help scowling at that. He stole a look at Poppy and thankfully the mention of Loudan’s name didn’t make her start smiling or anything because he’d have to stop the carriage and have a private conversation with her.

He couldn’t take much more of this. He’d been hard for around two weeks without any relief. He felt as if—well—as if it was time for him and Poppy to get married, though that didn’t make any sense. But she blushed when he touched her. And she kept stealing looks at him. And he could smell her wherever she was in the room, and she didn’t smell like lavender powder anymore, but like the most delicious sun-warmed peach he’d ever eaten.

Which was precisely what he intended to do—tonight. He needed Jemma’s help first, though.

He managed to catch her at the final stop to change horses before the carriage trundled the last hour or so to Beaumont Manor. He didn’t bother with any sort of flummery; she was the kind of woman one didn’t have to lie to, and he appreciated that.

“I need you to put us in the same room,” he said to Jemma.

Sure enough, the corner of her mouth curled up. “I directed the butler otherwise in my letters.”

“Please.”

She was grinning now. She smiled like a man; you had to love that about Jemma. “Absolutely not. If you want your wife to join you, you’ll have to lure her there yourself.” She gave him a slow look. “I think you might be able to manage it.”

“If I wasn’t in love with my wife,” he said, taking in the mischief dancing in her eyes, “I’d be begging for scraps at your feet.”

She deliberately eyed him again from basement to attics, pausing around the front door for a good ogle. “And if you weren’t married, I’d probably throw you a bone. Or two.”

She was so adorable that he bent down and gave her a kiss. And what made it all the more perfect was that Poppy came out of the inn at just the right moment to see it. He straightened up and waved to her, conscious that he hadn’t kissed his wife in months. Not even a little peck. Nothing.

Of course, as far as she was concerned, he wasn’t interested in his wife anymore. Not interested! There wasn’t a man in seven counties who wouldn’t be interested, especially now that her eyes had gone all soft and she kept kind of shivering and peeking looks.

To night, he promised himself.

To night.

When they finally arrived at the estate, an odd-looking fellow with hair like the crest of a whitecap came out to meet them. He turned out to be the butler. Then Beaumont himself appeared, followed by Miss Tatlock.

Fletch met Poppy’s eyes when that happened and they shared one of those moments of private silent conversation, both of them wondering what Jemma thought of Miss Tatlock’s early arrival.

It was just as if he and Poppy were living in the same household, Fletch thought, loving it.

The house was all draped in green stuff with berries and Fletch had to say that it smelled pretty good. Jemma didn’t seem to like it when Miss Tatlock pointed out the mistletoe, perhaps due to the implication that Miss Tatlock and the duke had been investigating the properties of mistletoe, but Fletch memorized where every little white bunch was hanging.

Then he let Poppy go upstairs alone to freshen up, just as if he didn’t have any interest in seeing her wash her face. Or change her clothes. Or take a bath. Or…

He swore and wandered off to stare out the window at miles of park. Snow was falling and as he stood there it started to swirl in huge curls in the air, sweeping from side to side.

Beaumont appeared at his shoulder. “Looks like a proper storm,” he said.

Fletch nodded. “Have all your guests arrived?”

“All except Mr. Dautry, due this evening, if he’s not held up by the weather. By the way, my butler just told me that a quantity of mail has arrived, some of which is for you. Most of it to do with that speech you gave, I expect.”

He turned and looked at Fletch. “That was a damned fine performance.”

“I’m honored that you think so,” Fletch said. “I merely took your advice.”

“Mine?”

“You told me that it was all about the story. You were right.” A very pleasing memory of the majority of the House of Lords leaping to their collective feet came to mind.

“I’ve told that bit of wisdom to many a young man and they’ve paid me no mind. But you created a story that swept the House, Fletcher.” He clapped him on the back. “I’m thinking you might be the savior of the party. And”—he added, leaving—“that man Higgle is lucky to have you as his landlord.”

Fletch grinned out at the twilight and the snow. It
was
a good speech. And he already had the topic of his next one ready. It would tackle the question of the African slave trade, the dirty little secret that no one discussed and from which many profited. He saw the shape of the speech in his mind, its appeal to decency and sanity, its internal organization. Its rightness.

When he finally strolled upstairs and proceeded to read his mail in his bath, his letters were entirely satisfactory. So much so that when he wandered into the drawing room a while later he was smiling to himself. Of course, his smile might have had something to do with the drum beat in his head that kept saying
to night, to night, to night.

Though that didn’t stop him from noticing the way the room fell silent as he entered.

Poppy leapt to her feet and flew toward him. For a moment he thought she was coming to his arms and just stopped himself from opening his own wide.

But she stopped short, waving a sheet of foolscap in the air. “Fletch, something horrible has happened to my mother!”

He raised an eyebrow. “She choked on her own venom and—”

“Fletch!”

His beloved, far-too-kind little wife frowned at him. “I’m serious. Something awful has happened to my mother. I have this letter from her.” She handed it to him.

Fletch took the foolscap, noticing over Poppy’s shoulder that the rest of the company was chattering with all the feverish excitement of a group of actresses after the Prince of Wales comes backstage.

“To My Daughter, Duchess of Fletcher, Countess Fulke, Baroness Ryskamp & etc.”
He raised an eyebrow and Poppy interjected.

“You know my mother, Fletch. She adores all those titles. Just read the note.”

“
I have suffered a great calamity. Though my soul is as innocent of this calumny as the purest flower, no impartial words can save me now. Truth’s words, like jewels, hang in the ears of anvils.
Poppy, this doesn’t make any sense. An anvil is a ironmonger’s block, is it not?”

“It’s not anvils, Fletch, but
angels
. Truth’s words hang in the ears of angels.”

“What’s this part about the devil—oh, I see,
his true foe
. Who is the de vil’s foe? Your mother?” And here I would have thought she and de vil were close companions rather than enemies, he added to himself.

“I’m not sure about that,” Poppy said. “Read the next paragraph. She isn’t quite so excited and it makes more sense.”

“
Gossip is a subtle knave and like the plague strikes into the brain of truth and rageth in his entrails
—Um, just a guess, but could it be someone is gossiping about her?”

“Keep going!”

“
Worse than the poison of a red-haired man.
Now we’re getting somewhere! A red-haired man is gossiping about her?”

“No! I’m not sure what she meant by that.”

“Well, Axminster’s hair has a reddish tint,” Fletch suggested. “Course I didn’t know he was much interested in your mother since she doesn’t frequent the backstage of the Lyceum Dance Hall, but perhaps he broadened his attentions?”

“Fletch, will you be serious? Look farther down the page!”

Fletch squinted. “It looks to me as if she has retired to the country, if that’s what she means by
sanctuary and impregnable defence of oppressed virtue
.”

“Not the country, Fletch.”

“No?” His heart sank a little. “Truly not? She’s staying in London?”

“No, she went to a sanctuary. My mother has retired to a nunnery!”

“A nunnery? We don’t have any of those.”

“Actually there are some nunneries in Scotland I think, but she’s gone to France. You see that part about the Bishop of Meaux? He always admired her. She left, Fletch. She left for France!”

“Your mother left for France.” Fletch felt like this sometimes after having a deep swallow of the best brandy. Kind of a sweet, hot happiness that spread right down his body. “Your mother left for France.”

Jemma called to them. “Poppy, I have a letter about it as well!”

Fletch followed Poppy back to the circle, suppressing his grin.

“Listen to this,” Jemma said. “It’s from Lady Smalley. I hardly know her, which means that she must have sent a copy of this to every acquaintance she has. She adds a bit in the beginning about Lady Flora’s
spotless name
and how no one believes the rumors.
We were seated in the Duke of Fletcher’s drawing room
—
now most strangely transformed with a magnificence so extreme that Lady Cooper commented that she felt she was in a royal bordello. Lady Cooper is ever humorous, of course.
”

“If one has to lose one’s reputation,” Mrs. Patton interjected, “it would be better not to do it in Lady Cooper’s presence—a sharp-tongued virago, if there ever was one.”

“Do keep reading,” Fletch said, seating himself happily. “I am all anticipation.”

Poppy shot him a glance. “You are discussing my mother, Fletch. Your mother-in-law.”

“Precisely,” he said. “Precisely.”

Jemma started reading again.
“When all of a sudden a young man appeared at the door. He cut a quite attractive figure, though there was something about him that wasn’t quite of the gentleman. He hailed Lady Flora in the most tender of tones, seeming to not notice at first that we were there. For when he did recognize our presence, he fell silent and indicated in a hundred ways his distress and confusion.”

“She had a lover!” Harriet gasped. And then glanced at Poppy. “Of course, that is merely the way it looked. One can hardly believe it of such a stalwart character as Lady Flora. Why she has never shown the slightest hint of moral laxness.”

“Certainly not,” Fletch murmured.

Poppy turned mystified eyes back to Jemma. “It’s impossible,” she stated. “I know my mother. Do read on, Jemma.”

“I’ll just summarize it for you. The handsome young man hastily retreated, but the damage was done. Lady Flora appears to have been overtaken by a fit of nerves that rendered her incapable of logical conversation. Lady Cooper then took it upon herself to fetch smelling salts from the butler and naturally used the opportunity to question him closely.”