An Affair Before Christmas (28 page)

“Why aren’t you down there with the philosophers?” he added. “I specifically requested philosophers.”

Charlotte raised her eyes. “The duchess said that there are no philosophers in her circle of acquaintance. And you are going to live. The doctor feels the infection is gone from your wound.”

Villiers smiled faintly. “You are the one who told me not to pay so much attention to my doctors.”

He had been absolutely right about the house party. The so-called standards of polite society didn’t operate here. Jemma had challenged him to a chess game and he even played a few pieces before he realized that he didn’t care about chess anymore.

Then Jemma got a droopy look around her mouth and looked as if she might cry, so he closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. Except that closing his eyes was dangerous these days: he closed them and woke up to find that the light had moved straight across the room and it was night. Or the night was gone and most of the day as well.

No one cared if Charlotte sat with him, and she never looked droopy. Sure enough, she was scowling at him. “You’re going to die looking like
that
?” she said pointedly.

He almost laughed but it took too much breath. “Appealing to my vanity won’t do it. May I use your name, oh sage Miss Tatlock?”

She turned up that long nose of hers. “Private names are far too intimate.”

“I want to be intimate,” he said.

There was a moment of silence.

“Though I won’t be around long enough to marry you,” he added.

“You wouldn’t want to marry me.” She picked up the book again. “Shall I continue?”

“Yes, I would,” he said, saying it because there was no reason not to. “I like you, Charlotte. I thought perhaps I could only love Jemma, but I’m fairly sure I’ve come to love you.”

“Very foolish of you,” she snapped.

“Yes.” But he was watching her under his lashes, and he saw a watery gleam in her eyes. He didn’t mean to make her droopy. The idea made him feel panicked. “So think about that. What a shame I’m dying. You could have inherited a fortune!”

She rallied instantly. “Don’t speak too soon. I might call in a priest and marry you to night.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

Now her mouth was definitely wobbling. It was a soft and pink mouth, too. Anything to do with physical intimacy was farthest from Villiers’s mind, but he had noticed her mouth. She said bruising things, but with a sweet little mouth.

“Yes, you would!” she said fiercely. “I would never marry you for your fortune, and don’t forget it!”

“Would you marry me for other reasons?” He watched her from under his lashes. Of course, she would say no. He was a wreck of a man, dying, stupid, foolish, alone. She was—

“And not just because you’re desperate for a wedding ring?” he added. He didn’t have time for social niceties, not here in the very shadow of death.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. She reached out and her warm fingers curled around his.

He felt the tide of exhaustion again. He was so tired of the pain. It was all over his body now, an ache, more than one ache. “Who would think that a foolish little sword wound could come to this?” he said.

Her hand tightened on his. “Don’t die.” She said it quietly. “Don’t.”

But he didn’t think he had a choice. “Do you know what I feel like, Charlotte?”

“No.”

“A torch. Nothing more than a torch borne in the wind.”

And then the blackness came quickly, before he had a chance to say another word.

It took her a moment to understand what had happened to him. He was no longer a slightly shabby sailor. He looked magnificent, clad in a coat of periwinkle blue that fit his shoulders like a glove. His shirt was of the finest linen. Only two things betrayed him: his hair still tumbled like a pirate, to his shoulders, and his feet wore the same scuffed, comfortable boots as before.

“Goodness,” she said faintly. “You look ducal.”

“I look like a blasted peacock,” he said, striding around the bed. He picked up his Villiers’s other hand. “Damn.”

There was no point in pretending that she didn’t know what he meant. Everything about the duke signaled that the time was near.

“It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow,” she said. “I had hoped he would be here for Christmas.”

“He may surprise you yet.”

“He just did,” she said.

Dautry glanced at her.

“He asked me to marry him.”

A look of black rage crossed his face and then it was as expressionless as ever. “Did he?” he drawled. “And did you take him up on his idea?”

She stood up and shook out her skirts. “You’re an ass.”

“A fine English gentlewoman using such a word!” he said, mockingly.

“Ass,” she repeated, loving the sound of the word on her own lips. There was something about this trip, her acquaintance with the Duke of Villiers, that was changing her. Making her more like him, perhaps: combative, fearless. She reached out and smoothed Villiers’s fingers, lying on the counterpane.

Dautry strode around the bed. “I can see that you are fond of him,” he said.

She had to tip her head back: he was standing just beside her and he was so tall. “You are—”

“I know,” he interrupted. “You already told me.”

His eyes looked at her with such disapproval that she actually felt a thrill. As if
she
, Charlotte Tatlock, would do something immoral. It was practically a compliment. “So you think that I would seduce a dying duke into marriage in order to become a duchess?”

“Is that what you’re doing?”

She loved the image of it, if only it didn’t include Villiers’s death.

“His name is Leopold, did you know that?”

He looked furious again. “How did you come to meet the duke?” Suddenly his hands were on her shoulders.

He’s going to shake me! Charlotte thought. It was all she could do not to smile. Dautry really thought she was a fatal temptress…not just a plain old maid who lived in Gough Square.

“How long have you known him?”

“Long enough,” she said, prolonging the deliciousness of it.

But she didn’t know enough about men. Or perhaps she just didn’t know enough about Dautry. He didn’t shake her; suddenly he bent his head and before she had any idea what was happening, his mouth was on hers.

On her mouth!

His lips were warm and firm, and she suddenly smelled him. He smelled like a sailor: like the clean wind and faintly of cloves. Stray thoughts whirled through her head, about temptresses who kissed strange men…

The idea was so delicious that she did precisely what he wanted and opened her mouth.

But then the kiss changed and she couldn’t think as clearly anymore. He stopped holding her shoulders and pulled her against his body. He was warm and hard, and the spicy smell of him went to her head so she wound her arms around his neck and hung on.

They didn’t stop until there was a noise on the bed. She pulled away and swung around, but Villiers was still sleeping. Her whole body was tingling. No wonder, she kept thinking. No wonder men and women…

She reached out and pulled up his coverlet a little, thinking about it.

“Has the local doctor anything to say?” Dautry said it quietly, in case Villiers was sleeping lightly.

The doctor had said no more than she had guessed for herself. “If he survives the night…but Dr. Treglown doesn’t think he will. Do you?”

She saw the answer in his eyes, and it echoed the truth in her own heart.

“What will you do when he dies?” His voice sounded different. The drawl was still there, but roughened by desire.

“Nothing,” she said, turning around to face him. “Weep.”

“I’ll come sit with him to night,” he said, turning to the door. “I need to eat. Keep me company?”

She looked at Villiers but he was sleeping in that profound way he had, as if every breath were too much and he might just slip away. It was tiring, watching a man die.

“Come sit with me,” Dautry said, his voice a little softer. He held out his hand. “You can return later. We’ll both come back later.”

He lingered as much as he could while bringing in the courses, intent on learning her secrets. The conversation didn’t seem particularly salacious. They talked of India (godforsaken place, to Blount’s mind), and pirates (godforsaken people), and then about whales (he had no particular opinion, but he was suspicious).

He was pouring the second bottle of wine before he discovered what made Miss Charlotte Tatlock so irresistible. It was the way she talked back to Dautry. Talked back! Inconceivable for a young woman. Yet she did. He refreshed their wine glasses during a conversation in which she was arguing in the most lively way about smugglers. Defending them, if you please!

Blount made up his mind on the spot. They got no more wine. None! Not even if the Jezebel herself rang the bell.

So it was disappointing when they sauntered back to the Duke of Villiers’s bedchamber, almost as if they didn’t notice that their butler had forsaken them.

They were talking that hard.

She felt powerful. She let Fletch carry her into the room because it felt good to be in his arms, to be carried about. As soon as they were in the bedchamber, she pulled free. She had to control the night.

She walked away from him slowly, leaned back against the bedpost so that her breasts arched forward. Fletch was standing next to the door and what she saw in his eyes made her heart beat even faster.

It was working.

But she had a plan, a plan that Jemma and Louise had drilled into her upstairs, and she wasn’t going to deviate from it now. Not after practicing it twice, even after Isidore fell on the bed and went to sleep, complaining that no man was worth all the energy.

So she let her lips curls into a sleepy, inviting smile. “I hear,” she said, “that you’re tired of your spouse.”

“I—”

But she didn’t let him answer. “
Bien
,” she said. “Because as it seems, I am in the same position.”

“You are?”

He sounded stunned. She lifted both hands above her head to the bedpost, feeling the deliciously free, wild sense of her breasts against the frail ruffle of her bodice. She could hear Fletch breathing. He didn’t look like the sophisticated sleek duke now. His eyes were gleaming.

“Poppy…” he said slowly.

“Monsieur?”

She brought one hand down to trail down her throat and then across her chest, just as Jemma had showed her. “It’ll drive him mad,” Jemma had said. “Men love it when a woman touches her own flesh.”

“Maybe I should send my husband a painting of me,” Isidore had said drunkenly from the bed. “Doing that.”

Poppy let herself smile at Fletch, just enough to make it clear that she was in charge.

“Why don’t you come closer?” she purred.

He was before her in one bound.

“No touching!”

He held up his hands. The smile in his eyes made her shiver, and she could feel herself getting warm and shivery between her legs. “
Jen’y touche pas, madame,
” he said.

But she had to be sure he understood, be sure that he knew. “A woman like myself,” she told him, “has demands.”

“Yes?” He came a step closer. “Tell me.”

She let her hand close over her breast and dropped her head back. She could feel her entire body tingling now, longing for the touch of his hand. In the days since she’d made her discovery in the inn, she’d explored her own body. She knew what she liked…and she knew just what she’d like him to do, though the very thought made her feel as pink in the face as Isidore.

“Tell me,” he demanded. There was a fierce wildness in his voice that made her tremble with excitement.

It was hard to be explicit. Embarrassment momentarily strangled her, stripping away her French cover. But then she looked at Fletch, and it was Fletch, her darling Fletch, standing in front of her. The only thing she really wanted was for him to touch her. And then—for her to be able to touch him.

Looking at him made her steadier. What she wanted was just what he wanted. Just like that a whole hot flush swept over her body. “I want to touch you,” she said. Her voice was quiet and steady, but she wasn’t whispering.

Without taking his eyes from hers, he wrenched off his coat. She leaned back against the bedpost again. She felt all the power of desire making her taller, making her more beautiful, making her lips shine and her body voluptuous.

Fletch’s shoulders were powerful and muscled. He pulled his shirt out of his breeches.

“Go on,” she said. To her embarrassment it came out as a croak.

But there was a smile playing around his lips too. “But what exactly do you want me to do?”

“I want you to take your shirt off.”

His smile made her shiver. He pulled up his shirt slowly, so she saw his rippled stomach, and then the golden muscles on his shoulders. It was odd how she saw it all different now. She had always thought he was pretty before. He wasn’t pretty.

He was…

She wanted to lick him. Luckily he couldn’t hear that thought, though she felt her face getting even redder.

“And now?”

But she was done. She couldn’t possibly ask a man to remove his breeches. Even though…she could see a bulge there and she—

She shook her head.

He walked forward another step so they were almost touching. “That’s all right,” he whispered, reaching down and feathering a kiss across her cheekbone. “I didn’t want to take my breeches off. I just want to kiss you.” He was nuzzling her lips, kissing her so sweetly that her knees trembled. “There’s no need to—”

“Take them off!” she barked, pushing him back. She couldn’t be this close to him, not when he smelled so good. She was losing her focus. Losing her Frenchness. He wouldn’t desire her if she turned back into her docile little self and just let him do things. She had to stay in control.

He stepped back, looking a little surprised, but then pleased too.
“Immédiatement!
” she added, just to get the message across.

He grinned at that and started playing with his waistband. Pulling it down a little. That was something she loved about him, the way his hips were so lean and there was a little hollow there. She wanted to lick it too. She didn’t know how she knew about that hollow, because she never consciously looked at him, but she did. Fletch pulled his breeches down, and farther down.

Poppy felt a little faint. She’d seen him a hundred times at least. Especially after he started insisting that they make love with all the candles lit, and she had to lie on top of the covers. She’d seen him. She never thought he was grotesque and hairy, the way her mother had described.

But she’d never looked at him and felt her whole body start to tremble either. He was large. And smooth. And he had his hands on his hips, so it looked like his whole body was just—

That. There.

“And now?” he said, his voice all deep and teasing, as if they were talking about bits of sugar.

Her mind reeled, trying to think what to say next. How could she stay French, be French, so he wasn’t bored? What would a Frenchwoman do next?

She couldn’t take her eyes off him and really the only thing she wanted was for him to—

That couldn’t be said. It was horribly vexing. She couldn’t think of anything.

“Sweetheart?”

He started to say something and his eyes were so sweet and kind that she knew she’d already failed. He was looking at her and seeing stupid old Poppy, not a sensual Frenchwoman with kohl all around her eyes.

“No!” she snapped.

He stopped, but he didn’t look quite so happy. Poppy took a breath. She had to find herself again, find the plea sure in it. She was failing, she knew she was failing—she pushed the thought away. It was probably time to go to the bed. That was what she should do.

“I would like you to lie down,” she said. Thankfully, she didn’t have to modulate her voice: it came out all provocative and husky on its own.

“Wouldn’t you like me to undress you first?”

She froze for a moment. Would a Frenchwoman let a man undress her? She couldn’t remember whether Jemma had said anything about it. At some point they had all been laughing so hard that she could hardly hear the advice.

“A Frenchwoman always undresses herself,” she stated.

He grinned so that must have been the right thing to do. Then he flung himself onto the bed, as cool as a cucumber. He propped his head on his arms and crossed his legs. But Poppy had trouble looking anywhere other than his…his waistline. She wet her lips and his hips rose just a little bit as she watched.

She did it again and he made a curious sound.

So she let her tongue play with her bottom lip. He was watching her with the sleepiest, most delicious expression she’d ever seen. She was doing it right. She knew she was doing it right. A little rush of exhilaration swept through her.

“It’s so hot in here,” she said, low and sultry. That was one of the lines Jemma told her and it sounded just right, even though Isidore screamed with laughter from the bed and said Jemma sounded like a three-penny whore.

Then she just pulled her neckline wide and eased it down over her shoulders. Fletch was sitting up now. He looked like a dying man seeing a drink of water.

Poppy licked her lips again and then slipped the dress down a little further. And a little further…

“Oh darling, you’re killing me.” He said it with a half groan, and Poppy felt heat flash from the tips of her ears to her toes.

“Mmmmm,” she said, pulling her sleeves a bit lower.

Her breasts were free now. He was looking, so she looked down too. They looked very nice, plump and warm. She knew what they felt like in her hands. But what she wanted was to feel his hands on her breasts.

She met his eyes and saw her own desire reflected there.

“Poppy,” he said, “could you please come to the bed now?” He sounded hoarse. It sounded to her as if the Frenchwoman had conquered him, and she could probably let him take over now. Which was good because—

That was the moment when she discovered that the neckline had gone down just as far as it was going to go—to her elbows. She tried to pull out an arm and couldn’t.

“You’re trapped,” her husband said, sounding delighted. He swung his legs off the bed.

It wasn’t French to get trapped in one’s clothing.

And yet—

Fletch didn’t even try to get her free. He just stood in front of her without touching her—couldn’t he tell what she wanted?—and kissed her. His mouth was sweet, like sin and honey and everything she’d ever wanted in life.

He didn’t open his lips though, and that’s what she wanted. By a moment later Poppy was feeling half-crazed. She couldn’t raise her arms. But he wasn’t touching her. He was just kissing her without—just rubbing his lips against hers.

So she finally had to do it herself. Like the daring Frenchwoman she was, she ran her tongue along the line of his lips. He tasted sweet, like a man. A little spicy.

Kiss me, she thought. Kiss me.

His lips softened but they didn’t open. There was just a gleam of humor in his eyes, and something else, something possessive and dark that made her shiver.

“Kiss me,” she finally whispered. “Fletch—”

And he did it. Just like that, one hand came to the middle of her back and pulled her towards him. Her breasts came to his chest, and his mouth opened, sweeping inside hers.

“Do you like that?” he said.

She was breathing too hard to answer, pressing against him, feeling the aching tips of her breasts.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“What do you like?”

He wouldn’t kiss her again until she said it, so she did. “Kiss me again, Fletch.” Her voice sounded as if she was begging, and a pulse of humiliation went through her, but then he started kissing her and it didn’t matter, none of it mattered…

He put his hand on her cheek and let it drift down, down to her neck and she was shrieking inside. Why didn’t he touch her?

She would say it: touch me, but it was too bold. And he was kissing her. Then she realized she wanted to touch him and she couldn’t because of the stupid dress, so she started struggling with it, wiggling while still kissing him.

He pulled back and stared down at her. There was something different in his eyes: slumberous and intent. He was looking at the Frenchwoman, Poppy thought with a little throb of anxiety. What would she do next?

But he took the decision out of her hands. “
La liberté,
” he whispered. Put his hands on her neck, drew his hands down, down over her breasts. She shivered, and he cast a trail of fire down to her waist. Then with one quick wrench he ripped the delicate fabric in half and it fell to her feet.

“Very nice,” he drawled.

Poppy nearly covered her breasts with one hand and her private parts with the other—just in time she remembered that she wasn’t herself. She was French. Instead, she stretched, all the way above her head. Her whole body was tingling, feeling pink and ready for—

Him.

He was smiling, so she just went by instinct, turned to the bed and climbed onto it. His hand brushed over her bottom and she thought she heard a little groan, like a curse. She lay down slowly and then turned over.

He was there, on the edge of the bed, his eyes dark. “What would you like now,
madame?”

“Kisses,” she said, stretching again. She’d discovered that if her hands were over her head her breasts looked bigger.

He crawled toward her and she couldn’t take her eyes from his. She was shivering all over. He swung a leg over hers and she was trembling so hard she was afraid he would see so she put on her French smile and said, “
Monsieur
?” Which happened to be the only word she could think of.

“Poppy,” he said, and then his mouth came to hers. It was like a gift. They’d kissed hundreds of times before, years’ worth of brisk kisses and longer kisses, but never like this. Never when her desire met his, when his mouth tasted like the sweetest nectar. Never when she—not he!—pulled him against her body.