An Affair Before Christmas

“Well?” Poppy asked. “Didn’t you hear me?” It felt good to ask a belligerent question. It was so un-Poppy-like.

  “I made a fool of myself in the House in case you don’t remember.” He didn’t look at her.

  Poppy laughed. She couldn’t help it. He looked so adorably disgruntled. “But you turned the speech around, didn’t you?”

  “No one understood my speech. My party, that is, Fox’s party, thinks I did a fine job. They seemed to have no idea that I changed my mind halfway through.”

  “Oh.”

  “My language was a bit convoluted. Only Beaumont seems to have grasped it.”

  “Jemma’s husband? Yes, he’s very smart, isn’t he?”

  “He thanked me for striking a blow for his side,” Fletch said morosely. “What’s the point if people don’t listen?”

  “It’s hard to follow long speeches. I find that they’re much more intelligible if someone makes a fairly simple point and repeats it at least twice, like the author of your paper on brandy. I don’t suppose your speech was simple, Fletch?”

  “How could it be simple? It’s a complicated topic. This idiot”—he shook the papers in his lap—“boiled the trade bill down to one idea.”

  “Yes, but you understood it immediately, didn’t you?”

  “Well—”

  “I rest my case,” Poppy said.

  He eyed her. “You know, you never used to disagree with me.”

  “We were married then.”

  “We are still married!”

  There was a flash of real anger in his eyes that she enjoyed. But she shrugged. “It’s different now.”

  He waited until they were at supper at the Fox and Hummingbird, and Poppy had stated her intention to retire to her chamber.

  Then he just blurted it out, with no preparation. “The truth of it is that whether your mother arranged our marriage, or whether it was all an illusion, I must be horribly obtuse, because I can’t talk myself out of being in love with you.”

  Poppy had risen; she plumped back into her seat knowing that the look of surprise on her face must be almost comic.

  “I know this sounds stupid, given the way you feel.” He looked grumpy, the way men do when they’re talking about emotions. “But I can’t have you thinking that I don’t love you. Because I do.”

  “Ump,” she said.

  He raised his hand. “I need to finish. I love you and so I want you to know that I understand. I don’t think you’re ever going to like physical intimacy, at least not with me, Poppy. I can accept that.”

  “Oh,” she whispered. Her heart felt as if it had fallen into a black well. Her whole life she’d tried not to disappoint people. And now she’d disappointed Fletch. It made her want to fling herself from the window.

  He reached out and pried her fingers apart. “It’s not your fault. And it’s not my fault. It’s just the hand of cards we were dealt. Don’t you see, Poppy?”

  “I see that I should—I should have tried harder,” she said in a little wooden voice that disguised how much she wanted to cry.

  “You did try, didn’t you?” His eyes were so kind that she felt tears swell up in hers.

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged. “So we give that up.”

  “You can’t give it up!”

  “Why not?”

  “Men just can’t.”

  “You think that men can’t give it up, but women can?” He was smiling at her a little now, tugging at her hand to make her smile at him.

  “It’s so kind of you to say so, Fletch. But I think we would really do better if you just went off by yourself for a while. Then when we decide to have an heir we’ll come back together and do that.”

  He sighed. “You didn’t hear me.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I’m in love with you, Poppy.”

  She swallowed.

  “I don’t want to go off with some light-heeled woman who would pretend to like me and pretend to desire me. And I don’t want to have an affaire with a woman like your friend Louise either.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “I did think of it. But if I imagine myself in bed with her—or any other woman—it doesn’t work for me. Damn it, Poppy, don’t you think it would be easier for me if it did work? I could skip out to Fonthill for the Christmas season and frolic with half the trollops in the kingdom.”

  “Yes, it would be easier for you,” she said baldly. “And easier for me as well. Why don’t you?”

  His eyes darkened and for a moment she thought she’d hurt him, but then he just turned her hand over and said, “We’re both spoiled goods. Because unfortunately when I asked you to marry me, it seems to have been a long-term proposition.”

  Poppy’s mind reeled. Part of her was screaming silently with the joy of it, dancing a hornpipe at the back of her brain. But part of her was terrified. Now they were back where they were before, back in the bed where she would just disappoint him again because she couldn’t be—

  He looked at her eyes and he must have seen exactly what she was thinking, because he shook his head. “I’m not asking for that, Poppy. We’ll do it exactly as you wish. No bed. None of that. I don’t need it and you don’t want it.”

  “You don’t need it?” This went against everything her mother had ever told her.

  “I’m discovering that bedroom activity isn’t terribly important to me. You’ve been gone for months and I haven’t broken my wedding vows.”

  His eyes looked as if he were serious. Could it be? She herself was fine without marital intimacies. Why shouldn’t Fletch be the same?

  “We’ll just skip that aspect until we decide that we want children,” he added.

  “I’m not sure we can have children, Fletch. We tried for four years.”

  He shrugged. “My father and mother were married for ten years before they had me. And then it was another eight before my brother happened along, and then finally the twins followed. So in the end they had four.”

  “Would it bother you if we don’t have children?”

  “Not particularly. One of my brothers will do the deed. So: I’ve thought it out, Poppy, and the only thing we can do is just pretend that all this bedding business doesn’t exist. We haven’t made love for months now and I’ve been doing just fine.”

  Poppy didn’t really think he was fine. There was a tightness about him, the sense of a taut wire singing in the wind…but she didn’t want to think about that. What she wanted more than anything was to believe him.

  “Unless, of course, you just don’t like having me around,” he said, rather awkwardly, as the silence grew.

  She let it grow some more. She didn’t want him to think that she was going to be his willing little acolyte, slavishly grateful for his every glance. He was staring at the floor, looking rather miserable. Good.

  “I wouldn’t want you to do this just because of my mother’s presence in your house,” she said. “Though I know well that my mother has a great deal to do with your plea for my return.”

  “Your mother has no part in my request.”

  She didn’t believe that for a moment, but she let it go. There was something more important that had to be said.

  “You’d have to understand that I don’t feel the same way as you do. I’m not in love, though I am very fond of you, Fletch.”

  He nodded. A lock of hair fell over his eyes and he looked so delicious that she almost jumped up to put her arms around him and make him foolish promises. Maybe she could try harder…

  No.

  She had felt free in the last months, living at Jemma’s, not worrying about her dress, and how she looked, and whether her husband would think she was stupid for buying curiosities, or whether he was coming to her bedchamber that night.

  “I’m not moving back home,” she added. “Not yet.”

  He looked stunned. “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  “Is this because of that Loudan fellow?” When Fletch frow
ned he looked thrillingly pirate-like, Poppy thought.

  “In a way it is. I always thought it would be improper of me to go to the meetings of the Royal Society. I hid my books. I tried so hard to be a proper duchess and make you happy. I’ve acquired a cabinet for my curiosities. I might as well warn you, Fletch, that it was quite expensive, as it’s modeled on the cabinet owned by the King of Sweden. The other day I bought an ancient Greek coin for it. And I saw an advertisement for a string of Virginia wampum.”

  “But I never said you couldn’t buy anything! You can have all the wampum you want, what ever that is.”

  “I don’t feel like being a duchess at the moment.”

  “You are a duchess,” he said stubbornly. “I’m your duke and you should be at home with me.”

  “This is about my mother, isn’t it?”

  “No. It’s about you. And me. I don’t like finding you’re not there for breakfast. And I don’t like going to parties without you. I miss talking to you.”

  “I can’t imagine why. We haven’t talked about anything particularly interesting in years.”

  “I thought it was interesting. Perhaps I like talking about boring things with you.”

  “I don’t want to go back to your house.”

  “It’s your mother’s house,” he said gloomily. “Wait until you see how she’s changed the drapery.”

  “Very formal?”

  “I feel as if I’m living in Versailles.”

  “How could I take the plea sure away from her?” Poppy said, grinning. “She always wanted to be a duchess.”

  He groaned. “Then can I live with you and Jemma?”

  “You’re not invited.”

  “Even for Christmas? What about Jemma’s house party? Half of London is discussing it. You wouldn’t leave me with your mother for the holiday, would you?”

  “I’ll see how I feel,” Poppy said loftily. “It’s to be a very intimate party. Surely you’d be happier retiring to the country with Pitt, or some friend from the government?”

  “No,” he said. “I’d be happier with you. Christmas always reminds me of being on the tower of Saint Germain des Près with you, Poppy. Do you remember that?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course I do.” Her heart was beating very quickly.

  “Now I think about it, I should have known from that absurd pin you were wearing that I’d find myself talking to you about river otters. I was so fevered with love that I couldn’t think straight.”

  “We were dazed by the season,” she said firmly. “Christmas can be like that.”

  He met her eyes. “The season had nothing to do with it, Poppy. Not for me.”

  She couldn’t think what to say, and somehow the moment was lost. So she pretended he had said nothing. He looked at her, eyes serious, brow furrowed.

  She didn’t want him to be alone on Christmas.

  “I’ll ask Jemma,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll ask Jemma to send you an invitation.”

  His smile made her feel very peculiar, so she retired to her bedchamber.

  Chapter 33

  The next day

  December 7

  The Ashmolean Museum was a bloody boring place full of stuffed mice. Poppy got excited over a poor flying squirrel, but Fletch thought it looked pitiful, pinned to a wall with its tiny claws extended.

  “Look at that,” he pointed out, “it’s pleading for its life. Begging. Set me free!”

  Poppy didn’t pay any attention. “Look at its fifth claw,” she said. “It’s bent backward, almost as if it had a thumb. Isn’t that interesting?”

  Fletch thought the little squirrel was going to haunt him in his dreams. “It’s supposed to be flying through the trees, though I don’t believe it really can fly without wings,” he said disgustedly. “Not pinned to a board. It smells in here.”

  “Taxidermy is not a perfect science,” Poppy said. But she obviously didn’t give a damn about the odor.

  Naturally the curator of the Ashmoleon was so overwhelmed by her blue eyes that he started opening all sorts of cabinets marked “Not for Display.” And then he started rootling around in the basement and coming up with dusty boxes full of extremely unsavory things.

  “A shrunken head?”

  “There’s no need to screech,” Poppy said, leaning over the disgusting little object as if it were made of gold.

  The curator gave Fletch a scornful look, so he retreated to the entryway where the odor was less offensive and took out that blasted report of Linchberry’s. It was bad. Twisted, even, in the way it thought only about French products and not English farmers.

  He read it again and then got a bottle of ink and a quill off the curator; the man barely registered his request, he was so enthralled by Poppy. Fletch rolled up his cuffs and started writing. The trick was to keep it simple, the way Poppy suggested.

  He’d noticed during the last months of haunting the House of Lords, listening to every speech, that not a single man talked about himself. Everything they said was couched in so much fancy language that the forest couldn’t be seen for the trees. Hell, that’s what he had done himself when he decided to make a speech of his own—which likely explained why no one had the faintest idea what he said.

  If there was going to be a treaty with France, it had to take into account the way that treaty would affect English farmers. Not English noblemen, and their penchant for French brandy and French silk—he cast an affectionate glance at the ribbed twill of his coat—but English farmers. Men like Higgle, who farmed part of the Fletcher duchy. Higgle had the de vil of a time making ends meet, what with his eight children and the price of bread.

  Fletch thought about it, started a paragraph, threw it away.

  The Duke of Beaumont had given him a bit of advice one day: that if he truly wanted to obliterate an opponent, the key was to create a story that would catch everyone’s attention. Higgle could be his story.

  He started again, crumpled up the page when he was nearly to the end, threw it away.

  Finally he started over again, just talking about Higgle. The way the man worked from dawn til dusk, tilling the ground. The way he had all his children working in the fields with him, until Fletch made him stop and let the children go to the village school. The fact that he received less than a penny for ten pounds of wheat, but then had to pay seven pence for a loaf of bread.

  By the time shadows started to grow in the museum entryway, he had five credible pages. And what’s more, he knew that he could give the speech without looking at the paper, though it helped to write it down. It was simple, it was clear, and by God, it was powerful.

  Just then Poppy came around the corner. He leapt to his feet. His wife looked as if she’d been in a fight. Her pink polonaise gown was streaked with brown smudges, and the lace hem was torn. “What the hell happened?” His voice echoed around the marble entry.

  She blinked up at him, and he realized instantly that she was unharmed. Curls had fallen out of her elaborate arrangement; he’d never seen her so disheveled. Even when they’d made love she’d kept her head still so her curls weren’t rumpled.

  Museums seemed to be the exception to that rule.

  “Mr. Munson let me see the collections that Captain Cook sent back from his second voyage. Even the ones in the basement that are uncatalogued.”

  “More flying squirrels?” Fletch tried to brush a black smear from Poppy’s shoulder.

  “There’s an animal that’s about twice the size of a large rat,” she told him.

  Fletch handed Mr. Munson a purse while Poppy wasn’t looking. He’d never seen her so excited. Her excitement had a terrible effect on his body; he was about to burst out of his breeches. Luckily, Poppy never paid the faintest attention to his body. It was just that her hair was flying, and her eyes were bubbling with excitement. Her cheeks were pink, just a soft rosy color on top of her cheekbones that made him want to kiss her there, and maybe bite her ear…

  He rea
lized she was staring at him. “Are you quite all right, Fletch?”

  “Your maid will have an apoplectic fit when she sees you. I was just thinking about that.”

  “The odd thing,” Poppy said, ignoring the question of maids, “is that this animal carries its young in a pouch.”

  “What?”

  “It’s called a possum, though Captain Cook apparently decided it was in the family of dogs.”

  “Ah,” Fletch said intelligently.

  “I don’t agree,” Poppy said. “I shall write Dr. Loudan immediately and tell him so. Even though its head resembled a dog’s, the pouch puts it in an entirely different species. Do you see my point, Fletch?”

  “Of course,” he said, handing her into the carriage.

  “The Dog and the Partridge,” he told his coachman, James. The name of the inn had an odd rightness about it, given Poppy’s subject of conversation.

  When he got inside the carriage, Poppy was still talking about the dog. In fact, he didn’t think she’d stopped for a moment.

  “The curator said that Captain Cook suggested that the animal liked fruit. He gave one an orange. No dog would eat an orange.”

  “Definitely not,” Fletch said.

  They pulled up at the Dog and the Partridge, and Fletch stepped out into the damp twilight. The air smelled chill and raw, as if snow was on the way. Poppy still didn’t seem to have realized how awful she looked, so Fletch just took her arm as if there were nothing untoward about her appearance.

  Given the raucous noises pouring out of the public room, not to mention the fellow sleeping at the end of the corridor, the Dog and the Partridge was overrun by customers. The innkeeper came forward to meet them smiling the peculiarly tight grimace of a man with one too many guests in his inn.

  “My lord,” the man said, bowing nervously. “I’m not sure that we’re able to accommodate you…”

  “We reserved the rooms,” Fletch said. “My man should have been here hours ago. I am the Duke of Fletcher.”

  “I’m afraid your man hasn’t arrived yet,” the innkeeper said. “I have Andrew Whiston here, Your Grace, and he’s attracted quite a lot of attention, as you can see.” He didn’t even jump when a sodden heap of a man reeled out of a door and crashed into the wall.