An Affair Before Christmas

  “Wait a minute!” he said. “He’s going to remake you as well.”

  “You need to get to know him,” she said, halfway down the stair and not turning around. “He’ll forget me. He doesn’t remember things well. You can take care of him now.”

  “He’s going to put me in cut velvet with roses.” The future duke’s voice was so disgusted that she couldn’t help smiling.

  “It will suit you,” she said. She couldn’t say what she really thought: that there probably wasn’t enough time for a tailor to fashion a whole costume before Villiers slipped away. Charlotte went out the door.

  May sighed with relief when she heard that a member of Villiers’s family had appeared. “Well, of course there had to be an heir!” she trilled. “Trust the man to show up only at the deathbed.”

  “It didn’t seem to be like that,” Charlotte said. “I didn’t get the impression that he cared much for the dukedom. I think he’s a sailor and had no idea of the duke’s infirmity. He only met the duke once.”

  May’s rounded mouth was as circular as her cheeks. “A sailor! A sailor as the next Duke of Villiers. That’s—that’s—awful.”

  “Yes.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

  May gave her a sharp glance. “You have to put Villiers out of your mind, Lottie.” May only called her by her childhood nickname in moments of the greatest distress. “I know it’s difficult, but life is like that. Here! Here’s something that will help.” With all the éclat of a conjurer with a rabbit, she pulled a franked letter from her pocket. “You remember how we thought that the Duke of Villiers’s letter was from Beaumont?”

  “Beaumont wrote to me?” Charlotte said, more puzzled than anything.

  “No, the duchess did! Perhaps she’s having another dinner!”

  Charlotte tore open the sheet. “She’s invited me to her estate for a Christmas house party.”

  May gasped. “Christmas at the duchy! You must go. Though it only begins just before the twenty-fifth.”

  “It isn’t clear that the Parliament will adjourn until the last minute,” Charlotte explained. “I thought you wanted me to stay away from the duke.”

  “A house party is different.”

  “How so?”

  May bit her lip. “It’s what you said.”

  “Beaumont isn’t attracted to me?”

  “And this proves it, don’t you see? The letter is from the duchess. She would never invite you if the reverse were true.”

  “I did tell you so,” Charlotte said wearily.

  “You must go.” May came over and sat down next to Charlotte. “Villiers is going to die soon, isn’t he?”

  Charlotte nodded miserably.

  “Go,” May said. “Go.”

  Chapter 40

  Poppy came back from Oxford looking as odd as a shorn sheep and without a maid, so Jemma sent a messenger to a brilliant young hair cutter she’d heard talk of, Monsieur Olivier.

  A day later Poppy looked as pretty as a peach, with soft, short curls around a bandeau. “You’ll set a new style,” Jemma told her.

  “I don’t care, as long as I don’t have to wear that horrid powder anymore.”

  “I’ve heard of people being sensitive to powder and coming out in red blotches,” Jemma said. “Villiers never touches it.”

  “I shall be judged horribly unfashionable, but it doesn’t matter,” Poppy said. “I’m married.”

  “True,” Jemma replied, somewhat startled. “Though I never considered dress to be relevant to marital status.”

  “I’ve always dressed with the wish to impress Fletch.”

  “I dress for myself,” Jemma said. “Sometimes I spend all day in my dressing gown. But if I do dress, I make myself ravishing because then I feel ravishing.”

  “I never feel ravishing.”

  “You are ravishing, so why ignore the evidence? Here.” She handed over a piece of foolscap. “What do you think of my house party? These are the people who’ve accepted my invitation. I’m composing a plan of battle for the estate butler. It’s all very annoying that I’ve never met the staff; I hate relying on unfamiliar help.”

  “My goodness,” Poppy said, eyeing the list. “How many people did you invite?”

  “Not many,” Jemma said. “I want this to be an intimate party. And besides, with Villiers ill upstairs, we can’t be too celebratory. It wouldn’t be proper.”

  “Proper? It’s scandalous.”

  “I never worry about scandalous,” Jemma said. “I just worry we will all become sunk in gloom. If he is doing well, we’ll have a huge Twelfth Night party.”

  “Did Villiers agree to come?”

  “He did. The only thing that makes me sanguine about his improvement is that he sent me a great many detailed instructions. For one thing, he requested that Miss Tatlock be invited. Isn’t that peculiar?”

  “You mean Miss Fetlock?”

  “Yes.”

  Poppy scowled.

  “I see you’ve reached the same conclusion I have,” Jemma said, adding a note to her list. “Beaumont asked Villiers to make sure his inamorata would attend. But the curious thing is that I told Beaumont myself that I would invite her.”

  “Why on earth did you do that?”

  “I was testing him. Or myself,” she added wryly. “At any rate, he said he would be very pleased if I would invite La Fetlock, so I would judge the testing a failure, wouldn’t you?”

  “Very foolish on both your parts,” Poppy observed. “Especially yours.”

  Jemma smiled at her. “A few months ago you wouldn’t have said that.”

  “What else did Villiers request?”

  “He said that he was worried about the state of his soul—which doesn’t bode well for his health, I have to admit—and he wants a few philosophers from Oxford to come to the party. To debate with him.”

  “How odd!”

  “He can’t possibly be as ill as is reported if he wishes to hold debates in his bedchamber. What’s more, he wants unmarried philosophers. Most peculiar. And he’s bringing a tailor and a mantua-maker and may bring a bonnet-maker as well. A bonnet-maker, Poppy! Do you think that he’s utterly cracked?”

  Poppy didn’t know and she couldn’t stop herself from asking the only question that really interested her. “Do you think I should send a note to Fletch? I haven’t seen him for two days and while, naturally, I don’t really care what he is doing for Christmas, I thought he might be interested in my curiosities. Perhaps I’ll bring them with me.”

  “It’s better for him not to know where you are. And that goes double for your mother. She is not invited, by the way.”

  “My mother,” Poppy said gloomily, “wishes me to pay her a visit at my earliest convenience.”

  “Let me say again,” Jemma said, looking alarmed, “that I may well cancel the house party rather than have your mother, myself and Villiers under one roof. The last time I met your mother in Paris, she told me that I was a daughter of the game. I don’t think that was a compliment, do you?”

  “My mother never compliments,” Poppy observed. “I can translate the phrase for you, if you wish.”

  “No, don’t. I prefer to think of it as referring to chess. I find it so wearying to be insulted.”

  Poppy leaned over and gave her a quick hug. “You are not nearly as degenerate as you pretend, do you realize that?”

  “Actually, I’m twice as much,” Jemma said promptly. “You’re just too innocent to see the truth of it. Speak to my long-suffering husband on the subject.”

  “Husbands live to be thwarted,” Poppy said mischievously. “Or so a very wise woman told me once.”

  Poppy stepped out of the carriage before the Duke of Fletcher’s townhouse—her own residence—with a surprising little fillip of homesickness. There was no particu lar reason for that; Poppy had lately realized that she had only resided in the house. She had never really made it her own.

  The house was, in a strange way, like her life. Sometimes she felt
as if she’d never lived at all, just let her mother be the puppet master.

  That thought had her walking through the front door with her jaw set. As Quince ushered her into the drawing room, she saw in a moment that her mother had not merely lived in the house: she had transformed it.

  The walls were covered with red-flecked brocade. Huge sconces sprouted from the wall beside the fireplace, gleaming with a combination of brass and gold, candles thrusting in all directions. The fireplace itself could hardly be seen due to a screen set with an embroidery of cabbage roses and edged in a confection of frothing gold scrolls. The furniture had all been gilded to match.

  “Mother?” Poppy asked, smiling at the butler to dismiss him.

  Her mother rose from the depths of a brocaded sofa with all the elegance of Marie Antoinette herself on a Court Reception day. A positive forest of feathers bristled above her towering hair; her shoulders were bare though it was morning, and her dress was as formal as the rest of the room. In short, she looked like the portrait of a duchess.

  “My daughter,” Lady Flora said, holding out her hand.

  Poppy curtsied and kissed it.

  Lady Flora backed onto the sofa and sat down. In truth, she would probably only fit on the sofa, given the size of her side-panniers. Poppy sat across from her and waited.

  Sure enough, there was a shriek. It wasn’t a trilled exclamation of female alarm either. It was something like the full-throated bellow of alarm that Poppy had read certain monkeys uttered.

  “Your hair!”

  “I cut it.”

  Her mother touched her own hair, the horror on her face transferring perhaps into some sort of dread that someone had taken a scissors to her without her notice. “Why—why—you stupid girl, why would you do such a thing? You look like a common shrimp seller! Don’t tell me that Luce had a hand in this!”

  “I terminated Luce’s employment.”

  “You terminated Luce! Luce! One of the finest French maids in En gland?”

  She actually gaped. Poppy suppressed a smile. “She had been gluing feathers into my hair, Mama, and then cutting them out. I couldn’t allow that to continue.”

  “How she achieved her effects is none of your concern! You should merely admire the effects. And Luce would faint to see you now; at least you were à la mode when she was with you!”

  “My hair had to be cut off to remove the snarls.” Poppy eyed the towering series of curls atop her mother’s head. “Do you have any idea how many snarls might be inside your hair, Mama?”

  “You sound like a common street girl,” her mother said, ignoring the question. “And you look like one too. A good French hairdresser isn’t found on the street corner. You’re going to have to find one immediately, before anyone sees you. I did want to tell you that I am gratified by the way that you have not advertised your stay with the Duchess of Beaumont. I have managed to keep it from the majority of my acquaintances.”

  Obviously, her mother was not acquainted with the sort of person who attended the Royal Society lectures. “You said you wished to speak to me, Mama?”

  “It is time for you to come home. I am holding a soirée tomorrow to celebrate your return to your rightful position. I have reformed your house—and your husband. The young fool has a mistress now and should bother you no further.”

  The odd pinch at Poppy’s heart only lasted a moment. He wouldn’t lie to her. “Fletch doesn’t have a mistress, Mama.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t insult both of us by lowering your speech to your hair,” her mother said. “Fletch! Fletch! He sounds like the unfledged baby that he is. I have addressed him as Your Grace, and I’ll warrant you that he liked it. Men always do. I summoned you, Poppy, because it is time to stop being so foolish and take over your rightful place as the Duchess of Fletcher.”

  “But I thought you were enjoying it,” Poppy said.

  The words fell into the drawing room like small stones.

  Lady Flora narrowed her eyes and for the first time she actually looked at Poppy. “So that’s it, is it?” she said softly. “You’re jealous of your mother?”

  “I am not jealous of you,” Poppy said. She hated that tone of voice. Any moment her mother was going to start screaming. Her brain was telling her to rush into speech, to patch over the wrong, to apologize, grovel…

  Lady Flora rose to her feet. Feathers swayed above her head like a crowd of gossiping ladies. “Just what did you mean by that comment?”

  Poppy rose as well, taking time to shake out her skirts. Then she met her mother’s eyes. “I thought you were enjoying living in this house. You have certainly made it more ducal.”

  “I merely brought it to the correct standard.”

  Poppy said nothing.

  Lady Flora took a step toward her. “You don’t like it? After I spent months of my life, decorating the house that you were too stupid and timid to change into the appropriate dwelling for a duchess, you don’t like it?”

  Poppy wanted to step backwards, if only because spittle hit her cheek, but she merely wiped it off.

  Her mother’s voice rose. “You are jealous of my beauty and my refinement! You take after your father and it is not my fault that you are such a pitiful substitute for a duchess. I did my best! I raised you to your station in life!”

  And then her hand flashed and she slapped Poppy across the face.

  It was such a blow that Poppy’s head whipped backward and she fell back a step. But in some odd way, it wasn’t very painful. Since she had expected it.

  Lady Flora threw herself back onto the couch and began to sob in a fashion that indicated to all who knew her—and Poppy had no doubt that Fletch’s staff knew her well by now—that a full-fledged fit of hysterics was about to erupt.

  Poppy stooped and picked up her brocaded bag. Then she said, “Mama.”

  Her mother raised her head and glared. “You are too much for me. What did I do to deserve such a fate?”

  “I am leaving,” Poppy told her. “I love you. But I don’t wish to see you again. You may stay with Fletch for a period of time, if you wish. Certainly hold your soirée tomorrow. But then I must ask you to return to your own establishment.”

  “I forbid you to go back to that house of sin!” her mother shrilled, suddenly forgetting her tears. “The Duchess of Beaumont is as much a disgrace to her title as you are. She’s a trull, who should be walking the streets in the dark instead of poisoning the very title she holds. I heard it on the best of authority that she is paying Lord Strange a visit this Christmas—at Fonthill! No one frequents that house but fornicators!”

  “Goodbye,” Poppy said.

  Her hands were trembling, but she didn’t stop, not even when her mother bellowed her name. She just reached out and pushed open the door to the corridor. She felt oddly detached and yet calmly triumphant.

  She had done all that she could.

  Quince took one look at her and began to stammer. Poppy put a hand to her cheek. It stung and was likely quite red. An appalling noise was beginning in the drawing room. “Do you help my mother—” she began.

  But the front door swung open and a footman ushered in Fletch and his friend Gill.

  Poppy’s hand flew back to her cheek but the moment their eyes met, she knew it was foolish to try to conceal it. In one stride he was pulling away her hand.

  Then it was as if all the footmen and the butler faded away, leaving no one but the two of them in the antechamber. Fletch’s hair fell over his eyes and he put one arm around her and pulled her close. Without saying a word he bent to kiss her bruised cheek.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered to his chest.

  He put her from him, just enough so he could look down in her face and said, “No, it’s not all right.”

  Gill was sending the butler and the footmen scurrying in all directions. Then he whisked himself away into the library.

  “I knew what she would do,” Poppy told him.

  “You knew?”

  ??
?My mother has a temper. I knew that if she were pressed, she would strike me. She’s never been able to resist it in moments of greatest fury. I said something that made her furious.”

  “I’m going to kill her.” Fletch’s face had utterly transformed. He didn’t look pretty, as her mother called him, now. He looked violent, like flame and gunpowder mixed, like a man who would take on a mob with his bare fists.

  “No,” Poppy said, smiling at him although the motion made her wince as her cheek was starting to swell. “I caused it to happen, Fletch.”

  “That’s absurd!”

  “I’ve thought about it quite a bit in the past few months. I decided that I would be her daughter only if she never struck me again. Until I went to Jemma’s house, you see, I never had a chance to think about it.”

  “How could you not tell me!” His voice was tight with rage. But not at her.

  “Oh, she hasn’t struck me since our marriage began,” Jemma said. “And not for a considerable time before that. I’d become very good at appeasing her, you see. As long I had behaved well—”

  “By marrying a duke.” His hands fell from her shoulders.

  She nodded. “True. I married a duke. But I really thought I was in love with you, Fletch.”

  “I can hardly believe that you were thinking clearly on the subject.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  Something came between them, the cold ugly truth of it. And still her mother’s grating sobs echoed through the door beside them.

  “Your mother must leave my house,” Fletch said, and the level of barely controlled violence in his voice made Poppy shiver.

  “She will. I humiliated her, you see. And I told her she had to leave. I’ve never given her instructions before.”

  “I’ll see to it. I suppose—I suppose you don’t wish to stay?” And without giving her a chance to answer. “Why would you?” He lifted his head and bellowed, “Quince!”

  “Your Grace,” the butler said, popping back out of the green baize door with an alacrity that suggested his ear had been pasted to the door.

  “My coach waits outside. Her Grace will return to the Duchess of Beaumont’s house. And for God’s sake, could you send someone in there to stop that caterwauling?” He jerked his head toward the drawing room.