An Affair Before Christmas

  “You do the honors,” Jemma told Fletch.

  Fletch blinked. “The phoenix in question is a man’s privates.”

  “Of course,” Poppy said. “And the fire is syphilis?”

  “No!” he said hastily. “I’ll explain the other part of the reference later.”

  “I think I understand it. Shakespeare talks of castles melting away, like the baseless vision of a dream. Your phoenix, I gather, doesn’t melt away.”

  In answer to Jemma’s laughter and Fletch’s look of shock she said, “I have been married for four years. And I spend a great deal of time working alongside beneficiaries of the Charitable Society for the Reception of Repenting Prostitutes.”

  “You alarm me,” Jemma said, grinning at her.

  “Did you see the new print by George Townly Stubbs called His Highness in Fitz?” Poppy asked.

  “In Fitz?” Jemma asked. “Do you mean to say, in Mrs. Fitzherbert?”

  Poppy nodded. “He is clothed. But Mrs. Fitzherbert isn’t.”

  Fletch chimed in with a print he’d seen of the prince called The Morning after the Marriage, and Poppy, feeling that she’d proved herself less than a idiotic innocent, went back to watching her husband.

  He still had the little beard, just enough to cover the dimple in his chin, but she actually liked it. He looked more manly with it. Not at all pretty, as her mother used to call him.

  Fletch wasn’t pretty. Not a bit. His eyes were black in the center, but with a ring of odd gray-blue color around them. With his hair pulled back, and no powder, he looked as wild as the men who roam the American forests, wrestling with alligators and catching possums.

  Suddenly Poppy realized that the servant bringing their dishes was sending Fletch a kind of signal. She kept brushing her bosom against his shoulder, for example, and leaning down next to him to offer a spoonful of this or that, so that even Poppy could see straight down into her bosom.

  Her breasts were much bigger than Poppy’s. Huge, really. And the way she kept licking her lips was absolutely revolting.

  Finally the girl managed to pry herself away from Fletch long enough to come around to Poppy’s side of the table and offer her a pyramid cream. The creams were shaped in mounds, and looked just as shaky as the girl’s breasts, to Poppy.

  She took another drink of her wine while she thought about it. Meanwhile the girl brushed some crumbs off Fletch’s lap—his lap! And Fletch didn’t seem to mind.

  The girl came again to her to pour her some tea, her distaste barely concealed. And why? Because Poppy didn’t immediately understand the phoenix joke? She bent down and Poppy looked straight into her enormous breasts.

  It was the work of a moment to scoop up her pudding and drop the rounded thing straight down her bodice.

  The girl shrieked and leaped in the air.

  Poppy stood up and smiled sweetly. “Oh my goodness, it must have slipped right out of my hand,” she cooed.

  The innkeeper came to the door, took one look and grabbed the girl by the arm. They could hear him all the way up the corridor. “I’ve told you and told you,” he was shouting. “Save those Bartholomew wares of yours for them as wants them. You’ve disgraced me one too many times.”

  Jemma was laughing again. “It’s like the phoenix, hatched out right before my eyes!”

  Fletch stood up and stretched. He could almost reach the ceiling. And that put his crotch level with Poppy’s eyes. His breeches were tight as possible. They outlined his muscled thighs as if they’d been painted on.

  “Wife,” he said lazily, “you’re frightening me.”

  Poppy stood and tossed her hair. It felt wonderful to feel her hair move with her body. She flounced down the corridor before him until a large warm hand curled around her waist.

  A deep voice said in her ear, “I really should give you a scolding, Perdita.”

  “That girl deserved what she got!” Poppy snapped, looking over her shoulder.

  He laughed down at her and the blood raced recklessly through her veins. “There’s hardly room in your bodice for a pudding,” he observed, looking down. “Though it would be interesting to use them as a plate.”

  Her gaze followed his. From this angle, her breasts didn’t look meager. Oddly, she felt a prickling all over as if he might touch—

  But he took her arm and started walking down the corridor as if nothing had happened.

  The one thought in Poppy’s head was that she was too late. She was no fool. The depraved warmth between her thighs meant desire. And she would quite like Fletch to eat pudding from her breasts.

  She’d found it.

  She’d found that desire for her husband that Jemma talked about, and it was only her stupidity that meant she’d found it four years too late.

  Chapter 43

  Poppy thought there was a chance—all right, a remote chance, but a chance—that Fletch would come to her room that night. Perhaps just to say goodnight? She took out her curiosities to show him, in case he knocked on the door.

  But no.

  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 ope
n 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.

  Chapter 44

  Country seat of the Duke of Beaumont

  December 21

  Charlotte was very disconcerted to find that she had arrived before her hostess. But she knew how it happened: the duchess had undoubtedly taken her time on the road, whereas Charlotte and May had found the least expensive way for her to get to the party, which involved taking the stagecoach and then hiring someone to drive her and her maid from the coaching inn to Beaumont Manor.

  The butler didn’t say anything, of course. He merely bowed, and mentioned that perhaps she wouldn’t mind a quiet evening, as the other guests had not yet arrived. Charlotte put her chin up and swept past him, trying to pretend that it was the duchess’s fault for not arriving, not hers for being early.

  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 th
e 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.

  Chapter 45

  Fletch was in a state of repressed exuberance.

  In the space of a few days he had fallen into a pit of despair, pulled himself out, decided to follow Poppy to the country even if she didn’t love him, and would never love him…and now look what was happening. From the moment they got in the carriage, Poppy hadn’t been able to meet his eyes. She turned pink when he touched her. In fact, he couldn’t stop himself from violating his own rules and “accidentally” running his hand down her hip as he helped her into the carriage.

  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.”