An Affair Before Christmas

by Eloisa James

  It was so sad. And now she thought of it, sad for the Earl of Gryffyn as well. One had to suppose that he would have to flee the country now that his opponent had died.

  Stupid men and their stupid duels. The butler was nowhere to be seen, so she had Roberts hail her a hackney. She wasn’t in a mood to wait for their ancient black carriage to be brought around from the mews so she could shamble down the street, all their genteel poverty revealed in every rusty spot on that carriage.

  “Fifteen, Picadilly,” she told the driver. When they pulled up in front of Villiers’s town house she realized for the first time the problem with a hackney. There wasn’t a footman to deliver her card. “Here, driver!” she called. “Will you be so good as to deliver my card?”

  He tugged his cap and took the card obediently enough. She watched through the window as he trundled up to the door, his driver’s cape blowing in a stiff wind. It wasn’t proper; one’s card should be delivered by a footman, but she couldn’t get over the fact that Villiers was dead. Dead men presumably didn’t care for niceties.

  A butler answered the door and took the card, but when Charlotte expected the driver to trundle directly back to the carriage, he didn’t do so. Instead a footman slipped past the butler and came down the path. He opened the door of the carriage.

  “If you please,” he said, bowing.

  “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood,” Charlotte said, feeling horribly embarrassed. Who knows what that foolish driver had told them? “I didn’t come to pay a call; I would never do that at this moment of turmoil. I didn’t mean to disturb the house hold, so we’ll be on our way.”

  The footman bowed again. “Your presence is requested, madam.”

  Charlotte pursed her lips. But who could see anything untoward in visiting the house of a dead unmarried man, after all? A man who wasn’t breathing could hardly be viewed as likely to steal one’s virtue.

  So she climbed out of the carriage and marched up to the house. The wind was unseasonably nipping and cold, and she arrived feeling as if her cheeks were red and her clothes all in a twist.

  “We are very grateful for your call,” a butler said, bowing.

  “I’m not visiting—” she began, but before she quite knew what was happening, her pelisse was gone and she was being bundled up the stairs. “I don’t wish to view the body!” she said. And then, thinking the butler hadn’t heard her, she stopped on the stair and said, “I am not here for a viewing, if you please.”

  The butler turned at the head of the stairs and peered down at her. “You wish a viewing? A viewing of what?”

  “I don’t wish for a viewing,” Charlotte said loudly.

  “A viewing?”

  Charlotte sighed and climbed the rest of the stairs. The butler was obviously deaf, and likely under a great deal of pressure. She noticed, for example, that he hadn’t managed to swath the house in black, which surely needed to be done as soon as possible. “I’m not interested in viewing the dead body,” she said as loudly as she could, once she reached the top. “The duke’s body. I’m not here to view it.”

  The butler’s mouth fell open, and through an open door at the right, she heard a low laugh. “I haven’t been put up for viewing yet, have I?” It was unmistakably the Duke of Villiers’s voice.

  Charlotte clapped a hand to her mouth.

  “If you please, Miss Tatlock,” the butler said, seemingly unperturbed. “His Grace is receiving visitors.”

  She backed up a step. “No,” she whispered in a horrified voice.

  A man with an anxious rabbity face popped out of the bedchamber and grabbed her by the elbow as she was about to retreat down the stairs. “Miss Tatlock, I really must insist. His Grace has been so very ill, you see, and he expressed a wish to see you.”

  “I don’t know him!” she said, in a low voice, keeping an eye on the door. “I thought he was dead!”

  “I’m not,” the duke said from inside. “So you might as well come in, whoever you are. I’m having a sane moment, thank God.”

  “No!” Charlotte said.

  But the rabbity man leaned close and said, “Please, Miss Tatlock, as an act of charity. He hasn’t requested a visitor in over a fortnight.”

  And then Charlotte realized that of course the poor duke must be just on the verge of expiring. She had never been one for succoring the sick and dying. But obviously one could not refuse the opportunity when offered.

  “I’ll send your carriage around the park,” the valet said, at least acknowledging the social rules that Charlotte was about to break by entering the duke’s bedchamber.

  “It’s a hackney,” she said. “Just send it away, if you please.”

  And she walked past him.

  Chapter 24

  Fletch couldn’t go home. In fact, he could never go home. Lady Flora was there; she was always there. His drawing room was filled with scented ladies and their delicate laughter. If he ventured home for dinner, the meal would be fraught with unfamiliar foods and servants he’d never seen before. He had the impression that most of his house hold had left. The house smelled different: scented.

  “Candles,” Quince told him when he asked. “Lady Flora feels that every room should have its own ambiance.”

  One had to suppose that was what made thresholds so unpleasant; one exited one ambiance only to be greeted by something quite different and yet equally sweet.

  Equally unpleasant was the fact that Lady Flora always seemed to know where he had been. He went to Pitt’s quarters in the Inns of Court, and she was ready with a comment about Pitt’s Indian policy. He went for a ride with Gill, and that evening she commented that Gill was getting a bit old for his short pants.

  “Gill doesn’t wear short pants!” he snapped, wondering if she’d gone mad.

  She smiled. “It’s merely a gentle comment about the earl’s need to grow up,” she told him. “I hear he tries to draw portraits, like a veritable maiden. One has to wonder whether he’s even had a woman, if you will excuse the indelicacy.”

  He did mind the indelicacy, though there was no way to say such a thing. He didn’t want an indelicacy from his mother-in-law. In fact, he didn’t want to see her ever, not at breakfast, nor at luncheon, nor waiting up when he returned, breathing concern. But not curiosity—never curiosity, because she always seemed to know what he was doing.

  Occasionally she would inform him, in passing, where she was going or the changes she had made to this or that room.

  “Did you ask Poppy?” he asked once, when she informed him that she was changing the hangings in the east parlor to a rich persimmon.

  “Poppy?” she said, looking as startled as if he’d mentioned King George himself. “Poppy? Of course not.” And she walked away, looking as if the ghost of a daughter fled before her.

  Fletch couldn’t help thinking it was peculiar.

  It had been months since he’d even seen Poppy. Though of course he wasn’t really looking for her, because he was establishing—trying to establish—himself in the House of Lords. But he had been to every party worth noting and she was never there. Yet she was still living with Jemma. Or perhaps not. No one would tell him.

  He had received a discreet note from his banker, informing him of Her Grace’s private account; of course he dispatched a large sum of money immediately. One did, when one’s wife left. That is, none of his friends’ wives had actually left, but he felt the etiquette of the situation was obvious.

  The question—the real question—was what he should be doing with himself.

  He knew what Poppy thought he was doing. He was supposed to be indulging himself in the company of women.

  In reality, he was spending most of every day in the House of Lords. He was bent on making a name for himself, making a difference in government. Making a difference to his country.

  His wife thought he was simply frolicking with courtesans. And she didn’t care.

  The thought was searing.

  Why should Poppy care? She never
liked making love to him. And now she said she never loved him at all.

  So why should that bother him?

  He was due to luncheon with Fox, at Mrs. Armistead’s house. And he’d heard rumors of lovely women and intimacies…

  It shouldn’t bother him.

  Chapter 25

  The Duke of Villiers’s bedchamber looked like the back of a waterfall to Charlotte: all dim and silvery with just a few candles strewn about. In the middle of the room was a resplendent bed, hung with watered gray silk embroidered with bluebells.

  Villiers was lying against the pillows, looking very white and stark. His cheekbones were always pronounced; May had once proclaimed him alarmingly handsome, and Charlotte had thought it a fair comment. But now his skin seemed translucent. He waved a hand in greeting, and Charlotte saw it was painfully thin, his knuckles sharp-cut. A rush of pity gripped her.

  “Please do me the honor of sitting,” he said. “Thank you for paying me a call.”

  The manservant rushed forward with a chair and she sat.

  Villiers didn’t say another word, just looked at her. Charlotte was suddenly aware of every aspect of herself, of her windblown brown hair, her reddened cheeks, the unexciting ruffle at the bottom of her prim gown. The room smelled like peppermint and lime-water.

  “What may I do for you, Your Grace?” she asked, trying to keep her voice low and calm, as befitted a deathbed.

  “Nothing, I expect,” he said.

  Funny: he didn’t sound as if he were dying. He sounded faintly amused and just a bit tired. Charlotte risked another look at him.

  He had closed his eyes. Oddly enough, he was even more beautiful when ill. His skin was so white that his lashes looked fantastically long and dark against his cheeks. “Surely there must be something I can do, since you wrote me a letter,” she said, finally.

  “Did I?” There was a faint tone of surprise in his voice that nettled her and she started to rise.

  “Please forgive me. I must have received the letter in error.”

  “Please,” he said. “Please stay. I’m sure I did write to you. I remember it now.”

  She subsided, wondering what one said to a dying man.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Well, if you did write me, I am wondering why you told me that you missed Benjamin, and whether you meant Barnabe.”

  “Barnabe?” he asked. “I don’t know a Barnabe. I meant Benjamin, the Duke of Berrow. In truth I believed I was sending a note to his widow, but somehow the letter went astray. My fever recurs in the afternoons, and my mind becomes horribly confused. There are too many B’s involved here, Barnabe, Benjamin and Berrow. Not to mention Beaumont. We met at the Duchess of Beaumont’s dinner party, did we not?”

  “Yes, we did. And I would be glad to contact the duchess for you, Your Grace,” Charlotte said. “I could do it immediately. Shall I ask your man for some writing paper?”

  “You’re that young woman Beaumont has set up a flirtation with,” Villiers said suddenly. “Lord Thrush wrote and said that you revised one of Beaumont’s speeches to Parliament and he thought you made it better.”

  Charlotte felt a blush edging up her neck. “I didn’t revise it,” she said. “I merely gave His Grace an idea of how to structure it.”

  “You needn’t do that Your Grace and His Grace business here,” Villiers said. “Surely my man told you that I’m dying?”

  Charlotte’s mouth fell open.

  “You look like a dying fish yourself,” he said. “I wonder that being on my deathbed hasn’t made me any more charitable. I don’t feel in the least like consigning myself to almighty powers and turning myself over to good works, you know. Not in the least. My doctors have been telling me that I’m dying for weeks now, and I haven’t heard even a single note of the heavenly choir in my ear.”

  “You show a great deal of confidence in the opinion of your doctors,” Charlotte observed.

  He smiled faintly. “My doctor would be much affronted if I decided to live. I have the distinct impression that he thinks one should only act under proper medical advice.”

  “May I suggest that you live just to affront them?”

  “An excellent suggestion. If I weren’t so tired, I would take it seriously. I’m not used to visitors, you know. You’re the first person I’ve seen in months, other than my valet.”

  “Your family?” she ventured.

  “I don’t have one. I expect it would be even more tiring to die while people weep around you. You, on the other hand, show a refreshing lack of sentiment.”

  “I assure you that I would be tearful if I knew you a bit better,” Charlotte said, smiling. It was hard not to like the phlegmatic way he was approaching the whole subject.

  “We must remain strangers then. Tell me something interesting, please.”

  “As a stranger?”

  “Yes. The best strangers are the ones who tell you intimate truths about themselves and then are never met again.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met that sort of stranger,” Charlotte said.

  “That’s because you’re a woman and so they never let you alone. I spent a number of years on the continent. It’s amazing what strangers will tell you if you’re trapped together in a sandstorm, for example.”

  “You’ve been in a sandstorm?”

  “No, but if I were I would babble all my most intimate secrets, I assure you.”

  “I don’t have any intimate secrets,” Charlotte said, a little sadly. “I wish I had, if only to enliven the conversation.”

  “Well, you’re flirting with Beaumont, for one. Are you in love with him?”

  Charlotte didn’t think his eyes were condemning, just tired and curious. “A bit,” she said. “But really only because there’s no one else to be in love with. He listens to me.”

  “He’s a politician. If he’s listening to you, it’s because you’re useful to him.”

  “I know that. But I’d rather be useful to him than useful to no one.”

  “Whereas I quite like being useful to no one. Of course, that does lead to disconcertingly empty bedchambers. I suppose if I’d made myself useful to a woman I’d have a flock of children in here now.”

  Charlotte glanced around. The room was exquisitely elegant and thoroughly male. The only accoutrement was a hairbrush, its handle covered in the same color as the walls.

  “I agree with your tactful silence,” his deep voice said from the bed. He had his eyes closed again. “It’s hard to imagine children with me or me with children. What about you? Did you want children?”

  “I’m not dead yet!” she exclaimed.

  “Well, in terms of the ton I expect you practically are,” Villiers said. “You’re all of, what, twenty-six?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Twenty-six and you’re engaged in a very public flirtation with a very married man…unless you’d like to have an illegitimate son to a duke…”

  “I don’t suppose you’re offering,” she snapped. She was stinging all over from his matter-of-fact assessment.

  “Alas, my candle is quite limp. Even your manifest charms couldn’t light it at this moment.”

  “There’s no need to be rude. Just because you’re dying doesn’t mean that you must indulge yourself at my expense.”

  He opened his eyes very wide. “In truth, I didn’t mean to do so.”

  “Yes, you did. I know perfectly well that my nose is too long, and my face undistinguished. And my clothing is all very well, but hardly of the latest mode. I look like what I am: an old maid with a paltry dowry who will never have children.” And with that she burst into tears.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” came from the bed.

  Chapter 26

  She was a lovely woman. She was plumply curvy, with a dimple in the middle of her right cheek that drew a man’s eyes like a magnet. Her figure bounced in the right places.

  And she didn’t have blond hair. Fletch couldn’t have an affaire wi
th a woman with Poppy’s hair color. It wouldn’t be right. This woman was a brown-haired cousin of Elizabeth Armistead, who was Fox’s consort.

  Consort: it was a kinder word than prostitute. Mrs. Armistead was beautiful, but more stately than her cousin.

  Fox was across the room, discussing strategy. Fletch hardly knew any of the men in the room, which made it easier. The wine was deep and rich and burned its way to his stomach. It was dark and intense, like Cressida’s eyes.

  “I’m married, you know,” she said, after they’d been talking for a while.

  “As am I,” he said.

  “I know that,” she laughed. “Everyone knows the marital circumstances of dukes. I know all about you. And your duchess.”

  “What about her?” he asked, suddenly protective.

  “She’s a most estimable lady,” Cressida said. “Actually my husband isn’t bad either. He’s a tailor. He lives in Suffolk and pretends that he doesn’t know what I’m up to. And I always go home for Christmas, and sometimes in the summer, if I can bear to do it.”

  “How long have you been away?”

  “We’ve been married for nine years,” she said, finishing her drink. “I was married out of the cradle, of course. But since the moment when I decided that I couldn’t abide another conversation about satin or thread, I came to live here at St. Anne’s Hill. A lady-in-waiting, I suppose you could call me.”

  “It’s a beautiful place to live,” Fletch said, glancing at the damasked walls.

  “Fox treats her very well,” Cressida said. “But in case you’re wondering, I’m not available for this sort of arrangement. I’m a lady-in-waiting, and not in waiting for a protector, not matter how noble.”

  Fletch laughed. He couldn’t help liking her, with her odd flaring black brows. She wasn’t entirely beautiful, but she was frank and very funny.

  “Would you like a tour of the house?” she asked.

  For a moment it felt as if the world held its breath. And then Fletch’s mouth opened, and he heard himself say, “Yes, of course. Of all things,” and then she took his hand, and she was smiling at him and they left the room.