An Affair Before Christmas

by Eloisa James

  “Hasn’t arrived,” Fletch said. “How can that be? The second carriage left Chalgrove when we did, early this morning.”

  “Do you think there was an accident?” Poppy asked, knitting her brow.

  “It’s possible,” the innkeeper asked. He snapped his fingers and two postilions leapt to their feet. “Accompany His Grace’s men; search the Chalgrove Road.” He turned back to Fletch. “It may be that they’re stuck in the mud. Unfortunately, there isn’t another inn for at least an hour’s drive. But I will do my best to accommodate you.”

  “Naturally I will reimburse anyone who is inconvenienced by our arrival,” Fletch said.

  Another man crashed out of the door and noisily began throwing up just outside the door. Poppy shuddered. “Who is Andrew Whiston?” she asked.

  “The King of Beggars,” the innkeeper said. “Only twenty-eight inches high, he is, and he’s quite a curiosity in these parts. Comes out from London once a year and sings us a few songs.”

  “He’s a drunkard, but a very short one,” Fletch said. “Spends every night drinking in Surr’s wine vaults when he’s in London.”

  “He do love his liquor,” the innkeeper said, turning about. “And the lads love to share it with him, if you take my meaning. I’ll do everything I can to make you comfortable. I can put you in a good chamber now, but I’ll have to see about a private dining room for yourself and your lady.”

  “We need two chambers,” Poppy chirped up, “plus accommodations for my maid, of course.”

  A look of panic crossed the innkeeper’s face. “I gave away my rooms already, Your Grace. I can likely put two of my guests together, but I’m afraid I can’t turn people out altogether.”

  Fletch took his wife’s arm. “We aren’t going to turn anyone out into the cold and dark, are we, Poppy?”

  She looked up at him and said, “Absolutely, we are. If you pay them double, Fletch, they’ll probably be quite grateful.”

  He always knew that women were the crueler sex. But there was something slightly unnerved in her voice that he found interesting. “Unkind wench. I don’t turn people out into the dark. It’s coming on to snow. That isn’t right.”

  She pursed her lips but he turned away. “Her Grace has kindly agreed to these uncomfortable arrangements,” he said to the innkeeper, who bowed so low that his nose surely touched his knees.

  “I’ll prepare a private parlor,” the man said, leading the way to the stairs, “and the very best meal that you’ve ever had in Oxford, that I can promise you. Just give me an hour to prepare the parlor, Your Graces, and you’ll be completely comfortable, I assure you.”

  “You can sleep in the parlor,” Poppy murmured to him, on the way up on the dark little stairs.

  “I certainly will not,” Fletch said. “I’m covered with dust and you are covered with worse. We are both going to have baths, supper, and then go to sleep. Remember, Poppy, I’ve put bedtime activities out of my mind. And I’m a man of my word.”

  She nodded. And if she believed that, Fletch had a whole army of flying squirrels that he could sell her. For some reason, his desire was utterly in flames again. It was as bad as when they first met.

  He took his wife’s arm and the only thing he wanted to do was spin her against the wall and kiss her so hard that her knees would buckle. It had to be because she looked disheveled. He never managed to get her in disarray; even when she was naked she always looked as if she were wearing an invisible corset.

  The bedchamber was large with a sloping roof that slanted down over the bed. “It’s cosy,” the innkeeper said nervously. “Our best room, Your Graces.”

  The sheets were snowy white and the room looked clean. That and a drink were all Fletch really cared about. “We shall require hot baths, both of us,” he said, “and meanwhile bring me a brandy, if you would. And a glass of wine for Her Grace.”

  “Wine?” Poppy said, looking up from the notes she had taken in the museum.

  “Wine,” he said firmly. “And a bath.”

  The innkeeper left and Poppy focused on him. “Hadn’t you better leave? That is, if you’ll allow me to have the first bath.”

  Fletch had just managed to wrench off his boots and in reply he walked over to the bed and fell onto it like timber crashing in the forest. “You’re joking,” he said from among the mounds of featherbed that popped around his face. “I’m exhausted, Poppy. We’ve been in the carriage for two days, and then spent seven hours in a bloody museum. I’m trying to get the sour taste of dust out of my mouth.”

  Poppy wandered over to the glass. When she saw herself she gave a little scream and started poking ineffectually at her hair.

  “It’s a mess,” Fletch said, having managed to beat back the pillows and sit up. “You look awful.”

  “You never said such a thing before,” she said, scowling at him. She’d managed to make things worse; there was a bit of that black furry stuff on her hair now.

  “Ah, but we were properly married then. Now it’s all different. It’s as if we’ve been married for forty years. No interest in each other in bed. We can tell each other the truth and not worry about hurt feelings.”

  She turned back to the mirror and started poking around again.

  “You’re getting black all over your hair,” he said a while later.

  She shrieked again.

  “Couldn’t you brush it out?”

  “Of course not. I’m sure you haven’t arranged your own hair.”

  “I certainly have. I don’t like men touching my body,” he said. “I’ve always dressed myself, perhaps just a little help with my boots.”

  “Well, women can’t do that,” she said flatly. “I can’t even tie my own side bustles.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your maid is not here. Can you get your own clothing off?” he said, thanking God that the quilt was concealing the rise in his breeches.

  “Of course,” she said firmly.

  “Well, then, why don’t you?” Fletch was starting to enjoy himself. “Because,” he added in his most reasonable voice, “this room really isn’t large enough for those baskets you’re wearing on your hips. And frankly, I don’t think the innkeeper is going to be happy with the way you’re spreading that furry stuff on everything you touch.”

  “Furry stuff?” She twisted around to look over her shoulder and started screaming again. In truth, it was rather disgusting. Lord knows where those smudges came from, probably down in the basement.

  “If you take off the bustles, you’ll deflate,” he said, grinning. He sat up just long enough to strip off his coat and waistcoat, and pull open his cuffs.

  She eyed him and then said, “Don’t watch.”

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. “I put all that behind me, remember? Besides, I have never had fantasies about women covered with dirt.”

  Then he watched her from under his lashes because frankly, he was having his first fantasy about a woman covered with dirt. Poppy’s skirts were huge; she kept pulling them up and losing track of her underskirts. Finally she managed to get all the material bunched up in her fists.

  Fletch had to take a deep breath when she pulled up her skirts. She had the sweetest turn of ankle he’d ever seen. He couldn’t see much higher than the back of her knee because she was wearing so much wire bracketry around her body. She was feeling around like a blind possum in the night, to use one of her own nature metaphors. She was never going to get that thing untied.

  “Do you need some help?” he asked finally.

  She whipped her head around and he grinned at her.

  “You had your eyes open!” she accused.

  He swung his legs out of bed and she let her skirts fall again. “You’re never going to get all that clothing undone, Poppy. I’ve seen you naked, remember? What’s the difference?”

  She muttered something about privacy.

  “You’ve taken off your clothes and laid down entirely naked on the bed in front of me,” he said, pul
ling up her skirts. “What are you afraid of? We’re an old married couple, remember? I’ll probably start breaking wind in front of you after every meal.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Yes, and if we’re at a formal supper, I’ll blame you,” Fletch said, struggling with the tapes holding up her side bustle. “I’ll jog you on the elbow and say very loudly, Don’t worry, darling, I’ll say it was I.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Poppy said with certain resolution in her voice.

  “Just how would you do that?” He turned her to the other side so he could untie the other string. He had to keep her talking because otherwise she might notice how his fingers were trembling. It was utterly ludicrous that he was so wild with lust now, when she was clothed, when he could have had her anytime in the year before she moved out, and had declined to do so.

  “I’ll give you a purge.”

  She was grinning at him with a wicked twinkle in her eye. Instead of untying, he managed to yank the knot tight.

  “I’ll give you a purge,” she continued gleefully, “and then I’ll drill a hole in your chamber pot.”

  “Loathsome wrench. How the hell does your maid usually get this off you?”

  She craned a glance over her shoulder. “They untie, obviously. You got the other one off easily enough.”

  “Well, this one is stuck.” He thought of asking her to bend over a chair so he could reach the knot better and bit his own tongue. He’d likely run stark raving mad if she did that, and lunge at her. Instead he threw her skirts over his left arm and started wrenching the string apart.

  “That’s a disgusting little idea you had about my chamber pot,” he said, trying not to look at the curve of her bottom, perfectly visible through her sheer chemise.

  “My mother—” she said and suddenly stopped.

  “I find it hard to imagine your mother attacking a chamber pot.”

  “She might surprise you.”

  The second bustle fell to the floor in a jostling of wires. He kicked it out of the way to Poppy’s little shriek. “Be careful with that! It’s delicate.”

  “I like your own hips better,” he said, going back to the bed and lying down quickly so that she didn’t see the front of his breeches.

  “I’m surprised to hear that from you of all people. After all, panniers are in fashion and surely that is of foremost concern for the Duke of Fletcher.”

  “I’ve gone a bit far in that direction,” he said, propping himself up against the wall. “I was trying to get you to notice me, you know.”

  She turned away from the window, her mouth open. “What?”

  “I wanted you to notice me. But now I’ve accepted that you’ll never desire me, so I don’t have to try so hard.”

  Instead of looking gratified, she suddenly looked as if she were going to cry. “That’s so sad, Fletch.”

  “I’ve gone past that,” he said. “It’s not a problem.”

  She turned back to the mirror and started fussing with her hair again, but what ever she was doing just made it worse.

  “You know, is there any chance that black stuff is tar?” he said, after a while. “Because it’s spread over quite a bit of your hair in back now.”

  “Tar? What’s tar?”

  “Black, sticky stuff that doesn’t come off,” he said, getting out of bed again.

  She had started out the day with a delightful hair arrangement involving one long feather, three shorter feathers, and a bunch of ribbons in the back. Plus a huge amount of curled, looped hair, naturally, a frizzed part on the top, and what must have been a full box of hair powder.

  Now the feathers were bent and her hair…He put a finger to the black stuff. “Definitely tar,” he said.

  “Can you brush it off?” Poppy asked. She tried to look over her shoulder at the glass again. “I can see there’s something black there, but—”

  “First we have to get all these feathers and bows out of your hair.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “Do you think Luce will be found soon?”

  “Surely you know how to take down your own hair.”

  “It’s different for men than women, you know!” She turned around and snapped at him, hands on her hips, and she looked so adorable he almost lost his head and kissed her. “All a man has to do is swat on a bit of powder—”

  “Not me.”

  “And tie your hair back. I could do that.”

  “Why don’t you, sometimes?”

  She started laughing. “Go outside with my hair tied back like a five-year-old girl?”

  “Surely you could do it in the house?”

  “It’s not done.”

  “I would do it, if I were you. This looks heavy and it smells awful.”

  “My hair doesn’t smell!”

  “I didn’t mean it smelled dirty. It’s just that there’s so much lavender powder in here that I can’t smell you at all.”

  “I don’t have a smell,” she said, setting that little jaw of hers and glaring at him.

  “I do.” He sniffed his own armpit. “I wonder when that bath is coming.”

  “You are disgusting!”

  “I am not,” he protested. “I rather like the smell of my sweat. I’d like yours, too.”

  A knock on the door signaled the entry of the innkeeper carrying a tin bathtub, followed by three men carrying buckets of hot water. He plunked it down by the window and turned to face them. “We’ve located your servants, Your Graces.”

  “Oh, lovely!” Poppy said. “Is my maid on the way?”

  “Unfortunately, their carriage turned over in a ditch. As I understand it, the men outside jumped clear. But Your Graces’ manservant and maid were inside the coach. Your valet was knocked clean out and only came to himself an hour or so ago. And your maid has broken her arm.”

  “Oh no! Poor Luce!” Poppy cried. “I must go to her!”

  “She’s right and tight back at the Fox and Hummingbird, Your Grace. My man said that she had a posset to take off the pain, and she was sleeping as sweetly as a babe.”

  “Is my valet there as well?” Fletch put in.

  “They’re both safe as bugs in a bed,” the innkeeper said. “Now I’ve thought about the duchess’s situation, and I thought that Elsie here, from the kitchen, would be able to help you with your women’s things.” He moved to the side, and a great, strapping lass with hairier arms than Fletch entered. She grinned, showing that she had only three teeth to her name.

  Fletch cast a look at Poppy and said, “My wife and I will quite relish the rustic pleasures of being without personal help for the night. Don’t think about it twice; I wouldn’t want to take Elsie away from her work in the kitchen.”

  Poppy opened her mouth, but Fletch had the innkeeper and his men out of that room before she could do more than splutter at him.

  Chapter 34

  Charlotte pulled out her Bible and sat down, trying to conceal the fact that she was rather anxiously trying to figure out whether Villiers looked closer to death than he had when she last saw him. The very thought made her heart knock against her chest, which was stupid because she hardly knew the man. She had only paid him a matter of four visits.

  “I’m unchanged,” he said, guessing her thoughts. “Just as pestilent, as resistant to Christian advice, and generally ill-tempered.”

  “I brought my Bible again,” she said primly. “I’m sure it will be a great consolation to you.”

  “Will you read me the bits about David watching Bathsheba? That was always my favorite when I was a boy.”

  “Absolutely not. I’m going to read you from Luke.” And she began to read the lovely old story of Christ’s birth. He surprised her and didn’t complain as she began, “There was in the days of Herod, King of Judea…”

  At some point his man brought in a glass of water and Villiers sipped at it. “The Christmas story,” he said, his voice as wry as ever. “Do you think I need to hear of miracles?”

  “It wouldn’t hur
t you. Christmas is coming.”

  “I used to love the holiday,” he said, handing the glass back to his man, who refilled it and quietly left the room. “Wishes, you know. Wishes.”

  “What did you wish for?”

  “To fly. I always wanted to fly. But I would have accepted the gift of speaking with animals. What about you?”

  “We were never encouraged to wish, at least not in connection with Christmas. But I have very fond memories of the holiday.”

  “You seem more starchy today.”

  “This is the way I always am. Would you like me to continue reading, Your Grace?”

  “Don’t Your Grace me, if you please.”

  “And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit,” she said, starting to read again. “He was filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.”

  But she didn’t think about the words she was reading; she thought about the way Villiers’s skin was drawn so tightly over his cheekbones. He was dying. She knew it in the pit of her stomach. So why was she being so prudish with him, when she could tell that it made him miserable?

  She put the book down again. After a bit he opened his eyes—he really did have the longest eyelashes—and said, “Well, do keep going.”

  “I thought you’d heard enough.”

  “I want to know how the story ends.” And then he started laughing at the expression on her face.

  “You ought to drink the rest of your water.”

  He picked up the glass and she cudgeled her brains for something to say that would make the spark come back into his eyes. “Why did you want to fly?” she asked.

  “Who wouldn’t? To have wings at your back, and the sky at your mercy…to drift on the belly of the wind the way hawks do, and perch on a tree to chatter to friends. I am persuaded that conversations that take place on the branches of a tree are far more interesting than those that take place in London town houses.”

  “That’s lovely!”

  “You must have wished for something,” he said. “There’s not a true Englishman in the world who hasn’t wished that he won the bean in his slice of cake and became King of the Bean, or wished that his horrid little sister would lose at snapdragon, and perhaps even singe a finger on a burning raisin.”