An Affair Before Christmas

by Eloisa James

  “We are having a house party,” Jemma said. “I’ve just sent out invitations.”

  He was putting the pieces back in place and his hands paused for a moment and then continued. “Of course,” he said. “A excellent idea.”

  Jemma felt nettled that he didn’t show more reaction. “Shall I invite Miss Tatlock?”

  The question hung in the air. She was deliberately baiting him, and why? Why?

  “I would enjoy that.”

  So there was the answer to that question.

  “Not her sister, though. I can’t stand her sister.”

  “She dithers,” he said, agreeing with her.

  “Poppy and Fletch, of course.”

  “But not her mother,” he said this time. “I can’t stand her mother.”

  “Lady Flora is not fluffy,” Jemma said feelingly.

  “She’s feral.”

  She laughed a little. “I’ll invite that nice Dr. Loudan from the Royal Society,” she said. “That will keep Fletch on his toes.” Elijah looked amused once she explained. “Jemma the Matchmaker,” he said. “It boggles the mind.”

  “Their marriage doesn’t have to be over. They love each other.”

  “But if their intimate life is as terrible as you say—”

  She shrugged. “Ours wasn’t much better.”

  Too late she realized that she’d walked into a trap. “Our marriage,” he said thoughtfully.

  Jemma leaped from her chair. “Time to dress!”

  He rose. “Perhaps…we could invite Villiers?”

  “Villiers? But he’s—”

  “Alone. Servants, but—”

  The Elijah she fell in love with all those years ago, appearing in such an unexpected way. “If we invite Villiers, the gossips will be overjoyed,” she observed. “No one will believe he’s dying. They will think I’m having an affaire with him under your very nose.”

  “When I think of him dying, I almost wish you were.”

  For a moment Jemma couldn’t breathe. Then: “That certainly establishes my place in your life.”

  He was pushing in his chair and looked up. “Whaa—” And realized. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  But Jemma had had enough heart-wringing for the day. “It will serve you right,” she said. “I’ll nurse him back to health and then slip in his bed and prove all the gossips right.”

  There was something in his eyes—of course it wasn’t misery, though it looked…“I shall stoop to looking in keyholes,” he said gravely.

  “And why would you do that?”

  He took a step toward her. “You are my duchess, Jemma.”

  “I have been so for years.”

  He tipped up her chin. “You kissed me the other night.”

  “A moment’s aberration,” she said, the words coming in a whisper.

  “Kisses are like a claim of possession, don’t you think?”

  They were so close that she could feel the warmth of his body and suddenly remembered how large he was compared to her. How different his body was from hers. He didn’t wait for her to come up with a clever riposte. He simply bent his head and kissed her breathless.

  “Possession,” he repeated, his voice a little deeper than normal.

  And left the room.

  Chapter 37

  Fletch was afraid to turn around. It felt as if a spell had been cast over the room, a sweet, sleepy spell of privacy. The snow was like the brambles that grew around the princess’s palace—the one who slept for one hundred years. If only they had one hundred years, without servants, without Poppy’s mother, without all the Your Gracing and My Gracing.

  The windows were steaming over as snow began to twirl and fly on the other side of the window. Perhaps the storm would prove bramble-like and keep them trapped in a snug bed together.

  He could just see the gold of Poppy’s hair reflected in the window, and the curve of one shoulder. She’d sat down with her back to him, of course. Her hair fell in lumpy coils, black mixed with the gold, and two feathers jutting out behind. It fell below her waist in the back.

  The innkeeper had left some liquid soap, but Fletch couldn’t imagine that it would work on that tar. Still, he picked up a basin and scooped some water out of the remaining bucket.

  “I’m going to pour this over your head.”

  Poppy clasped her arms tighter around her chest and nodded.

  He let it fall down slowly. Artistically. He poured a little to the right so that her chemise flattened against her shoulder blade, and then ran down her back. Moved to the left so that he could see the delicate pink of her skin through her chemise. She started shivering.

  “The chemise will make you colder,” he said. “And it’s not clear to me how you can wash through cloth.”

  She just bent her head and said, “Will you wash my hair now, please?”

  He got some more water but there was a lot of hair. The smell of lavender powder was starting to nauseate him so he sloshed on more water. Then he poured out the liquid soap and began rubbing it into her hair. She stayed quiet for a moment, but then she started protesting, and giving advice, and directions.

  “Poppy!”

  She shut up for a moment.

  “Have you ever washed anyone’s hair?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ve washed my own, and I’m doing yours exactly the same way.”

  “But it hurts,” Poppy said. She had stopped covering her breasts and was holding onto the sides of the tub instead. “This tub is going to tip!”

  “I have to put some muscle into it,” he said. “Your hair is a mess.” He picked up a part that seemed all matted together. “Ug! Should I just cut it off?”

  “No!” she squealed. “Don’t! I can get out the snarl. I’m sure I can get it out.”

  “You could always wear a wig while it grew out,” Fletch said. “I think it would be easier to wear a wig. You can’t tell me that your maid bathes all of this out of your hair every night.”

  “Yes, she does. Sometimes it takes some time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Usually not over a couple of hours,” Poppy said. “Ow!”

  “A couple of hours!” Fletch stopped trying to get his fingers through snarls of hair. “You’re wasting a couple of hours every night on this? And what about the nights when I came to your bed—you would stay up for two more hours washing your hair?”

  Poppy blinked up at him. Wet rat tails hung over her eyes. “Sometimes when I’m very tired, I almost fall asleep, but I cannot sleep with powder in my hair. It starts to itch horribly after a day. On a bad day I can be absolutely crazed by supper time. It’s hard to sit still.”

  Fletch stared down at her. “Poppy,” he said slowly, “would you say that your head was itching when we were making love?”

  She went still for a second and then, “Only sometimes.” She sounded like a guilty little girl. He stared down at her head feeling as if dawn had just broken over his head. Maybe…“You’re shivering. You need to take that wet chemise off. You’re liable to freeze.” He walked over to the fireplace and put on another log. “I’m not watching. Take it off, Poppy.”

  He heard the sound of a wet cloth slap the ground. He poked at the fire again, thinking hard. He had to go slow. Very slow. Pray for snow. Tell her that he had no interest in her body. Make her trust him.

  Which meant no sex to night. Every muscle in his body, including his favorite, protested.

  He had to make this work, because it had to be permanent. He was slowly starting to realize that he didn’t even know his wife. How could he not have known that she was waiting through those hours he lavished on her body, desperate to wash her hair?

  He remembered trying to touch her hair and she always protested. He had given in, of course, because everyone knew that ladies’ hair took hours to arrange. The bucket of water next to the fire was still warm; he picked up the dipper and poured it over her again. She squealed. He saw her peeking to see whether he was lo
oking at her naked self.

  He wasn’t. He wasn’t, because if he actually looked at all that pink skin sitting before him like the most delectable sugarplum of his life, he’d fall on her like a ravening animal.

  Instead he walked behind her, like a man who has no interest in marital beds. He poured more soap into her hair, grabbed the comb, and started trying to get out the tar in earnest. Fifteen minutes later he was getting worried. “It won’t come out. I’m going to have to cut some of it, Poppy. Especially this long part.” He picked up a long rat tail that fell down her back. It was tangled up with the feather and the tar and God knows what else.

  Poppy looked up at him and to his horror, he saw a tear slide down her cheek. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sorry. Look.”

  She looked at the matted snarl and a few more tears fell down.

  “It doesn’t matter. You can wear a wig. Why do you need all this hair anyway? It makes you itch. You’re better off without it.”

  “But then—” she sniffed adorably, so he got her his handkerchief. She buried her face and said something.

  “What?”

  “I’ll be so ugly,” she burst out, looking up at him with her bottom lip quivering. “And unfashionable. You hate unfashionable women!”

  If only she knew. If only—he kept his eyes above her collarbone. “That’s irrelevant, Poppy.” He said it in his most friendly voice. “Your mother told you the truth about men: we don’t stay attracted to one woman very long. I love you, and I want you to be comfortable. I don’t care about your hair!”

  She sniffed again and wiped away a few more tears.

  “That doesn’t sound as if you love me.”

  “Well, I do.” He grabbed the scissors. “I would love you even if your hair was as short as that possum’s.”

  He could see a few more tears on her cheeks, but she bent her head and didn’t say anything, so he started cutting.

  After a bit he said, “Poppy?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was muffled because she’d drawn up her knees and hidden her face in them.

  “Did you know that there are snarls in your hair, next to your scalp?”

  “What?”

  He cut one out and showed it to her. “See? It’s all matted up in there. I don’t think your maid was actually combing your hair all the way through in the back.”

  She shuddered and started to cry again, loudly this time. “Just cut it off,” she cried. “Go ahead. It doesn’t matter.”

  So Fletch did. He clipped here and snipped there. He tried to save the parts that he could get a comb through, but all the tar had to go.

  “I think the problem is that she’s been gluing feathers into your hair in back. And then I suppose she would cut them out if they wouldn’t wash out.”

  “That is so disgusting,” Poppy said.

  “I’m finding the tips of quills,” he said. “It’s a menagerie in here.”

  “More like an aviary,” she said sourly.

  “I’m surprised. I always wondered how women managed to get their hair up in the air and have it be three times their height. Now I know.”

  “Sometimes Luce puts a cushion inside,” Poppy said. “How else can she make the plumes stay up? The plumes I wear for formal occasions are sixteen inches long. And I’ve been thinking that it’s not really her fault. Most women leave their hair up between stylings, even with the feathers attached, but I always insisted on washing it, every night.”

  “I found a hair pin,” Fletch said. “Look—it has a diamond head.”

  “It’s only from yesterday,” Poppy said crossly. “You’re making me feel hideously unclean.”

  “If the shoe fits,” Fletch retorted. But she looked so mortified that he relented and said, “At least you never smell, Poppy. I can’t bear the way women smell like hog’s grease.”

  “The powder sticks to grease too much and make me itch; I use tallow instead.”

  “Tallow!” That explained a lot. Fletch ruthlessly cut out a few more pieces of hair matted with candle wax.

  “I’m going to find another maid,” Poppy said. “I never liked Luce.”

  “Then why on earth did you keep her?”

  “My mother found her. She’s French. And she does the most wonderful frizzes on my hair. Remember Lady Salisbury’s ball?”

  “Your hair was as high as a Babylonian tower.”

  “It was beautiful.”

  Fletch cut out a few more chunks and they fell over Poppy’s shoulder. She picked them up with a shudder and dropped them on the floor.

  “What I don’t understand is why you never noticed what your maid was doing. Or not doing, to be more exact.”

  Poppy sounded cross as the dickens. “Ladies don’t brush their own hair.”

  “Ladies don’t do this, ladies don’t do that. I’m glad I’m a man.”

  “If I were a man,” Poppy said, “I would go to Cambridge University and became a famous naturalist.”

  “Dr. Poppy, the world’s expert on dog possums,” Fletch said. “There, I think I’m finished.” He pulled a comb through the hair that was left.

  “I still need to take a bath,” Poppy said. “This water has grown quite unpleasant.”

  Fletch picked up her gown and threw it strategically over the mirror in the corner. Then he grabbed a toweling cloth and handed it to her.

  She looked at the small cloth and then at him.

  “I’m not interested, remember?”

  Her eyes were asking a question, but he forced himself to smile. “I’ll go downstairs and tell the innkeeper that we need this bath emptied and fresh hot water.”

  He was so hard it actually hurt to go down the stairs. That had to be a first.

  Chapter 38

  Fletch stayed downstairs while Poppy took her second bath, which gave her time to pull her gown off the mirror, burst into tears again at the sight of her shorn, hacked-off locks, then climb into a steaming tub of fresh water and get clean. Really clean because she washed her hair herself: ran her fingers through every strand, rather than sitting there passively while her maid did it for her.

  Never again, she vowed to herself.

  It wasn’t until she was toweling herself by the fire that she realized that never applied to lavender hair powder as well. There was no point in making herself look perfect every day. Her husband didn’t desire her.

  Oddly enough, the knowledge stung. “Dog in the manger,” she muttered to herself, shaking out her hair and throwing it back over her shoulders. It weighed almost nothing, which was a delicious feeling. The steely truth was that she may not want him—at least to make love to her—but she wanted him to desire her.

  Her heart ached, which was idiotic. She had lain there for years suffering agonies of embarrassment—and yes, itching—and generally just waiting for it to be over. Why, why, why would she want him to do that again?

  She didn’t, of course.

  It was just that this room was so small, and he seemed so large. She hadn’t been able to stop looking at his chest. He’d got wet washing her hair, and his shirt had clung to him. He was warm and hard and muscled in all the places where she had no muscles.

  That was probably it. After all, she was a naturalist. His body was as different from hers as if he were a flying squirrel. His hair was silky and glossy whereas hers—she shuddered. How could she not know the state of her hair?

  No wonder he didn’t desire her.

  She would never desire anyone who had disgusting matted bits in his hair. Of course, Fletch’s hair was the kind of hair you could brush against your body and it would feel like satin.

  Her skin was red from the scrubbing she’d given it, and her scalp felt clean and free. No more powder. No more tallow. No more feathers. No more frizzed hair. No more French maid.

  There was a noise at the door and she hastily leaped under the covers. Fletch poked his head around, raised an eyebrow, and then ushered in a footman with an empty bathtub.

  “They�
�re in shock down below,” he said, once the old tub had been removed by weary men. “I don’t think the kitchen has ever heated this much water, not if it was bath day for the whole parish. They’ll be sending up a few covered plates for our supper, since our trunks are back at the Fox and Hummingbird, and we can’t dress for the meal.”

  “I’m clean,” Poppy said. She should feel humiliated but she didn’t.

  Fletch started to pull his shirt out of his breeches. “It won’t bother you if I bathe, will it?” he asked.

  She shook her head as he undid the buckles at his knees.

  “You’ve seen me naked enough and you never turned a hair.”

  “That’s not true,” Poppy said, averting her eyes as he pulled his shirt over his head. “When we first married, I thought I would throw up from pure nervous ness every time you came to my room.”

  He blinked at her, his hands caught in his waistband about to pull down his breeches. Poppy felt herself redden. This was all so intimate. She’d never seen him undress. He came to her room sedately clothed in a dressing gown, ushered through the door by her maid. Somehow it felt different when she saw the way his chest expanded from the waist of his breeches. And he had a dusting of black hair on his chest, but it didn’t hide the muscles. They bulged under his skin in…

  “You felt as if you were going to throw up?”

  “My mother threw up the first time,” Poppy said. “Goodness, it’s hot in here, isn’t it?” She flapped her hand in front of her face.

  “Your mother vomited?”

  “Oh yes. Many women do, you know,” Poppy said, chattering to cover up the fact that it was—he was making her feel quite peculiar.

  “They vomit?”

  “It’s just such a shock. And so—well—”

  “Unpleasant,” he said, his mouth tight now. He pulled off his breeches in one smooth gesture.

  Poppy felt the most peculiar sensation in her stomach. Fletch’s legs were long and golden-colored. His flank was a smooth curve. Everything about Fletch was beautiful. He had his side to her so she couldn’t see his privates. That wasn’t beautiful, of course, as her mother had pointed out long ago.