An Affair Before Christmas Page 5

  “No,” he said consideringly, “but I could do so. I believe, in fact, that you are the only woman I have met whom I could love. Love is always a decision, you know. Though I love chess, I find the wish in me to love something else as well. Perhaps you and I, Jemma, could find love together.”

  “Unless we are incapable of true love.”

  “Do you believe that of yourself? I have loved, though not in a sexual way.”

  “Benjamin?” she asked.

  “Indeed. And”—he raised his eyes again, and the shock of it went to the bottom of her spine—“and Elijah. Your husband.”

  “You and Beaumont were childhood friends,” she said. “But?”

  “He was golden, you know, even then.”

  “My husband?”

  “He was full of plans, to change the world, to change the village. He talked of them constantly.”

  “He’s still full of plans,” Jemma said feelingly. “I do believe he thinks the House of Lords wouldn’t function without him.”

  “He was always so,” Villiers said. “To be fair, I believe he may be right. He is not only intelligent, but incorruptible, which is a rare value in a politician.”

  “What happened to your friendship?”

  There was a queer lopsided smile on his lips. “What ever happens to men?”

  “A woman.”

  “Her name was Bess. I wish I could speak rhapsodically about her, but the truth is that I hardly remember her face. Though I loved her dearly—or thought I did.”

  “And Beaumont did as well?” Jemma laughed a bit. “I can just imagine the two of you, sparring over Bess’s attentions. From her name, I gather that she was not a marriageable young lady?”

  “I have a cousin named Bess,” Villiers said, standing and offering her his arm. “But of course you are right. Bess had an altogether worthy position drawing beer in the village.”

  “Where the two of you sat night after night, mooning over her blue eyes?”

  “No, I sat alone. You have to understand that this nose of mine was even bigger in my youth.”

  “But you won Bess anyway,” Jemma said, feeling quite sure she knew precisely how attractive a young Villiers would have been. She herself wouldn’t have lasted a moment against those eyes with less cynicism, more eagerness, his bottom lip, his hair…

  “I did. Until Beaumont decided that he wanted her instead.”

  “That sounds unfair—and quite unlike him.”

  “Ah, there were wheels within wheels, as there so often are,” Villiers said, sighing as he opened the library door. “But all I meant to say, Jemma”—and his voice lingered on her name, turned it into a caress—“is that I was mistaken to refuse your generosity.”

  Jemma wasn’t sure how to reply.

  He turned to her and made, suddenly, a deep bow. “With fair warning, Your Grace. I shall do my very best to entice you.” And then he turned with a swish of his magnificent rose cloak, and walked away.

  Jemma stood like a clod in the corridor and watched him leave.

  Chapter 6

  THE MORNING POST (CONTINUED)

  And should the circle of Amazons open its arms to our young, unmarried sprites, the chaste and virtuous children of our best nobility, one hates to think of the effect. Young ladies are vulnerable, yes, vulnerable—to the lure of sin, the sweet lure of sin!

  All laughter disappeared, replaced by civil smiles and deep bows.

  “Your Grace,” said St. Albans, a sharp-tongued fellow with a lamentable fascination with gossip. Who happened to have Fletch’s wife on his arm.

  “Lady Nevill, your servant,” said Gill.

  Fletch contented himself with bowing. He should introduce Poppy to Lady Nevill. Poppy was as beribboned and decorated as a box of French sweets, her hair carefully arranged into a towering stack of bows and curls.

  The worst possible thing happened, then.

  “Why Your Darling Grace,” Lady Nevill said. “How are you this morning?”

  Poppy dimpled at her. “Lovely, thank you, Louise. I thought I’d be exhausted after all that sewing we did yesterday, but I’m fine.”

  “Sewing?” Fletch said hollowly.

  “That’s where I was yesterday morning,” Poppy said to him. “The sewing circle for Queen Charlotte’s hospital. Louise and I kept sewing and sewing, and drinking cups of tea, for hours.”

  “You should keep better track of your wife, Fletch,” St. Albans said, obviously trying to turn the whole awkward mess into a light joke.

  “I never know where she is,” Fletch said. “It would be most tedious to track one’s wife like a grouse in hunting season. I find it easier to proceed on the grounds of total ignorance of her whereabouts.”

  “I always tell you of my plans,” Poppy said stiffly.

  “You must all think I am very slow,” Lady Nevill said, looking to Fletch. “I gather this gentleman is your charming husband, Poppy, about whom you’ve told me so much?”

  “Oh, yes it is,” Poppy said. “I’m so sorry; I thought you knew each other. May I present my husband, the Duke of Fletcher? Fletch, this is a very good friend of mine, Lady Nevill.”

  He made a leg. Lady Nevill dropped a deep curtsy. Her eyes were completely different now. She was friends with Poppy, damn it.

  “Your Grace, it’s a plea sure to meet you,” she said. “And now you young children must forgive me. I see a dear friend on the other side of the room whom I must greet. Au revoir!”

  Fletch bowed again. It was as if they had never flirted. As if he were no more than any other man. And he could tell from the delicious way she said au revoir that she even spoke French.

  Dammit.

  There was a moment of silence after she left.

  “You were both laughing so hard,” Poppy said. “Could you share the joke?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” he said. Anger was starting to burn in the back of his throat. Rage at her, rage at life…

  She dimpled. “I take it you were telling each other naughty jokes? I’m certain that I could understand anything Louise enjoyed.”

  “I doubt it,” Fletch said. The other men were absolutely silent. He knew his voice was laden with scorn and near disgust. He couldn’t help it.

  She blinked and then her sprightly smile popped out again. “Then I shall give you all the plea sure of explaining it to me!”

  “You must be joking,” he said. “There are some things that ladies of your type never understand.”

  She pulled herself taller. “Ladies of my type?”

  “You know the type, St. Albans,” he said. But St. Albans wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Good to the bone. Practically achieving sainthood right here in London.”

  “Fletch,” Poppy said. “Do not speak to me like this, I beg you.”

  “Why not?” For the first time he looked at her directly in the face. “We never say anything significant to each other any longer. In fact, I don’t believe we’ve exchanged an interesting word in a year.”

  She was rather white. “That is not true.”

  “Name one interesting sentence,” he said, jeering at her.

  She raised her chin. “I told you last week that I loved you. Under the circumstances, that was remarkably interesting.” She spun on her heel and left.

  “Dammit,” Gill said. He forgot he was wearing a wig and tried to run a hand through his hair. His wig fell off and plopped on the floor. It looked like a dead hare, lying on the carpet.

  Fletch’s jaw tightened. “I’m sick of her childish views. I can’t stand any more of her cheerful little comments about every damn thing. If I dropped dead in the street, she’d probably kneel down next to me and coo some platitude about how much I will enjoy heaven.”

  “She loves you, not that you deserve it,” Gill said.

  “Who cares if I deserve it? I don’t want it,” Fletch said. “Our marriage is a sham and a fraud. That being the case, I’d rather that we both understood precisely where we are, rather than my wife prete
nding that we’re a normal couple. That we have”—he spat it—“any sort of life in the bed.”

  “Almost no one does have an intimate life with his wife,” St. Albans said, apparently recovering his tongue after the shock. “Doesn’t mean he has to shoot her down in cold blood like that.”

  “She sees the world in rose and gold,” Fletch said flatly. “I believe she actually thinks we’re happy.”

  “She doesn’t now,” Gill said.

  Fletch hunched his shoulders. “Good.”

  Chapter 7

  THE MORNING POST (CONTINUED)

  There can be nothing more dangerous to moral fiber than a circle of women bent on achieving their desires, living a life of pleasure, and paying heed to no admonishments. This paper fears for the souls of every duchess in London!

  Poppy never used to cry before she became a duchess.

  Unfortunately, having a spouse had turned Poppy into a waterspout. She cried herself to sleep. She cried in the oddest moments, for example, in between meetings of the Charitable Society for the Reception of Repenting Prostitutes and the meetings of the board of Lady Charlotte’s Lying-In Hospital. Now she ran down a long corridor of Beaumont House, wiping away the tears as they rolled off her chin.

  How could he? How could he have said that, and in front of his friends? She knew they didn’t talk very much. She knew—she knew there was something terribly wrong.

  But try as she might, she couldn’t make it work. She woke every morning determined to make Fletch love her again, the way he used to before they married. She never betrayed the faintest irritation at the way he stalked around the house. Never, ever, did she irritate him by pointing out that they would have no children, given that he visited her bed once a month, if that. She never commented when he grew a silly little pointed beard, though he knew well that she loved his dimple. In truth, the goatee was vastly becoming.

  But it was like everything else in the past few years. Fletch had turned himself into a distinguished, incredibly beautiful stranger. He wore clothes of a kind that dazzled and frightened her. He wore that little beard. He hired a French valet and a French chef, and rattled away to both of them in the language.

  While growing up, her mother had made her study pianoforte for hours a day, saying the skill was essential to marriage. But if she offered to play for Fletch after supper, he would get a look of grueling boredom on his face, cross his arms over his chest, and sit until she finished a piece. Then he would stand, bow politely enough, and say his goodnight. Without kissing her.

  She slowed to a walk. When had Fletch stopped kissing her? The very thought made her hiccup with tears, but after a bit she found a handkerchief and tried to think about it. She couldn’t remember. The last kiss…she didn’t realize it was the last kiss.

  The last kiss he would ever give her, perhaps!

  It wasn’t until she discovered that someone was standing before her, touching her cheek and saying something that Poppy realized that she was leaning against the wall and howling. Literally howling with sobs.

  “I—I—I,” she said, and peered through her swollen eyes. “Oh dear!” she wailed, collapsing into Jemma’s arms. “I’m so—so—”

  Jemma gave her a kiss and said, “Hush,” and then said to someone over her shoulder, “You did precisely the right thing, Isidore.”

  Then Jemma gave her another kiss, as if she were a little girl, and said, “Darling, Isidore fetched me as soon as she realized you were in distress. Now, come in here, and Isidore will come too.”

  Poppy let herself be put on a sofa without saying a word and Lady Isidore Del’Fino sat opposite. Her mama had said that she should never share the particulars of her marriage, that it was disloyal. But every time that Poppy said anything about marriage to her mama, her mother would say that she had to train Fletch into a sense of his responsibilities and proper behavior.

  “Does he respect you?” she would demand.

  And Poppy would nod. She wasn’t absolutely sure of the truth of that, because she had seen something very close to disgust in Fletch’s eyes lately. But the alternative was so horrible that she couldn’t bear it.

  “If he respects you, there is nothing to worry about,” her mother would pronounce. “Do not say a word to anyone about your disappointments in Fletcher, and he will pay you the same favor. This is the nature of marriage.”

  More tears welled in Poppy’s eyes at the thought. She didn’t feel like adhering to the nature of marriage anymore. Especially when Jemma sat down next to her (at least as close as they could be, given the size of Poppy’s panniers, and said, “Now what on earth is going on, Poppy?”

  “It’s Fletch,” she said, hiccupping. Her handkerchief was sodden with tears, so she accepted Jemma’s. “My marriage—I can’t say it!” She sobbed a bit more instead.

  After a while Jemma said, “Marriages are like lap dogs. Everyone boasts about having a good one, but the only ones I ever see are devoted to scratching the paneling and jumping on people. Failures, in my eyes.”

  Poppy hiccupped again, loudly. “I’m sorry,” she said, gasping a little. “I always—always hiccup when I’m upset and mama says it is a most disgusting habit, but I truly am not in control of it.”

  “It’s not as bad as scratching the paneling with your claws,” Jemma said reassuringly. “Now what’s happening in your marriage? Or should I say, what can possibly be happening in your marriage that hasn’t already happened in mine?”

  “I am sure this is just the conversation to make me very glad not to be living with a husband yet,” Isidore said, while Poppy tried to stop crying. “Has your husband taken to wearing rouge?”

  “No!”

  “I only asked because I’m certain that Viscount St. Albans put a little something on his cheeks, and he and Fletcher are close friends, aren’t they?”

  “They doesn’t mean they share a pot of rouge,” Jemma said. She squeezed Poppy’s hand again. “You’ll feel better after you tell us, darling.”

  “I think he’s”—but Poppy couldn’t say it. The enormity of her suspicion was just too cruel to contemplate. “He was abominably rude to me in front of his friends,” she said. “He said—He made it clear that our marital activites are not all that—that he desires.” Tears welled up again. “But since he never comes to my bedchamber, I don’t see what I could do about that!”

  “He said that in front of his friends?” Jemma said. Her voice rose about two octaves. It made Poppy feel better just to hear it.

  “Bastardo!” Isidore hissed.

  “Precisely,” Jemma said. “What a bastard thing to do. What exactly did he say, Poppy?”

  “Well, I walked up with—with”—Her voice faltered.

  “With whom?” Jemma asked.

  “Viscount St. Albans,” Poppy said reluctantly, “and Gill. And…”

  “He was talking to a woman?” Isidore guessed. “He didn’t say this in front of a woman!”

  “No, she left.” But Poppy stopped.

  “I see,” Jemma said, giving Poppy’s hand another squeeze. “I would guess that Fletch has a mistress.”

  At the word, tears started backing up in Poppy’s throat again. “We were in love,” she whispered. “He was in love with me just a few years ago. And then it all went wrong!”

  “At least he had the decency to wait a year,” Jemma said. “I was only married a few weeks when I walked into Beaumont’s chambers in Westminster to find him tupping his mistress on the desk.”

  Poppy’s gasp was matched by Isidore’s.

  “No!” Poppy cried.

  “You never told me that,” Isidore said, at the same moment.

  Jemma smiled a bit tightly. “It’s not the sort of information one offers to one’s friends.”

  “Who was she?” Poppy asked.

  “Her name was Sarah Cobbett,” Jemma said. “Which is really irrelevant, because I gather he’s pensioned her off, or what ever it is they do with women when they’re done with them.”


  “At least you didn’t know her,” Poppy said.

  “I suppose the good thing is that they can’t pension us off,” Isidore said thoughtfully.

  “Yes, they’re stuck with us for life,” Poppy said. “Though Fletch would love to pension me off. He looks at me in such a way.” Her voice trembled and she steadied it. “I just wish I knew what I did wrong! Something I said? Or did? Now he loathes me. He truly does.”

  “Beaumont was a bastardo as well,” Isidore said.

  “The problem is that I still love him,” Poppy said. “I can’t help it. Ever since I realized how much he dislikes me, I’ve tried and tried to just cast him out of my heart.”

  “Goodness,” Jemma said. “Cast him out of your heart? You’re a poet.”

  Poppy hiccupped loudly.

  “Are you sure you can’t do it?” Jemma continued. “I had a foolish fondness for Beaumont in the early weeks of our marriage, but after I found him with his mistress—and, I must admit, after he told me that he loved the woman—I did not find it overly difficult to excise him from my heart. At the moment, he appears to be flirting madly with Miss Charlotte Tatlock, and I find it merely irritating.”

  “Really?” Poppy asked damply. “I’ve tried and tried this year, but I can’t help it. I still love him. If he’s in the room, I’m happier. And if I don’t know where he is”—her eyes filled with tears again—“I suppose he’s been off consorting with other women. I didn’t even think of that!”

  “Who was the woman he was speaking to?” Isidore asked.

  “Lady Nevill,” Poppy said. “Lu—” The name was broken by a particularly loud hiccup. “Louise! But—but I can’t believe that Louise…and yet they were smiling in such a way.”

  “Not Louise,” Jemma said firmly. “I’m not saying that Louise respects her marriage vows, though with her poor husband incapacitated as he is, no one makes much of a fuss about it. But Louise has her own code of honor and she would never sleep with your husband.” She reached out and pulled the bell cord.

  A footman opened the door directly. “May I help you, Your Grace?” he said, staring at the far wall. “Fowle asked me to stand outside and ensure that you were not interrupted.”