An Affair Before Christmas

by Eloisa James

  “It’s a geode,” Poppy said. She put down the statue of Cupid. “Look. You open it like this.” The two rough bits of rock fell open to reveal a gorgeous amethyst interior. “It’s like a wild little cave that you can hold in your hand,” she said. “A fairy grotto.”

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” Mr. Grudner said promptly, looking like a man who had no idea what a fairy grotto might be but knew that the phrase suggested pure profit.

  “I found this as well,” Poppy said, ignoring him. She held out the pit of a fruit, a small one, perhaps an apricot. Delicately she pulled at it until it fell apart. Inside was a mess of the tiniest spoons Jemma had ever seen.

  “That’s darling!” Jemma said, suddenly remembering a little serving set she’d had for a long-lost doll.

  “Twenty-four spoons inside a cherry pit,” Poppy said.

  “The smallest such in the world,” Mr. Grudner put in.

  “That’s no cherry pit,” Jemma stated. “It’s a peach at least.”

  “Cherry, Your Grace,” Mr. Grudner said stubbornly.

  Jemma sighed. Clearly, Poppy was about to be fleeced of all the money she had taken from her husband’s bank account and yet…why shouldn’t she be fleeced if she wanted to? It was not a Reeve family habit to shelter people from making errors. Cherries, peaches, who cared?

  But Poppy surprised her. She dimpled at Mr. Grudner and asked for a chair, and then charmed him into dusting it, and by the time she sat down and took off her gloves, and accepted a cup of tea, Jemma could see exactly where this was going. Sure enough, forty minutes later they walked out of the store leaving a bewildered own er, who had half convinced himself that he had practically given away the cherry stone to the duchess because she was…because she was…

  Charming. He sighed and shook his head, thinking about what Mrs. Grudner, God rest her soul, would have said. It wouldn’t have been pretty.

  “The worst of it is that I had to pay full price for my chess queen,” Jemma said. “And you bought everything for about half what he first requested. That’s unfair!”

  Poppy dimpled at her in complete unrepentance. “My mother says that a lady never bargains for anything.”

  “Then what do you call the exchange that just went on there? That poor man asked for fifty pounds for the cherry stone, and you paid him, what, four?”

  Poppy grinned. “I call it—I call it—”

  “Let’s just call it rebellion,” Jemma said dryly. “Would it be fair to say, Poppy, that in the process of leaving your husband, you have also left your mother?”

  “That’s just how I see it,” Poppy said, leaning back and opening the sack containing her cherry stone. “Tomorrow I intend to visit France & Banting. By all accounts they make delightful curiosity cabinets.”

  “There are cabinets built for cherry pits?” Jemma asked incredulously.

  “Haven’t you ever seen a curiosity cabinet? The King of Sweden’s was displayed at the Leverian Museum last year, and I told my mother I was visiting the poor but I went to the museum instead.”

  “Quite a mutiny,” Jemma said dryly. “I trust she didn’t discover your perfidy?”

  “Thankfully no. And you may be as sharp as you please, Jemma, but I assure you that it is hard to withstand my mother’s will.”

  “I can only imagine,” Jemma said. “Luckily, she’s never shown me the faintest interest.”

  “That,” Poppy said candidly, “is one of the reasons why I am so grateful that you took me in. My mother’s concern for her reputation is such that she cannot visit me, no matter how she may wish to do so.”

  “I knew that my reputation would come in handy for something. You should hear Beaumont complain about how that same reputation is ruining his chances for this and that in Parliament. I shall have to inform him that it is actually of ser vice in keeping away mothers and other marauding armies.”

  “I think I shall request a cabinet of oak and ebony. I love the combination of black and brown woods.”

  “Hmmm,” Jemma said. She had taken out her Queen and was examining her again. In truth, she was a delicious chess piece. Her gown frothed in the back like the curve of an ocean wave crashing on the shore.

  “Mr. Grudner said that your piece came from Lord Strange, didn’t he? His is one of the curiosity collections that I would love to see.”

  “It’s such a shame about Strange,” Jemma said. “Even I couldn’t visit Fonthill, his estate, of course. Why, why do you suppose that he broke up the set and sold the Queen? It’s such a cruel thing to do.”

  “Why couldn’t you visit Fonthill? I mean to.”

  “His reputation is ten times blacker than mine. The man has scandalized people who think of me as angelic.”

  Poppy leaned back. “I mean to see his collection. And I want to go to the Ashmoleon Museum as well. And to the Royal Society. Mother never allowed me to go to their meetings, even though they regularly allow ladies to attend.”

  Jemma blinked at her. Poppy’s face was as charming as ever, but Jemma suddenly realized that there was nothing soft about Poppy’s jaw, and that her smile was as determined as it was sweet.

  “Miss Tatlock is the secretary of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Royal Society,” she offered.

  “You mean that young woman who flirts with your husband?”

  “I think of her as Miss Fetlock,” Jemma said. “It is an affectionate name, you understand.”

  Poppy smiled at her. “I wish I could think up a mean name for Louise, but I’m too fond of her.”

  “There we differ. I have no liking whatsoever for Miss Fetlock, though I am the first to admit that my dislike is extremely unfair. As far as I know, she adores Beaumont from afar and he certainly would never risk his precious reputation to do more than converse with the poor woman.”

  “Then we must direct her attentions in some other direction,” Poppy said firmly. “As it happens, I know a delightful young scientist, Dr. Loudan.”

  “She couldn’t marry just any young man from Oxford, no matter how intelligent he was,” Jemma said. “She’s caught in the bounds of propriety, you know. One of those. Poor but a peer.”

  “He’s the Honorable George Loudan,” Poppy said. “And he stands to be Viscount Howitt someday.”

  Jemma raised an eyebrow. “What a splendid idea, Poppy!”

  “I shall go to the next Royal Society meeting. At least, the next one to which they invite women. And I’ll introduce the two of them.”

  “How on earth did you meet this scientist, Poppy?”

  To Jemma’s amusement, Poppy got a little pink.

  “Poppy!”

  “I wrote him a letter,” Poppy confessed. “You see, he wrote a treatise on the three-toed sloth in Transactions of the Royal Society, and while I felt he made some astute comments, he overlooked an important point that Dr. Hembleton made in a previous article, having to do with their back claws.”

  “You wrote him a letter? About a three-toed sloth?” What ever Jemma was expecting, it wasn’t missives to do with sloths.

  Poppy nodded.

  “Illicit correspondence with a gorgeous young man.” Jemma leaned back, grinning. “You did say that he was gorgeous, didn’t you, Poppy?”

  Poppy looked even more flustered. “Well, of course, I wasn’t thinking of his person when I wrote him a letter—”

  “Of course you weren’t,” Jemma said, chortling. “Not a thought. Never. Of course not. Did he write back?”

  “It isn’t like that,” she protested.

  “He wrote back, did he? Probably thought you were brilliant, didn’t he? And—just how many letters have ensued, Miss Holier-than-Thou Duchess?”

  Poppy looked a little faint. “Do you really think—see it—do you think that he—”

  “Who knows how he thinks? Men are a mystery to me. I love the idea that you’re engaged in conversation, albeit epistolary, with one of the world’s great scientists!”

  “I hardly think he’s one of the wo
rld’s great scientists,” Poppy said. “He may be an expert on the three-toed sloth, but he makes frequent errors in his assessments of research. I suspect him of sloppy note-keeping.”

  And then, when Jemma kept giggling, she said: “Truly, this is not an illicit flirtation.”

  “No? I suppose you showed all your letters to Fletch?”

  “He wouldn’t be interested. Fletch doesn’t care about sloths.”

  “I suppose if the sloths were wearing little ermine-lined cloaks, it might be different,” Jemma said mischievously.

  “You shouldn’t—” Poppy said, and then started laughing. “Fletch is rather ridiculous, isn’t he?”

  “Delicious,” Jemma said. “But ridiculous.”

  “He never used to be like that,” Poppy said a little sadly. “In the last year, he just became more and more polished.”

  “No wonder you turned to the purveyor of two-toed sloths. I would have done the same. Well, if I had the faintest inclination to discuss such a topic.”

  “Three-toed, not two-toed. You would be interested,” Poppy said. “Really, you would! Dr. Loudan can be quite fascinating.”

  “I suppose he thinks you’re fascinating as well?” Jemma asked mischievously.

  “No,” Poppy said.

  “No?”

  “You see, I have the sort of brain that simply can’t forget a tiny detail I read somewhere. I’m just like that.”

  “I forget everything,” Jemma observed.

  “But you remember every chess game you ever played. My brain works that way when it comes to articles about sloths and French marmoses. It’s terribly inconvenient,” she said feelingly.

  “Why?”

  “Unladylike,” Poppy said, wrinkling her nose. “I can’t help it, though. I see a new book or an article on a subject that interests me and I become simply feverish to read it. My mother loathes that propensity.”

  “How strange,” Jemma said. “I don’t mean you, but the very idea of feeling feverish about a sloth, three-toed or not, is peculiar. You must know that.”

  “I never tell anyone. And you must promise to do the same.”

  “Why doesn’t this Oxford fellow simply embrace you and your detailed brain, then?”

  “I find that scientists are not always excited to be reminded about details,” Poppy said, looking rather surprised. “Surely accuracy is of the utmost importance when it comes to natural study, but you would be surprised, Jemma, at how inexact some people can be. Dr. Loudan is occasionally quite reluctant to drop an idea, even when the evidence is against him.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a naturalist. There are very few of them wandering around Paris. So do you really think we could interest the inexact but Honorable George Loudan in Miss Fetlock?”

  “The curious thing to me, Jemma, is why you are so interested in removing Miss Tatlock from your husband’s company. You acknowledge that he would never endanger his reputation. And she is a gently bred young lady. Your marriage is in no danger.”

  “I already saw my husband in love with another woman,” Jemma said. “I left for Paris because I couldn’t bear to be around him in that circumstance. That’s one thing that Beaumont has never understood: marriage and reputation are not the most important things.”

  “It’s a common problem,” Poppy said thoughtfully. “My mother would agree with Beaumont.”

  Chapter 23

  September 2

  Charlotte didn’t know what to make of the letter when it arrived. She saw the ducal seal and snatched it from the house maid as if it might burn her fingers. And then she ran upstairs where May couldn’t see it.

  Only to find to her disappointment that the seal was that of the Villiers family, and not that of the Beaumonts. Of course not. The Duke of Beaumont wouldn’t write to her. He would never do that. He was solid, respectable, honorable…

  She came back to herself with a start and stared down at the note. It was obviously written by a servant, and it stated that the Duke of Villiers would like her to pay a call. The Duke of Villiers? An unmarried man? How on earth could she do that? Why would he even expect that she would consider it?

  And why would he want her to visit? He barely exchanged two words with her at the dinner party given by the Duchess of Beaumont, which was the only time they’d met. And finally, who was Benjamin, the name mentioned in the letter?

  The problem, Charlotte thought, was that her life was boring. She’d been on the shelf more years than she cared to count. Her mother had always said that she had an intelligent countenance, and she knew that she was honest, fairly virtuous and chaste. Not that she’d ever had a chance to be less than chaste, but a virtue is still a virtue, even if untested. But none of those qualities made life interesting.

  May entered the room. “Is that a letter from Beaumont?” her sister demanded.

  “How did you know that I received a letter?”

  “The maid told me, of course,” May said impatiently. “I see that Mr. Muddle shall indeed have to have a word with His Grace. He is toying with your reputation in a most unkind fashion, sending you private letters.”

  “Mr. Muddle will have nothing to do with the Duke of Beaumont!” Charlotte cried, horrified at the thought of her sister’s fiancé muddling his way through a conversation with the duke. “You couldn’t possibly ask it of him, May!”

  “I most certainly could,” May said, drawing herself up. “Mother would not have permitted the visit. And no one could have your welfare more at heart than my future husband, Mr. Muddle!”

  Charlotte hated the way that May’s voice dropped when she said the word husband. And it wasn’t just jealousy either. It wasn’t.

  “It’s not a letter from Beaumont,” she said flatly.

  “Oh.” May sat down. “Well.”

  “Beaumont has never written me and he won’t. You just don’t understand, May. He’s not interested in flirting with me.”

  “But you are interested in flirting with him,” May said, with a sister’s shrewish perception. “And sometimes that’s even more dangerous to a woman’s reputation, Charlotte.”

  Charlotte was too depressed to answer, so they just sat for a moment until May said, “Who’s the letter from, then?”

  “It’s from the Duke of Villiers.”

  “Oh!” May said. “Is it a deathbed confession?”

  “Confession? Confession to what?”

  “I don’t know!” May cried, clasping her hands together. “I believe he is already dead. Maybe it’s”—her voice lowered to a curdled whisper—“a letter from a dead man!”

  “Villiers is dead?”

  “So I heard this morning,” May said. “Dead. The coal man had it on the best authority from the fishmonger in Gatrell Street.”

  “That’s awful,” Charlotte said, letting the letter fall from her fingers.

  “But what did he want from you? I didn’t think you even knew him.” She reached for the foolscap.

  “He attended the dinner party given by the Duchess of Beaumont that I was at last spring, but we hardly spoke. I think a mistake was made in the address.”

  “No,” May said, with her usual brand of tiresome logic. “It’s plainly addressed to you, both on the overleaf and the letter itself.” She read the note. “How peculiar. Of course, I know what he’s talking about. And so do you, Charlotte. So do you.”

  “I do?”

  “Of course you do! It’s that mad Reeve whom you danced with all those years ago. The one you thought would offer you marriage and instead he hived off to the country, mad as a march hare.”

  “You needn’t make me sound like such a fool!” Charlotte snapped.

  “Be that as it may,” her sister said, “obviously His Grace is referring to Reeve. They must have been friends, and he wanted you to know that on his deathbed.”

  “Except,” Charlotte said, “that Reeve’s given name is Barnabe, not Benjamin.”

  “Close enough,” May said. “It’s obvious.”
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  “Well, it hardly matters if the duke is dead,” Charlotte said.

  “You should drop off your card,” May said. “The duke was thinking of you—of you, Charlotte—practically on his deathbed. It’s the least you can do.”

  “I’ve never understood that custom,” Charlotte said. “What ser vice does it do the dead person when I drop my card at his house? What good is that, pray? Suddenly all the carriages line up outside a house and small bits of paper fly back and forth, but does the dead person sit up in his coffin and count his visitors? No, he does not!”

  “You are unaccountably strange,” May said. She’d said it many times before, so the sentence flowed with practiced ease. “All I can say is, thank goodness it isn’t the Duke of Beaumont thinking of you with his last breath. You’d never live that one down!”

  “How many times must I tell you,” Charlotte said between clenched teeth.

  “I know,” May said, “but you must admit that it’s all rather strange. Here you are, practically a spinster, Charlotte, if you don’t mind my saying so. Neither of us ever had a shard of interest from, well, the nobility. And suddenly you’re being chased around by dukes. It’s—it’s odd.”

  Charlotte folded up the letter. “I’ll drop my card at Villiers’s house on my way to buy some physic for the downstairs maid. Her face is swollen again, and Cook wants mustard to make up a poultice.”

  “You could send Roberts,” May observed. “It isn’t ladylike for you to traipse off to the market for herbs.”

  “I’m an old maid, remember,” Charlotte said, with an edge. “And I need some fresh air. It’s quite odd to receive a letter from someone who just died.”

  “I can’t imagine what everyone will think of it! I just hope they don’t think that you were as close to Villiers as you supposedly are to Beaumont!” She laughed shrilly at the very idea and trotted off.

  Charlotte didn’t bother to change her dress. She was neatly attired in a simple blue sacque gown. It was neither particularly flattering nor particularly fashionable, but it served. She stared down at it for a moment, remembering how resplendent the Duke of Villiers always appeared, clothed in fantastically embroidered costumes. When he appeared at the party following that fatal duel, he looked white, but gorgeous.