An Affair Before Christmas

by Eloisa James

  Fletch lowered himself into the bath and threw his head back. His hair slid backwards like black embroidery floss, just the way that Poppy’s was going to do from now on. He was so beautiful that she felt her mouth go dry. The sweep of muscle, golden skin, and there—between his legs—

  She couldn’t imagine how he kept it from being visible all the time, the way it stood out from his body like that. He must have to keep it penned in, the way her stays trapped her breasts. He had his eyes closed, so she leaned back against the pillows and looked.

  He looked, well, elegant. Powerful.

  The whole sight made Poppy start shivering a little, because it made her think about how he used to come over her and say, “Poppy, are you ready?” And she always nodded because she was desperate to get it over with. And then he would rub there, against her, and sometimes…

  The memory of it made her feel feverish between her legs and she turned her head away.

  Fletch, meanwhile, closed his eyes more tightly and smiled to himself. Things were going along quite well. A tiny sprig of hope was blossoming in his chest.

  “Will you wash my hair?” he said, leaning his knees against the sides of the tub so that his wife could have her fill of looking, if she wanted. “You could pull on my shirt.”

  She could hardly say no, so she came behind him and started washing. He arched his back into her hands, and gave a little stifled groan.

  Her hands froze. “Are you all right?”

  He thought she sounded breathless. “It feels so good,” he said hoarsely, laying it on as thick as he dared.

  “Oh, good,” she said, rubbing his head harder.

  By the time she had finished, he’d thought up another scheme. “Poppy, would you mind washing my legs? I’m so large that I’m afraid I’ll turn this tub over.” He rocked it a little to illustrate and water splashed onto the floor.

  “Don’t do that!” she said. “I don’t want those footmen up here again. They already think that we’re half-cracked.”

  He reached out a long leg. “Would you mind?” If he said so himself, his legs were fine, though his crown jewels were what he really wanted her to inspect. She looked as pink as an Easter cake as she rubbed a cloth over his ankles. He bent his knee so that she could reach his thighs more easily.

  She kept stealing looks at him, so finally he did her a favor and threw back his head (he was starting to get a neck cramp) and closed his eyes again. “Thanks, sugarplum,” he murmured.

  The cloth was inching up his thigh. He didn’t dare even take a peek from under his lashes because if she looked interested he would have to throw the tub to the side and leap on her. That wasn’t in his plan.

  He let her get close to the crown jewels, but not close enough to touch. “Would you mind doing the other one?” he murmured, pulling his right leg back.

  But instead of a slow caress of his ankle, a cloth rubbed him so fast and hard that he probably lost half his leg hair. Two seconds later she was tossing a towel in his direction and he was wondering what went wrong.

  Probably it had to do with the jewels themselves.

  Damn it, if most women threw up—and he’d never heard that before, but what did he know?—perhaps she was feeling a little nauseated. He knew damn well that he was a lot bigger than most men.

  Not that it had ever done him any good, he thought morosely.

  “What do we wear for nightclothes?” Poppy asked.

  While he was standing in front of the fire, drying himself, she had tucked herself into the bed. She had her eyes rigidly on the far wall, the better not to see him, he supposed.

  Damn.

  “I’ll get something,” he said, pulling on his breeches and shirt. It took some rearranging to fit everything into its proper place, since certain parts of his body didn’t seem to have recognized that the game was up, for the night at least.

  All the way down the stairs he told himself that he didn’t desire her. OK, that he did desire her, but that nothing was going to happen. Nothing. Nothing. He was as neutered…as neutered. Think St. Albans, he told himself. You think St. Albans walks around in this state?

  The thought was certainly dampening, though his body paid no attention.

  What was a bit more dampening was the vision of himself and Poppy dressed in the landlord’s night clothing. The man had offered a nightrail owned by Elsie, but Fletch thought cleanliness might be an issue. So when the landlord offered two clean nightshirts, he grabbed them.

  In the end it wasn’t so hard to rein in his inner de vil. Once they had eaten, and were back in bed, Poppy told him the idea she’d had about the possum and its strange thumb. And then he started to tell her about his talk, and she liked it so much that he actually got up and gave it. Without notes. Striding back and forth in front of the fire, the landlord’s nightshirt flapping around his knees.

  At first Poppy kept breaking into giggles, but he saw exactly when she started listening. And he saw when the spell was broken and mentally dropped the next two paragraphs and swept into a conclusion.

  She clapped and he felt so proud that he was grinning like a maniac. “There can’t be a lord in the house to disagree with you!” she cried.

  “It’s just because of some advice from Beaumont,” he said. “You see, it’s all about telling a story, rather than actually parsing out the arguments. And then you pointed out that it would be better to be clear and simple—”

  But she was giggling again.

  “What?”

  “It’s your—your thing,” she said, covering up her mouth, “when you don’t have it trapped in your breeches, it’s so hopelessly odd-looking, Fletch! You have to forgive me, but—” and she broke into peals of laughter.

  Fletch looked down and there it was, proudly tenting the front of the blasted nightshirt. Well, he couldn’t expect any different. Poppy was drowned in acres of fabric, but her hair was curling in adorable ringlets, and she was the prettiest, sweetest, most delicious thing he’d ever seen.

  He sighed.

  “It’s a man’s curse.”

  “I know,” Poppy said, sobering. “I shouldn’t laugh. After all, you never laugh at my breasts, do you?”

  “Never,” he said with absolute truth.

  “And yet they’re just as odd in their own way. I mean, if I ever have children they’ll leak milk and even now they bobble all around, and once in a while they actually fall out of my dress.”

  “Very odd,” Fletch said. “Odd. Very odd.” And then because he couldn’t think of another thing to say that didn’t involve close contact with those breasts, he suggested they go to sleep.

  So he snuffed the candle and climbed back into the featherbed. The snow had stopped a while ago; to Fletch’s regret it seemed likely that they would be able to leave in the morning. This storm wouldn’t keep them in the bed for a hundred years.

  He was lying on his back, staring up into the darkness of the rafters when a small hand crept into his. “I’m so happy that you came to Oxford with me,” Poppy whispered.

  He was too. But he was afraid to tell her why in case he ruined it all.

  “You’re my responsibility,” he said, a bit roughly. “I’ll always look out for you, Poppy.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered back.

  He thought she sounded a little disappointed, but maybe it was just wishful thinking.

  Chapter 39

  It was only as Charlotte climbed out of the hackney the next day that she realized that she’d forgotten to put her Bible in her bag. Not that it really mattered, but she had convinced May (who thought her visits were scandalous) that she was succoring the dying by reading biblical passages.

  “He’s worried his immortal soul is lost,” she had explained.

  May dithered, torn between distrust and an innate wish to help. “I just wish there was someone else who could do the succoring,” she had said over and over, wringing her hands. “Why must you be the one to read aloud the Bible?”

  “No one will
think anything of it, if they learn of it.”

  “They certainly will!”

  “Not if he dies,” Charlotte had said.

  “Oh!” May had said. “It seems so…”

  But Charlotte had stayed up half the night thinking about it. “I don’t see how Villiers can possibly survive. He’s had a fever for months now. He’s thin as a rail and stretched…you can see it. It’s a terribly cruel way to die.”

  “Oh, dear,” May said.

  “If there’s anything I can do, I shall.”

  May wrung her hands again but they both knew Charlotte had no choice. Yet for all Charlotte talked of death, she had a plan. Villiers perked up when she sparred with him. He needed that. When he wasn’t fighting, he lay quietly in his gray and sleepy room. He let himself slip away. But when she insulted him and fought with him, he woke up.

  It probably wouldn’t work. But it was the only thing she could think of.

  She walked into his bedchamber, ready to insult him, and stopped. Villiers wasn’t alone.

  Propped against the window on the far side of the bed was a lean man with a rugged face. His eyes were black as midnight, with great circles under them, as if he’d had no sleep. Even tired, there was no mistaking those sharp-cut cheekbones; she looked from Villiers to the stranger and back again.

  “Look at that,” the man drawled, not bothering to come to a standing position. “Your churchifier has shown up and damned if she doesn’t see a resemblance between the fanciest man in the ton and myself.”

  Villiers had been lying with his eyes shut. His skin looked translucent to Charlotte, drawn tightly over his cheekbones. He opened them now and looked—with the same eyes as his relative—at Charlotte. “There you are, Miss Tatlock,” he said. He smiled too, that sweet smile that came so rarely.

  She walked over to the bed and looked down at him. “I came to read you the rest of that story I began, but I forgot my Bible.”

  “Do tell,” the man by the window said. "‘The Song of Songs,’ Villiers?”

  She would have thought he was horrible except there was something strained in his voice, as if he too were trying to wake Villiers up, make him answer by taunting him.

  “The story of Jesus’s birth,” she said. “His Grace was quite curious to find out how it ended.”

  “Badly,” came the voice from the bed. “It ends badly, like so much else in life. My dear Miss Tatlock, I find I am hideously tired today.”

  She tried to think of something to say.

  A thin hand waved. “My cousin. You see, I do have family. Someone has to be duke after me. It’s taken months, but my solicitor just managed to track down the man himself.”

  The future duke grinned at Charlotte, his teeth white against his bronzed skin. “It’s killing him to admit that such a shaggy type as I will take over the title.” It was true that he wasn’t very elegant. His coat was rumpled and hung open. He was wearing a cravat, of a sort, but it looked nothing like the gorgeous pieces of linen that dukes tied around their necks.

  “Cruel,” Villiers said. “Handing over my exquisite house, not to mention my collection of walking sticks, to this sad excuse for a gentleman.”

  “Your name, sir?” Charlotte asked.

  “Miles Dautry. I wouldn’t want to be rude, Miss Tatlock, but I think that the duke should preserve his strength at the moment.”

  He was evicting her. But she couldn’t do that before she tried to rouse Villiers. “How can His Grace possibly relax when the dukedom is going to one such as you?” she asked, sitting down as if Dautry hadn’t spoken. “The very name Villiers is known for exquisite judgment, style, taste…no wonder the duke cannot rest.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence in the room. Then Villiers started chuckling. It was weak, but a chuckle. And he opened his eyes and and peered at his cousin.

  “A mess, isn’t he? I’m so pleased that you agree with me, Miss Tatlock. I should have taken him on while I was still on my feet.”

  “It’s not too late,” Charlotte said quickly. “You could teach him all the ways of being a duke. How to dress.”

  Dautry snorted but he didn’t say anything, which meant that he saw her plan. He raised an eyebrow at her and she gave him a quick frown, willing him to fall in.

  Villiers waved his hand again. “Too late. I think the man has never polished his nails. He probably only owns one pair of stockings—”

  “Not true,” Dautry said. “I have several.”

  “Undoubtedly all worsted,” Villiers said with a sigh. “And his coat…just look at his coat, Miss Tatlock. I may be sick unto death, but even I noticed when that coat entered the room. My only plea sure is that I get to flee this cruel world before a man wearing that coat becomes duke.”

  Charlotte looked. Dautry was singularly broad in the shoulders, wearing a black coat that had nothing to distinguish it but the fact it was made of linsey-woolsey. And it was rumpled.

  “I rode all night after I got the message,” he said.

  “I see just what you mean, Your Grace,” Charlotte said. “It’s a disgrace. A disgrace to the name.”

  Dautry’s eyes narrowed. “What about you, Miss Tatlock? After all, you are surely here hoping to become a duchess?”

  She blinked at him.

  “I know your type,” he said. “You’re hanging out for a title and merely pretending to do a bit of good works. I expect you hoped Villiers would rally.”

  “No,” Charlotte said. “I was planning to snare the heir. That means you…if I hadn’t had a look at you first! Now I shall have to reformulate all my plans.”

  Villiers started laughing weakly. “Help me up, Dautry. She’s got you there. No decent woman will marry you when you look more like a dock-worker than a duke. And then what will happen to my poor estate? Handed from man to man without a woman’s intervention?”

  Dautry looked around the bedroom and curled his lip. He still hadn’t unfolded his arms. “I don’t want to insult you, but the house shows signs of a woman’s hand, though you never bothered to marry one.”

  “There’s nothing manly about being a sartorial disgrace,” Villiers said, looking truly awake now. “Dautry, you’ll have to submit to my tailor. Dying man’s last wish.”

  Charlotte couldn’t grinning. “Don’t forget the barber,” she said, her voice as sweet as syrup. “No woman would marry a man who looked like a shag-bag.”

  “I think you should do the same for Miss Tatlock,” the future duke said, his eyes narrowed. “Look at her gown. I’m surprised that you can tolerate being in the same room with it. Plain serge and tucked in the style of two years ago.”

  “I almost forgot,” Villiers said. “I’m planning to find her a husband. What Miss Tatlock needs is a philosopher. I don’t suppose you know any?”

  “What a lucky little hymn-singer,” Dautry said, his eyes flicking over her plain gown. “I’m afraid that philosophers rarely venture to sea. We prefer men who do rather than just think about it.”

  “She must wear colors,” Villiers said dreamily. “Brilliant colors, jewel colors.” He seemed to be turning a little pink and the words tumbled out in a manner that Charlotte recognized.

  She bit her lip and looked to Dautry. He came over to put a hand on Villiers’s forehead. “A cool cloth, if you please,” he called to the footman outside the door.

  Villiers’s eyes closed again.

  “Miss Tatlock,” Dautry said.

  It was time for her to leave.

  “Strawberries…embroidered taffeta,” Villiers murmured.

  She could feel Dautry’s eyes on her as she picked up her knotting bag. Then, just as she was leaving, he said: “I trust that you were not indeed hoping to make yourself a duchess, Miss Tatlock?”

  She didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. She didn’t want to turn around, because her eyes were shining with tears, but she did. “I don’t even know him, sir. He gave my name to the valet by accident whilst in a fever, I believe. So, no. But I wished that readi
ng the Bible would keep him alive.”

  “I would agree with you there,” he said with a rueful twist of his lips.

  “He’s been ill for months,” she said. “Why weren’t you here? He’s so alone.”

  “I had no idea he was indisposed. I met him once, at seven years of age. I scarcely recall the event, and I certainly had no idea he’d fought a duel. Fool, at his age.”

  “He’s not so old!”

  “Cut velvet,” the duke suddenly said. “With roses.” His cheeks were stained with color.

  “Too old to be fighting duels,” Dautry said.

  “I’ve never seen you before at any event.”

  He leaned back against the window and crossed his arms again. “So you’re not just a good Samaritan happened off the street, but a member of the so-called ton?”

  “It happens by birth and you, sir, are in the same dire predicament,” she snapped.

  “Actually, no.”

  “You are a future duke.”

  “An unlikely duke, and I never spent much time thinking about it. I only inherit due to a younger son two generations back who fell in love with the daughter of a sailor and went to sea.”

  “A sailor!” Of course it all made sense now. He had a windswept look about him, and there were crinkles at the corners of his eyes, for all he couldn’t be more than thirty. A duke’s son turning sailor. What a scandal that must have been! Charlotte couldn’t help grinning. “Did she run away to sea with him?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Celebration from a dulcet young lady of the ton?”

  She picked up her knotting bag again and slipped through the door. He followed, but stopped in the doorway.

  “Don’t you ever stand straight up?” she demanded.

  “I like to know where the nearest solid support is.”

  “You’re not on board ship now.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “Don’t let him turn you into a duke too easily. You have to fight every inch of the way, do you hear?”

  “Damned if you don’t sound like my mother,” he drawled.

  The words thumped to the bottom of her stomach and she felt the old maid she was. “Well, goodbye.”