An Affair Before Christmas (10 page)

No one could get the duke to take more than the smallest sip of water. The last real drink he’d had had been during that brief period of sanity when Finchley tried the chess gambit.

“It’s chess,” Finchley said to Mrs. Ferrers. “It’s the only thing that speaks to him. Listen!”

Sure enough, the duke, voice cracked and hoarse from talking all night, said, “That’s two pawns in return for the sacrifice…” His hands waved pieces in the air: they had to give him chess pieces or he plucked them from the thin air, and that was so ghoulish that Mrs. Ferrers said it quite gave her a turn.

“I’m going to fetch the duchess,” Finchley stated.

“The Duchess of Beaumont? I thought as how you said that the master would never forgive you for letting the duchess see him in this condition.”

“No more he will,” Finchley said, looking at his master. Villiers’s hair was all sweaty again, his face red and pinched. “But he’ll die soon. I have to try it.”

He took the duke’s own carriage, and stamped up the steps to the town residence of the Duke of Beaumont. But it wasn’t all clear sailing. “I won’t have that,” the Beaumont butler, Mr. Fowle, said, on hearing his request. “The duke has enough to plague him without his duchess calling on Villiers at his home. Half of London is already thinking that they’re on their way to a tryst.”

“He’s sick unto death,” Finchley said desperately. “No one could think that.”

“Don’t be a fool,” the butler replied. “You know perfectly well Villiers could be a corpse in that bed, and the stories will have him doing a lively dance in the sheets. The only thing is to speak to Beaumont himself. Because if the duke accompanies the duchess, why then there’s nothing to it.”

“Do you think he would?” Finchley said. “You know that Villiers and Beaumont aren’t the best of friends.”

Mr. Fowle drew himself up. “His Grace may not approve of Villiers’s actions, but he would never desert a man in need.”

No more would he. A moment later Finchley’s story was tumbling out before the duke.

“Damn these duels,” Beaumont said. “And damn Gryffyn for challenging Villiers in the first place. Bring me my greatcoat, Fowle.”

“The duchess?” Finchley asked.

“The duchess has retired to bed,” Beaumont said. “If Villiers needs to play a game of chess, I’ll play with him.”

“He must drink water,” Finchley said, feeling desperate. “I tried to play chess with him, Your Grace. It’s not just that he needs to play chess; I’m afraid that no one but the duchess will do. Please, could we rouse her? Please?”

Beaumont looked at him for moment. “You’re a good man,” he said. “If I don’t have Villiers drinking within the hour, I’ll drive back here myself and cart my wife over to the house. Will that be sufficient?”

Finchley bowed. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“I’ll try,” he had told Finchley. But he couldn’t talk to Villiers, not with a footman bathing Villiers’s forehead, and Finchley breathing heavily to his right, and the house keeper peering in from the stairs. “I’ll ask you all to leave.”

Finchley started to say something, so Elijah hit him with the look he gave recalcitrant legislators in the House of Lords.

Once the room was quiet, Elijah pulled the chair closer. “Villiers,” he said.

There was no appreciable response. “Your Grace!” he said more loudly. “Villiers!”

“His white queen is being smothered,” Villiers said. He didn’t even glance in Elijah’s direction, just waved the rook in the air.

Elijah picked up a glass of water and tried to bring it to Villiers’s lips, but the rook struck the glass and he almost dropped it onto the covers.

“Smothered,” Villiers said hoarsely. “It’s being…” His voice died into a cracked mumble.

He’s going to die, Elijah thought. Villiers—Villiers, who’s that? They hadn’t really spoken in years, but this was no Villiers. This was Leopold, his oldest, dearest friend. Somewhere under that mop of sweaty hair and reddened eyes was Leo, the first person he had ever loved in the world.

He put down the glass and snatched Villiers’s rook. That got a response. Leopold’s reddened eyes swung about and he said, “Black is desperate. He has no more checks.”

“Leopold,” Elijah said, using his most forceful voice. “Leopold, I’ve come to play a game of chess with you.”

Villiers tried to pull the rook away.

“That’s
my
rook,” Elijah said. “I always play white, don’t you remember?”

For the first time, Villiers’s eyes fixed on him. “Who are you?” he said.

“Elijah,” he said. “I’m Elijah.”

“Elijah,” Villiers said dreamily. And then: “Oh no, Elijah’s a duke now. He’s married to a duchess.”

“You are a duke too,” Elijah said firmly. “I’m come to play chess with you.”

Villiers struggled to sit up, so Elijah hauled him up on his pillows. “First you must drink some water. Then you may make a move.”

There was something different about Villiers now; he was inhabiting his own body again. Elijah avoided his eyes and picked up the chess board, swiftly putting the pieces in their places. Then he picked up the glass of water and put it to his lips. Villiers was staring at him over the glass, but he opened his cracked lips—and drank.

“Who are you?” he said suddenly.

“Elijah. The Duke of Beaumont.” Elijah smiled a little. “Jemma’s husband.”

“Jemma doesn’t have a husband,” Villiers said.

“She doesn’t?”

Elijah moved a pawn to Queen’s Four.

Villiers reached out his hand but Elijah stopped him. “Not unless you drink.”

Villiers took a gulp and then picked up a black pawn. His hand trembled, but he managed to move his pawn to Queen’s Four as well.

Elijah took out a knight. Once prompted, Villiers drank and then, his hand shaking terribly, managed to move a pawn to Queen’s Bishop Four.

“Jemma is not married,” Villiers said, when the glass of water was almost gone. “I know she’s not married because she doesn’t look married.”

“How does she look?” Elijah asked with interest.

Villiers gulped the last of his water and held out his glass. “I seem to be unaccountably thirsty.” He moved his queen forward.

Elijah found it rather vexing to realize that he was playing a man who was verifiably out of his mind, and yet that madman was spinning a pretty web around his queen. “Why do you say that Jemma doesn’t look married?” he asked again.

“She looks like a woman who’s never been properly loved,” Villiers said. “
You
wouldn’t know this, but she’s actually married to a fellow I used to know.”

Elijah cast him a quick look, but Villiers was frowning at the board.

“We’re no longer friends,” he said, making his move and taking an unprompted drink of water.

“Perhaps the fellow loves her,” Elijah said.

“Oh no,” Villiers said. “She told me that he loves his mistress, which is a bloody strange thing under the circumstances, but apparently he told her so himself.”

Elijah ground his teeth. Of course, he had said such a bloody foolish thing but it was years ago. Could it be that Jemma remembered? One had to suppose…

“I should like to be married to her myself,” Villiers said, sounding quite chatty now that his voice wasn’t so hoarse. He had almost finished the second glass of water, so Elijah poured more into his glass.

“Would you?” His own voice sounded like two pieces of iron rubbing together.

“She knows her way around a bed,” Villiers said. “Did you really move your rook to King’s Seven? That was remarkably foolish.” He promptly took the piece. “She knows her way around a bed, and yet she’s remarkably intelligent. I would bed her, but I’m afraid I would lose her. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“No, why?” Elijah managed. His queen was in danger; he saw his queen was in danger and he could do nothing. Even in a fit of fever and madness, when Villiers couldn’t seem to recognize who he was, he had spun a web of black pawns around him and now a black rook was looming.

“I want her, but I want her friendship more,” Villiers said. “I’m afraid you’ve lost this game. What did you say your name was? The doctor, aren’t you? I do feel better.” He picked up Elijah’s queen and lay back against his pillows. His eyes drooped closed but he said something.

“What is it?” Elijah said, bending over.

“Lord, what fools these mortals be,” Villiers said.

Could he be quoting from Shakespeare in the midst of a fever? Elijah ventured to put the back of his hand against his forehead and he seemed cool enough. It was Elijah who felt as if he had a fever. A fever of rage.

Villiers opened his eyes again. “Just be sure to take Betsy out before you leave, would you?” he said.

“Betsy?
Betsy
?”

“My dog,” Villiers said. “She’ll need to go out. She’s been keeping me company.”

“She’s not your dog,” Elijah managed. “She was
my
dog, though she died many years ago!”

For a moment Villiers’s eyes opened all the way and he looked at him. “Why, so she did,” he said, sounding surprised. “Is that Beaumont? Did you keep the dog and the woman as well? Are you married to the barmaid now? Lucky sod.”

“No, I’m not,” Elijah said. “Drink some more water.” There was something in his voice that seemed to snap into Villiers’s consciousness because he frowned. But he drank the entire glass Elijah handed him.

Elijah took the glass back, then picked up his greatcoat.

“If you have Betsy,” came the voice from behind him, “and you have Jemma too, then…then you have everything, don’t you?”

It was not the first time in Elijah’s life that he realized how unimportant “everything” can feel.

Finchley was outside the door. “He drank five glasses of water,” Elijah said. “I expect he needs to piss. I’m not prepared to hand him a chamber pot; I’ll leave that up to you.”

“Your Grace,” Finchley said, and there were tears in his eyes. “Will you come again?”

Elijah tightened his lips. “If you need me, I’ll come,” he said. “Send me word in my chambers. You say he doesn’t have the fever in the mornings?”

Finchley nodded.

“Make him drink five to six glasses of water. Not just sips. He has to drink enough for the whole day.”

Finchley clasped his hands. “I will, Your Grace. I will. And you’ll—”

“If you need me, I’ll come.”

What had she done to Fletch that he should be so rude to her? Loved him, that was all. Loved him even when he grew that little beard, and became so bewilderingly elegant, and stopped breakfasting with her.

There were limits to any woman’s patience. Although patience didn’t seem to be the word for the twist of poker-hot anger she felt on remembering how Fletch smiled at Louise. He smiled at Louise the way he used to smile at her. And then it all dropped away when he saw her, and there was nothing but scorn and dislike in his eyes.

“He used to love me,” she told her reflection in the glass. It looked back at her, precisely the same face that Fletch first fell in love with. She wore the same clothes—or near enough as made no matter. She maintained appropriate standards when they were married. She tinted her lips before coming to breakfast, and was never seen in
dishabille.

But the weight of Fletch’s silent demands was always with her. More French, she thought. He wanted her to be French, even though she wasn’t French.

Her marriage had turned out to be just like her relationship with her mother. Her mother’s demands were different. Be beautiful. Be powerful. Be obedient. But the important ones were the ones Poppy could never achieve: you’ll never be as beautiful as I am, her mother had remarked many a time. You’ll never charm men the way I do. I would have married a duke…

An awful thought struck Poppy: what if she had never been in love with Fletch? What if she had simply obeyed her mother’s command to marry a duke…and he was an available duke? Now she thought of it, Fletch was the only unmarried duke she met in Paris after her debut.

She didn’t understand Fletch. She didn’t even feel as if she knew who Fletch was—so how could she be in love with him? The awful pressure in her chest eased a little. She had only thought she loved him.

She had no choice but to love her mother, no matter how badly she disappointed her. But she could choose not to love Fletch, and she could choose to make his disappointment irrelevant to her.

I need to make my own choices, Poppy thought. Decide for myself. What do I want to do with my days? Never go back to that house, said her heart. Stop trying to please my husband. Stop trying to love him.

What she really wanted was time to be Poppy, rather than the Duchess of Fletcher. With a sudden rush, ideas crowded into her head: things she wanted to do, books she wanted to read, places she wanted to see. She almost felt giddy with the joy of it. She didn’t need to be a duchess. She could be just herself. Poppy.

She could live alone. Look at Jemma. Jemma had left her husband and set up her own house. She could do that as well. And she could travel! Giddy images of Paris, the Nile, the wild Americas, came to mind.

There was a little tap at the door, and her maid said, “His Grace requests your presence.”

She turned toward her lip color, and dropped her hand. She didn’t love Fletch. She had never loved Fletch. Why should she make herself beautiful for him?

She walked down the stairs and found she was actually smiling. How long had it been since she genuinely smiled in Fletch’s presence? Probably over a year. She had spent all that time wound tight as a top, trying desperately to figure out how to please him, how to make him love her.

Walking into the drawing room was a bit difficult because—though it was unimportant, she quickly reminded herself—Fletch was so beautiful. His hair was like ebony, with a sheen like midnight. His nose was straight and his eyes slanted under his eyebrows, making him look just faintly exotic. If he wasn’t so infernally beautiful, he wouldn’t be so demanding.

“Poppy!” he said, turning around with a frown. That made it easier. He was always frowning at her, and she was sick of it.

She smiled at him, a different smile than the one she normally gave him. It wasn’t a cringing puppy smile, begging for love. “Yes, Fletch?”

“I need you to come home now.”

“I won’t be coming home,” she said, seating herself. “I’m staying with Jemma for the foreseeable future. She won’t retire to the country until December because of Beaumont’s involvement in the House of Lords; I shall stay with her.”

“Couldn’t we just skip all the fuss, please, Poppy? Surely we’ve known each other long enough so that you could simply forgive me and come home.”

“I do forgive you.”

“Oh good,” he said, looking as if he’d never had a doubt of it.

“Although you were abysmally rude to me in public.”

“I did apologize. I will never do such a thing again.”

“And you were flirting with one of my friends.”

“I hadn’t the faintest idea—” he said, and stopped.

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, tapping her finger on the chair, “that one is a bit more difficult to explain away, isn’t it? It
is
true that Louise is one of my friends. A dear friend, unfortunately for you. But of course there are many women in London with whom I am positively unacquainted.”

“Yes,” he said, looking uneasy for the first time.

“So I think we can both agree that you should simply look farther afield,” she said gently.

His mouth actually fell open a bit, which was very pleasant to observe.

“We should make some plans,” Poppy said. “Obviously, we shall have to co-habit again at some point in the future…shall we say five years or so? When you feel that the question of an heir becomes pressing, I assure you that I will be compliant. I had felt that I wanted a child early in our marriage, but now I realize that it would be far, far wiser to wait. I have things to do.”

“You do?” He sounded stunned.

“Yes. You and I have separated in an amicable way, and so we can plan everything without acrimony. I would suggest five years and then we shall have to live in the same house hold again.”

“You what?”

“We could plan for more than five years, but we run the risk of childlessness. After all, we have been married four years with no issue.”

He just stared at her.

“We can discuss these arrangements later,” she said with another encouraging smile. “Fletch, was there something you wished to say at this point?”

Though she was being tremendously cheerful, the hot little coal of rage was still under her breastbone. She paused, but he seemed to have been struck dumb.

“Jemma assures me that she would love me to retire with them to the country for the Christmas season. She will be bringing a large party with her. After that, I thought I might return to France for a few years, but I’m not certain of my plans yet. I hope to travel widely.” The little coal of rage prompted her to say, very sweetly, “But never fear, Fletch, I will be certain to give you my direction. I know it would be most incommodious if you had no idea where your wife was. No one wants to have to track his wife like a grouse in hunting season.”

He finally opened his mouth. “I didn’t mean the comment in this light.”

“I will tell you where I am going, and you won’t have to worry about me. Oh! I forgot. You never do worry, do you?”

His brows knit. “You sound most unlike yourself, Poppy. I am truly sorry that I have made you angry.”

He looked so perplexed that she actually laughed, a genuine little laugh. “I’m angry, Fletch, but I’m as angry at myself as you. I should never have married you.”

“You shouldn’t?”

“I think I married you because my mother told me to do so.”

“You—you married me because you were in love with me!”

She smiled again because it felt good to tell him the truth. “No, I wasn’t, Fletch. My mother told me from the moment I was seven years old that I was to marry a duke. You were the first English duke who arrived in Paris, and so I married you. Yes, I thought myself in love with you, but now I’ve discovered that I made a mistake. Which is”—she pointed out—“a very good thing, as you clearly made the same discovery some time ago.”

He opened his mouth.

“Didn’t you?” she prompted. “Because it seems to me that you not only realized you were not in love but you decided to seek companionship elsewhere.”

The silence grew between them until she couldn’t stand it. For all she wasn’t in love with him, it was terribly humiliating to have one’s husband be so uncaring. “I really don’t see any point in our discussion continuing.”

“We haven’t discussed anything yet!” Fletch protested.

“There’s not much to discuss.”

“You need to come home now,” he said, exhibiting the kind of stubbornness that characterized little boys in the orphanage.

“I’m not coming home.”

“You must.”

“Why?” For a moment, the world froze on its spiral. Because, despite herself, despite her talk and her bravery and her lack of love, there was a little part of her heart—

“Your mother,” he said.

“My mother.” The aching part of her heart closed its doors. For a second she thought she might cry and then she grabbed control. “What about my mother?”

“You knew quite well that your mother has moved into our house,” he said, glaring. “It’s been two months, and she shows no sign of leaving.”

Poppy was very pleased to discover that Fletch’s glare didn’t bother her in the least. “I’m certain that you can handle her.”

Fletch’s eyes narrowed. “What are you up to, Poppy? Where is all this wild talk coming from? Did the Duchess of Beaumont put you up to this?”

“I haven’t spoken to Jemma about my plans,” Poppy said truthfully. “Beyond asking her if I could stay with her through Christmas. And I certainly haven’t told her the conclusions I’ve drawn about our marriage. Naturally, she knows what
you
think of our marriage. Most of London has heard it by now.”

“You sound spiteful,” Fletch said.

“Oh dear,” Poppy said. “I’m sure I didn’t mean to. I’ve spent so much time trying to charm you that I suppose it was bound to wear thin.”

“Your mother—” he said, helplessly.

The coal of rage got a little larger as she realized that the only thing he really gave a damn about was the fact that her mother was living with him. Poppy knew perfectly well that her mother was a rather unpleasant person to live with.

“I’ll speak to my mother,” she said, resolving to do just that. She would thank her for staying with Fletch.

“Poppy!” he said, sounding urgent, for once.

But Poppy was done. He could go to hell, him and his black clothes and the pure beauty of him. She turned her back to him without even saying goodbye and walked to the door.

“Poppy!”

She left.