An Affair Before Christmas (13 page)

Villiers didn’t even have the strength to read the rest of the letter, which was galling.

He had his chess board by the bed, but he couldn’t seem to keep his mind on a good chess problem, even though Finchley set it up from
Chess Analyzed
, by Philidor, just as he had asked him to do.

His eyes kept slipping around his room, his empty, tedious room. He had redone it two years ago in a pale gray, the color of an early sky over the ocean, of a day when autumn is just turning into winter. He still liked the color. But it was empty…empty…terribly empty.

He could even find it in himself to regret the fact that his fiancée had left him for Jemma’s brother, though he didn’t give a damn about that when it happened.

“May I bring you some barley soup, Your Grace?” Finchley said, hovering in the doorway like some sort of specter of death.

“No,” Villiers said. And then: “No, thank you, Finchley.”

“A number of visitors called this morning,” Finchley announced with some pride. He took a tray from a waiting footman and displayed it as if it were a baby. Sure enough there was a little heap of cardboard bits, embossed with the names of nobility, acquaintances, friends and the purely curious.

“No, thank you,” Villiers said. There was no one he cared to see among the heaps of cardboard. The truth was that he was depressed. He would have liked to see Benjamin. Benjamin would have rushed into the room like a breath of chill water, and Villiers would have had to say something sharp to him, and would have thought about clumsy-footed puppies and the like.

It was something, to come so close to death. And then to remember that his friend Benjamin had already died.

“I don’t suppose,” he said, just as Finchley was about to leave, “that the Duchess of Beaumont paid a call? Or the Duchess of Berrow?” That would be Benjamin’s widow.

Finchley bowed. “No ladies were among your visitors, Your Grace.” He said it patiently, as though Villiers had forgotten all the social etiquette. Of course no ladies came. Why on earth would Benjamin’s widow pay him a call? Doubtless she blamed him for Benjamin’s suicide.

He would have thought that Jemma might have come. She had said they were friends, after all. One had to suppose that they weren’t as good friends as that. It was hard to remember…his brain was all foggy.

“The Duchess of Beaumont didn’t call, did she?” he asked again, just to make sure.

Finchley got an odd expression on his face, but he shook his head. “No, Your Grace.”

“Raved about her, did I?” Villiers guessed. “I suspect I said all sorts of things, Finchley. I have the oddest memories. Did the solicitor ever come?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Finchley said. “Do you not remember creating your will?”

“Of course,” Villiers said, lying through his teeth. Then he took pity on the uncomfortable manservant. “You may go.”

Finchley disappeared and Villiers stared at his fingers in the light. They had grown thinner, almost transparent, really. Of course Jemma hadn’t visited. She couldn’t visit him. That would be tantamount to telling all London that they were having an
affaire
—and the worst of it was that they weren’t. In fact, Villiers had been stupid enough, as he recalled it, to turn down what might have been an invitation.

“Fool, fool,” he whispered under his breath.

And then, thinking of Benjamin, “
Fool.
” The fever was coming back, making his head reel. It lapsed in the mornings, but he felt it coming back now that luncheon was over, approaching like a dark velvet tide that would pull him under.

And for the first time, he thought: I might die. I really might die. And what a fool way to die, dueling over a fiancée for whom he didn’t give a fig. A life thrown away for a careless word, for a twist of steel.

Not that there was much to give up but a tangle of regrets and some lost friends. Benjamin…dead. Elijah. Elijah, married to Jemma. His life made his head ache.

There was one thing, though…

One thing that had to be done.

Already his eyesight was wavering. “Finchley,” he called, hearing his voice crack.

His manservant appeared instantly. “I’ve got the fever again,” he said, to forestall the patient hand on his forehead. “I’ll have some water please, and I need to write a note. Quickly, before it comes on.”

But by the time Finchley came back with a sheet of foolscap, the fever had come, and Villiers couldn’t remember what he meant to say.

“That woman,” he managed. “Address it to her.”

Finchley sat beside the bed and said, “What woman?”

To Villiers, his valet’s lean figure grew longer, grew horns, swayed against the wall. He closed his eyes. “We were all friends, of course. What is her name? Charlotte, I think. Perhaps Charlotte. From His Grace, the Duke of Villiers. Greetings.”

He forgot what he wanted to say and that he wanted to say anything, and fell into a pool of warm water that was inexplicably waiting behind his closed lids. He was floating in it, flying really, when Finchley’s per sis tent voice came through the water, dimly, watery. “Your Grace. Can you tell me this woman’s last name?”

“Whose?”

“Charlotte,” Finchley said. “A woman named Charlotte. You are writing her a missive, Your Grace.”

“I am? Charlotte? Do you mean Charlotte Tatlock?” he said, knowing he sounded irritable. “A rather odd young woman, long in the tooth.”

Saying all that exhausted him and he fell back. A missive? What the hell is that? “No, no, I mean to say, tell her—tell her—” The pool yawned at his feet again, welcoming, warm. Perhaps there were mermaids there with bright eyes who would make him feel warm and loved. Nourished. Perhaps…Surely Benjamin’s widow’s name wasn’t Tatlock. Because Benjamin’s last name…what was Benjamin’s last name? “Tell her to visit me,” he said. “Tell her that—tell her that I miss Benjamin.”

He could hear Finchley’s quill scratching and it made his head throb. “Now go away, do,” he said. “Deliver it by messenger.”

When the door closed, he closed his eyes and fell into the pool but there were no bright-eyed mermaids with sleek green tails, merely shifting shadows and heat. It was so hot that the pool must be heated by volcanos.

And so it went, until another dawn.

Jemma followed in a more leisurely fashion, making sure that her side bustles didn’t touch the carriage door. “I suspect that Mr. Grudner doesn’t believe in cleaning,” she said, looking in the window.

“Look at that,” Poppy said, pointing.

Jemma peered closer. “An old riding glove? What does it do, fly by itself?”

“It belonged to King Henry VIII. See? It says so on the card.”

“And what’s the proof of that,” Jemma said, snorting. “You could take any old glove and put a card next to it saying it belonged to King Solomon himself. Besides, Poppy, did you know that Henry VIII never bathed? He didn’t like water next to his skin, apparently. My uncle told me that the king’s skin was as smooth as a baby’s behind. But imagine…” She shuddered. “Imagine the inside of that glove!”

It was a small store, painted a pleasing cherry red. Everywhere Poppy looked were boxes topped with glass, glass shelves, even glass pedestals with precious objects on top.

“Ladies,” a man said, coming forward. “You do me too much honor.” He was tall and thin with a wild shock of white hair that made his head appear too large for his body, like a puppet at Barthlomew Fair. “I am Ludwig Grudner. May I show you something? Perhaps the glove of Henry VIII that you admired in the window?”

“No,” Poppy said, smiling at him. “I’m interested in scientific curiosities, if you please.”

“I have a lanhado from Africa,” Mr. Grudner said. “Ten foot wing span, of course, and beautifully stuffed. I have to keep it in another location, but I could have it delivered to you tomorrow morning.”

“Not stuffed animals, but curiosities,” Poppy explained. “I intend to develop my own curiosity cabinet. I saw your advertisement for the horn of a Sisfreyan beast.”

“A notable piece,” Mr. Grudner said. “A true miracle, that. I sold it for three hundred pounds.”

“Three hundred pounds!”
Jemma interjected. “That’s an outrage!”

“The only one of its kind,” Mr. Grudner retorted. “It was worth far more than that, and I did it only because Lord Strange is one of my best customers.”

“He is?” Jemma asked.

“Lord Strange is a great naturalist,” Mr. Grudner reported. “And, of course, he is able to indulge his curiosity. He has one of the best collections in En gland, and most of it purchased from this very shop.”

“Oh,” Poppy said, obviously entranced. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t get to see the horn of the beast before it was purchased.”

“The store is full of wonderful objects…Every lady should have her own curiosity cabinet. Can I show you the hand of a mermaid, perhaps?”

Jemma wandered away once Poppy was happily occupied in poring over Mr. Grudner’s unsavory collection. She found a small picture made entirely of feathers and was trying to decide whether it depicted a monkey climbing up the back of a man—or possibly a person climbing a flight of stairs or perhaps a cow next to a tree, when she saw a chess piece, sitting by itself on a small pedestal.

It was the white queen, carved from ivory. She stood with a regal frown, her body shadowed by the enormous crown that bloomed on her head. The crown was a hollow sphere, exquisitely carved with open work, and when Jemma peered inside she saw inside another sphere, also open, and inside that, yet another.

“Exquisite, is it not?” Mr. Grudner said, popping up at her shoulder. “I’m afraid that I have only the one piece. The entire set belongs to Lord Strange and I have not been able to convince him to part with it.”

“Then why on earth did he part with the queen?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say for certain,” Mr. Grudner said.

“A chess set,” Jemma said, “is nothing without its queen. Useless. Why on earth would Strange give you the queen?”

“He sold it to me, ha ha,” Mr. Grudner said. “Didn’t get to be the richest man in En gland by giving away pieces of artwork like this.”

“Why would he sell it to you?”

“I suppose he must have given up chess,” Mr. Grudner said. “However it may be, Your Grace, I assure you that this piece is quite lovely on its own. There are five nested spheres inside the crown, ending with the smallest ivory marble I’ve ever seen.”

Poppy called from the other side of the store. “Jemma, do look at this!”

Jemma walked over, bringing the queen with her. For some reason she was reluctant to put down her fiendishly frowning little face, so obstinate even in the face of losing her king and the rest of her court.

“I found a marvelous statue of a boy and a butterfly,” Poppy said, holding it out.

“A copy of an ancient Greek statue,” Mr. Grudner said, “and a very fine one, if I say so myself.”

“Just look at the detail on the butterfly!” Poppy exclaimed.

Jemma looked, but it wasn’t the butterfly but the naked youth kneeling before it that struck her as interesting. “Who does the piece represent?” she asked Grudner.

“Eros, or Cupid, in love with Psyche,” he said. “Psyche means butterfly in Greek, of course.”

“And what is that?” Jemma asked, peering at the odd rock in Poppy’s other hand.

“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!”