An Affair Before Christmas (21 page)

“Of course!”

“I thought women slept with their heads upright so as not to disturb their curls. You never took your hair down when I visited your bedchamber.”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, why not?” He came up behind her and started tweaking her hair. “Even when I saw you in a nightgown your hair was always up; I thought you always left it so.”

“I took another bath after your visits, naturally, so my maid would take down my hair then. What are you doing?” Poppy asked. She was starting to feel very peculiar. Even though Fletch wasn’t interested in bedding her anymore…well, they were
alone.
Really alone. No maid waiting to bathe her. No maid at all.

“I’m taking all the pins out of your hair, of course.”

“That young woman would have done perfectly well!”

“She was wearing an apron, Poppy. Did you see that apron?”

“She works in the kitchen. Why shouldn’t she wear an apron? I sometimes wear an apron when doing house hold things.”

“You didn’t notice that the apron was bloody?” he enquired. “Because I did. It looked as if gentle Elsie had been twisting the heads off chickens with her bare hands.”

Poppy had to admit that she was somewhat reluctant to be bathed by a chicken killer. “Ow!”

“I can’t get this feather to come out. The long one in the back.”

“Well, don’t just pull!” But when Poppy put her hands up and tried to help out, he batted her away.

“I’ve got quite a few pins out,” he said a minute later. “But this black stuff isn’t coming out, Poppy. And the feather doesn’t budge.”

“It will wash out,” she said. “If you leave now I’ll wash it out in the tub.”

“And just how are you going to do that yourself?”

She turned around and glared at him. A feather thwacked her in the eye and she brushed it out of the way.

“Those feathers are glued into your hair. Did you know that, Poppy? Your maid must be gluing them in and then cutting them out later.”

She hadn’t known that, but there was a great deal she didn’t know about hair dressing. That’s why she paid Luce so much.

“The problem is that we don’t have a pair of scissors around here,” he said. “I suppose I can ask the innkeeper.” He opened the door and bellowed down the hall before she thought to answer.

A moment later he waved a pair of scissors at her. “I’m going to have to cut out all that black stuff and the feathers. You’d better stay very still.”

She backed away. “Are you jesting? You’re not cutting my hair. I’ll wash out the tar. And the glue.”

“Right,” he said, folding his arms. Poppy really hated the fact that he looked…well…so male. That was it. He was a big male, with a lot of muscles, and it naturally made her nervous. Actually, it made her want to run her hand up his arm, the part where the muscle was straining against the linen of his shirt.

“I’ll scrub it out,” she repeated. “So if you wouldn’t mind leaving, Fletch, I’ll get it done in a jiffy.”

“Where am I to go? You want me to go down and ogle the King of Beggars?”

“I certainly don’t care where you go but you can’t stay here while I bathe.”

“Why not? I’ve seen you naked, Poppy. Hell, I’ve kissed you all over naked. We’ve been married four years, remember? That side of our marital life is over. I think you need help.” He picked up a strand of Poppy’s hair and looked at it with a distasteful expression on his face. “Have you ever bathed yourself?”

There was something in his voice that sounded critical. “No, I have not,” she said fiercely. “But neither has any other woman of my acquaintance.”

“I was just offering to help.”

Now he’d made her feel guilty for snapping at him. After all, what difference did it make? He’d seen her naked more times than she could count. And she could see tar clumping her hair powder. The itch was beginning to drive her mad. “All right. But I’m going to bathe in my chemise.”

He shrugged. “I like to be really clean myself but I know many ladies aren’t like that. One only has to walk into a ballroom in July to realize it.”

“I
am
clean!” she snapped.

“Your choice,” he said kindly. “It certainly doesn’t matter to me what you wear in the bath. I might as well say it again, but that part of our marriage is over.”

It was all quite embarrassing. Poppy started trying to untie her gown and realized that she couldn’t unhook her sash by herself so it was just as well Fletch was there. He was working at the little hooks when she remembered what Jemma had said and started giggling.

“Thinking happy thoughts about Loudan again?”

He sounded rather unfriendly. “Jemma told me that men could come in quite handy on carriage trips,” she said, feeling the laughter bubble up inside her again. “She was right.”

He pulled her dress backward, off her shoulders and arms, and she stepped out of it. This par ticular dress had three separate petticoats sewn into it and it weighed quite a lot. Her stays laced behind, so Fletch started working on them and cursing a little under his breath. He certainly wasn’t very handy. Poppy started thinking about the possum in the Ashmolean again.

“Those opposable thumbs are very important,” she told him.

There was a ripping noise and her stays fell away. She spun around to find him holding up bits of lacing.

“They wouldn’t come apart,” he said with a silly grin.

Poppy put her hands on her hips. “Now what am I going to do without laces?”

“Well, you can’t wear that gown again anyway.” He turned it over with his toe and Poppy could see black marks on the sides. When she raised her eyes, Fletch was staring right at her chest. She looked down too and realized that she was wearing a chemise so light that the line of her breast could be seen through it. She even saw the pink tip of one of her nipples.

But before she could wrap her arms around her chest, his eyes slid away as if there was nothing interesting there and he said, “You get in the bath, and I’ll try to wash out that tar.”

Of course he wasn’t attracted to her body anymore. After all, he’d had four years to sate himself on her, and that was more than enough. Plus, Poppy knew quite well that many women had really large bosoms compared to hers.

She lifted the hem of her chemise and stepped into the bath. She cast a quick glance at Fletch, but he was over on the other side of the room, looking out the window.

“It’s snowing,” he said. “A proper snowfall.”

She could just see a blur of white over his shoulder. It made the room seem even smaller and more private.

“I’d like snow for Christmas,” she said. She sat down in the water, thinking about what would happen to her chemise when it got wet.

Not that it would matter to him, anyway.

The wet cloth looked as fine as netting where it clung to her legs. She tugged it over her knees, but where it fell between her legs she could even see golden hair through the tissue-thin cloth. Quickly she brought her knees up to her chest, splashing water on the floor.

“Are you ready?” he said from the window.

“No!” If she wrapped her arms around her chest and kept her knees up, she was covered. Not decent, but covered.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m ready.”

She’d actually started reading the
Morning Chronicle
and the
Morning Post
, though she was careful not to let him know. There was no point in letting one’s husband think that he was interesting; it would only end in disaster.

This night Jemma looked at the board and knew she had him. There would be three more days, because of the one-move-a-day rule, but the game was over. “You didn’t play this game seriously,” she said, moving her queen to King’s Four and taking his only remaining castle.

He moved a pawn in a hopeless gesture of solidarity toward his threatened queen. “True,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want you to think that I want any less to win.”

“I believe it’s competition that spurs you to play,” she said. “Last game, Villiers was your competition, not myself. Without Villiers playing a parallel game, you can’t bring yourself to play your best.”

She didn’t say the obvious: that if her assessment were correct, he didn’t really care to win. And given that she herself was the purported prize for winning the match…well, there was nothing there that she hadn’t known for years, was there?

“Fox’s India Bill will be voted on any day,” he said. “Shall we go to the country soon? My mother writes that she will remain in Scotland.” There was no need to explain that comment: the dowager duchess was known far and wide as a harridan.

“We are having a house party,” Jemma said. “I’ve just sent out invitations.”

He was putting the pieces back in place and his hands paused for a moment and then continued. “Of course,” he said. “A excellent idea.”

Jemma felt nettled that he didn’t show more reaction. “Shall I invite Miss Tatlock?”

The question hung in the air. She was deliberately baiting him, and why? Why?

“I would enjoy that.”

So there was the answer to that question.

“Not her sister, though. I can’t stand her sister.”

“She dithers,” he said, agreeing with her.

“Poppy and Fletch, of course.”

“But not her mother,” he said this time. “I can’t stand her mother.”

“Lady Flora is not fluffy,” Jemma said feelingly.

“She’s feral.”

She laughed a little. “I’ll invite that nice Dr. Loudan from the Royal Society,” she said. “That will keep Fletch on his toes.” Elijah looked amused once she explained. “Jemma the Matchmaker,” he said. “It boggles the mind.”

“Their marriage doesn’t have to be over. They love each other.”

“But if their intimate life is as terrible as you say—”

She shrugged. “Ours wasn’t much better.”

Too late she realized that she’d walked into a trap. “Our marriage,” he said thoughtfully.

Jemma leaped from her chair. “Time to dress!”

He rose. “Perhaps…we could invite Villiers?”

“Villiers? But he’s—”

“Alone. Servants, but—”

The Elijah she fell in love with all those years ago, appearing in such an unexpected way. “If we invite Villiers, the gossips will be overjoyed,” she observed. “No one will believe he’s dying. They will think I’m having an
affaire
with him under your very nose.”

“When I think of him dying, I almost wish you were.”

For a moment Jemma couldn’t breathe. Then: “That certainly establishes my place in your life.”

He was pushing in his chair and looked up. “Whaa—” And realized. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

But Jemma had had enough heart-wringing for the day. “It will serve you right,” she said. “I’ll nurse him back to health and then slip in his bed and prove all the gossips right.”

There was something in his eyes—of course it wasn’t misery, though it looked…“I shall stoop to looking in keyholes,” he said gravely.

“And why would you do that?”

He took a step toward her. “You are my duchess, Jemma.”

“I have been so for years.”

He tipped up her chin. “You kissed me the other night.”

“A moment’s aberration,” she said, the words coming in a whisper.

“Kisses are like a claim of possession, don’t you think?”

They were so close that she could feel the warmth of his body and suddenly remembered how large he was compared to her. How different his body was from hers. He didn’t wait for her to come up with a clever riposte. He simply bent his head and kissed her breathless.

“Possession,” he repeated, his voice a little deeper than normal.

And left the room.