An Affair Before Christmas (31 page)

Ever since Poppy was small, she had always welcomed Christmas. Her mother rarely lost her temper on Christmas; it was a quiet but celebratory day. They would sit about and her mother would let her skip her three hours of harpsichord practice, and the hour with the song master and the hours dancing. She even watched as Poppy played spillikins, though she always refused to play herself. And they would have gilt-topped gingerbread men to eat, a trip to church with warm bricks at their feet, and finally a roasted peacock for dinner.

There was a sound of feet and then warm arms wrapped around her waist from behind. “Come back to bed,” said a sleepy voice.

“It’s Christmas,” she said.

“Let’s celebrate.”

“Not by that!”

“Why not?” He was nuzzling her neck, which was very sweet.

“Christmas is—Christmas is special,” she said, pulling away.

“You are special.” He reached out for her again.

“Fletch, it’s morning.”

He blinked at her. “So?”

She wiggled away. “It’s not only morning—it’s Christmas morning. All of that”—she waved at the bed—“it isn’t seemly for the morning.”

His expression darkened a bit. “What do you mean by seemly?”

“I couldn’t—” She stopped. It almost sounded as if she’d heard herself say this before. Her mind skipped back to herself, lecturing Fletch on the inappropriateness of openmouthed kisses on a Christmas some years ago.

He folded his arms and raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t be French all the time,” she said slowly.

“I wouldn’t want you to be.”

“I won’t always feel like making love under a tree.”

“Not even behind the curtains?”

“No.”

He was grinning now. “I can live with that. Because there’s always the bed. Look at me, Poppy.”

She met his eyes.

“No—look at me.”

She started to blush. “It’s morning, Fletch! My maid will be here any minute.”

“She’ll either knock first or learn to,” he said. “Now look at me, Poppy.”

She started chewing on her lower lip, but she let her eyes fall below his neck. He wasn’t wearing drawers. His legs were long and very strong. It was those legs that plowed through the snow last night once he decided to carry her home. And his arms…she loved the way the muscles bulged in his forearms. He’d carried her all the way home as if she weighed no more than a feather. Poppy had nestled against his chest, her whole body boneless and soft and whispered things to him that she was fairly sure he couldn’t hear.

Plus, she liked the way his chest came down into a hard little series of valleys. There was a little arrow of hair. And there it was. Not that it could make her blush anymore. Still, her glance lingered in an affectionate sort of way. And even looking made her feel that melting surge of heat again.

“Well,” she said briskly, to cover up the fact that her knees felt a little weak, “I looked.”

“What did you see?”

“Are you looking for compliments?”

“Absolutely.”

She turned up her nose. “You look like a perfectly healthy male in your twenties.”

He took a step toward her. “Don’t I look like the person you love?”

Their eyes caught, but it was time for the truth. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, John.”

“Like someone you married not just because your mother wanted you to?”

“I don’t think”—her voice caught—“I don’t think she had anything to do with it. Not really.”

“Like someone who will be there, beside you, every day for the rest of your life?”

She managed a wobbly smile at that one.

“Poppy, what did you think that Christmas was for?”

“Nibbling on gingerbread men?” she whispered.

“I’m your Christmas gingerbread man,” he said, just a quirk at the corner of his mouth betraying the fact he was laughing.

Poppy gathered herself together. “Are you saying that making love to one’s spouse on Christmas is seemly?”

He smiled at her as if she’d won the village archery contest. “I am.”

“And are you saying that making love in the morning is also seemly?”

“Yes. If not vitally important.”

“And that”—and she had to say this one slowly, because it was so important—“that you won’t lose interest in making love to me if I don’t act like a Frenchwoman?”

“And I don’t want to have to drag you out under a tree all the time either.” He tilted up her face. “Don’t you see, Poppy? I love you. I loved you enough to give up sex because you didn’t like it. Now that you do like it…well, I’d like to do it anytime you’ll let me. Under a tree, sure. With a French accent,
mais oui
. But snuggling in the bed with my oh-so-English wife, after she gives me a lecture on flying squirrels’ toes, always. And for our whole life. So will you, please, come back to bed now?”

There were tears in her eyes. “I think,” she said softly, “that I would like to marry you.”

“You are married to me.”

“I married a duke,” she said. “I would like to marry you. My John, who happens to be a duke.”

He swept her up in his arms. “Perdita, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she gasped.

“Good. Then let’s seal our engagement.” He swept her off toward the bed and then said, “Are you going to protest?”

She shook her head.

He deepened his voice to a silly imitation of a preacher. “It’s most unseemly for unmarried people to make love.”

She kissed his shoulder. He fell backwards but kept talking, the devilish laughter in his eyes as always. She kissed his neck. And then his chin, that strong chin now free of its jaunty little beard. So she kissed his dimple too.

“I love you,” she said. Her voice sounded husky and seductive, except now she knew that it wasn’t French but just desire. “I don’t know how it happened, how I was so lucky. Because it’s true that had you been some other man, some other duke, my mother would have forced me to marry you and I was such a stupid little creature that I would have. But somehow—somehow—you were the duke who appeared. I don’t deserve you.”

“I feel the same way. The way you respond to me while making love—”

“I listened to my mother,” she said, interrupting. “I could hear her in my head all the time. I could feel her disgust—never you, Fletch. Because if I’d really felt you, if I’d really known you, it would have been different. From the very first night together. I just didn’t know you were my husband, not really.”

“I was always your husband,” he said. “There’s never been anyone for me since I saw you the first time, Poppy. Never. When you left me, I felt as if my soul had left the house. I kept walking about and pretending to be a normal person, but I was missing this vital part, this soul part—does that make sense?”

“With this kiss,” she whispered, her lips against his, “I give you my soul. For keeping.”

“For better, for worse,” he said.

“In sickness and in health.”

“'Til death do us part.”

And from that moment forward, the Duke and Duchess of Fletcher fell silent. But from then onwards, they surprised their friends, and later their family, by insisting that, all evidence to the contrary, they were married on Christmas Day.

And they celebrated that day together for years, and years. And years.

“I know Henry VIII had a large stomach,” Fletch observed. “But I think Lord Pladget took liberties in his interpretation.”

“His wife told me that he tied the hearth rug around his middle with twine.”

“You know, I thought that Lady Isidore was quite sedate when I first met her,” Fletch said. “But look at her now!”

Isidore danced by, dressed as Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. Her skirt was made of gold tissue and embroidered all over with peacock tails; her bodice wasn’t worth mentioning because there was so little to it.

“Oh no,” Poppy moaned. “That’s Lord Beesby she’s dancing with, isn’t it?”

“He’s a bit of a silly old codger,” Fletch said. “Always votes—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Poppy said. “Just look at the way he’s staring into Isidore’s eyes.”

“In love,” Fletch said. “Hopeless case, I’d say.”

“Is he married?” Poppy hissed.

“Not yet.”

She relaxed and they continued dancing down the length of the room, narrowly avoiding a collision with a boisterous peer dressed, rather improbably, as the Pope. His face had turned a ripe purple and he was swaying like the sail of a tall ship. All the talk of costumes made Poppy remember something she’d been meaning to ask.

“Fletch, who was that young man you hired?” she asked.

But Fletch didn’t hear; he was laughing at the way the Pope stumbled to the floor, bringing a sailor dancing with the Queen of Sheba with him.

“Sailors dance,” Dautry said. “Besides, believe it or not, Miss Tatlock, there is civilization outside the ballrooms of the
ton.
”

She who had been so snappy and witty with Villiers couldn’t think of anything to say at the moment. It was as if a magic curtain had evaporated and she had returned to being a lumpy old maid. Except that…the old maid was dancing with a flamboyantly masculine man, the kind whom all the women in the room were watching.

“So are you going to marry him?” he asked abruptly.

“What?”

“Are you going to marry Villiers? And don’t”—he added—“think that I am worried about inheriting the title. My father left me what is often called a shipping fortune. I could buy half London and sell it again, if I wished.”

“Naturally, you must feel some anxiety—” she began.

He pulled her off the ballroom floor and into a small curtained alcove, and with no finesse about it either.

Suddenly she felt herself a little breathless. “Are you going to marry him?” he demanded.

Her mouth opened but no words came out.

He bent his head. His mouth wasn’t soft and forgiving: it demanded and took, asked a question she wasn’t ready to answer.

So she—old maid Charlotte—stepped away from him and put her hands on her hips. “I’m not sure yet,” she told him.

He looked a little dazed. At least she wasn’t alone feeling that wild heat when they kissed. “You’re not sure of what?”

“I’m not sure who I shall marry.”

“Has a choice been offered?”

She grinned, knowing that her sister May wouldn’t even have recognized her. She was the Queen of Sheba to night, a woman who commanded men’s hearts. “Villiers is threatening me with a breach of promise suit if I don’t marry him.”

Dautry snorted.

“And I love him.”

His jaw tightened.

She danced one step closer to him. “But then there’s you.”

“I didn’t ask you to marry me.”

The idiot.

“I suppose that only leaves me the duke, then. You can practice calling me Your Grace.”

His eyes were fierce, but softened when he looked to the bottom of her soul, and saw a woman who wanted to stand before the wind and feel salt on her lips.

“Charlotte,” he said.

She raised her chin. “I’ll decide next week. Between your proposal and his. Because you did make one, didn’t you? You may have forgotten to say it out loud; I have noticed a certain reticence in your nature.”

There was a spark of laughter in those black eyes of his. A spark of laughter—and something else, something that made her feel a bit weak behind the knees, and as if there wasn’t enough air in the room.

Which there wasn’t once he started kissing her again.