An Affair Before Christmas (8 page)

Then like a miracle, Poppy’s lips opened and she said: “I’m going to stay with a dear friend.”

“Who?”

“The Duchess of Beaumont.”

“Beaumont?” Lady Flora said. “That trollop? Why on earth would you wish to stay with her?”

“I like her.”

“Could you not stay with Lady Wartley? She’s such a wonderful presence on the hospital board, and I know she has a sincere affection for you.”

“I would feel more comfortable with Jemma.”

“I should never have allowed that acquaintance,” her mother said. “It was all very well in Paris, but who would have thought such a light-skirt would find her way back to En gland?”

“She’s my friend, mother. I wish you wouldn’t be—”

“I call a spade a spade,” her mother said. “I always have. The woman’s a light-skirt, and that’s all there is to it. I pity her husband, Beaumont, that I do. On the other hand, she is a duchess. You have my permission to pay her a visit.”

“If you’ll excuse me, Mother,” Poppy said, standing up and dropping a curtsy that was just a shade disrespectful, “I have an appointment. Do request any refreshments you may desire.”

“Do you know,” her mother said thoughtfully, “this might be enjoyable? I always thought that if circumstances were different I would do well on the stage.”

Poppy almost felt a pang of sympathy for Fletch.

“I shall begin with a fit of hysteria. I have observed that men dislike hysteria above all else. That will put his house hold in a proper frame of mind.” Her mother took her face in her hands; to Poppy’s alarm her mother’s eyes were misty again. “I have been a terrible mother, to thoughtlessly leave you in this house for years,” she said.

“Really, I—”

“Hush.” Lady Flora ceremoniously kissed Poppy on the forehead. “Mother is in charge now. By the time I signal for your return, Perdita, your husband will be a new man. I promise you that. He will beg you to return home, and you can set your own terms. Just think of me”—and there was a rare gleam of humor in her eyes—“as the chamber pot that Fletcher has yet to encounter.”

Poppy got as far as the bottom of the stair and then leaned against the banister, hand on her heart. Could she really leave Fletch to what ever punishment her mother had in mind? When she thought about his behavior, flirting with Louise—yes, she could.

He deserved her mother.

One problem was that while she was certainly friends with Jemma, there were far more women she knew better, women whom she joined on committees, women with charitable ambitions. Women whose reputations were snowy white compared to Jemma’s.

All of London knew that Jemma had had
affaires
in those years she lived in Paris, apart from her husband. All of London was watching the chess matches Jemma was playing with her husband—and the Duke of Villiers. Jemma was a
bad woman
.

Which was precisely why Jemma was just the right person. She wouldn’t condemn her. Or try to talk her into returning.

And her mother would never darken the door of a strumpet like Jemma, duchess or no. If Lady Flora thought men were fools, she thought that women who voluntarily dabbled with them worse than fools.
Slut
, she would hiss, on hearing the least bit of gossip about a woman. She had only allowed Poppy to be friends with Jemma, all those years ago in Paris, because her disdain warred with her snobbism. After all, Jemma was a duchess.

Poppy finally let go of the banister, realizing that her hands were damp with sweat. She straightened up and asked the butler for her pelisse. Then she said, “I shall trust you, Quince, to tell the duke that I am leaving the house to him.”

The butler’s eyes bulged. “Your Grace?”

“I’ve decided to live elsewhere,” she said, buttoning her pelisse under her chin. It was quite chilly for the end of April. “I doubt he will mind much. If he has anything to say about it, I expect I’ll see him at Lady Vesey’s ball later this week.”

The butler’s mouth snapped shut and he bowed. “May I offer the house hold’s regrets, Your Grace?”

Poppy’s head was spinning with the freedom of speaking her mind. “Why should you? It will be much easier without a duchess in residence, you know. I expect that the duke will be out most of the time, just as he is now, and you won’t have much work at all.”

Quince seemed to be flummoxed, so she patted him on the arm. “If you wouldn’t mind calling the carriage for me?”

“Your Grace,” he said with a gulp, and bowed.

Poppy sat down on a chair in the antechamber and hummed a little to herself. The anteroom was large and austere and it made her very happy to think how much she disliked it. It was cold. Forbidding.

The thought wandered through her mind that Jemma might be surprised by her visit, but she dismissed it. The important thing was that she felt quite happy. Relieved, really.

Jemma paused in the doorway, the very picture of French elegance, from the tip of her curled hair to the pink silk toes of her slippers.

“What a plea sure to see you,” she said.

Poppy gulped. “I thought that I would return home to Mama. But in fact she is going to stay in my house and—and mother Fletch.”

Jemma blinked. “Did you say that Lady Flora is going to
mother
Fletch?”

“Yes indeed,” Poppy said, nodding.

“I can’t imagine anyone mothering Fletch, let alone your mother!”

“May I pay you a visit?” Poppy asked.

“I would love that above all things,” Jemma said, dropping a kiss on Poppy’s cheek. “It must be providence, given that my brother dragged my beloved ward off to the country and left me all alone.”

“Is it true that they will marry by special license?” Poppy asked.

Jemma sighed. The truth of it was that her ward had been caught practically in the very act of intimacy with her brother—and in an
open boat!
—so a hasty marriage was prudent for all concerned. “I believe that my brother is so consumed with passion for his new wife that he cannot wait,” she said.

“I’m afraid I won’t be very good company,” Poppy said, feeling tears welling up again. “I just—I don’t feel like being—”

“When I left Beaumont I cried for weeks,” Jemma said, her eyes looking a little haunted. “Weeks.”

“I could do that,” Poppy said, choking a bit. “I mean, I think I might do that.”

“Then you’re in just the right place,” Jemma said. “I shan’t bother you, but if you wish for company all you have to do is ask. Cry away!”

Poppy couldn’t help smiling, even through her tears.

“I must play!” the duke bellowed.

“Even then, his mind may be permanently disordered,” Banderspit said, his mouth curving downwards in a disapproving sniff. “A man with his moral tendencies is obviously already on the very edge of derangement. A wound of this sort is enough to put his mind into a permanent state of restlessness.”

“No!” Finchley cried, relaxing his grip on Villiers’s arm, since the duke had relapsed again into a semi-dreaming state. “The duke is perfectly sane in mind and body. He simply has a fever.”

“The piece! I must make my move!” Villiers whispered. His voice was a little hoarse, so Finchley put a glass of water to his mouth. Some of it spilled down his throat. He’d never seen his master so vulnerable, not even once.

“We should get a priest to him,” Banderspit said briskly. “As I said, a man of such moral turpitude will likely die of it. He has no reason to live other than degenerate desires, and that’s no inspiration.”

“That is not the case!” Finchley cried.

“Has he family?”

“No.”

“Obviously he’s not married,” Banderspit said with a sniff. “Though it appears that he’s working to ruin other people’s marriages.”

Villiers was tossing again. He opened his eyes and fixed them on Finchley’s face. “Finchley?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Finchley said, bending over.

“I have to play the piece, Finchley. You know that. She’ll have to come here to me because I shan’t rise today. Send her a message.” His hand loosened and his head dropped back to the pillow.

“Raving,” Banderspit said. “I doubt that bleeding him will do any good. You’ve waited too long.”

Finchley had his doubts about bleeding. Hadn’t the surgeon bled the second footman, and the man languished in the attics for a month before he died? Finchley always thought that he would have gotten better on his own, if they hadn’t taken blood from him.

“I agree with you,” he said to Banderspit. “Bleeding is unlikely to help.”

Banderspit cast him a suspicious glance. “I am His Grace’s chosen surgeon,” he said. “You’ve no right to call anyone else.”

“I won’t,” Finchley said, automatically pressing down on the duke as he tried again to rise and go play his chess piece.

“I shall return this afternoon,” Banderspit announced. “If His Grace is no better, and I have no expectation that he will be, I will bleed him no matter what you say. Though his morals are not to my liking, I have taken my oath under God to do all I can for sinners as well as the blessed.”

Right, Finchley thought. Especially when the sinners of this world pay you so well. He got Banderspit out of the room and then turned around. Villiers was tossing from side to side.

There was no help for it. The duchess had to play her piece.

He went to the door and called for the butler.

He handed his cloak to Quince.

“If you please, Your Grace,” the butler said with an unusual tone to his voice.

Fletch paused.

“If I might speak to you in private.”

Fletch ground his teeth. He wanted to get it over with Poppy and then have a strong drink. “Can’t it wait, Quince? I have something to say to the duchess and then—”

A voice interrupted him from the top of the stairs. “Your Grace!”

He looked up and felt a perfectly horrible day grow more awful. He bowed smartly. “I shall greet you in a moment, Lady Flora. Quince has something urgent to tell me.” And without waiting for an answer he walked into the west drawing room.

“We probably have five minutes before she hounds me here,” he told the butler. “Did the chef dismiss all the kitchen staff again?” He answered himself. “If he had, you’d be telling the duchess. So what can I do for you, Quince?”

“This concerns the duchess,” Quince said.

Fletch raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“She asked me to give you a message.”

“She did?”

Quince didn’t hand him a slip of foolscap. “I believe her to have indicated, Your Grace, that she will be residing elsewhere.”

“Residing—what the de vil are you talking about? Isn’t she upstairs with that harridan of a mother of hers?”

“No,” Quince said. “Lady Flora is here quite alone, and has been engaged in hysterics for the past hour or so. Perhaps longer. It seems longer,” he added with feeling.

Fletch felt an icy calm. Poppy was clearly kicking up her heels. But how could she storm out of the house and leave her mother behind?

“Your Grace?” Quince bleated.

“Yes,” Fletch said, heading toward the door.

Quince spoke in a low voice. “Lady Flora instructed her maid to go to Selby House and return with her clothing.”

Fletch stopped, his hand falling from the door. “Quince,” he said. “Tell me you are joking and I’ll double your wages.”

“Your Grace,” Quince said, “Should this event come to pass, I envision doubling most of the staff ’s wages in order to keep them.”

Fletch reached the hallway just as Poppy’s mother descended the last step. He saw her with the clear eyes of shock. Poppy had run off and it was going to cause him serious annoyance to bring her back. And whose fault was it? Poppy’s mother. And whose fault was it that his bride loathed the bedchamber? Her mother. And whose fault was it that Poppy spent most of her time in hospitals and charities? Her mother.

There wasn’t much about Lady Flora that revealed her true nature. She dressed with all the formality of a queen and generally commanded that sort of attention. In truth, she was beautiful. Her figure was alluring, which was unusual in a woman in her forties. But it was her face that made her truly dangerous. Fletch admitted, from the depths of his rage, that it was a bewitching face, more so even than her daughter’s. It was the face of a woman who was accustomed to doing exactly as she liked, when she liked and how she liked. It was the face of a woman who rarely encountered opposition to her commands: in short, she had come to regard herself as something akin to the Queen of En gland. Or perhaps, given that Lady Flora scorned those who spent their lives in one small island, the female equivalent of the Tsar of Russia.

Fletch bowed so abruptly that his chin might have cut the air if such a thing were possible. “Lady Flora. I regret to say that you seem to have caught us at an unfortunate moment.”

She glided up to him and put a hand on his arm. “You poor dear,” she said.

Fletch blinked. To this point, his mother-in-law had always treated him with the same regard with which she regarded every gentleman: as if he were a slightly more gilded version of a manservant.

“I feel responsible,” she cooed. Yes! It was a coo. Fletch ground his back teeth and didn’t shift backwards, as was his instinct. “I obviously failed in raising my daughter, and through that, I failed you. I have been in the greatest agony of mind for an hour; you must understand, the agony of a mother’s heart is like no other.”

Fletch opened his mouth but her lovely lips just kept moving.

“Then I realized that there is only one person in the world who can solve this dilemma, who can make up for the extraordinary behavior of my daughter”—and for a moment Fletch saw her blue eyes harden into something like glass—“and assuage my own
overwhelming
sense of guilt. I shall stand by your side, Your Grace, I shall not desert you, even though my daughter has done so. I—”

Fletch cleared his throat. “Lady Flora, I have every confidence that my wife will return to the house by nightfall; there is no need to put yourself into such anxiety.”

“I only wish that were the case,” she cried, her voice rising a little. “Yet I must admit that I know Perdita better than you do. She is nothing if not amenable—until she—”

Fletch caught the flash of Lady Flora’s white teeth. “She had it from my late husband, may God rest his soul,” Lady Flora said. “I very much doubt that Poppy will return to your house, Your Grace.”

“Of course she will!” Fletch growled, moving backwards so that her hand fell from his sleeve. “Now if you will allow me, madam, I will ask Quince to accompany you to your house himself, since you are distressed.”

She smiled at him as if she hadn’t heard him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll speak to the house keeper and get everything under control immediately. I won’t have you discomforted in the slightest by this absurd flight on the part of my daughter!”

There wasn’t even a twitch in her eye to admit that there was something incongruous about a mother offering to replace a daughter. The only thing Fletch could imagine was that Lady Flora, like her daughter, was the sort of person who never thought of bedroom matters.

Fletch’s only thought was of flight. “I do apologize, Lady Flora. I am due at an urgent appointment.”

She smiled at him with all the warmth of a ravening tiger. “Do make yourself comfortable wherever you wish to go. Everything will be in order for you in this house.”

Sure enough, she turned away and began barking at Quince about house keeping and menus and her maid and sheets. It was amazing how quickly her smooth tone peeled away when she addressed a servant.

“Oh, Your Grace!” she carrolled, as a footman was opening the door.

He turned back to her once more.

“Do give my best to my daughter, should you happen to speak to her.”

Fletch bowed. The funny thing was that Lady Flora’s hair was a still vibrant golden color; it didn’t look as if it were made of snakes. But surely…

His butler bowed by the door, holding out the coat he had just taken off. “Quince,” he said, pausing, “who was that goddess whose hair was made of snakes?”

“Medusa, Your Grace,” Quince said. “One glimpse at her hair and a man was struck to stone.”

“Just so,” Fletch said thoughtfully, heading toward his carriage. Poppy would understand that she had to come home.