An Affair Before Christmas (Page 68)

“He’s a wart,” Jemma said bluntly. “If you want to turn red, Isidore, you go right ahead.”

“One of these days,” Isidore said, with only a little slur in her voice, “I’m going to do something wild.”

“No doubt,” Louise said briskly. “When that times comes, we’ll sober you up. It’s best never to be wild while inebriated.”

Poppy took a huge gulp of her toddy. In her view, it was likely easier to be wild with a little inebriation. “I want to do something wild too,” she said.

“What?” Isidore said, peering at her. “Is your husband going to India as well?”

Louise reached over and took Isidore’s cup away. “You’ve had enough, darling. At this rate, you’ll sleep straight through Christmas Eve and miss all the festivities.”

“I’m not sure how celebratory we can be,” Jemma said, looking worried. “My butler tells me that Villiers isn’t doing very well at all. I stopped up to see him, but he was asleep again. I think he slept most of the day.”

“Oh dear,” Isidore said, her mouth drooping instantly. “I thought perhaps I would marry him instead of my duke, but I can only do that if he survives.”

“I didn’t know you liked Villiers,” Jemma said, looking surprised.

“I hardly know him. But he’s a duke. I could just scratch out my husband’s name on the wedding certificate. It seems like a fair trade for the duke I don’t really have. A duke in En gland is worth two off in India.”

“Which reminds me,” Jemma said. “So how can we help, Poppy?”

Poppy had finished her toddy and was enjoying an agreeable warmth in the pit of her stomach. “Fletch says that men are never interested in women after a few years of bedding them,” she said. “So he’s not interested in me anymore.”

“Bastardo!” Isidore hissed, taking Jemma’s cup out of her hand and drinking some of it.

“I want to—to lure him back to my bed,” she said.

“You’re looking as red as I am,” Isidore observed.

Jemma was grinning. “A femme fatale,” she said. “Louise, Isidore, let’s go!” She grabbed Poppy’s hand. “Upstairs!”

Fletch had just decided that Jemma’s odd-looking butler was the person to tell him where his wife was sleeping when Beaumont gave an odd cough. They were playing cards. Fletch looked up to meet Beaumont’s eyes, alive with laughter. He put down his cards.

“Yes?” Fletch asked.

“I think,” Beaumont said, rising, “that this performance is likely directed at you, not me.”

Fletch rose and turned around.

She was walking in the door.

At supper, her hair had been up above her head, in one of those hair styles that women liked, albeit without the powder. She’d looked sweetly pretty. Now it was all different.

Walking in the door was the courtesan to a prince. She had curls atop her head, caught up with sparkling jewels, though a few fell to her shoulders. Her eyes were lavishly lined with black and they looked twice as big and four times as powerfully blue. Her lips were crimson and curled in a small mocking smile.

Her gown was dark crimson, a color near to black. And the bodice plunged below her breasts. There was nothing but the frailest scrap of lace covering her nipples. Around her neck she wore a dramatic, exquisite necklace, with a pendant that fell just between the curves of her breasts.

The entire drawing room went silent as a stone.

Fletch walked forward, feeling as if he should fall on his knees.

Poppy stopped and her scarlet mouth curled appreciatively.

He swept into a bow. “Good evening, madam.”

“Bonsoir.” Her voice was no sweet jangle of bells. It was husky, demanding, a woman’s voice. It was a French woman’s voice.

Jemma swept in behind them, laughing, with other women, but Fletch didn’t take his eyes from Poppy.

There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in her eyes. Not even a tremor. She was, every inch, a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.

Him.

“I am here only for the evening,” she said.

“Visiting?” he managed.

“From France.”

“Could I get you…something, mademoiselle?”

“Alack,” she said, lowering her eyelashes. They were outrageously black and so long that his loins stirred. “I am no mademoiselle.”

“Married, are you?” he said, taking her hand and bringing it to his mouth. “I am désolé.”

Her shoulders rose in a little shrug. “Why should you be? I find that marriage is such an interesting state.”

“Truly?”

“But of course! Only a married woman can truly know what she wants.”

Behind him Jemma laughed, but Fletch’s heart was beating too hard for laughter. Every inch of him had turned to fierce prowling hunter, to the kind of primitive male who throws a female to a pallet and has his way with her. He wanted to toss Poppy over his shoulder and take her upstairs, every delectable inch of her. Her breasts were visible to the whole room; he could see one pink nipple peeking at him through the white lace.

“And what did marriage teach you about desire?” he asked, the huskiness in his own voice startling him. “What do you want, madame?”

Something changed in her eyes, went serious for a moment.

“Poppy?” he said. “What do you want?” He brought her hand to his lips again. Even touching his lips to her skin made him start shaking a bit, like a race horse waiting at the start line.

“You.”

She said it softly, and then shot him another one of those liquid dark, dangerous looks out of her beautiful eyes.

“I want you.”

Fletch’s only explanation was that he lost his head. Right there in a drawing room full of giggling peers, at least two or three footmen, not to mention a butler with hair like the rise of the sea…

The Duke of Fletcher swept up his duchess in his arms—or perhaps it was just a wild Frenchwoman paying a visit—and stalked out of the room.

And up the stairs.

Chapter 47

Dying was not an easy business. Villiers pretty much thought he had reconciled himself to it but he wasn’t enjoying the process. The Scottish doctor had stopped dropping turpentine in his wound, but the man’s mouth drooped when he looked at him. Plus, Villiers could feel the bad news. The fever didn’t wrench him this way and that as much, but the exhaustion was like an undertow, pulling him out to sea.

“I’m not going to live much longer,” he told Charlotte. She’d suddenly appeared after supper and told him a story about Lady Flora and a young servant that he didn’t believe for a moment. Now she was sitting beside him reading from one of Mr. Fielding’s novels. Villiers hadn’t listened for pages. He liked lying there and watching the way her mouth moved as she read, and the delicate bones in her hand as she turned the pages.

“Why aren’t you down there with the philosophers?” he added. “I specifically requested philosophers.”

Charlotte raised her eyes. “The duchess said that there are no philosophers in her circle of acquaintance. And you are going to live. The doctor feels the infection is gone from your wound.”