An Affair Before Christmas

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.

Chapter 37

Fletch was afraid to turn around. It felt as if a spell had been cast over the room, a sweet, sleepy spell of privacy. The snow was like the brambles that grew around the princess’s palace—the one who slept for one hundred years. If only they had one hundred years, without servants, without Poppy’s mother, without all the Your Gracing and My Gracing.

The windows were steaming over as snow began to twirl and fly on the other side of the window. Perhaps the storm would prove bramble-like and keep them trapped in a snug bed together.

He could just see the gold of Poppy’s hair reflected in the window, and the curve of one shoulder. She’d sat down with her back to him, of course. Her hair fell in lumpy coils, black mixed with the gold, and two feathers jutting out behind. It fell below her waist in the back.

The innkeeper had left some liquid soap, but Fletch couldn’t imagine that it would work on that tar. Still, he picked up a basin and scooped some water out of the remaining bucket.

“I’m going to pour this over your head.”

Poppy clasped her arms tighter around her chest and nodded.

He let it fall down slowly. Artistically. He poured a little to the right so that her chemise flattened against her shoulder blade, and then ran down her back. Moved to the left so that he could see the delicate pink of her skin through her chemise. She started shivering.

“The chemise will make you colder,” he said. “And it’s not clear to me how you can wash through cloth.”

She just bent her head and said, “Will you wash my hair now, please?”

He got some more water but there was a lot of hair. The smell of lavender powder was starting to nauseate him so he sloshed on more water. Then he poured out the liquid soap and began rubbing it into her hair. She stayed quiet for a moment, but then she started protesting, and giving advice, and directions.

“Poppy!”

She shut up for a moment.

“Have you ever washed anyone’s hair?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ve washed my own, and I’m doing yours exactly the same way.”

“But it hurts,” Poppy said. She had stopped covering her breasts and was holding onto the sides of the tub instead. “This tub is going to tip!”

“I have to put some muscle into it,” he said. “Your hair is a mess.” He picked up a part that seemed all matted together. “Ug! Should I just cut it off?”

“No!” she squealed. “Don’t! I can get out the snarl. I’m sure I can get it out.”

“You could always wear a wig while it grew out,” Fletch said. “I think it would be easier to wear a wig. You can’t tell me that your maid bathes all of this out of your hair every night.”

“Yes, she does. Sometimes it takes some time.”

“How much time?”

“Usually not over a couple of hours,” Poppy said. “Ow!”

“A couple of hours!” Fletch stopped trying to get his fingers through snarls of hair. “You’re wasting a couple of hours every night on this? And what about the nights when I came to your bed—you would stay up for two more hours washing your hair?”

Poppy blinked up at him. Wet rat tails hung over her eyes. “Sometimes when I’m very tired, I almost fall asleep, but I cannot sleep with powder in my hair. It starts to itch horribly after a day. On a bad day I can be absolutely crazed by supper time. It’s hard to sit still.”

Fletch stared down at her. “Poppy,” he said slowly, “would you say that your head was itching when we were making love?”

She went still for a second and then, “Only sometimes.” She sounded like a guilty little girl. He stared down at her head feeling as if dawn had just broken over his head. Maybe…“You’re shivering. You need to take that wet chemise off. You’re liable to freeze.” He walked over to the fireplace and put on another log. “I’m not watching. Take it off, Poppy.”

He heard the sound of a wet cloth slap the ground. He poked at the fire again, thinking hard. He had to go slow. Very slow. Pray for snow. Tell her that he had no interest in her body. Make her trust him.

Which meant no sex to night. Every muscle in his body, including his favorite, protested.

He had to make this work, because it had to be permanent. He was slowly starting to realize that he didn’t even know his wife. How could he not have known that she was waiting through those hours he lavished on her body, desperate to wash her hair?

He remembered trying to touch her hair and she always protested. He had given in, of course, because everyone knew that ladies’ hair took hours to arrange. The bucket of water next to the fire was still warm; he picked up the dipper and poured it over her again. She squealed. He saw her peeking to see whether he was looking at her naked self.

He wasn’t. He wasn’t, because if he actually looked at all that pink skin sitting before him like the most delectable sugarplum of his life, he’d fall on her like a ravening animal.

Instead he walked behind her, like a man who has no interest in marital beds. He poured more soap into her hair, grabbed the comb, and started trying to get out the tar in earnest. Fifteen minutes later he was getting worried. “It won’t come out. I’m going to have to cut some of it, Poppy. Especially this long part.” He picked up a long rat tail that fell down her back. It was tangled up with the feather and the tar and God knows what else.