An Affair Before Christmas

There was a noise at the door and she hastily leaped under the covers. Fletch poked his head around, raised an eyebrow, and then ushered in a footman with an empty bathtub.

“They’re in shock down below,” he said, once the old tub had been removed by weary men. “I don’t think the kitchen has ever heated this much water, not if it was bath day for the whole parish. They’ll be sending up a few covered plates for our supper, since our trunks are back at the Fox and Hummingbird, and we can’t dress for the meal.”

“I’m clean,” Poppy said. She should feel humiliated but she didn’t.

Fletch started to pull his shirt out of his breeches. “It won’t bother you if I bathe, will it?” he asked.

She shook her head as he undid the buckles at his knees.

“You’ve seen me naked enough and you never turned a hair.”

“That’s not true,” Poppy said, averting her eyes as he pulled his shirt over his head. “When we first married, I thought I would throw up from pure nervous ness every time you came to my room.”

He blinked at her, his hands caught in his waistband about to pull down his breeches. Poppy felt herself redden. This was all so intimate. She’d never seen him undress. He came to her room sedately clothed in a dressing gown, ushered through the door by her maid. Somehow it felt different when she saw the way his chest expanded from the waist of his breeches. And he had a dusting of black hair on his chest, but it didn’t hide the muscles. They bulged under his skin in…

“You felt as if you were going to throw up?”

“My mother threw up the first time,” Poppy said. “Goodness, it’s hot in here, isn’t it?” She flapped her hand in front of her face.

“Your mother vomited?”

“Oh yes. Many women do, you know,” Poppy said, chattering to cover up the fact that it was—he was making her feel quite peculiar.

“They vomit?”

“It’s just such a shock. And so—well—”

“Unpleasant,” he said, his mouth tight now. He pulled off his breeches in one smooth gesture.

Poppy felt the most peculiar sensation in her stomach. Fletch’s legs were long and golden-colored. His flank was a smooth curve. Everything about Fletch was beautiful. He had his side to her so she couldn’t see his privates. That wasn’t beautiful, of course, as her mother had pointed out long ago.

Fletch lowered himself into the bath and threw his head back. His hair slid backwards like black embroidery floss, just the way that Poppy’s was going to do from now on. He was so beautiful that she felt her mouth go dry. The sweep of muscle, golden skin, and there—between his legs—

She couldn’t imagine how he kept it from being visible all the time, the way it stood out from his body like that. He must have to keep it penned in, the way her stays trapped her breasts. He had his eyes closed, so she leaned back against the pillows and looked.

He looked, well, elegant. Powerful.

The whole sight made Poppy start shivering a little, because it made her think about how he used to come over her and say, “Poppy, are you ready?” And she always nodded because she was desperate to get it over with. And then he would rub there, against her, and sometimes…

The memory of it made her feel feverish between her legs and she turned her head away.

Fletch, meanwhile, closed his eyes more tightly and smiled to himself. Things were going along quite well. A tiny sprig of hope was blossoming in his chest.

“Will you wash my hair?” he said, leaning his knees against the sides of the tub so that his wife could have her fill of looking, if she wanted. “You could pull on my shirt.”

She could hardly say no, so she came behind him and started washing. He arched his back into her hands, and gave a little stifled groan.

Her hands froze. “Are you all right?”

He thought she sounded breathless. “It feels so good,” he said hoarsely, laying it on as thick as he dared.

“Oh, good,” she said, rubbing his head harder.

By the time she had finished, he’d thought up another scheme. “Poppy, would you mind washing my legs? I’m so large that I’m afraid I’ll turn this tub over.” He rocked it a little to illustrate and water splashed onto the floor.

“Don’t do that!” she said. “I don’t want those footmen up here again. They already think that we’re half-cracked.”

He reached out a long leg. “Would you mind?” If he said so himself, his legs were fine, though his crown jewels were what he really wanted her to inspect. She looked as pink as an Easter cake as she rubbed a cloth over his ankles. He bent his knee so that she could reach his thighs more easily.

She kept stealing looks at him, so finally he did her a favor and threw back his head (he was starting to get a neck cramp) and closed his eyes again. “Thanks, sugarplum,” he murmured.

The cloth was inching up his thigh. He didn’t dare even take a peek from under his lashes because if she looked interested he would have to throw the tub to the side and leap on her. That wasn’t in his plan.

He let her get close to the crown jewels, but not close enough to touch. “Would you mind doing the other one?” he murmured, pulling his right leg back.

But instead of a slow caress of his ankle, a cloth rubbed him so fast and hard that he probably lost half his leg hair. Two seconds later she was tossing a towel in his direction and he was wondering what went wrong.

Probably it had to do with the jewels themselves.

Damn it, if most women threw up—and he’d never heard that before, but what did he know?—perhaps she was feeling a little nauseated. He knew damn well that he was a lot bigger than most men.

Not that it had ever done him any good, he thought morosely.

“What do we wear for nightclothes?” Poppy asked.

While he was standing in front of the fire, drying himself, she had tucked herself into the bed. She had her eyes rigidly on the far wall, the better not to see him, he supposed.

Damn.

“I’ll get something,” he said, pulling on his breeches and shirt. It took some rearranging to fit everything into its proper place, since certain parts of his body didn’t seem to have recognized that the game was up, for the night at least.

All the way down the stairs he told himself that he didn’t desire her. OK, that he did desire her, but that nothing was going to happen. Nothing.Nothing. He was as neutered…as neutered. Think St. Albans, he told himself. You think St. Albans walks around in this state?

The thought was certainly dampening, though his body paid no attention.

What was a bit more dampening was the vision of himself and Poppy dressed in the landlord’s night clothing. The man had offered a nightrail owned by Elsie, but Fletch thought cleanliness might be an issue. So when the landlord offered two clean nightshirts, he grabbed them.

In the end it wasn’t so hard to rein in his inner de vil. Once they had eaten, and were back in bed, Poppy told him the idea she’d had about the possum and its strange thumb. And then he started to tell her about his talk, and she liked it so much that he actually got up and gave it. Without notes.Striding back and forth in front of the fire, the landlord’s nightshirt flapping around his knees.

At first Poppy kept breaking into giggles, but he saw exactly when she started listening. And he saw when the spell was broken and mentally dropped the next two paragraphs and swept into a conclusion.