An Affair Before Christmas

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.

Chapter 55

A Costume Ball at the country seat of the Duke of Beaumont January 6, Twelfth Night

“Not one of these costumes is particularly interesting,” the Duke of Fletcher complained to his wife.

“I think that Mrs. Patton’s costume is very imaginative. I’ve never seen quite such a fierce-looking Diana, and all in royal blue too. The bow and arrow is a nice touch. And I like the squire over there, the one dressed as Henry VIII.”

“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.

The Queen of Sheba wasn’t quite as amused. Charlotte untangled herself from the Pope’s feet. Dautry pulled her to her feet as if she were a feather, and a moment later they were dancing down the floor again.

“How on earth did you learn to dance?” she said.

“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.

“I’m sorry?” Fletch said.

“The young man you hired,” Poppy repeated. “Where did you find him?”

“Which young man?”