“You still have three maids and a personal maid,” Poppy said. “And I’m there, Jemma. Plus, Isidore is coming; she’s likely already there.”
“Everyone’s coming,” Jemma said, still looking flustered. “Louise will be there already, and Harriet, of course.”
They said it at the same moment. “Louise!”
And then Fletch could have cut his tongue out because Poppy shrunk back in her seat and suddenly she didn’t look like a rosy poppy anymore, but like a prim Englishwoman. He cursed silently, while Jemma obliviously totted up the guests who should arrive before her.
“Villiers, of course,” she said. “He’s been there for a few days at least; they decided to go to the country immediately. I just hope that the butler has done everything I instructed him to do for his care.”
“Of course he has,” Fletch said, feeling rather impatient.
“Oh, and the naturalist,” Jemma said. “Dr. Loudan.”
Fletch couldn’t help scowling at that. He stole a look at Poppy and thankfully the mention of Loudan’s name didn’t make her start smiling or anything because he’d have to stop the carriage and have a private conversation with her.
He couldn’t take much more of this. He’d been hard for around two weeks without any relief. He felt as if—well—as if it was time for him and Poppy to get married, though that didn’t make any sense. But she blushed when he touched her. And she kept stealing looks at him. And he could smell her wherever she was in the room, and she didn’t smell like lavender powder anymore, but like the most delicious sun-warmed peach he’d ever eaten.
Which was precisely what he intended to do—tonight. He needed Jemma’s help first, though.
He managed to catch her at the final stop to change horses before the carriage trundled the last hour or so to Beaumont Manor. He didn’t bother with any sort of flummery; she was the kind of woman one didn’t have to lie to, and he appreciated that.
“I need you to put us in the same room,” he said to Jemma.
Sure enough, the corner of her mouth curled up. “I directed the butler otherwise in my letters.”
“Please.”
She was grinning now. She smiled like a man; you had to love that about Jemma. “Absolutely not. If you want your wife to join you, you’ll have to lure her there yourself.” She gave him a slow look. “I think you might be able to manage it.”
“If I wasn’t in love with my wife,” he said, taking in the mischief dancing in her eyes, “I’d be begging for scraps at your feet.”
She deliberately eyed him again from basement to attics, pausing around the front door for a good ogle. “And if you weren’t married, I’d probably throw you a bone. Or two.”
She was so adorable that he bent down and gave her a kiss. And what made it all the more perfect was that Poppy came out of the inn at just the right moment to see it. He straightened up and waved to her, conscious that he hadn’t kissed his wife in months. Not even a little peck. Nothing.
Of course, as far as she was concerned, he wasn’t interested in his wife anymore. Not interested! There wasn’t a man in seven counties who wouldn’t be interested, especially now that her eyes had gone all soft and she kept kind of shivering and peeking looks.
To night, he promised himself.
To night.
When they finally arrived at the estate, an odd-looking fellow with hair like the crest of a whitecap came out to meet them. He turned out to be the butler. Then Beaumont himself appeared, followed by Miss Tatlock.
Fletch met Poppy’s eyes when that happened and they shared one of those moments of private silent conversation, both of them wondering what Jemma thought of Miss Tatlock’s early arrival.
It was just as if he and Poppy were living in the same household, Fletch thought, loving it.
The house was all draped in green stuff with berries and Fletch had to say that it smelled pretty good. Jemma didn’t seem to like it when Miss Tatlock pointed out the mistletoe, perhaps due to the implication that Miss Tatlock and the duke had been investigating the properties of mistletoe, but Fletch memorized where every little white bunch was hanging.
Then he let Poppy go upstairs alone to freshen up, just as if he didn’t have any interest in seeing her wash her face. Or change her clothes. Or take a bath. Or…
He swore and wandered off to stare out the window at miles of park. Snow was falling and as he stood there it started to swirl in huge curls in the air, sweeping from side to side.
Beaumont appeared at his shoulder. “Looks like a proper storm,” he said.
Fletch nodded. “Have all your guests arrived?”
“All except Mr. Dautry, due this evening, if he’s not held up by the weather. By the way, my butler just told me that a quantity of mail has arrived, some of which is for you. Most of it to do with that speech you gave, I expect.”
He turned and looked at Fletch. “That was a damned fine performance.”
“I’m honored that you think so,” Fletch said. “I merely took your advice.”
“Mine?”
“You told me that it was all about the story. You were right.” A very pleasing memory of the majority of the House of Lords leaping to their collective feet came to mind.
“I’ve told that bit of wisdom to many a young man and they’ve paid me no mind. But you created a story that swept the House, Fletcher.” He clapped him on the back. “I’m thinking you might be the savior of the party. And”—he added, leaving—“that man Higgle is lucky to have you as his landlord.”
Fletch grinned out at the twilight and the snow. It was a good speech. And he already had the topic of his next one ready. It would tackle the question of the African slave trade, the dirty little secret that no one discussed and from which many profited. He saw the shape of the speech in his mind, its appeal to decency and sanity, its internal organization. Its rightness.
When he finally strolled upstairs and proceeded to read his mail in his bath, his letters were entirely satisfactory. So much so that when he wandered into the drawing room a while later he was smiling to himself. Of course, his smile might have had something to do with the drum beat in his head that kept saying to night, to night, to night.
Though that didn’t stop him from noticing the way the room fell silent as he entered.
Poppy leapt to her feet and flew toward him. For a moment he thought she was coming to his arms and just stopped himself from opening his own wide.
But she stopped short, waving a sheet of foolscap in the air. “Fletch, something horrible has happened to my mother!”
He raised an eyebrow. “She choked on her own venom and—”
“Fletch!”
His beloved, far-too-kind little wife frowned at him. “I’m serious. Something awful has happened to my mother. I have this letter from her.” She handed it to him.
Fletch took the foolscap, noticing over Poppy’s shoulder that the rest of the company was chattering with all the feverish excitement of a group of actresses after the Prince of Wales comes backstage.
“To My Daughter, Duchess of Fletcher, Countess Fulke, Baroness Ryskamp & etc.” He raised an eyebrow and Poppy interjected.
“You know my mother, Fletch. She adores all those titles. Just read the note.”
“I have suffered a great calamity. Though my soul is as innocent of this calumny as the purest flower, no impartial words can save me now. Truth’s words, like jewels, hang in the ears of anvils. Poppy, this doesn’t make any sense. An anvil is a ironmonger’s block, is it not?”
“It’s not anvils, Fletch, but angels. Truth’s words hang in the ears of angels.”
“What’s this part about the devil—oh, I see, his true foe. Who is the de vil’s foe? Your mother?” And here I would have thought she and de vil were close companions rather than enemies, he added to himself.
“I’m not sure about that,” Poppy said. “Read the next paragraph. She isn’t quite so excited and it makes more sense.”
“Gossip is a subt
le knave and like the plague strikes into the brain of truth and rageth in his entrails—Um, just a guess, but could it be someone is gossiping about her?”
“Keep going!”
“Worse than the poison of a red-haired man. Now we’re getting somewhere! A red-haired man is gossiping about her?”
“No! I’m not sure what she meant by that.”
“Well, Axminster’s hair has a reddish tint,” Fletch suggested. “Course I didn’t know he was much interested in your mother since she doesn’t frequent the backstage of the Lyceum Dance Hall, but perhaps he broadened his attentions?”
“Fletch, will you be serious? Look farther down the page!”
Fletch squinted. “It looks to me as if she has retired to the country, if that’s what she means by sanctuary and impregnable defence of oppressed virtue.”
“Not the country, Fletch.”
“No?” His heart sank a little. “Truly not? She’s staying in London?”
“No, she went to a sanctuary. My mother has retired to a nunnery!”
“A nunnery? We don’t have any of those.”
“Actually there are some nunneries in Scotland I think, but she’s gone to France. You see that part about the Bishop of Meaux? He always admired her. She left, Fletch. She left for France!”
“Your mother left for France.” Fletch felt like this sometimes after having a deep swallow of the best brandy. Kind of a sweet, hot happiness that spread right down his body. “Your mother left for France.”
Jemma called to them. “Poppy, I have a letter about it as well!”
Fletch followed Poppy back to the circle, suppressing his grin.
“Listen to this,” Jemma said. “It’s from Lady Smalley. I hardly know her, which means that she must have sent a copy of this to every acquaintance she has. She adds a bit in the beginning about Lady Flora’s spotless name and how no one believes the rumors. We were seated in the Duke of Fletcher’s drawing room—now most strangely transformed with a magnificence so extreme that Lady Cooper commented that she felt she was in a royal bordello. Lady Cooper is ever humorous, of course.”
“If one has to lose one’s reputation,” Mrs. Patton interjected, “it would be better not to do it in Lady Cooper’s presence—a sharp-tongued virago, if there ever was one.”
“Do keep reading,” Fletch said, seating himself happily. “I am all anticipation.”
Poppy shot him a glance. “You are discussing my mother, Fletch. Your mother-in-law.”
“Precisely,” he said. “Precisely.”
Jemma started reading again. “When all of a sudden a young man appeared at the door. He cut a quite attractive figure, though there was something about him that wasn’t quite of the gentleman. He hailed Lady Flora in the most tender of tones, seeming to not notice at first that we were there. For when he did recognize our presence, he fell silent and indicated in a hundred ways his distress and confusion.”
“She had a lover!” Harriet gasped. And then glanced at Poppy. “Of course, that is merely the way it looked. One can hardly believe it of such a stalwart character as Lady Flora. Why she has never shown the slightest hint of moral laxness.”
“Certainly not,” Fletch murmured.
Poppy turned mystified eyes back to Jemma. “It’s impossible,” she stated. “I know my mother. Do read on, Jemma.”
“I’ll just summarize it for you. The handsome young man hastily retreated, but the damage was done. Lady Flora appears to have been overtaken by a fit of nerves that rendered her incapable of logical conversation. Lady Cooper then took it upon herself to fetch smelling salts from the butler and naturally used the opportunity to question him closely.”
She looked at Poppy. “It truly was very bad luck that your mother happened to invite Lady Cooper to tea.”
“Lady Cooper is one of her best friends,” Poppy said. “But it doesn’t matter. This is—quite simply—impossible. Inconceivable.”
“Not according to Lady Cooper,” Jemma said. “Your own butler straight away confessed that the young man had originally visited the house in order to assist your mother in some decorating schemes and as the last months passed, he had indeed noticed that they were spending more and more time together.”
“Impossible!” Poppy exclaimed.
Fletch reached forward and took her hand. “Alas, the family is always the last to know, dearest.”
She shot him a look and he shut his mouth. Really, she had moments in which she quite resembled her mother.
“Does your correspondent have anything further to say?” Poppy asked Jemma.
“Only that the young man was indeed quite handsome and when confronted, maintained that he stood as a bulwark to protect Lady Flora’s renown and chastity, and that she was his dearest patron and nothing more. That’s a quote. Naturally, that simply inflamed everyone further, for there’s nothing worse than a man defending a woman’s honor. If the man had no relationship with your mother, Poppy, he would have said so, rather than talking about her honor.”
“It’s true,” Mrs. Patton said. “Talk of honor is always the death knell to a woman’s reputation.”
Poppy was shaking her head. “I simply can’t believe it. I just can’t—I can’t believe it.”
Fletch kept silent.
“Since the dinner bell rang some time ago, I think we should go in or risk choking on a chilly cut of meat,” Jemma said, coming to her feet. “Poppy, I know this must be most distressing for you. Would you prefer to eat in your room?”
“No,” Poppy said. “Jemma, may I read that letter myself? I simply can’t believe it!”
“Don’t you remember when Bussy D’Ambois turned out to be having an affaire with the Countess of Montsurry,” Jemma asked, “when everyone thought he was toying with the Duchess of Guise? I assure you that the Count of Montsurry was just as surprised as you are now.”
“But that ended so unpleasantly,” Fletch said. “Didn’t the count go quite mad?”
“He murdered his wife,” Jemma said, “insisting that he had to defend the honor of his name.”
“I suppose there are those who might think that your name has been tarnished by connection with your mother,” Fletch said to Poppy, who was reading Lady Smalley’s letter.
“Nonsense,” she replied.
“Then I suppose I needn’t be as extreme as the Count of Monsurry,” he said with a pang of disappointment.
Jemma gave him a sharp look.
He smiled back at her blandly. “All’s well that ends well, don’t you think? I feel quite certain that Lady Flora will soon rule what ever nunnery her friend the bishop places her in.”
“Of course she will,” Poppy said, handing the letter back to Jemma. “But—”
She talked all the way to the dining room. And through most of the meal. The sad fact was that Poppy was having as hard a time getting her mind around the truth of this story as did the Count of Monsurry. Yet by the time the pear compotes and apple tarts appeared, she was reluctantly accepting the account.
“For why would your mother retire to France unless there was truth in it?” Fletch kept repeating. “She would simply brazen it out.”
Then it turned out that Beaumont, late in opening his mail, had been sent a similar account. Beaumont’s letter described the young man falling to his knees and kissing Lady Flora’s feet in anguish; they all agreed that the detail was likely embellished.
“But the truth of it stands,” Fletch said. “Your mother was caught by a pretty face, Poppy. She’s human after all.”
“No, she’s—” Poppy said, and caught herself.
“Human,” Fletch said happily. “Nothing more than a hapless member of the human race, just like the rest of us.”
Chapter 46
The idea that her mother had a lover was inconceivable. Obviously, there had been some horrendous miscarriage of justice. Poppy drank a great deal of wine at supper, trying to talk herself into feeling sorry for her mother.
But certain facts kept
intervening with her attempts at sorrow. One was that Lady Flora had moved to France. Had entered a nunnery. When Poppy and Fletch returned to London, there would be no sharp letters, no accidental encounters in ballrooms leading to vitriolic comments on her hair or dress, no meetings at all.
To say that her heart lightened at the thought would underestimate the truth. She felt as if she had drunk an entire case of champagne.
When supper was over, the ladies left the gentlemen with their port and returned to the drawing room. Harriet and Mrs. Patton left to visit the nursery. Jemma seated herself on a sofa with Isidore and—gulp—Louise. Which was distinctly humiliating, because Poppy had decided to ask for marital advice. Yet Louise already knew the worst about her marriage.
So she mentally girded her loins and marched over to Jemma. The three of them were sipping toddies, looking like a fashion plate from The Lady’s Magazine. It wasn’t that Poppy didn’t feel fashionable: she knew quite well that her petticoat was flounced and furbelowed. She had a beautiful lace ruff, and her hair was raised on the smallest pad—with no powdering whatsoever. She looked pretty. In fact, she thought the way her hair shone without powder was much more attractive than when it was powdered. But the important point was that she didn’t look…
Like Louise.
Louise had a roguish sensual look about her. It wasn’t just that her gown was lower cut and a bit tighter—which it was—it was something about the way she walked, and the color of her lips, and the way she laughed, low and deep.
“Hello, darling,” Jemma said, looking up. “Are you drinking these toddies? Because honestly, I think they may be a wee bit on the strong side. I’m not sure I can stand up.”
“I haven’t had one,” Poppy said. “Perhaps I should.”
“Definitely you should,” Isidore said, giggling madly. Her cheeks were bright red, which looked wonderful with her jet-black hair. She looked tipsy.
Louise reached up and pulled Poppy down next to her. “Do come sit with me,” she said. “How lovely your hair looks. Please take my toddy. I only sniffed it, as I can’t abide strong liquor.”