An Affair Before Christmas

Villiers smiled faintly. “You are the one who told me not to pay so much attention to my doctors.”



He had been absolutely right about the house party. The so-called standards of polite society didn’t operate here. Jemma had challenged him to a chess game and he even played a few pieces before he realized that he didn’t care about chess anymore.



Then Jemma got a droopy look around her mouth and looked as if she might cry, so he closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep. Except that closing his eyes was dangerous these days: he closed them and woke up to find that the light had moved straight across the room and it was night. Or the night was gone and most of the day as well.



No one cared if Charlotte sat with him, and she never looked droopy. Sure enough, she was scowling at him. “You’re going to die looking like that?” she said pointedly.



He almost laughed but it took too much breath. “Appealing to my vanity won’t do it. May I use your name, oh sage Miss Tatlock?”



She turned up that long nose of hers. “Private names are far too intimate.”



“I want to be intimate,” he said.



There was a moment of silence.



“Though I won’t be around long enough to marry you,” he added.



“You wouldn’t want to marry me.” She picked up the book again. “Shall I continue?”



“Yes, I would,” he said, saying it because there was no reason not to. “I like you, Charlotte. I thought perhaps I could only love Jemma, but I’m fairly sure I’ve come to love you.”



“Very foolish of you,” she snapped.



“Yes.” But he was watching her under his lashes, and he saw a watery gleam in her eyes. He didn’t mean to make her droopy. The idea made him feel panicked. “So think about that. What a shame I’m dying. You could have inherited a fortune!”



She rallied instantly. “Don’t speak too soon. I might call in a priest and marry you to night.”



“I wouldn’t mind.”



Now her mouth was definitely wobbling. It was a soft and pink mouth, too. Anything to do with physical intimacy was farthest from Villiers’s mind, but he had noticed her mouth. She said bruising things, but with a sweet little mouth.



“Yes, you would!” she said fiercely. “I would never marry you for your fortune, and don’t forget it!”



“Would you marry me for other reasons?” He watched her from under his lashes. Of course, she would say no. He was a wreck of a man, dying, stupid, foolish, alone. She was—



“And not just because you’re desperate for a wedding ring?” he added. He didn’t have time for social niceties, not here in the very shadow of death.



“I don’t know,” she said slowly. She reached out and her warm fingers curled around his.



He felt the tide of exhaustion again. He was so tired of the pain. It was all over his body now, an ache, more than one ache. “Who would think that a foolish little sword wound could come to this?” he said.



Her hand tightened on his. “Don’t die.” She said it quietly. “Don’t.”



But he didn’t think he had a choice. “Do you know what I feel like, Charlotte?”



“No.”



“A torch.Nothing more than a torch borne in the wind.”



And then the blackness came quickly, before he had a chance to say another word.



Charlotte sat next to Villiers and watched him sleep. He was gaunt, his face as white as parchment. And yet she could still see that glorious scrap of life that makes up the soul. It wasn’t hard to grasp how fragile the place was in which the soul resided.



Dautry came in quietly. He had just arrived, having missed supper.



It took her a moment to understand what had happened to him. He was no longer a slightly shabby sailor. He looked magnificent, clad in a coat of periwinkle blue that fit his shoulders like a glove. His shirt was of the finest linen. Only two things betrayed him: his hair still tumbled like a pirate, to his shoulders, and his feet wore the same scuffed, comfortable boots as before.



“Goodness,” she said faintly. “You look ducal.”



“I look like a blasted peacock,” he said, striding around the bed. He picked up his Villiers’s other hand. “Damn.”



There was no point in pretending that she didn’t know what he meant. Everything about the duke signaled that the time was near.



“It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow,” she said. “I had hoped he would be here for Christmas.”



“He may surprise you yet.”



“He just did,” she said.



Dautry glanced at her.



“He asked me to marry him.”



A look of black rage crossed his face and then it was as expressionless as ever. “Did he?” he drawled. “And did you take him up on his idea?”



She stood up and shook out her skirts. “You’re an ass.”



“A fine English gentlewoman using such a word!” he said, mockingly.



“Ass,” she repeated, loving the sound of the word on her own lips. There was something about this trip, her acquaintance with the Duke of Villiers, that was changing her. Making her more like him, perhaps: combative, fearless. She reached out and smoothed Villiers’s fingers, lying on the counterpane.



Dautry strode around the bed. “I can see that you are fond of him,” he said.



She had to tip her head back: he was standing just beside her and he was so tall. “You are—”



“I know,” he interrupted. “You already told me.”



His eyes looked at her with such disapproval that she actually felt a thrill. As if she, Charlotte Tatlock, would do something immoral. It was practically a compliment. “So you think that I would seduce a dying duke into marriage in order to become a duchess?”



“Is that what you’re doing?”



She loved the image of it, if only it didn’t include Villiers’s death.



“His name is Leopold, did you know that?”



He looked furious again. “How did you come to meet the duke?” Suddenly his hands were on her shoulders.



He’s going to shake me! Charlotte thought. It was all she could do not to smile. Dautry really thought she was a fatal temptress…not just a plain old maid who lived in Gough Square.



“How long have you known him?”



“Long enough,” she said, prolonging the deliciousness of it.



But she didn’t know enough about men. Or perhaps she just didn’t know enough about Dautry. He didn’t shake her; suddenly he bent his head and before she had any idea what was happening, his mouth was on hers.



On her mouth!



His lips were warm and firm, and she suddenly smelled him. He smelled like a sailor: like the clean wind and faintly of cloves. Stray thoughts whirled through her head, about temptresses who kissed strange men…



The idea was so delicious that she did precisely what he wanted and opened her mouth.



But then the kiss changed and she couldn’t think as clearly anymore. He stopped holding her shoulders and pulled her against his body. He was warm and hard, and the spicy smell of him went to her head so she wound her arms around his neck and hung on.



They didn’t stop until there was a noise on the bed. She pulled away and swung around, but Villiers was still sleeping. Her whole body was tingling. No wonder, she kept thinking. No wonder men and women…