An Affair Before Christmas

Page 51

“You’re too unpleasant to die,” she said sharply. “If you’re not careful, I’ll marry you while you’re in a fever and then take all your money.”
He stopped looking so dismal and laughed a bit, though it made him wheeze. “What the hell would you do with money? Buy some clothing?”
“Give it to your children,” she said.
“They’re set for money. No father, but money. I made a will. Seeing as I’m no father, they’ll be better without me.”
“Poppycock. You are a father. You’re just a bad one.”
“I’ll have to find you a deaf husband,” he said, eyes narrowed. “But I demand that you keep visiting me until I do.”
“Why should I risk my reputation on your implausible matchmaking abilities?”
“That’s something you don’t know about me. I never fail at what I put my hand to. I’ll find the perfect man. I’d like to see you refuse him.”
“If I take him, you’ll have to do something for me in return.”
“What? In return for finding you your heart’s desire, I have to do you a favor?”
“It’ll keep you alive long enough to do it,” she pointed out. “Otherwise you’re like to tumble into the grave merely because your doctor told you to do it. I don’t think anyone in London realizes how malleable you are.”
“You are a hellcat. What’s your favor, then?”
“If you find me a husband—one that I like, I’ll turn wife and you turn father.”
“I’m as much a father as my father ever was. Better, because I don’t ever shout at them.”
“You might, if you knew their names.”
“Worse than a hellcat,” he observed. “It’s going to take a miracle to marry you off.”
“And you’re going to have to sit up,” she retorted. “Just how do you expect to find me a husband while you’re malingering in bed?”
He eyed her. “When the fever comes on I don’t have much choice.”
“Well, I can’t ruin my reputation in your house. What decent man would want to marry a woman he met in your presence—in your bedchamber?”
“Good point,” he murmured. “I suppose you’re saying that I should get up.”
“Well…” she hesitated.
“I always thought that generals should be female.” He seemed to go to sleep, and she put her Bible back in her knotting bag, thinking to steal out. But he opened his eyes again and said, “A Christmas house party, that’s what we need.”
“Go to sleep,” she said. “You’re looking all weedy again.”
“If we were invited to a house party you could read me the entire Old Testament and no one would have the faintest idea that we were in such promiscuous contact. I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” he said, his eyes closing again. “Do you know, I’m tired. But it’s not the fever-tired. Maybe you’re the miracle, Miss Charlotte What ever your name is.”
“Humph,” she said, just to leave him with something to think about.
Finchley was hovering in the hallway and she smiled at him. “I think that’s a healthy sleep,” she whispered. “He doesn’t have that feverish look.”
“The Lord be praised,” Finchley said, and looked as if he might cry. “Your hackney is waiting, Miss Charlotte.”
Chapter 35
“Just what do you intend to do now?” Poppy was in-censed as she watched the door shut behind Elsie. “How am I supposed to ready myself for bed, let alone bathe? I can’t sleep with all this powder in my hair!”
“Do you wash the powder out every night?”
“Of course!”
“I thought women slept with their heads upright so as not to disturb their curls. You never took your hair down when I visited your bedchamber.”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, why not?” He came up behind her and started tweaking her hair. “Even when I saw you in a nightgown your hair was always up; I thought you always left it so.”
“I took another bath after your visits, naturally, so my maid would take down my hair then. What are you doing?” Poppy asked. She was starting to feel very peculiar. Even though Fletch wasn’t interested in bedding her anymore…well, they were alone.Really alone. No maid waiting to bathe her. No maid at all.
“I’m taking all the pins out of your hair, of course.”
“That young woman would have done perfectly well!”
“She was wearing an apron, Poppy. Did you see that apron?”
“She works in the kitchen. Why shouldn’t she wear an apron? I sometimes wear an apron when doing house hold things.”
“You didn’t notice that the apron was bloody?” he enquired. “Because I did. It looked as if gentle Elsie had been twisting the heads off chickens with her bare hands.”
Poppy had to admit that she was somewhat reluctant to be bathed by a chicken killer. “Ow!”
“I can’t get this feather to come out. The long one in the back.”
“Well, don’t just pull!” But when Poppy put her hands up and tried to help out, he batted her away.
“I’ve got quite a few pins out,” he said a minute later. “But this black stuff isn’t coming out, Poppy. And the feather doesn’t budge.”
“It will wash out,” she said. “If you leave now I’ll wash it out in the tub.”
“And just how are you going to do that yourself?”
She turned around and glared at him. A feather thwacked her in the eye and she brushed it out of the way.
“Those feathers are glued into your hair. Did you know that, Poppy? Your maid must be gluing them in and then cutting them out later.”
She hadn’t known that, but there was a great deal she didn’t know about hair dressing. That’s why she paid Luce so much.
“The problem is that we don’t have a pair of scissors around here,” he said. “I suppose I can ask the innkeeper.” He opened the door and bellowed down the hall before she thought to answer.
A moment later he waved a pair of scissors at her. “I’m going to have to cut out all that black stuff and the feathers. You’d better stay very still.”
She backed away. “Are you jesting? You’re not cutting my hair. I’ll wash out the tar. And the glue.”
“Right,” he said, folding his arms. Poppy really hated the fact that he looked…well…so male. That was it. He was a big male, with a lot of muscles, and it naturally made her nervous. Actually, it made her want to run her hand up his arm, the part where the muscle was straining against the linen of his shirt.
“I’ll scrub it out,” she repeated. “So if you wouldn’t mind leaving, Fletch, I’ll get it done in a jiffy.”
“Where am I to go? You want me to go down and ogle the King of Beggars?”
“I certainly don’t care where you go but you can’t stay here while I bathe.”
“Why not? I’ve seen you naked, Poppy. Hell, I’ve kissed you all over naked. We’ve been married four years, remember? That side of our marital life is over. I think you need help.” He picked up a strand of Poppy’s hair and looked at it with a distasteful expression on his face. “Have you ever bathed yourself?”