An Affair Before Christmas by Eloisa James

minutes before she hounds me here,” he told the butler. “Did the chef dismiss all the kitchen staff again?” He answered himself. “If he had, you’d be telling the duchess. So what can I do for you, Quince?”
    “This concerns the duchess,” Quince said.
    Fletch raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”
    “She asked me to give you a message.”
    “She did?”
    Quince didn’t hand him a slip of foolscap. “I believe her to have indicated, Your Grace, that she will be residing elsewhere.”
    “Residing—what the de vil are you talking about? Isn’t she upstairs with that harridan of a mother of hers?”
    “No,” Quince said. “Lady Flora is here quite alone, and has been engaged in hysterics for the past hour or so. Perhaps longer. It seems longer,” he added with feeling.
    Fletch felt an icy calm. Poppy was clearly kicking up her heels. But how could she storm out of the house and leave her mother behind?
    “Your Grace?” Quince bleated.
    “Yes,” Fletch said, heading toward the door.
    Quince spoke in a low voice. “Lady Flora instructed her maid to go to Selby House and return with her clothing.”
    Fletch stopped, his hand falling from the door. “Quince,” he said. “Tell me you are joking and I’ll double your wages.”
    “Your Grace,” Quince said, “Should this event come to pass, I envision doubling most of the staff ’s wages in order to keep them.”
    Fletch reached the hallway just as Poppy’s mother descended the last step. He saw her with the clear eyes of shock. Poppy had run off and it was going to cause him serious annoyance to bring her back. And whose fault was it? Poppy’s mother. And whose fault was it that his bride loathed the bedchamber? Her mother. And whose fault was it that Poppy spent most of her time in hospitals and charities? Her mother.
    There wasn’t much about Lady Flora that revealed her true nature. She dressed with all the formality of a queen and generally commanded that sort of attention. In truth, she was beautiful. Her figure was alluring, which was unusual in a woman in her forties. But it was her face that made her truly dangerous. Fletch admitted, from the depths of his rage, that it was a bewitching face, more so even than her daughter’s. It was the face of a woman who was accustomed to doing exactly as she liked, when she liked and how she liked. It was the face of a woman who rarely encountered opposition to her commands: in short, she had come to regard herself as something akin to the Queen of En gland. Or perhaps, given that Lady Flora scorned those who spent their lives in one small island, the female equivalent of the Tsar of Russia.
    Fletch bowed so abruptly that his chin might have cut the air if such a thing were possible. “Lady Flora. I regret to say that you seem to have caught us at an unfortunate moment.”
    She glided up to him and put a hand on his arm. “You poor dear,” she said.
    Fletch blinked. To this point, his mother-in-law had always treated him with the same regard with which she regarded every gentleman: as if he were a slightly more gilded version of a manservant.
    “I feel responsible,” she cooed. Yes! It was a coo. Fletch ground his back teeth and didn’t shift backwards, as was his instinct. “I obviously failed in raising my daughter, and through that, I failed you. I have been in the greatest agony of mind for an hour; you must understand, the agony of a mother’s heart is like no other.”
    Fletch opened his mouth but her lovely lips just kept moving.
    “Then I realized that there is only one person in the world who can solve this dilemma, who can make up for the extraordinary behavior of my daughter”—and for a moment Fletch saw her blue eyes harden into something like glass—“and assuage my own overwhelming sense of guilt. I shall stand by your side, Your Grace, I shall not desert you, even though my daughter has done so. I—”
    Fletch cleared his throat. “Lady Flora, I have every confidence that my wife