Poppy looked up at him and to his horror, he saw a tear slide down her cheek. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sorry. Look.”

She looked at the matted snarl and a few more tears fell down.

“It doesn’t matter. You can wear a wig. Why do you need all this hair anyway? It makes you itch. You’re better off without it.”

“But then—” she sniffed adorably, so he got her his handkerchief. She buried her face and said something.

“What?”

“I’ll be so ugly,” she burst out, looking up at him with her bottom lip quivering. “And unfashionable. You hate unfashionable women!”

If only she knew. If only—he kept his eyes above her collarbone. “That’s irrelevant, Poppy.” He said it in his most friendly voice. “Your mother told you the truth about men: we don’t stay attracted to one woman very long. I love you, and I want you to be comfortable. I don’t care about your hair!”

She sniffed again and wiped away a few more tears.

“That doesn’t sound as if you love me.”

“Well, I do.” He grabbed the scissors. “I would love you even if your hair was as short as that possum’s.”

He could see a few more tears on her cheeks, but she bent her head and didn’t say anything, so he started cutting.

After a bit he said, “Poppy?”

“Yes.” Her voice was muffled because she’d drawn up her knees and hidden her face in them.

“Did you know that there are snarls in your hair, next to your scalp?”

“What?”

He cut one out and showed it to her. “See? It’s all matted up in there. I don’t think your maid was actually combing your hair all the way through in the back.”

She shuddered and started to cry again, loudly this time. “Just cut it off,” she cried. “Go ahead. It doesn’t matter.”

So Fletch did. He clipped here and snipped there. He tried to save the parts that he could get a comb through, but all the tar had to go.

“I think the problem is that she’s been gluing feathers into your hair in back. And then I suppose she would cut them out if they wouldn’t wash out.”

“That is so disgusting,” Poppy said.

“I’m finding the tips of quills,” he said. “It’s a menagerie in here.”

“More like an aviary,” she said sourly.

“I’m surprised. I always wondered how women managed to get their hair up in the air and have it be three times their height. Now I know.”

“Sometimes Luce puts a cushion inside,” Poppy said. “How else can she make the plumes stay up? The plumes I wear for formal occasions are sixteen inches long. And I’ve been thinking that it’s not really her fault. Most women leave their hair up between stylings, even with the feathers attached, but I always insisted on washing it, every night.”

“I found a hair pin,” Fletch said. “Look—it has a diamond head.”

“It’s only from yesterday,” Poppy said crossly. “You’re making me feel hideously unclean.”

“If the shoe fits,” Fletch retorted. But she looked so mortified that he relented and said, “At least you never smell, Poppy. I can’t bear the way women smell like hog’s grease.”

“The powder sticks to grease too much and make me itch; I use tallow instead.”

“Tallow!” That explained a lot. Fletch ruthlessly cut out a few more pieces of hair matted with candle wax.

“I’m going to find another maid,” Poppy said. “I never liked Luce.”

“Then why on earth did you keep her?”

“My mother found her. She’s French. And she does the most wonderful frizzes on my hair. Remember Lady Salisbury’s ball?”

“Your hair was as high as a Babylonian tower.”

“It was beautiful.”

Fletch cut out a few more chunks and they fell over Poppy’s shoulder. She picked them up with a shudder and dropped them on the floor.

“What I don’t understand is why you never noticed what your maid was doing. Or not doing, to be more exact.”

Poppy sounded cross as the dickens. “Ladies don’t brush their own hair.”

“Ladies don’t do this, ladies don’t do that. I’m glad I’m a man.”

“If I were a man,” Poppy said, “I would go to CambridgeUniversity and became a famous naturalist.”

“Dr. Poppy, the world’s expert on dog possums,” Fletch said. “There, I think I’m finished.” He pulled a comb through the hair that was left.

“I still need to take a bath,” Poppy said. “This water has grown quite unpleasant.”

Fletch picked up her gown and threw it strategically over the mirror in the corner. Then he grabbed a toweling cloth and handed it to her.

She looked at the small cloth and then at him.

“I’m not interested, remember?”

Her eyes were asking a question, but he forced himself to smile. “I’ll go downstairs and tell the innkeeper that we need this bath emptied and fresh hot water.”

He was so hard it actually hurt to go down the stairs. That had to be a first.

Chapter 38

Fletch stayed downstairs while Poppy took her second bath, which gave her time to pull her gown off the mirror, burst into tears again at the sight of her shorn, hacked-off locks, then climb into a steaming tub of fresh water and get clean. Really clean because she washed her hair herself: ran her fingers through every strand, rather than sitting there passively while her maid did it for her.

Never again, she vowed to herself.

It wasn’t until she was toweling herself by the fire that she realized that never applied to lavender hair powder as well. There was no point in making herself look perfect every day. Her husband didn’t desire her.

Oddly enough, the knowledge stung. “Dog in the manger,” she muttered to herself, shaking out her hair and throwing it back over her shoulders. It weighed almost nothing, which was a delicious feeling. The steely truth was that she may not want him—at least to make love to her—but she wanted him to desire her.

Her heart ached, which was idiotic. She had lain there for years suffering agonies of embarrassment—and yes, itching—and generally just waiting for it to be over. Why, why, why would she want him to do that again?

She didn’t, of course.

It was just that this room was so small, and he seemed so large. She hadn’t been able to stop looking at his chest. He’d got wet washing her hair, and his shirt had clung to him. He was warm and hard and muscled in all the places where she had no muscles.

That was probably it. After all, she was a naturalist. His body was as different from hers as if he were a flying squirrel. His hair was silky and glossy whereas hers—she shuddered. How could she not know the state of her hair?

No wonder he didn’t desire her.

She would never desire anyone who had disgusting matted bits in his hair. Of course, Fletch’s hair was the kind of hair you could brush against your body and it would feel like satin.

Her skin was red from the scrubbing she’d given it, and her scalp felt clean and free. No more powder. No more tallow. No more feathers. No more frizzed hair. No more French maid.