“Yes.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

May gave her a sharp glance. “You have to put Villiers out of your mind, Lottie.” May only called her by her childhood nickname in moments of the greatest distress. “I know it’s difficult, but life is like that. Here! Here’s something that will help.” With all the éclat of a conjurer with a rabbit, she pulled a franked letter from her pocket. “You remember how we thought that the Duke of Villiers’s letter was from Beaumont?”

“Beaumont wrote to me?” Charlotte said, more puzzled than anything.

“No, the duchess did! Perhaps she’s having another dinner!”

Charlotte tore open the sheet. “She’s invited me to her estate for a Christmas house party.”

May gasped. “Christmas at the duchy! You must go. Though it only begins just before the twenty-fifth.”

“It isn’t clear that the Parliament will adjourn until the last minute,” Charlotte explained. “I thought you wanted me to stay away from the duke.”

“A house party is different.”

“How so?”

May bit her lip. “It’s what you said.”

“Beaumont isn’t attracted to me?”

“And this proves it, don’t you see? The letter is from the duchess. She would never invite you if the reverse were true.”

“I did tell you so,” Charlotte said wearily.

“You must go.” May came over and sat down next to Charlotte. “Villiers is going to die soon, isn’t he?”

Charlotte nodded miserably.

“Go,” May said. “Go.”

Chapter 40

Poppy came back from Oxford looking as odd as a shorn sheep and without a maid, so Jemma sent a messenger to a brilliant young hair cutter she’d heard talk of, Monsieur Olivier.

A day later Poppy looked as pretty as a peach, with soft, short curls around a bandeau. “You’ll set a new style,” Jemma told her.

“I don’t care, as long as I don’t have to wear that horrid powder anymore.”

“I’ve heard of people being sensitive to powder and coming out in red blotches,” Jemma said. “Villiers never touches it.”

“I shall be judged horribly unfashionable, but it doesn’t matter,” Poppy said. “I’m married.”

“True,” Jemma replied, somewhat startled. “Though I never considered dress to be relevant to marital status.”

“I’ve always dressed with the wish to impress Fletch.”

“I dress for myself,” Jemma said. “Sometimes I spend all day in my dressing gown. But if I do dress, I make myself ravishing because then I feel ravishing.”

“I never feel ravishing.”

“You are ravishing, so why ignore the evidence? Here.” She handed over a piece of foolscap. “What do you think of my house party? These are the people who’ve accepted my invitation. I’m composing a plan of battle for the estate butler. It’s all very annoying that I’ve never met the staff; I hate relying on unfamiliar help.”

“My goodness,” Poppy said, eyeing the list. “How many people did you invite?”

“Not many,” Jemma said. “I want this to be an intimate party. And besides, with Villiers ill upstairs, we can’t be too celebratory. It wouldn’t be proper.”

“Proper? It’s scandalous.”

“I never worry about scandalous,” Jemma said. “I just worry we will all become sunk in gloom. If he is doing well, we’ll have a huge Twelfth Night party.”

“Did Villiers agree to come?”

“He did. The only thing that makes me sanguine about his improvement is that he sent me a great many detailed instructions. For one thing, he requested that Miss Tatlock be invited. Isn’t that peculiar?”

“You mean Miss Fetlock?”

“Yes.”

Poppy scowled.

“I see you’ve reached the same conclusion I have,” Jemma said, adding a note to her list. “Beaumont asked Villiers to make sure his inamorata would attend. But the curious thing is that I told Beaumont myself that I would invite her.”

“Why on earth did you do that?”

“I was testing him. Or myself,” she added wryly. “At any rate, he said he would be very pleased if I would invite La Fetlock, so I would judge the testing a failure, wouldn’t you?”

“Very foolish on both your parts,” Poppy observed. “Especially yours.”

Jemma smiled at her. “A few months ago you wouldn’t have said that.”

“What else did Villiers request?”

“He said that he was worried about the state of his soul—which doesn’t bode well for his health, I have to admit—and he wants a few philosophers from Oxford to come to the party. To debate with him.”

“How odd!”

“He can’t possibly be as ill as is reported if he wishes to hold debates in his bedchamber. What’s more, he wants unmarried philosophers. Most peculiar. And he’s bringing a tailor and a mantua-maker and may bring a bonnet-maker as well. A bonnet-maker, Poppy! Do you think that he’s utterly cracked?”

Poppy didn’t know and she couldn’t stop herself from asking the only question that really interested her. “Do you think I should send a note to Fletch? I haven’t seen him for two days and while, naturally, I don’t really care what he is doing for Christmas, I thought he might be interested in my curiosities. Perhaps I’ll bring them with me.”

“It’s better for him not to know where you are. And that goes double for your mother. She is not invited, by the way.”

“My mother,” Poppy said gloomily, “wishes me to pay her a visit at my earliest convenience.”

“Let me say again,” Jemma said, looking alarmed, “that I may well cancel the house party rather than have your mother, myself and Villiers under one roof. The last time I met your mother in Paris, she told me that I was a daughter of the game. I don’t think that was a compliment, do you?”

“My mother never compliments,” Poppy observed. “I can translate the phrase for you, if you wish.”

“No, don’t. I prefer to think of it as referring to chess. I find it so wearying to be insulted.”

Poppy leaned over and gave her a quick hug. “You are not nearly as degenerate as you pretend, do you realize that?”

“Actually, I’m twice as much,” Jemma said promptly. “You’re just too innocent to see the truth of it. Speak to my long-suffering husband on the subject.”

“Husbands live to be thwarted,” Poppy said mischievously. “Or so a very wise woman told me once.”

Poppy stepped out of the carriage before the Duke of Fletcher’s townhouse—her own residence—with a surprising little fillip of homesickness. There was no particu lar reason for that; Poppy had lately realized that she had only resided in the house. She had never really made it her own.

The house was, in a strange way, like her life. Sometimes she felt as if she’d never lived at all, just let her mother be the puppet master.

That thought had her walking through the front door with her jaw set. As Quince ushered her into the drawing room, she saw in a moment that her mother had not merely lived in the house: she had transformed it.