Free An Affair Before Christmas by Eloisa James

“From the moment we fell in love, you’ve wanted me to be different. And yet I am precisely the kind of wife that I understand. I—I don’t know how to be other than myself.”
    His jaw tightened. She saw it under her lashes. “No doubt I have made untoward demands on you.”
    “How would you like me to be?”
    He didn’t answer. She gathered her courage and kept blundering on because it all had to be said. She couldn’t bear another conversation of this nature. “I’m really asking you, Fletch. I keep wondering how I disappoint you, and I don’t know. What am I doing wrong? I have tried to do everything you asked of me, stayed quiet when I thought you wished me to, modeled my behavior on yours.”
    “You have not disappointed me.”
    Her stomach was so sour that she almost felt as if she might throw up right here, sitting in her own bedchamber. She clenched her hands instead, under a fold of her gown so that he couldn’t see it. Her face was completely calm; she knew that. “What do you expect? Or perhaps I should ask, what do you wish I would do?”
    “You told me once that ladies are different from washerwomen, do you remember that?”
    She smiled faintly. “I’ve done so much work in hospitals in the last two years that I can tell you that women are not really very different. I don’t remember saying that. What was it in reference to?”
    “You didn’t want me to kiss you other than with a closed mouth.”
    Now he had that furious look again.
    “But I allowed you to do so,” she said, forcing all her fear into her stomach and not letting her voice wobble. “Once we were married, I have tried very hard never to say no to you, Fletch.”
    “We shouldn’t have this conversation.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you have done your best, Poppy, I know that. And my hopes were naïve.”
    “But what did you expect me to do !”
    His head jerked up at the sharpness in her tone.
    “You always look disappointed. You demand, and demand, without saying what you want. What is it?”
    “I would have wanted you to—to—”
    “Well?” She hardly recognized the hardness in her own voice.
    “Enjoy yourself,” he said sadly. “Enjoy yourself, enjoy me, it’s all the same.”
    She bit down so hard on her lip that she could taste blood, metallic and strange. “I do enjoy myself.”
    He rose at that and walked to the window. “I’ve been blaming you for something that is outside your control, and it’s grossly unfair. I’m sorry.”
    She stared at his back and knew that her marriage was indeed over. She couldn’t give him what he wanted. They would never be happy together, and she would always disappoint him.
    She couldn’t stand that anymore.



Chapter 10
    Two days later
April 24
    T he Duke of Villiers lay in bed. His shoulder burned in the spot where the rapier thrust had gone through, with an intensity unabated by cold compresses. “The brandy makes it worse, dammit,” he said through clenched teeth.
    It was mortifying to discover just how much he did not like pain. At the moment, for example, he was pretending to be lying down simply due to surgeon’s orders but in truth he wasn’t sure he could rise. It must be blood loss.
    “Brandy kills infection, Your Grace,” his valet told him. As if he were some sort of idiot child.
    “I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be done; I’m just saying that it increases the—the discomfort.” Surely men didn’t suffer pain . Anyway, this didn’t feel like pain. It felt like something on a much higher magnitude, like a red-hot poker straight to the gut.
    “More barley water, Your Grace?” Finchley said.
    Villiers narrowed his eyes and watched his valet sweep about the room. Finchley was the sort of valet who would have made a better duke than Villiers himself. Villiers knew it; Finchley knew it. Villiers had presence, arrogance and blood lines. Finchley had presence, arrogance, a ducal way of walking, a penchant for wigs and high heels,