Read Online Poppy by M.C. Beaton - Free Book Online

oil lamp on the desk, a heavy brass thing with a green shade, but the duke made no move to light it. Shadows gathered on the paneled walls. There were framed hunting pictures on one wall, and a glass-fronted bookcase on another The fireplace had a polished high brass fender topped with a sort of leather bench around it, and the fire itself suddenly spurted up, sending flame patterns dancing over the walls and up to the low ceiling. A pair of lovers by Du Paquier in yellow and pink porcelain carried on their eternal courtship on the mantelshelf. Poppy thought idly that perhaps she should leave to go and find Freddie, but her emotions had been so buffeted about since her marriage that she felt like a weary ship come to port after a storm. So she sat silently, occasionally looking around the room and sometimes at the play of firelight on the duke’s face as the storm grew louder outside and dusk crept over the lawns and ornamental water.
    Suddenly he raised his head, and their eyes met, Poppy’s wide and blue and wondering, and the duke’s black and inscrutable.
    Freda, who had been leaning her ear to the other side of the door in the hopes of hearing the new Mrs. Plummett get her comeuppance, could not understand the continuing silence, and with a shrug assumed she was too late and that the interesting interview was at an end. She pushed open the door.
    The duke stared at her with a strangely blank look on his face. Poppy remained facing him and did not even turn around. Somewhere far below, the dressing gong sounded.
    “What are you two doing sitting in the dark?” exclaimed Freda, rustling forward, lighting the lamp and turning it up to its fullest. A flicker of irritation, which was quickly masked, crossed the duke’s face, but not before she had noticed it. He felt annoyed with Freda. He was sure if she had not come in, he would have been able to analyze, to his satisfaction, these new, strange emotions that had beset him.
    “In case you have not noticed,” said Freda with an edge to her usually charming voice, “that was the dressing gong.”
    “Oh, thanks, Freda,” mumbled Poppy, getting to her feet. The duke, with his usual punctilious courtesy, immediately got to his own.
    Freda’s eyes were like ice. “For your information,
Mrs
. Plummett,” she said. “When you address me, you call me Mrs. von Dierksen. Only the duchess calls me Freda.”
    Now, Poppy would have done well to follow the duke’s example in trying to analyze her emotions. As it was, she did not realize that the sudden, trembling rage and dislike for Freda, which consumed her, was based on jealousy, pure and simple.
    With great dignity the Honorable Mrs. Freddie Plummett gathered her skirts about her and glared at Freda. “I don’t know why you’re going out of your way to be so nasty,” said Poppy, “but I suggest you take whatever it is and stuff it up your jumper!”
    Then with one apologetic glance at the duke’s immobile face, she fled from the room.
    “Well…!” said Freda.
    “I know,” said the duke. “You never in all your born days.”
    “Exactly. How could you bear to be closeted with such a low creature?”
    “My tastes are becoming debased with age, my darling. I found her quite delightful.”
    “Don’t tease so, Hugo. She’s awful. Think of your poor mother. I do feel for her.”
    “I shouldn’t,” he said in a mocking voice. “Mother resents your presence here so much more than Mrs. Plummett’s.”
    “But that is your fault, Hugo. You should tell her we are affianced. There is no barrier to our marriage. I am of the finest blood.”
    “Ah, yes, but you forget I have no intention of marrying,” said the duke lightly. “What is marriage after all, my dear Freda? Merely a form of romanticized lust.”
    “You’re impossible!”
    “And unmarriageable, dear Freda.”
    “I am tired of being treated like a courtesan, Hugo, and so I warn you. You never sit with me in darkened rooms in rapt