Don't Tempt Me (12 page)

“The same could have happened to him,” she said. “What would you have me do?” Her voice rose. “Nothing?”

“Yes!”

“That is completely unreasonable!”

“I don't care. When I give an order—”

“An order?” Her eyes were a stormy sky flashing lightning. Hot pink color flooded her cheeks. “You do not order me!”

“Yes, I do. You're my responsibility. I'm in charge of you.”

“In charge?” she said. “Of me?” Her voice went up another notch. “I did not agree to this. I did not agree to be stifled!”

“Oh, very good. Give the shopgirls an earful.”

“You were the one who chose this place. You are the one who chose to make a scene. You did not care who was listening. I do not care, either. You cannot shout at me.”

“I most certainly can.”

“Then shout, but I will not listen to you. I will not be ordered. I will not be stifled. For twelve years I was stifled. If this is how you mean for us to go on, then our agreement is cancelled.”

“Agreement?” Whatever else he'd expected, it wasn't this. He blinked and told himself he couldn't have heard correctly. “Cancelled?”

“That is what I said.”

“You can't be—You think you can do this without me?”

“I shall not do it with you, that much is certain.” She folded her arms and stuck her nose in the air. “I release you from your promise to help me.”

His heart was beating far too fast.

“Good,” he said. “That's a relief.”

“A greater relief to me,” she said. “Go away. I hate you. You are impossible.”

“Good-bye,” he said. “And good riddance.”

He turned his back and started for the door.

Something struck his hat and knocked it off. He did not turn around.

He left the hat and stomped out.

 

Though Marchmont had made Zoe so furious that she could hardly see straight, she'd been aware of Jarvis slinking out of the back room and into the shop when the shouting commenced.

Remaining conscious of her surroundings had become second nature. She had learned early in her time in the pasha's palace to watch from the corner of her eye the comings and goings of wives, concubines, servants, slaves, and eunuchs.

After glancing at the design book she'd thrown at Marchmont, then at his hat lying by the door, Zoe turned to the maid, who had a death grip on the handle of her umbrella.

Jarvis crept closer. “I'm sorry, miss. I know he said I was to go away, but they told me when they made me your lady's maid that I was in charge of you and was not to let you out of my sight and if anything happened to you it would be my fault.”

An image arose in Zoe's mind of the terrified maid beating a murderous Marchmont off with an umbrella.

Though her heart still pounded and outrage lingered—along with a painful awareness of having thoroughly destroyed her future—the image helped her recover her composure, if not her equilibrium.

“Summon the dressmaker,” she said. “As long as I am here, I shall buy clothes.”

Jarvis hurried to the door through which the shopgirls and seamstresses had escaped. Evidently the maid moved too quickly, because when she opened the door, the dressmaker stumbled into the room, and her helpers after her.

They had been piled up against the door, eavesdropping, obviously. Not that they needed to. People three streets away must have heard the row.

Now the women tumbled out, tripping on their hems and one another's feet. Caps got knocked askew and smocks came undone. One girl fell backward over a footstool, and another cracked her head against one of the overhead drawers that had been left open when they'd fled. An occasional “Ow!” and “Get off my foot!” punctuated their arrival, along with some expressions in French that Zoe didn't understand.

Madame quickly straightened her magnificent lace cap, gathered her dignity, and approached.

“I need clothes,” Zoe said.

Madame examined Zoe's dirty, torn carriage dress with a pained expression and nodded. Zoe wasn't sure whether the woman was pained because her dress was torn and dirty or because it was a year out of date. She suspected the latter.

“I need everything,” Zoe said.

“Oui
,
mademoiselle.
” The dressmaker glanced at Marchmont's hat on the floor near the shop door.

Jarvis edged closer to Zoe and whispered, “Miss, I think she's wondering who's going to pay.”

“I am well able to pay my own way,” said Zoe. “I don't belong to him. He does not pay for me.”

She told herself she didn't belong to him or need him. She would go to Paris or Venice. It would be more agreeable than London. There would not be so many rules, for one thing. Gertrude had told her that the Parisians and the Venetians were quite wicked and immoral and tolerated all sorts of impropriety.

In one of those wicked places she would easily find a man who could awaken in her the feelings that Marchmont did. She'd find other men who could make her feel like a serpent slithering out of the cold darkness into the hot sun.

Other men who weren't unreasonable and despotic.

A prince, perhaps. That would show him.

She beat down the memory of his mouth touching hers and the longing that still had not subsided.

“Everything,” she repeated. “And everything in the latest mode.”

“Oui
,
ma—”

The bell over the shop door tinkled.

Marchmont strode in.

He picked up his hat but did not put it on. He did not look at her or anybody else. He crossed the room, set his hat down upon a table, dropped in the most provokingly calm manner into the chair beside it, picked up a book of fashion plates from the table, and began turning the pages.

He was impossible, infuriating. Yet the world brightened at that moment. She hadn't realized how heavy lay the weight upon her heart until now, when it lifted, and the regret and guilt trapped there evaporated.

She regarded the pale gold head, the one unruly lock falling over his forehead, the large but graceful hands holding the book, the long legs….

She remembered the warmth of his gloved hand against her back and the touch of his fingers on her jaw and the jittery shock that had raced through her at these mere nothings of caresses. She remembered the light touch of his lips and the ache it had made in her belly.

She turned her back on him and began explaining to Madame what she meant by “everything.”

“Everything,” Zoe said, “down to my undergarments. My sisters' stays are so tight against my breasts that I can hardly breathe—and this includes the ones they wear when they are pregnant. But you see, they are smaller in the back even when their breasts are enormous from breeding. My mother's corsets are very handsome and comfortable, but they are too big. She is older and more plump. All the women of my family are shorter than I, and we are not shaped the same. My bottom—”

A strangled sound came from the chair by the table.

Zoe ignored it. “My bot—”

“This,” came the deep masculine voice from behind her.

Madame looked that way. “Ah!” she said.

Zoe turned.

He was holding up the fashion plate book. It was
open to a picture of a magnificent gown. “This will be perfect for the Prince Regent's Birthday Drawing Room.”

Zoe crossed the room and stared hard at the design, not him.

It was splendid, daring and dashing. It was
red.

“It's very French,” she said. The difference from English style was unmistakable. Had she not memorized
La Belle Assemblée
, which included not only illustrations but detailed descriptions of the latest fashions in Paris?

“You're an exotic,” he said. “Your apparel ought to be something out of the ordinary. All the world will be studying you. Give them something they can see and easily put a name to, and their tiny brains won't be forced to imagine.”

Though she knew it was in her best interests to do so, Zoe was not ready to forgive him. He had been unreasonable and tyrannical. He had hurt her feelings.

The coming weeks were going to be extremely trying.

Still, the gown was magnificent. It was so very, very
French
.

She looked at him.

He lifted his gaze from the book he was holding and met hers. “Why don't we buy the clothes now and argue later?” he said. “I have an engagement at eight o'clock. Hoare must have at least two hours to dress me for it or he'll cry. That leaves us time either to quarrel or to order your wardrobe, but not both.”

“You are abominable,” said Zoe, and she flounced away.

 

Zoe expressed her disgust with him in the time-honored fashion of women everywhere, by shopping exhaustively.

The sums she spent would have daunted most men, certainly, for she was determined to have everything of the best and most fashionable, from head to toe. Among other things, she bought dozens of corsets. Unlike other modistes, Madame employed her own corset maker, in order to assure a perfect fit for her gowns.

As she'd made clear earlier, Zoe had strong opinions on this topic.

Before she went into the fitting room, she not only explained to Madame precisely how her breasts ought to be most comfortably and attractively arranged but demonstrated, by holding them in the desired position.

“Not in front of the shop window, Miss Lexham, I beg,” the duke said.
And not in front of me.

“I forgot,” she said. “I must not take hold of my breasts before others who are not my husband.” She turned to Madame. “I lived in another place, and the rules there are different for what is said and done and what is not.”

“Oui
,
mademoiselle
,” said Madame. “Let us go into the fitting room, if you please.” She kept her face neutral. From elsewhere in the shop, Marchmont heard giggles.

“I don't want the short kind,” Zoe said as Madame led her to the curtained alcove. “They press the ribs under my breasts, and they do not enhance the shape in the way I wish. I want the kind that comes to
here.” She indicated the place on her hips. “And it must have the shape that makes the pretty curve from the waist and makes the bottom—But no. Augusta said I should not mention my bottom. It is vulgar, she said. Jarvis, what is the word they use? For the same thing?”

“That's
derrière
, miss,” said a scarlet-faced Jarvis.

“A French word, yes. Now I recall. My French is execrable. What little I learned as a girl, I forgot. Thank you, Jarvis. What I wish, Madame Vérelet, is for the corset to shape exactly to my
derrière.
When I wear a dress of fine muslin or silk, I want the shape behind to make a curve, very round.” She curved her hands over her buttocks to demonstrate.

“Miss!” said Jarvis.

“Oh, yes.” Zoe released her
derrière
. “I forgot.”

She disappeared into the fitting room. Madame closed the curtain, but it was only a curtain. Marchmont could hear Zoe talking about her breasts and hips and
derrière
. He heard the rustle as Madame took out her tape and measured. He heard her murmur the measurements to the assistant, who wrote them down.

His mind instantly produced supporting illustrations.

He remembered the softness and warmth of her body melting against his.

His body reacted as one would expect, his temperature climbing upward, along with his cock.

And that was a bloody damned waste of energy, when the gods only knew when he'd have time for amours, at the rate things were going. He told himself it was only for a fortnight—if he didn't kill her before that.

He looked round the shop at the hordes of females.

“Someone get me a drink,” he said.

 

When he returned her to Lexham House, Marchmont promised to call the following day.

“I don't care,” said Zoe, nose in the air.

They stood in the vestibule while a parade of footmen unloaded parcels from his curricle. Most of Zoe's frocks would not be ready for several days. However, when the Duke of Marchmont entered Madame Vérelet's shop, all of her other customers dropped in priority to forty-second place. She had ordered her seamstresses to alter a few garments intended for other ladies who were not the Duke of Marchmont's protégée.

Zoe was wearing one of these dresses. The duke had ordered her damaged gown burned.

He and she had spent an hour in a shoe shop as well, where she made sure he saw her prettily turned ankles, the evil little tease.

They had bought stockings, too, heaps of them.

He banished from his mind the provocative glimpses he'd had of her legs. Like it or not, he needed to think. With Zoe, a man needed his wits about him.

“It hardly matters whether you care or not,” he said. “I shall come to collect you at two o'clock. If you choose to spend the day in this house instead, you're welcome to do so. I certainly have sufficient to occupy me. I shall not die of grief because I cannot escort a sulky young woman about London.”

“If you find me so disagreeable, I wonder why you came back into the dressmaker's shop,” she said.

“What sort of paltry fellow do you take me for, to
be put off by a temper fit?” said he. “Especially one of yours. It was hardly the first I've seen, and I am certain it won't be the last. You ever were a pain in the a—Ah, Lord Lexham, I see you have escaped Westminster's clutches.”

“Temporarily.” Zoe's father, who'd quietly entered the vestibule between servants, stood watching the parade of parcels. “Zoe's been shopping, I see,” he said.

“Oh, this hardly signifies,” said Marchmont. “These are merely some fripperies and trinkets we bought in the futile attempt to sweeten her ghastly temper.”

Zoe stormed out of the vestibule, hips swaying, skirts swishing.