Silk Is For Seduction (19 page)

The first seamstress arriving in the morning—and that was usually Pritchett—should have noticed the sketch, and turned it over to Marcelline, Sophy, or Leonie. But when Sophy went in, shortly after the girls’ workday began, the sketch was gone and nobody said a word about it. It didn’t turn up until this morning. Selina Jeffreys found it under her chair when she came to work.

Pritchett had scolded her for hurrying away at night and leaving a mess. She’d made a great fuss about the sketch—Madame’s work was never to be carelessly handled.

But Marcelline, Leonie, and Sophy knew there hadn’t been a mess, and that Jeffreys’s place had been as clean and orderly as the others. Nothing had been lying under her chair or anyone else’s.

Well, now they knew. And now they were ready.

The shop door swung open, setting the bell jangling.

She looked up from the dress, and her heart squeezed painfully.

Clevedon stood for a moment, his green gaze sweeping the shop and finally coming to rest on her. He frowned, then quickly smoothed his beautiful face and sauntered toward her. Riveted on that remarkable face, too handsome to be real, it took her a moment to notice the large box he was carrying.

“Your grace,” she said, bobbing a quick curtsey.

“Mrs. Noirot,” he said. He set the box on the counter.

“That cannot be Lady Clara’s new dress,” she said. “Sophy said her ladyship was delighted with it.”

“Why the devil should I be returning Clara’s purchases?” he said. “I’m not her servant. This is for Erroll.”

Marcelline’s heart beat harder, with rage now. She was aware of her face heating. It probably didn’t show, but she didn’t care whether it did or not. “Take it back,” she said.

“Certainly not,” he said. “I went to a good deal of trouble. I know nothing about children anymore, and you will not believe the number and variety of—”

“You may not give my daughter gifts,” Marcelline said.

He took the lid off the box, and lifted from it a doll—such a doll! She had black curling hair and vivid blue glass eyes. She was dressed in silver net and lace, trimmed with pearls. “I’m not taking it back,” he said. “Burn it, then.”

At that moment, Lucie burst through the door from the back. She stopped short at the sight of the doll, which the beast hadn’t the grace to return to its box.

She’d been watching the street from the window upstairs, no doubt, as she always did. She’d recognized his fine carriage.

She was six years old. It was too much to expect her to resist the doll. Her eyes widened. Yet she managed a creditable “Good evening, your grace,” and a curtsey. All the while, her eyes never left the doll. “My, that’s a fine doll,” she said. “I think it’s the most beautiful doll I’ve ever seen in all my life.”

All six years of it.

“You’re going to pay for this,” Marcelline said under her breath. “And painfully.”

“Is it, indeed?” he said to Lucie. “I’m not a good judge of these matters.”

“Oh, yes.” Lucie drew a step nearer. “She isn’t like ordinary dolls. Her eyes are blue glass, you see. And her face is so lifelike. And her hair is so beautiful, I think it must be
real
hair.”

“Perhaps you’d like to hold her,” Clevedon said.

“Oh, yes!” She started toward him, then hesitated and looked at Marcelline. “May I, Mama?” she asked in her best Dutiful Child voice.

“Yes,” Marceline said, because there was nothing else she could say. She was hardheaded and practical, and any mother would know this was setting a terrible precedent as well as compromising her reputation.

But to deny her child—any child—such a treat, after the child had seen it and had done nothing wrong to be punished for, was wanton cruelty. She was a strict mother. She had to be. But too many cruelties, large and small, had marked her own childhood. That was one legacy she wouldn’t pass on.

Folding his large frame, he crouched down to Lucie’s level. Solemnly he held out the doll. Equally solemnly, she took it, holding her breath until it was safely in her arms. Then she held it so carefully, as though she believed the thing was magical, and might disappear in a minute. “What is her name?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I thought you would know.”

Oh, the wretched, manipulative man!

Lucie considered. “If she were my doll, I should call her Susannah.”

“I think she would like to be your doll,” Clevedon said. He slanted a glance upward, at Marcelline. “If she may.”

Though she was captivated by the doll, Lucie didn’t fail to see whose permission he sought. “Oh, if Mama says she may? Mama, may she? May she be my doll?”

“Yes,” Marcelline said. What other answer could she make, curse him!

“Oh, thank you, Mama!” Lucie turned back to Clevedon, and the look she sent him from those great blue eyes was calculated to break his heart, which Marcelline sincerely hoped it did. “Thank you, your grace. I shall take very good care of her.”

“I know you will,” he said.

“Her limbs move, you see,” Lucie said, demonstrating. “She needn’t wear only one dress. This one is very beautiful, but she’s like a princess, and a princess must have a vast wardrobe. Mama and my aunts will help me cut out and sew dresses for her. I’ll make her morning dresses and walking dresses and the most beautiful carriage dress, a blue redingote to match her eyes. The next time you come, you’ll see.”

The next time you come.

“Why don’t you take Susannah upstairs to meet your aunts?” Marcelline said. “I have something to discuss with his grace.”

Lucie went out, cradling the doll as though it were a living infant. Clevedon rose and watched her go out, through the door to the back of the shop. He was smiling, and it was a smile Marcelline had never seen before. It was not his charming smile or his seductive one or his winning one.

It was fond and wistful, and she could not withstand it. It won her and weakened her will more effectively than any of his other smiles could have done.

Which only made her angrier.

“Clevedon,” she began.

He turned back to her, the smile fading. “You may not rake me over the coals,” he said. “She set out to captivate me, much as her mother did—”

“She’s six years old!”

“You both succeeded,” he said. “What was I to do? She’s a little girl. Why should she not have a doll?”

“She has dolls! Does she seem neglected to you? Deprived in any way? She’s
my
daughter, and I take care of her. She has nothing to do with you. You’ve no business buying her dolls. What will Lady Clara think? What do you think your fine friends in the ton will say when they hear you’ve given my daughter gifts? You know they’ll hear of it.” Lucie would show the doll to the seamstresses, naturally, and they’d tell everybody they knew, and word would spread through the ton in no time at all. “And do you think their speculations will do my business any good?”

“That’s all you think about. Your business.”

“It’s my life, you great thickhead! This”—she swept her hand to indicate the shop—“This is how I
earn
my living. Can you not grasp this simple concept? Earning a living?”

“I’m not—”

“This is how I feed and clothe and house and educate my daughter,” she raged on. “This is how I provide for my sisters. What must I do to make you understand? How can you be so blind, so willfully obtuse, so—”

“You’ll make me run mad,” he said. “Everywhere I turn, there you are.”

“That’s monstrous unfair! Everywhere I go, there is your great carcass!”

“You upset everything,” he said. “I’ve been trying for a fortnight to propose to Clara, and every time I steel myself to it—”

“
Steel
yourself?”

“Every time,” he went on, unheeding,
“you”
—he waved his hand—“There you are. I went to Warford House today to
come up to scratch,
as you so poetically put it, but you had her worked up into such a state, we couldn’t have a proper conversation, and all my speech—and I spent
half an hour
composing it—went out of my head.”

The door to the back of the shop opened again and Leonie came in.

“Oh, your grace,” she said, feigning surprise, though she’d probably heard the row from the stairs. Marcelline hoped the seamstresses had followed orders and left early, else they’d have had an earful.

“He was about to leave,” Marcelline said.

“No, I wasn’t,” he said.

“It’s closing time,” Marcelline said, “and we know you aren’t buying anything.”

“Perhaps I shall,” he said.

“Leonie, please lock up for me,” she said. To him she said, “I’m not keeping my shop open all night to pander to your whims.”

“Do you plan to throw me out bodily?” he said.

She could knock him unconscious. Then she and her sisters could drag him out into the alley behind the shop. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d had to dispose of a troublesome male.

“You’re too big, curse you,” she said. “But we’re going to settle something, once and for all.”

Chapter Ten

Approaching Marriages in High Life.—A marriage is on the tapis between Mr Vaughan and Lady Mary Anne Gage, sister of Lord Kenmare. Viscount Palmerston, it is said, will shortly be united to the rich Mrs Thwaites.

The Court Journal
, Saturday 25 April 1835

M
arcelline stormed through the passage, past the stairs toward the back of the building, and through the open door into the workroom.

She met chaos.

Worktable covered with scraps of fabric, thimbles, thread, pincushions. Floor littered with debris. Chairs left where they’d been pushed out. It looked as though seamstresses had fled or been chased out.

She didn’t have time or mind to wonder at it. She didn’t have time or mind to put two and two together. The state of the room was one more trial in a long, wearying day of biting her tongue and maintaining an even temper in the face of stupidity, rudeness, and ill-usage. A long day of crushing her own wants and giving all her energy to winning and pleasing.

She’d deal with this latest aggravation later.

Clevedon first.

She turned to face him, bracing her hands against the edge of the disgracefully cluttered worktable.

She took pride in the neatness and order of her shop, a stunning contrast to life in her parents’ household, or what had passed for a household. But it didn’t matter what he thought of the disarray, she told herself. How would he know the difference between how a workroom ought and ought not to be maintained? And what did he care?

“You’re not to come here again,” she said. “Ever.”

“That suits me,” he said. “This is the last place on earth I’d wish to be.”

“You’re not to buy my daughter any more gifts,” she said.

“Why did you think I would?”

“Because she’s a conniving little minx who knows how to wrap men about her finger,” she said.

“So like her mother,” he said.

“Yes, I connived, and I wrapped you about my finger. But now I’m done with that. What did I ever want of you but your betrothed?”

Liar, liar
.

“We’re not betrothed,” he said, “thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me?” she said with a mocking laugh. Mocking him. Mocking herself. “You’re not betrothed because of
you.
Why didn’t you make your so-carefully-rehearsed speech to that beautiful girl? The speech to which you devoted a mere half hour for the most important question of your life—”

“Clara doesn’t need—”

“But why should you take any trouble, when you take for granted everything you have? You’re used to getting whatever you want and losing interest as soon as you get it.”

“I love her,” he said. “I’ve loved her since we were children. But you—”

“It’s my fault, is it?” she said. “I’m the demon destroying your happiness? Only look at yourself and listen to yourself. Like every other man, you want what you can’t have. Like every other man, you’ll stay interested—even obsessed—until you get it. You came here this evening because you can’t think straight—because it drives you mad not to have something you want.”

His color darkened, and she saw his hands clench. “If you think that something is you, think again,” he said. “I don’t want you. But you want me, and I feel so sorry for you.”

Inwardly, it was as though she’d walked into a wall. Her head pounded and pain shot deep, deep inside.

She wanted him. She wanted to be the heartbreakingly beautiful girl he loved. She wanted to be someone else: a woman who mattered to him and to all those who mattered, instead of a nobody to be used and discarded. She wanted everything her family had taken away: every opportunity they’d squandered and all the damage done to her future long, long ago, generations before she was born.

Outwardly, she didn’t blink. “Then send me more customers,” she said. “I find money a great comfort in any calamity.”

She heard his sharp inhale. “By gad,” he said. “By gad, you’re a devil.”

“And you’re an angel?” She laughed.

He crossed the room, and in that instant she knew what would happen. But she was a devil and so was he, and she only stood there, gripping the table, daring him, daring her own destruction.

H
e stood over her, looking down into her dark, brilliant eyes. They mocked and taunted, as her voice had mocked and taunted him with the ways he lied to himself and everyone else.

The truth was, he was no angel. Three years ago, he’d abandoned his responsibilities, gone abroad, and found himself. He’d settled in Paris because he could be free there as he could never be in England. In Paris, his hunger for excitement and pleasure could do no damage to those he loved.

She promised nothing but damage, everywhere.

She was wrong for him in every possible way, and especially wrong at this time. Why couldn’t he have met her a year ago, three years ago?

But when he looked down into her eyes, right and wrong meant nothing. He and she were two of a kind, and like called to like, and he wanted her. And she, who read him so easily and so well, had spoken one needle-sharp truth after another.

Yes, he’d go on wanting her until he had her.

Then it would be done, and he could be free of her.

He cupped her face and tilted it upward and brought his mouth to hers and kissed her. She turned her head away, breaking the kiss. He trailed his mouth along her cheek, to her ear and down. Her scent rose from her neck, and all the air he breathed then was her and all he knew then was her.

“Fool,” she said. “Fool.”

“Yes,” he said. He wrapped his arms about her and pulled her away from the table and dragged her up against him.

That was right, no matter how desperately wrong it was. It was right, the warmth of her back against his forearm, and the way her supple body fit to his, as though it had been tailored special in some infernal shop where Beelzebub presided.

He was done for, caught. Heat pumped through him, fever-fierce, and scorched his reason.

This was all he’d ever wanted: possession. Images burned in his mind—the cool way she’d taken her leave of him in the opera house . . . men colliding with one another or stumbling over their own feet when she passed . . . the way she had of turning her head . . . the graceful arc of her fan, sweeping over her dress . . . the light movement of her hand touching her shoulder in the place where he’d touched her. All this and more—every moment in her company—all of it was swirling in his mind and racing through his veins when he took her into his arms.

This was what he’d wanted. To hold her. To keep her.

Mine
.

Unthinking, like a brute.

With one arm he swept the table clear. Pieces of cloth, bits of lace and ribbons wafted down, while spools of thread, thimbles, and other bric-a-brac clattered to the floor.

He lifted her onto the table.

She set her hand against his chest, to push him away. He laid his hand over hers, and held hers there, over his pounding heart. He lifted her chin and dared her, his gaze locking with hers. Her eyes were wide and so dark, as dark as night. That was where he wanted to be: lost in the darkness, the unknowable place that was Noirot.

Noirot. That was all he knew. He didn’t know if that was truly her name. He didn’t know her Christian name. He didn’t know whether she’d ever had a husband. It didn’t matter.

She brought her hands up and grasped his head and pulled him to her. She wrapped her legs about his hips and kissed him in that wild way of hers, holding nothing back, and demanding the same
everything
from him.

He gave it, too, in a mad, hungry kiss, while his hands moved greedily over her, wanting and wanting, endlessly wanting. He’d stored it up for so long. Mere weeks had passed since he met her, yet it seemed forever that he’d wanted her. It seemed an eternity he’d lived in dreams and fantasies and the memories that came unbidden, haunting his days and nights. Now he wasn’t dreaming. Now he was alive, finally, after sleepwalking for a lifetime.

Under his hands, silk and muslin and lace rustled, the sound so intimate, inviting possession. But everywhere he found obstacles, layer upon layer of her curst
fashion
between his hands and her skin. He slid his hand over her bodice, seeking skin, remembering the velvety miracle of hers, and its warmth. The memory was maddening, because he couldn’t touch her in the way he wanted, lingeringly. For all his demented heat, he knew they had little time, no time, only a moment. They’d met at the wrong time and they were not meant for each other and this was all he’d have.

No time.

He dragged up her skirt and petticoats and slid his hand up over the fine muslin drawers. Awareness crackled, electric: of the smooth flesh under his hand . . . its heat warming the thin fabric . . . the sweet fullness of her thighs . . .

But they had no time. He found the opening to the drawers. He heard her sharp inhalation as his fingers slid over the softness there. Then, as he stroked, she gave a little, unwilling cry, which she quickly smothered against his mouth.

He knew what he was doing. A part of him knew where they were and how mad it was. A part of him knew he’d closed the door behind him, but hadn’t locked it. A part of him knew this was a room anyone might enter at any moment. All this was in his mind, in the smallest part of his mind. The awareness hovered and nagged, a low, urgent warning:
Make haste, make haste
.

He was a fool and he ought to be mortified. After all this time, to be no more than a schoolboy, wanting a girl, and stealing a moment for a furtive and hurried coupling.

But he couldn’t stop.

She reached down and unbuttoned his trousers, and he gasped against her mouth as she touched him, her hand grasping his swollen shaft, and sliding up and down, and his mind went dark, and there was only need and heat.

He pushed her hand away, and pushed into her. She gave another little cry, again quickly stifled, and then there was only the sound of their breathing, ragged and harsh, as he thrust again and again, merely a brute, possessing, mindless.

Mine
.

He felt her nails dig into his arms and he felt her body shudder as pleasure caught her, but that was all. She didn’t cry out. He heard only the sound of her breath, quick and shallow.

He wanted more, endless more, but he’d waited too long, wanted too long, and when her muscles contracted about him so fiercely at her climax, his control shattered. Pleasure pounded through him like a live thing, dragging him to a precipice, and over. And down he went, in a surge of triumph so ferocious that he never thought of pulling away. It was too late, too late. He felt her spasms as her pleasure peaked again, and he heard her hoarse cry, damning him to hell, and happiness flooded him, and he spilled into her, in a fiery rush of relief and raging joy.

M
arcelline did not want to cling to him, but she had to, or she’d slide off the table and slither to the floor in a limp heap. Her heart had slowed from its frenzy, and now beat slow and fierce, a sledgehammer at her ribs.

Oh, she was a fool, the greatest fool there ever was! She could have lived in blissful ignorance. She could have supposed all men were the same and coupling was a relief for strong feeling as well as a great pleasure.

Now she knew that the simple act could be volcanic, and the world could begin and end in a few minutes, leaving everything upended, the universe destroyed and rebuilt, and nothing as it had been before.

But the day had offered one injury after another. What was one more catastrophe?

She’d made a fatal mistake, and it wouldn’t be the first time. She’d survived others. She’d survive this.

He held her still, so tightly, his powerful arms bracing her back. She needed to push him away. She should have done it long since, at least at the critical moment. She knew one couldn’t rely on a man to remember to withdraw at such a time. But she couldn’t be relied on, either. She’d wanted him inside her. She’d wanted him to be
hers
and hers alone, even if it was only for a moment, only for this once. And she hadn’t wanted to let go.

Even now.

She let herself wallow for one more moment in the strength and warmth enveloping her. She let herself inhale his scent, purely male and purely his. She let her cheek graze his—and somehow that seemed more intimate than anything they’d done, though he stood between her legs, though she felt his shaft slipping from her and the wetness of his seed . . . the seed he’d spilled inside her because she hadn’t the wit or will to prevent it. And that, too—their savage, desperate coupling, for she wouldn’t call it lovemaking, never, never—had seemed a greater intimacy than if they’d lain naked in bed, enjoying each other at their leisure.

But she was a fool, and there was the beginning and end of it.

“You must let go,” she said. Her voice was thick.

He tightened his hold, his arms like iron bands.