Vixen in Velvet (31 page)

There had been too much to do lately and Marcelline had been too ill when there was time. And so it was only now that Leonie could tell her the full story of the last two and a half weeks. She didn’t cry. She’d never been one for weeping. But she’d almost wept at Vauxhall.

It’s you they’re looking at. The most beautiful girl in the place.

And her heart had broken then.

She and her sisters had looks, certainly, and they made the most of their assets, but they were not, strictly, beautiful. Leonie was the least beautiful of the three, with her crooked nose and too-sharp jaw and red hair.

But Lisburne had said she was the most beautiful girl in the place and he’d said it in a way that made one believe he believed it, which only a man besotted could do.

“Your taste, as it ought to be, is excellent,” Marcelline said. “He’s handsome to a painful degree.” She patted Leonie’s hand. “I was beginning to worry about you. I feared you’d hold out for a respectable professional man and save your virginity for the wedding night—and our ancestors would turn in their graves.” She broke out into giggles then, and Leonie couldn’t help giggling, too.

When they’d sobered, Marcelline said. “Clevedon didn’t like it because he says Lisburne is
slippery.
”

“Slippery,” Leonie said blankly.

Marcelline smiled. “I think he means that Lisburne is like the Noirots and the DeLuceys in one way. Charming but elusive. He treats women beautifully, Clevedon says, and stays with them long enough for them to believe he’ll stay forever. Then he leaves them beautifully, with very expensive trinkets to help mend their broken hearts.”

“That’s nothing I hadn’t worked out for myself,” Leonie said. “I knew he was a charmer from the instant I met him. Completely irresistible. Entirely dangerous.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Marcelline said.

“Better to leave than to be left,” Leonie said. “And I preferred to leave on a high note.”

“Without the trinkets?” Marcelline said in mock astonishment. “Can you truly be a Noirot? Or did Gypsies take our real sister, and leave you on the doorstep as a consolation prize, as Sophy used to claim?”

“Oh, I’ll get a trinket,” Leonie said. “But better than jewelry,
chérie
. My goodbye gift from him will be priceless.”

Lisburne House

O
n Sunday, a special edition of the
Spectacle
published Tom Foxe’s blow-by-blow account of Theaker and Meffat’s unmasking at Vauxhall. While dashes and asterisks stood in for names, nobody in Society remained in any doubt of Lord Swanton’s innocence or his manly display when women bystanders were insulted, or the dastardly behavior of two men who had been, the
Spectacle
reminded its readers, intimate friends of a recently disgraced member of the peerage.

In the entire edition, otherwise overflowing with gossip and innuendo, there appeared no sly insinuations about a certain dressmaker and a marquess. The children’s fête received due attention, however, and in that context Miss Noirot’s dress, along with those of Lady Gladys, Lady Clara, and other patrons of Maison Noirot were described in brain-freezing detail.

Swanton being late coming down to breakfast, Lisburne had more than sufficient time to read and reread the
Spectacle.
As though he’d find a clue there to explain what had happened between him and Leonie.

What had happened to him. When she left.

He’d stood blind and deaf and paralyzed until Clara had demanded his attention.

After a long, hard fight with his pride he’d gone to Maison Noirot. Leonie ought to have arrived long since, but she wasn’t there. Fenwick had answered the door and said, “I fought she was wif you,” or something to that effect.

A sound from the doorway brought Lisburne back to the moment.

Swanton entered, all aglow. He actually chirped a greeting. He hummed while filling his plate.

Lisburne wanted to throw the coffeepot at him.

Instead he flung the
Spectacle
across the table to Swanton’s place. “You’ll be happy to know you are once more an angelic being, whom all ladies must worship and adore,” he said.

Swanton sat down. “Not happy to see you in a fit of the blue devils,” he said. “My redemption is mainly your doing, after all.”

“It’s Miss Noirot’s doing,” Lisburne said. He felt a sharp ache in his chest. He ignored it. “If she hadn’t had the wit to let that strange little boy loose on the streets of London, we might never have found Mrs. Williams. Or maybe we ought to thank her sister, for finding Fenwick in the first place.”

“I saw you dancing with Miss Noirot,” Swanton said. “You looked like a man in—”

“I saw you dancing with Gladys,” Lisburne cut in.

“Yes.” Swanton ducked his head and attended to his breakfast. Had Lisburne been paying attention, he’d have noticed the color creeping up his neck.

But Lisburne’s mind was elsewhere. Swanton hadn’t been Gladys’s only partner at Vauxhall. She was never without a partner during all the time Lisburne had remained at Vauxhall—and a very long time it had seemed. After dancing with Clara, he’d danced and flirted with other young ladies. And why shouldn’t he, when Leonie saw fit to abandon him? Not that he blamed her, after all, when she had just recovered her shop’s reputation. He understood that shopkeepers, especially milliners, had to be careful about public perception of their morals, and she needed to be more than usually careful, because of the young women she sponsored. Still, she might at least . . .

“But I’ll call tomorrow,” Swanton was saying. “And I should like to borrow the curricle. I think, if I’m quick enough off the mark, she’ll consent to drive with me.”

“Yes, of course she will.”

“Then it’s all right?”

“What is?”

“For me to borrow the curricle,” Swanton said. “Can’t have the other fellows stealing a march on me.”

“Certainly not. Help yourself.”

Lisburne left the breakfast room and went upstairs to his room, where Polcaire waited, to dress his master for the day. The master dutifully played his part: He maintained an air of calm insouciance during this lengthy and critical procedure, and delivered the necessary bon mot for Polcaire to share with the other valets at their favorite drinking place.

Wednesday 29 July

L
isburne told himself he had nothing to be irate about. He had intended to seduce Leonie Noirot. He’d succeeded. She’d made his enforced stay in London very interesting, indeed. But he’d always known he’d return to the Continent, which meant that sooner or later they would part ways.

He hadn’t expected to part ways quite so soon.

He told himself he ought to have expected it, since she wasn’t a courtesan or a merry widow but a businesswoman with a shop to run, who couldn’t afford to be seen as a demirep or the mistress of a nobleman. He understood this perfectly well. He better than many of his peers understood the way business worked. He viewed his own extensive holdings as business. Since he oversaw them from abroad, he was all the more careful and attentive to details.

He understood, truly he did.

And he was wretched and angry all the same, and it took only until midweek for him to break down and visit the shop.

He arrived shortly after opening time on Wednesday morning, when the ladies of the beau monde were least likely to appear.

But he hadn’t reckoned on the wives of excessively rich barristers and their curst daughters who took it into their heads to become betrothed at the most inconvenient times and needed a thousand fittings for bride clothes.

He arrived, in short, ten minutes after Mrs. Sharp brought her second-eldest daughter in, when Madame couldn’t possibly be spared.

“I am so sorry, my lord,” Selina Jeffreys said, “but I can’t say when Madame will be available. Mrs. Sharp was one of our first clients, and Madame must attend her personally. But perhaps in an hour—two at most—Madame will be free.”

He went out and walked the few steps up and across St. James’s Street to White’s. There he loitered in the coffee room, listening to gossip and losing track of what people were saying. Then he decamped to the morning room, where he read the papers without knowing what he was reading.

He told himself he would not go back to the shop today. Tomorrow, perhaps. Or Friday. She would have to see him on Friday. It was the last day of July, the day of reckoning.

Judging by the newspaper gossip of the last few days, the odds of his losing the Botticelli had improved. All that could save it was the failure so far of any of Gladys’s numerous admirers to come up to scratch.

He supposed he had her father to thank. It would be one thing to get Gladys’s consent. Quite another to face Boulsworth and the prospect of becoming his son-in-law.

That prospect was enough to make strong men quail.

And if Lisburne won the wager, he would get his two weeks with Leonie, and of course he’d be very discreet and devise a way of taking her away without causing any talk.

But if she didn’t want to go?

Well, then, he was a gentleman, and he’d never forced a woman in his life. He’d offer an alternative, though there wasn’t anything else he wanted and the thought of her not wishing to be with him made him feel . . . ill.

He flung down the newspaper he’d been staring at. He collected his hat and walking stick and started up the street to Piccadilly. He reached the corner, where he stood for a moment. Then he turned back and walked down St. James’s Street and into Maison Noirot.

She stood near the door, arranging a hat on a mannequin’s head. She wore an ivory color organdy dress, embroidered all over with little blue things. The sleeves might have doubled as hot air balloons, but instead of one of those pelerines that turned a woman’s upper half into a wide inverted triangle, she wore a satin lace-trimmed scarf, knotted very much in the style favored some generations ago. Unlike so many other daytime fashions, it offered a glimpse of the velvety skin of her neck and throat . . . and he remembered the scent of her skin and the taste and feel of it under his mouth.

And though he’d been sure when he set out that he would offer her alternatives, his mind went to work devising seduction.

When she spied him, she smiled her polite professional smile and advanced. “My lord.” She made a curtsey. Not
the
curtsey, but one suitably businesslike. “Jeffreys told me you’d stopped by. I was sorry I’d missed you.”

“Were you really?” he said.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “There are one or two business matters—”

The shop bell tinkled and what seemed like a herd of young women poured in.

But it was only Gladys and Clara and the other Morris girl—not Alda the adder, but the dark one—and Clara’s bulldog of a maid, Davis.

“Lisburne,” Gladys said, with a nod and a little smile.

“Simon,” Clara said.

She turned to the Morris girl. “Lady Susan, I believe you know my cousin Lisburne.”

She was dark and pretty and an agreeable sort of girl—rather a miracle, considering her mother and sister—and Lisburne wished her and his two cousins at the devil.

He said what was necessary, because it was habit, and required no thinking, which was just as well, since he was too angry and frustrated to think.

Gladys drew a little nearer, obliging Lady Susan to step back a pace.

“I do beg your pardon, Lisburne,” Gladys said sotto voce. “I wouldn’t interrupt your tête-à-tête for worlds. We can wander about the shop for a while, if you wish. Or we might walk down to the palace and try to stare the guards out of countenance.”

“You needn’t,” he began. He found himself pausing to rethink his answer, because she tipped her head to one side and searched his face.

Though he was sure she could read nothing there, he felt exposed. And at the same time he had a sense of what some men saw in her: intelligent eyes, a fine complexion . . . and a surprising kindness in the way she looked at him.

“You’re very good,” he said. “But my business can easily wait for another day.”

“We shouldn’t have come so early,” Gladys said. “But the party, you know. On Friday. All the world will be there, and now everybody wants a dress from Maison Noirot, and so we came early to avoid the mobs. Madame and her accomplices have made me yet another beautiful dress, and you’d think all they needed to do was fit it to the nearest barrel, but no, they’re so fussy, and I must stand still and let them pin and trim and mutter.”

“The party,” he said blankly.

“Mama’s party,” Clara said. “Of course, you and Lord Swanton must be drowning in invitations, and I daresay it’s slipped your mind. But Mama gives a grand ball every year at the end of the Season. The last day of July. An immense, elaborate affair, meant to make all the other hostesses gnash their teeth.”

“This time it’s to be quite shocking,” Gladys said in a conspiratorial whisper. “For one thing, I’ll be there.” She laughed. “In bronze or sunset or whatever they call the color. And I’ll set the entire ballroom alight.”

“And we’re to have my new sister,” Clara said. “Lady Longmore is coming. And the duchess will be there. And all we need do is persuade Leonie—and we’ll be the talk of London!”

He looked at Leonie. He saw the very faint wash of color in her cheeks.

“Yes, yes, we’ll discuss that later,” she said. “But for the present, if your ladyships will be so kind as to proceed to the fitting room? We have a great deal to do, and not very much time in which to do it, yes? Come, come. No dawdling, if you please.”

And in this imperious manner she shooed them on their way, and Jeffreys hurried along with them.

Once they’d passed through the door of the showroom and into the inner sanctum, Leonie said, “I can guess why you’ve come.”

“Why should I not come?” he said. “Do you think I forget as easily as you do?”

She went still.

“I understand your reasons,” he said. “I’ve understood it until I’m sick with understanding. Your business. I know. I must respect it else I don’t respect you. But my pride is badly hurt and so I’m not behaving well. I should keep away, and not make any more talk. I should adjust the terms of our wager—”