Читать книгу Regency Rogues and Rakes - Anna Campbell - Страница 39

On Putney heath, to the south of the village, is an obelisk, erected by the corporation of London, with an inscription commemorating an experiment made, in 1776, by David Hartley, Esq., to prove the efficacy of a method of building houses fire-proof, which he had invented, and for which he obtained a grant from parliament of £2500.

—Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England, 1831

The weather did turn extremely ugly, very quickly. The wind picked up speed, driving the rain sideways at times, so that even the apron couldn’t fully shield them.

Still, any driver could manage a team in rain. This weather wouldn’t slow the Royal Mail, let alone stop it. Mail coach drivers continued through thunderstorms, floods, hailstorms, sleet, and blizzards. At present Longmore had only a bad rainstorm to contend with. No thunder and lightning to agitate the horses.

He drove on.

The storm drove on, too, with increasing intensity, the rain pouring straight down sometimes and at other times pelting sideways at them, depending on the gusting wind.

Though the waxing moon wouldn’t set until the small hours of morning, the storm swallowed its light. Rain poured off the hood, obscuring Longmore’s view of the horses as well as the road ahead. It dimmed what little light the carriage lamps threw on the road. The farther he drove, the darker grew the way ahead. He slowed and slowed again, and finally settled to a walk.

By the time they passed Queen’s Elm he was driving half blind and trusting mainly to the horses to keep to the road. Luckily this was a major coaching route, wide and smooth, which lowered the odds of his driving into a ditch.

Still, he needed to keep his mind on driving. Talking was out of the question. In any case, with the rain thumping on the roof and the wind whistling about their ears, they’d have to shout to make themselves heard.

They drove on through villages distinguishable mainly thanks to the lights in a few windows. Not many lights. It was bedtime in the countryside. The inns and taverns were awake, but not much else.

He glanced to his left. Only Sophy’s gloved hand, clenched on the curved arm of her seat, hinted at fear.

Though he quickly brought his gaze back to the road ahead, a part of his mind marveled at her. He couldn’t think of another woman who wouldn’t be shrieking or weeping right now, and begging him to stop.

He was starting to argue with himself about whether he ought to stop.

Though their creeping pace made it seem they’d been on the road for hours, he knew they hadn’t gone far. They hadn’t yet crossed the Putney Bridge, and that was only four miles from Hyde Park Corner.

Through the lashing rain he made out flickering lights ahead. Gradually, he began to discern the rough outlines of houses—or what seemed to be houses. Finally they reached the quaint old double tollhouse, with its roof spanning the road. The roof diverted some of the downpour while they waited for the gatekeeper to collect his eighteen pence and open the gate. Though he wasn’t inclined to prolong the encounter, he did answer Longmore’s question.

Yes, he remembered the cabriolet. An exceptionally fine vehicle and a prodigy of a horse. Two women tucked under the hood. Couldn’t properly make out their faces. One had asked for directions to Richmond Park.

When pressed for more detail, the gatekeeper said, “I told them to keep on this road up to the crossroads, then watch for the obelisk at the corner of Putney Heath, and go that way, rightish. I told them what to look for. It’s not hard to keep to the main road, but for some reason, there’s them that go astray there, and end up in Wimbledon.” He hurried back into the shelter of his tollhouse.

“Richmond Park,” Longmore said. He had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the wind and drumming rain. “What the devil’s there?”

“I read that Richmond Park was beautiful,” Sophy said.

“You think she’s gone sightseeing?”

“I hope so. It might calm her.”

He had to stop talking to negotiate the bridge. An old, narrow, uneven structure, it bulged up unexpectedly here and there. At this time of night, in this weather, the only way to proceed was cautiously.

Caution wasn’t Longmore’s favorite style.

He was grinding his teeth by the time he got them safely to the other side of the Thames. Thence it was uphill to Putney Heath and the obelisk, about two miles away.

The horses trudged up the road while the rain went on thrashing them, torrents cascading from the hood’s rim. The wind, howling occasionally to add atmosphere to the experience, blew the wet under the hood. It dripped down Longmore’s face and into his neckcloth.

Though he knew her glorious monstrosity of a traveling costume involved layers and layers, the wet would eventually penetrate to skin, if it hadn’t already.

He threw her a quick glance. She’d turned her head aside so that the back of her hat took the brunt of the wind-driven rain. That was the only sign of discomfort. Not a word of complaint.

He went on wondering at it, even while he watched the road and argued with himself what to do.

When at last they reached Putney Heath, the wind abruptly died down. In the distance a bell tolled. An ominous rumbling followed. He turned his head that way in time to see the crack of lightning.

The wind picked up again, coming from the same direction.

It was driving the thunderstorm straight at them.

* * *

Sophy was petrified.

Her heart had been pounding for so long that she was dizzy. She was terrified she’d faint and fall out of the carriage and under a wheel. If she fell, Longmore might not even notice at first, between the darkness and the rain’s incessant hammering.

Safe at home, the sound of rain drumming on a roof, even as fiercely as this, could be soothing.

This was not soothing.

She was city bred. If she’d ever spent time in the country, it must have been in her early childhood. She vaguely recalled traveling across the French countryside when she and her sisters had fled cholera-ravaged Paris three years ago. But they’d traveled in a closed vehicle, and not at night in such hellish weather.

Intellectually, she knew she wasn’t in any great danger. While a famously reckless man, Longmore was a highly regarded whip, too. In a carriage, one couldn’t be in safer hands. He drove with the magnificent calm the English deemed de rigueur in whipsters. The horses seemed tranquil and absolutely under his control. Traveling on the king’s highway, she knew, one could count on smooth, well-maintained roads. Hostelries lined them at short intervals. Help was rarely far away.

All the same, she didn’t feel very brave.

She’d started out concerned mainly about Lady Clara. The difficulties of travel, even at night, hadn’t crossed Sophy’s mind. For one thing, at this time of year, a sort of twilight prevailed rather than full darkness. For another, this evening had promised to be a pleasant one: When she set out from home for the Gloucester Coffee House, she’d assumed the moon would brighten their journey.

Instead, within minutes they were pitched into a streaming Stygian darkness, which feeble lights here and there only seemed to emphasize. The world about her felt too empty.

Breaking in on an unexpected silence, the crack of thunder, distant as it was, made her jump. Longmore’s head turned sharply that way, and in the faint glow of the carriage lights, she saw his jaw muscles tighten.

He turned to her. “Are you all right?” he said.

“Yes,” she lied.

“The horses won’t be, in a thunderstorm,” he said. “I’ve decided not to chance it. With a broken neck you won’t be much help to my sister. We’ll have to stop.”

She was only half relieved. As alarming as she found it to travel at present, she was impatient at delay. Back in London, after Fenwick had reported what his friends had told him about the cabriolet, she’d looked up Richmond Park in a road guide. It wasn’t very far from London. Still, near as it was, if even Longmore didn’t want to risk traveling on, no sane person would try it.

Though they seemed to be crossing an endless uninhabited wilderness, it wasn’t long before he turned into the yard of an inn. White flashes lit the sky, and the thunder rumbled oftener and more loudly, nearer at hand.

While the ostlers rushed out to take charge of the horses, Longmore practically dragged her from her seat and swept her along under his arm to the entrance, calling over his shoulder, “Look after the boy. If he isn’t drowned, dry him off and see that he’s fed.”

A short time later, she was shaking off the wet from her carriage dress, and Longmore was treating the landlord with the same imperious impatience he’d shown Dowdy and her accomplice: “Yes, two rooms. My aunt requires her own. And you’d better send a maid to her.”

“Your aunt?” Sophy said after the landlord had hurried away to see about rooms.

Amusement lit Longmore’s dark eyes and a tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I always travel with my aunt, don’t you know? Such a dutiful nephew. Luckily, I’ve scads of them.”

That was all it took: one rakish glint in his dark eyes and a ghost of a smile. Her heart gave a skip and pumped heat upward and outward and especially downward. She had to fight with herself not to rush to the nearest window and pull it open, storm or no storm. She needed a sharp dose of cold water.

She told herself to settle down. He’d used that look on hundreds of women, probably, with the same effect. And she was a Noirot. She was the one who was supposed to slay men with a glance.

In any event, she supposed she ought to be glad he owned at least a modicum of discretion.

As fille de joie euphemisms went, “aunt” was probably more useful than “wife.” Half the world would probably recognize him, and that half would know he wasn’t wed or likely to be anytime soon, if ever.

He took out his pocket watch. “This is ridiculous. We haven’t covered eight miles and it’s nearly half past ten o’clock.”

“She wouldn’t travel in this weather, surely?” Sophy said in a low voice, though they were alone in the small office. “If she did visit the park, wouldn’t she stop at an inn nearby when it grew dark?”

“I hope so,” he said. “But who knows what’s in her mind?”

“She has Davis,” Sophy said. “She wouldn’t let her mistress endanger herself.”

“Clara can be obstinate,” he said. “My hope is the horse. Wherever she tries to go, she’ll have the devil of a time changing horses. The cabriolet only wants one, but it needs a powerful one. Inns reserve those for the mail and stage coaches. She’ll probably find it easier to keep the one she set out with. Which means she’ll need to stop at intervals—and stay for a good while—to give the creature food and drink and rest.”

Sophy knew little about the care of horses. She and her sisters had had enough to do in learning not only their trade but a lady of leisure’s accomplishments as well. This was no small feat for girls who had precious little leisure. But it was unthinkable merely to learn a trade. While the DeLuceys and Noirots might all be greater or lesser rogues and criminals, they never forgot they were blue bloods. Too, they knew that refined accents and manners vastly improved the odds of luring unsuspecting ladies and gentlemen into their nets.

Learning dressmaking and learning to be a lady—not to mention acquiring other less virtuous Noirot and DeLucey skills—left no time for the finer points of horsemanship. Sophy could distinguish general types of vehicle, and she could appreciate a handsome horse, but for the rest she had to trust Longmore’s judgment.

“I think I’ll send Fenwick to insinuate himself among the stablemen,” he said with a glance at the door through which their host had departed. “They’ll have noticed the cabriolet if it passed, or they’ll have heard about it from post boys. We’ll get more detailed gossip from them than from any tollgate keepers.”

The innkeeper reappeared then, a plump maidservant following. While she led Sophy up to her room, Longmore stayed behind, talking to the landlord.

Meanwhile, less than ten miles away, in Esher’s Bear Inn, Lady Clara sat by the fire, studying her copy of Paterson’s Roads.

“Portsmouth,” she told Davis. “We’re already on the road, and it’s only a day’s journey.” She calculated. “Not sixty miles.”

“It’s not twenty miles back to London, my lady,” Davis said.

“I’m not going back,” Clara said. “I won’t go back to him.”

“My lady, this isn’t wise.”

“I’m not wise!” Clara jumped up from her chair, the guidebook clattering to the floor. “I declined a duke because he didn’t love me enough. Poor Clevedon! He at least liked me.”

“My lady, everybody who knows you loves you.”

“Not Adderley,” Clara said bitterly. “How could I be so blind? But I was. I believed all those romantic words he’d taken out of books.”

“Some gentlemen can’t express themselves,” Davis said.

“I’d almost got myself to believe that,” Clara said. “But that wasn’t the point, was it? That wasn’t the real problem. How humiliating that I needed Lady Bartham to point out the simple fact: If he’d truly loved and respected me, he would never have done what he did.”

Her ladyship hadn’t said it quite so baldly as that. But Lady Bartham never insulted or hurt anybody plainly and honestly. She’d slither about the subject like a snake, and every so often, when you weren’t expecting it, she’d dart at you, tiny fangs sinking in, so tiny you barely felt them … until a moment later, when the poison seeped in.

There was a moment’s silence, then, “Portsmouth is a naval town, my lady. Very rough. Sailors and brothels and—”

“It’s near,” Clara said. “It’s a port. I can get on a ship and sail far away. It can’t be so very dangerous. People go there to tour and sightsee. I’m ruined. Why shouldn’t I see the world? I haven’t even seen England! Where do I ever go? To our place in Lancashire and back to London and back to Lancashire. Since Grandmamma Warford died, I don’t go anywhere. She used to take me away, and we had such fun.” She swallowed. She still missed her grandmother. No one could take her place. Clara had never felt more in need of her counsel than now.

“She used to drive her own carriage, you know,” she went on, though Davis knew perfectly well. But Clara needed to talk, and her maid wouldn’t shriek at her, as Mama did. “She was an excellent whip. We’d drive out to Richmond Park and visit her friends there.” They would go out to Richmond Park and Hampton Court for a day’s outing.

Clara had driven to the park today, hoping somehow her grandmother’s spirit would find her, and tell her what to do. She’d left the park no wiser, and gone on to Hampton Court. None of Grandmamma’s wisdom came to her there, either, and even a living person, Grandmamma’s great friend, Lady Durwich, had no advice but for her to turn back and stop being such a ninny.

Clara wasn’t sure where she was going. To Portsmouth, to start with. After that … somewhere, anywhere. But not back to London. Not back to him.

Sophy’s room was small but clean, and the maidservant was as eager to please as Sophy expected her to be. People of every social degree judged by externals. While an upper-class accent and fine clothes were sure to win attentive service, generous tips and bribes could raise the quality of service to unadulterated obsequiousness.

Not only was Sophy expensively dressed but she had ready money. Marcelline had made Leonie provide funds for tips and bribes, and Sophy wasn’t stingy with her coin. She wanted supper and a fire and a bath and she was happy to pay for them.

She got all three quickly, without fuss, despite the hour and the sudden influx of storm refugees.

As it turned out, she was in too much turmoil, about Lady Clara and about the shop, to do more than pick at supper. Since she was, at the best of times, a light sleeper, she knew she was in no state to attempt sleeping until after she’d had a bath. That would quiet her. Certainly she’d feel better once she washed the ghastly egg mixture out of her hair. She’d brought her favorite soap, scented with lavender and rosemary.

Though the inn servants had brought a very small tub, she’d bathed under more primitive conditions. And no, it wasn’t the easiest thing to wash her hair without help, but she managed it.

And so, in time, thanks to the hair washing and the bathing and the soothing scent of her soap—and a glass of wine—the turmoil began to abate.

She donned her nightgown, wrapped herself in her dressing gown, poured another glass of wine, and settled into a chair near the fire to dry her hair.

The old inn’s walls were thick. She heard little of what passed outside her own room. The thunder grew more distant as the storm traveled on. The rain continued, beating against the window, but now that she was safe and dry indoors, the sound soothed her. She’d always liked the sound of rain.

She remembered rainy days in Paris, and the misty rain last week, when she’d strolled up St. James’s Street to lure Lord Longmore from his lair. While pretending to be gazing elsewhere, she’d watched him saunter across the street to her … such long legs in his beautifully tailored trousers … the finely cut coat, sculpted to his upper body, emphasizing his broad shoulders and lean torso … the snowy white neckcloth tied with elegant simplicity under his strong chin … he moved with the easy grace of a man completely at home in his body and completely sure of himself … such an odd combination he was … part dandy, part ruffian … so tall and athletic … she’d like to be his tailor … oh, she’d like to fit him in something snug … no harm in dreaming …

… What was burning?

Longmore tried not to think about his sister, out in the storm.

She wouldn’t be out in the storm, he told himself. She wasn’t that stupid. Even if she was, Davis wouldn’t stand for it.

But wherever Clara was, he wasn’t likely to catch up anytime soon. And wherever she was, he couldn’t protect her.

While his mind painted ugly scenes featuring his sister in the clutches of villains, he wasn’t altogether unaware of what passed in the next room. He’d caught the muffled sound of voices when Sophy talked to the maid, and the tramp of feet in the room and a thump of something heavy being set down and then the splashing.

She was taking a bath.

That was a much more agreeable image than the ones of his sister in peril.

He told himself that worrying about Clara wasn’t going to help her, and it would only wear on his nerves, already frayed after the slog through the storm.

He had another bottle of wine sent up and he gave his coat to the inn servant for drying and brushing.

Since his trousers were still damp, he drew a chair up before the fire. There he sat, drinking.

By degrees, he grew calmer. Clara might be out of her head, but she wouldn’t endanger her horse, he reminded himself. She’d have taken shelter. She’d go to a respectable inn because Davis wouldn’t let her go into one that wasn’t—and respectable inns lined the Portsmouth Road.

The wine and more optimistic thoughts calmed him enough to make him grow drowsy. He was putting his booted feet up onto the fender when Sophy screamed.

He sprang from the chair to the door between their rooms. He yanked the handle. It wouldn’t open. He stepped back a pace and kicked.

The door flew open, crashing against the wall.

She was making little sounds of distress and dancing about and trying to pull off her dressing gown. Smoke rose from the hem. He saw a tiny flame lick upward.

In two quick strides he reached her, ripped the ties she’d been struggling with, pulled the dressing gown off her, and threw it into the bathtub.

“Oh!” she said. “Oh!”

“Are you all right?” he said. Without waiting for an answer, he turned her around, his heart racing while he looked for signs of incipient fire. He spied some brown spots and holes at the bottom of the garment, but no signs of active burning.

“What the devil were you doing?” He turned her around again. Though festooned with frills—at the neck and wrists and down the front opening—her nightdress was a flimsy nothing. Tissue-thin muslin … through which one could easily make out the outlines of her … naked … body.

A haze entered his mind. He shook it off. No time for that now.

No rushing fences. Not the time and place.

A part of his mind said, Why not?

He ignored it. “Are you drunk?” he demanded. “Did you fall in the fire?”

Someone beat on the door to the passage. “Madam! Madam!”

She ran to her portmanteau and began rummaging.

Longmore strode to the passage door and yanked it open. An inn servant stood there. “What the devil do you want?”

“Sir—your lordship—I beg your pardon—but someone screamed—and one of the guests smelled smoke.”

Sophy drew on a shawl. “Yes, I screamed,” she said. “I thought I saw a bat.”

“A bat, madam? But the smoke?” The servant sniffed. “I do smell smoke.”

The fellow was trying to peer round Longmore, who advanced to the threshold to block his ogling half-naked females who didn’t belong to him.

“That was the bat,” Longmore said. “I caught it and threw it into the fire. Do you fancy a bite? It’s not quite cooked through, I’m afraid. No? Well, then, off with you.”

He shut the door in the servant’s face.

He turned back to Sophy, whose most interesting parts the shawl now enveloped.

At first, he’d checked mainly to see whether she was on fire. After that he’d discovered how flimsy her nightdress was. Now he noticed that her hair was damp, streaming down her shoulders. It fell over her breasts. It was long and thick. In places, long tendrils had started to dry, and as they did, they were brightening from a pale brown to gold … and they were curling. All by themselves.

His breathing quickened, and that instantly got his breeding organs excited.

Not now.

Why not?

“What the devil happened?” he said. He spotted the wine bottle on the little table near the fire. “How much have you had to drink?”

“I’m not drunk!” she said. “I—I was too agitated to sleep. I had a bath.”

“I heard,” he said.

Her eyes widened.

“I would have looked through the keyhole,” he said, “but that method isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. One can only see a small part of the room, usually, and in my experience, it’s the wrong part. In any event, I was by the fire, drying out, and it seemed a great bother to leave the warmth and the bottle to crouch at a door, all for the chance of not seeing much.”

She looked at the doorway between their rooms, then at the bathtub, then at him.

“You didn’t think it was worth the bother?” she said.

He shrugged. “I don’t know what came over me. And I still don’t know how you proceeded from being wet to being on fire.”

There was a pause, then she said, “I not only bathed, but I washed my hair to get that nasty egg mixture out. It was getting rancid. I was sure if I put my head on the pillow, any vermin in the vicinity would come running to feast on it.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” he said.

“You say so because it wasn’t on your head,” she said. “And so I washed my hair. And then I had to dry it at the fire, didn’t I? Which is what I was doing. But I must have dozed—and when I woke, my dressing gown was burning. I must have slumped in the chair and got too close, and a spark caught it. And then I couldn’t get the stupid ties undone, to get the blasted thing off.” She blinked hard. “Thank you for saving me. I’m sorry I caused so much t-trouble.”

“Well, it was exciting,” he said.

“I don’t like to be exciting in th-that w-way,” she said.

“Good gad, you’re not going to cry, are you?” he said. “You can’t be upset because I ruined your dressing gown?”

“N-no. Of c-course n-not.”

“Because I didn’t look through the keyhole?”

“Don’t be r-ridiculous.”

“Then what are you crying about?”

“I’m not crying!” She blinked again. “I’m perfectly well.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. It’s only … I keep thinking I should have stayed with your sister when she came to the shop last Saturday. I told you we’d deal with Adderley, but I didn’t tell her. I had other things on my mind. Your mother. And Dowdy’s. And now … it seems my priorities were wrong.”

“What rot. You didn’t know Clara was going to act like an idiot.”

“I wasn’t paying attention! And now she’s in danger. She hasn’t the slightest idea how to survive. She wouldn’t know a scoundrel if he wore a badge announcing it. She trusted Adderley, of all men! I should have done something!”

“What are you talking about? What could you have done?”

She waved her arms. “Something. A diversion.”

He stomped back to her, grasped her shoulders, and gave her a little shake. “Stop it,” he said.

“I’m so worried,” she said.

He took her face in his hands and tilted it up so that he could look down into her eyes. They were filling. It was like looking into the Adriatic Sea through a mist. A tiny bead of moisture trickled down the side of her nose. Her lower lip jutted out in a pout. It trembled.

It wasn’t the time and place.

He oughtn’t to rush his fences.

But she’d waved her arms, and that made her womanly parts jiggle and he could only keep one idea in his head at a time, and in any case, oughts never went down smoothly with him.

He was who he was, and that wasn’t a good boy. And so down he went, and crushed her sulky little mouth under his.

He’d never done things by halves. He wasn’t likely to start now.

He kissed her firmly, fearlessly, recklessly, the way he did everything. It never occurred to him to be cautious.

Not much occurred to him, in fact. He simply did it, in the way he did everything, without thinking or worrying.

And then he walked off a cliff.

Down he went, as though there were a sea below, and he was falling straight into it.

He was falling into her somehow. He tasted the sea—a hint of salt tears—and there was a hint of the wine she’d drunk, too. He breathed in the fresh scent of her. Where he was sinking, the world was warm. Lavender and something else scented the air and the scent brought back a moment: the sun of Tuscany and a villa framed in lavender and jasmine. He felt the same inexplicable, soaring happiness he’d felt a few years ago, far away from England.

He wrapped his arms about her. It was instinctive to hold on to something too wonderful to understand.

And her mouth simply melted under his, so soft and welcoming. Her body melted against him, too, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Her arms came up and wrapped about his neck. Her breasts pressed against his waistcoat. She was so warm and so softly curved and he was warm and warmer still, his pulse racing while he drank in more deeply: the sweetness of her mouth and the clean scent of her and the way her soft curves fit against him.

He slid his hands down and grasped her bottom and pressed her close—and she made a choked little sound against his mouth—and small as it was, it was a jolt, and all the signal he needed.

He lifted his hands away from her bottom.

He lifted his mouth from hers.

He took one unsteady step back, and another.

Her great blue eyes were dazed, and she swayed a little. The shawl lay in a puddle on the floor.

“My goodness,” she said breathlessly. “My goodness.”

She tipped her head to one side and studied him in the manner of a drunk trying to focus.

Hell.

It was her first time.

She’d never been kissed before.

That was completely impossible.

No, it wasn’t.

Yes, it was.

Never mind. There was nothing for it but to bluster his way out of it, whatever it was.

“Don’t,” he said. “Do. That. Again.”

“Yes,” she said with a dazed little smile.

“I can’t abide hysterics,” he said firmly.

“Yes,” she said.

He was dizzy, too, but he could see her clearly enough. He could see far too much of her … or not nearly enough. He could see the bed as well, only a few steps away, so inviting.

Well, then, why not accept the invitation?

Because … he didn’t know why. Or why not.

He turned his back, on her, on the bed, on everything, and stomped out.

In a kind of haze, Sophy watched him go.

She watched all of him go: his black hair disheveled as though he’d dragged his fingers through it—or had she done that? … the broad shoulders and the motion of his shoulder blades under the waistcoat … the muscles of his arms, tantalizingly visible under the fine linen of his shirt … the back of his waist and the upside down V of the waistcoat where it gathered at the base of his spine … and on down over his hips and the long legs … and all of that big body moving so smoothly and as gracefully as a thoroughbred.

He walked to the door and closed it behind him, with a sharp thud that made her jump, and jolted her out of the daze.

She shook her head. She closed her eyes and opened them. She drew her tongue over her lips … the way he had done.

She moved to the table, refilled her wineglass, and drank it down in a gulp to strengthen her resolve.

She marched to the door connecting their rooms and pushed it open.

He froze, a wineglass halfway to his mouth. That wicked, dangerous mouth.

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

“What are you saying?” he said. “Are you insane?”

“I was for a minute,” she said. “But you can’t do that again. You can’t be such an idiot.”

“Go away,” he said. “Do you know you’ve almost no clothes on?”

“Never mind. I need—”

“Never mind? Listen to me, Miss Innocence. There are many things a man can ‘never mind.’ A nearly naked woman isn’t one of them.”

“Taut pis!” she said. “There wasn’t time to dress. I have to say it while I know why I’m saying it, while I’m still under the influence.”

He dragged his hand through his tangled hair. “You don’t have to say anything. You have to go away.”

“I cannot get involved with customers,” she said. “It’s bad for business.”

“Business!”

“And do not tell me you’re not a customer.”

“I’m not, you nitwit. When was the last time I bought a dress?”

“Any man who has the means to pay our bills is likely to acquire, sooner or later, a woman we want in our dress shop,” she said. “She won’t patronize us if we have a reputation for poaching the men.”

“Business,” he said. “This is about the shop.”

“Yes,” she said. “Which means I couldn’t be more serious. If you kiss me again, I’ll stab you.”

She turned and marched out, slamming the door behind her.

She poured herself another glass of wine, but this one she drank more slowly. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt. She couldn’t remember when last she’d done something so difficult and terrifying and so completely the opposite of what she wanted to do.

No wonder Marcelline had lost her head over Clevedon.

No wonder she’d insisted on explaining to Sophy, for the hundredth time, how babies were made.

Lust was a dangerous force.

Like any Noirot, Sophy liked danger, risk, a gamble.

But she could not, would not, gamble with Maison Noirot. If she let the dangerous force sweep her away, it would sweep away everything they’d worked and suffered for.

She rose, walked to the bathtub, and took out the dressing gown he’d drowned there. She wrung it out and draped it over the chair—near the fire but not too near. It wasn’t completely unsalvageable. The girls at the Milliners’ Society could take it apart and make something of it.

The dressing gown wasn’t important. It was the shop Sophy needed to save—and that meant saving Lady Clara. That was all she had to do, and it wasn’t going to be easy.

She smiled. But she was a Noirot, after all, and if it were easy, it wouldn’t be much fun.