Читать книгу Vixen In Velvet - Loretta Chase, Loretta Chase - Страница 12

SYMMETRICAL PERFECTION.—Mrs. N. GEARY, Court Stay-maker, 61 St James’s street, has the honour to announce to the Nobility and Gentry, that she has returned from the Continent, and has now (in addition to her celebrated newly-invented boned “Corset de toilette”) a STAY of the most novel and elegant shape ever manufactured … totally exterminating all that deadly pressure which has prevailed in all other Stays for the last 300 years … two guineas, ready money.

—Court Journal, 16 May 1835

Monday 13 July

A steady routine is of first importance,” Leonie heard Matron explain. “Four hours of lessons, four hours of work, two hours for exercise and chores, half an hour for meals. As your lordship will see, the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females is a modest enterprise. We can take in but a fraction of the girls who need us. But this is only the beginning. The Philanthropic Society, as you may be aware, began in a small house on Cambridge Heath and currently accommodates some two hundred children in Southwark. We, too, expect to grow, with the aid of charitable contributions as well as sales of our girls’ work, which I will be pleased to show you.”

From where Leonie stood in the corridor, no one in the workroom could see her. However, even with only a view of his back, she had no trouble recognizing the gentleman Matron was falling all over herself to accommodate.

Ah, yes, undoubtedly Lord Lisburne would like nothing better than to look at needlework.

Leonie debated for a moment. Not about what to do, because she was seldom at a loss in that regard. She did wonder, though, what had brought him here, of all places. She knew he was bored in London. He’d said he wanted to return to the Continent. In the meantime, he seemed interested merely in amusing himself, and she seemed to be one of the amusements.

Very well. Easy enough to turn that to her advantage. Business was business, he was rich, and he was here.

She swept through the open door.

“Thank you, Matron, for undertaking tour duty,” she said. “I know Monday is a busy day for you. I’ll continue Lord Lisburne’s tour, and you may return to your regular tasks.”

Matron relinquished Lord Lisburne with poorly concealed reluctance. And who could blame her? All that manly beauty. All that charm.

Unfortunately, all that manly beauty and charm must have turned Matron’s brain. Otherwise she’d have known better than to bring him into the workroom. Many of the girls in the bright, airy room stood on the brink of adolescence if not well in. Putting a stunning male aristocrat in front of them was asking for trouble.

Most sat in a stupor. Three had stuck themselves with their needles and were absently sucking the wounded fingers. Verity Sims had overturned her workbasket. Bridget Coppy was sewing to her dress sleeve the apron she was making.

They’d be useless for days, the lot of them.

Even Leonie was aware of a romantic haze enveloping her brain. Last night he’d sneaked into her dreams. And today he’d plagued her as well. Her mind made pictures of him as he’d been at Astley’s Royal Circus, the tantalizing glimpses she’d had of the openhearted boy he might have been once upon a time.

Nonetheless, she briskly led his lordship out of the workroom and into the corridor.

“We’re somewhat cramped, as you see,” she said.

“Yet what efficient use you’ve made of the quarters you have,” he said. “Given your penchant for order, I oughtn’t to be surprised. Still, it’s one thing to write numbers and such neatly in a ledger and quite another to organize a poky old building into something rather pleasant and cozy.”

Though she had her guard up, she couldn’t squelch the flutter of gratification. She and her sisters had worked hard to make the most of what they had. They hadn’t much. Their financial success was only very recent, and she knew better than to take it for granted. In the dressmaking business, failure could happen overnight, from natural catastrophes or merely the whims of fashionable women. With the Milliners’ Society, they’d proceeded cautiously, incurring no expenses they couldn’t cover with ready money.

They’d done it because of Cousin Emma, who’d given to three neglected children a real home and an education. She’d taught them how to make beautiful things and she’d saved them from the pointless, vagabond life of their parents.

And she’d died too young, with only the first taste of her own success.

Leonie thanked him calmly enough and said, “All the same, we’d prefer rather less coziness. We should like to expand into the house next door.”

“I daresay. Always room for expansion.”

By this point they’d moved out of the others’ hearing range.

“Very well, I’m stumped,” she said. “Did you merely stumble upon the place and decide to look in, or is this all part of a master plan?”

“Master plan,” he said. “Swanton charged me with finding out your charity. He wants to raise funds for you while everybody still loves him. You know how fickle the public can be, especially the female part of it.”

“He charged you,” she said.

“To be strictly accurate, I volunteered,” he said. “Eagerly. This is because I have two uses at present. One, I can watch and listen to him make poetry. Two, I can hang about him, ostensibly to shield him from poetry-maddened females, but actually to do very little and enjoy the edifying experience of being invisible to the females.”

“Despair not,” she said. “You weren’t invisible to Matron or the girls in the workroom.”

“Be that as it may, I had a good deal more fun looking into your activities,” he said.

Inside her head, a lot of panicked Leonies ran about screaming, What? What did he find? What did he see? Why?

Outwardly, not so much as a muscle twitched, and she said, “That sounds tedious.”

“It proved far more difficult than I expected,” he said. “You and your sisters are strangely quiet about your philanthropy.”

The inner Leonie settled down and said, Oh, that’s all right, then.

She said, “It isn’t much to boast about.”

“Is it not?” He glanced back toward the room they’d left. “I’ve lived a sheltered life. Don’t think I’ve ever seen, in one room, so many girls who’ve led …” He paused, then closed his eyes and appeared to think. “Let us say, unsheltered lives.” He opened his eyes, the green darkening as he studied her for one unnerving moment. “You keep getting more interesting. It’s rather a trial.”

“It’s business,” she said. “Some of the girls turn out to be more talented than others. We get to pick the crème de la crème as apprentices for Maison Noirot. Too, we’ve trained and educated them ourselves, which means that we know what we’re getting. We’re not as disinterested as your duchesses and countesses and such. It isn’t pure philanthropy.”

“The fact remains, you pluck them from the streets and orphanages and workhouses.”

She smiled. “We get them cheaply that way. Often for free.”

She led him into the small shop, where the girls’ productions were on display. “If your lordship would condescend to buy a few of their trinkets, they’ll be in raptures,” she said.

She moved to a battered counter and opened a glass display case.

He stood for a moment, gazing at the collection of watch guards and pincushions and handkerchiefs and sashes and coin purses and such.

“Miss Noirot,” he said.

She looked up. He was still staring at the display case’s contents, his expression stricken.

“The girls made these things?” he said. “The girls in that classroom?”

“Yes. Remember Matron telling you that we raise funds by selling their work?”

“I remember,” he said. “But I didn’t …” He turned away and walked to the shop’s one small window. He folded his hands behind his back and looked out.

She was baffled. She looked down into the display case then up again at his expertly tailored back.

After what seemed a long time, he turned away from the window. He returned to the counter, wearing a small smile. “I’m moved,” he said. “Perilously near to tears. I’m very glad I came on this errand instead of Swanton. He’d be sobbing all over the place and writing fifty-stanza laments about innocence lost or abused or found or some such gobbledygook. Luckily, it’s only me, and the public is in no danger of suffering verse from this quarter.”

For a moment, she was at a loss. But logic swiftly shoved astonishment aside. He might feel something on the girls’ account or he might be feigning great-heartedness and charitable inclinations, as so many aristocrats did. Philanthropy was a duty and they performed it ostentatiously but they didn’t really care. If even half of them had truly cared, London would be a different place.

But it didn’t matter what he truly felt, she told herself. The girls mattered. And money was money, whether offered in genuine compassion or for show.

“It would seem that your friend’s poetry has infected you with excessive tenderheartedness,” she said.

“That may be so, madame, yet I wonder how any man could withstand this.” He waved his hand at the contents of the display case. “Look at them. Little hearts and flowers and curlicues and lilies of the valley and lace. Made by girls who’ve known mainly deprivation and squalor and violence.”

She considered the pincushions and watch guards and mittens and handkerchiefs. “They don’t have Botticelli paintings to look at,” she said. “If they want beauty in their lives, they have to make it.”

“Madame,” he said, “is it absolutely necessary to break my heart completely?”

She looked up into his green-gold eyes and thought how easy it would be to lose herself there. His eyes, like his low voice, seemed to promise worlds. They seemed to invite one to discover fascinating depths of character and secrets nobody else in the world knew.

She said, “Well, then, does that mean you’ll buy the lot?”

Lisburne House

Later

Swanton gazed at the objects Lisburne had arranged on one of the library tables—after he’d cleared off the heaps of letters and the foolscap covered with poetic scribbling.

After what seemed to be a very long time, Swanton finally looked up. “Did you leave anything in the shop?”

“I found it hard to choose,” Lisburne said.

“Yet you claim I’m the one who’s always letting himself be imposed on,” Swanton said.

“Miss Noirot didn’t impose,” Lisburne said. “Like a good businesswoman, she took advantage of me during a moment of weakness.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d been weak. It wasn’t as though he’d never visited a charitable establishment before. With his father, he’d attended countless philanthropic dinners and visited asylums and orphanages and charity schools. He’d watched the inmates in their distinctive uniforms and badges standing stiffly at attention or parading for their benefactors’ inspection or singing the praises of deity or monarch or benevolent rich people.

He was used to that sort of thing. Yet he had wanted to sit down and put his face in his hands and weep for those girls and their dainty little hearts and handkerchiefs embroidered with pansies and violets and forget-me-nots.

Confound Swanton for planting him in his poetic hotbed of feelings!

“I suppose you didn’t realize quite how canny she is,” Swanton said.

“I did not,” Lisburne said. “She’s the very devil of a businesswoman.”

After she’d torn his heart to pieces and cleaned out the display case as well as his purse, she’d very charmingly got rid of him.

“I’m glad you weren’t there,” he told Swanton. “It might have killed you. It nearly killed me when she said, ‘They don’t have Botticelli paintings to look at. If they want beauty in their lives, they have to make it.’ ”

Swanton blinked hard, but that trick rarely worked for him. Emotion won, nine times out of ten, and this wasn’t the tenth time. His Adam’s apple went up and down and his eyes filled.

“Don’t you dare sob,” Lisburne said. “You’re turning into a complete watering pot, worse than any of those deranged girls who follow you about. Pull yourself together, man. You’re the one who proposed to raise funds for Maison Noirot’s favorite charity. I found out all about it for you. I’ve brought you abundant evidence of their work. Do you mean to compose a lugubrious sonnet on the occasion, or may we discuss practical plans?”

“Easy enough for you to talk about pulling oneself together.” Swanton pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “You’re not the one who’s afraid to put a foot anywhere lest he step on a young female. I have to be careful not to hurt their tender feelings, and at the same time not say anything too kind, lest it be construed as wicked seduction.”

“Yes, yes, it’s a hellish job,” Lisburne said. “If you want to go back to Florence or Venice tomorrow, I’ll go with you happily.”

He might as well. What had he to do here but try to keep Swanton out of trouble with swooning girls? Though a grown man, supposedly capable of taking care of himself, the poet tended to be oblivious at times. This made him easy prey for any of a number of unpleasant women, like Lady Bartham’s younger daughter, Alda.

As to Miss Leonie Noirot …

If Lisburne did return to Italy tomorrow, would she notice he was gone, or would she simply find another fellow to intrigue while she set about picking his pockets?

Swanton took up one of the pincushions that had stabbed Lisburne to the heart.

“That’s Bridget Coppy’s work,” Lisburne said. “Miss Noirot says the heart shape is traditional for pincushions. But instead of the usual red, the girl exercised her imagination and made it in white with a coral trim, to set off the colorful flowers. The cord attaches to the waist.”

“The flowers are charming,” Swanton said. “So delicate.”

“Bridget is becoming a skilled embroiderer,” Lisburne said.

“My mother would like this,” Swanton said.

“Then by all means let us deliver it in person. I see gifts aplenty here for my mother as well. And her new husband. They would both be enchanted.”

His mother had chosen her second husband as wisely as she’d done her first. Lord Rufford was a good, generous man, who made her happy. He’d made a friend of his stepson, too, no easy feat.

“You’re in a devil of a hurry to return,” Swanton said.

Lisburne laughed. “Perhaps I am. I’m supposed to be such a cosmopolitan fellow, yet I let a redheaded French milliner get the better of me. Perhaps I want to slink away in shame.”

“That I beg leave to doubt,” Swanton said. “I believe you’re so far from wishing to leave that you’re even now puzzling over how she did it, so that you can plan how to prevail at your next encounter.”

Lisburne looked at him.

“She’s the only woman you’ve taken any particular notice of since we came to London,” Swanton said. “And I know you. As well, that is, as anybody can know you.”

“As though there were anything of great moment to know,” Lisburne said. But Swanton was a poet. He imagined everybody had hidden depths. If Lisburne did have them, he wasn’t interested in exploring them, and he certainly wouldn’t encourage anybody else to do so. “What about you? Do you feel compelled to stay?”

“I feel I must,” Swanton said.

“Do you? I’d as soon be stalked by wolves as by a lot of gently bred maidens.”

“They’ll grow sick of me soon enough,” Swanton said. “In the meantime, I should be a coward to run away when I can do so much good. It would be unworthy of your father’s memory, in any event.”

“Yes, yes, stab me with my father, do,” Lisburne said.

“I know it isn’t fair, but it’s the only way I know to win an argument with you,” Swanton said.

“Very well,” Lisburne said. “We stay until they turn on you. Then we pray we can get away in time.”

He glanced at the piles of correspondence he’d flung onto one of the library’s sofas a short time earlier. “Meanwhile, does your secretary need a secretary? The heaps of letters have only grown higher since yesterday.” Remembering what Swanton had said moments ago, he added, “Begging letters, you said. One of the perils of rank and wealth. Everybody puts his hand out, and somebody has to decide who’s deserving and who isn’t.”

“That’s the least of it,” Swanton said. “Today alone I received two claims for child support and one extortionate note threatening a breach of promise suit.”

To anybody who knew Swanton, the claims were absurd. Yet they oughtn’t to be taken lightly.

Fame aroused envy and greed and, generally, the worst instincts of some people. Too many would be willing to believe ill of him.

“Show me the letters,” Lisburne said.

Evening of Tuesday 14 July

Had Lisburne not been so deeply engrossed in his cousin’s unpleasant correspondence, he might have got wind of the other matter sooner. Or maybe not.

Though he’d been to White’s often enough, he hadn’t looked into the betting book in days. Why bother? So many of the wagers were witless, arising from boredom. How long a fly would crawl about the window before it died or flew away, for instance.

Lisburne, for the present at least, wasn’t bored. Watching women moon about Swanton had been tiresome, and even the possible dangers of the situation hadn’t made life exciting. But then Miss Leonie Noirot had entered the picture, and London had become far more interesting.

Since she was everything but boring, Lisburne wasn’t shocked to find her at the heart of the latest gossip.

He and Swanton had attended the Countess of Jersey’s assembly, where the ladies made the usual fuss about the poet. While the younger women were fluttering about Swanton, Lisburne drifted toward the card room. As he was about to enter, Lady Alda Morris detained him, in order to whisper something behind her fan.

Maison Noirot

Wednesday 15 July

Lady Gladys stood before the dressing glass, her face pink.

Four women—Leonie, Marcelline, Lady Clara, and Jeffreys—watched and waited.

Today, for the first time, Lady Gladys wore the corset Leonie had designed especially for her.

Unlike the one they’d hastily adapted last week to replace the monstrosity she’d brought from home, this one employed all of Leonie’s knowledge of mathematics, physiology, and physics. Until this moment, she hadn’t been allowed to enjoy her accomplishment, because Lady Gladys had refused to come out and show herself in the corset. She said she would not cavort about in her undergarments to be gawked at.

That, however, was before she’d seen the gold evening dress.

When they’d first shown it to her, she’d made a face and said the color would make her look as though she had a liver disease. But by Lady Gladys’s standards, the protest was feeble. A moment later she said she might as well try it on. Then she’d insisted on Jeffreys—the allegedly consumptive speaker of vile French—attending her in the dressing room.

Ladies were nothing if not capricious, but this lady had apparently devoted her young life to making everybody about her want to throttle her.

“Well,” she said at last.

One word, but Leonie caught the little bubble of pleasure in it. Lady Gladys had a beautiful voice, as expressive as an opera singer’s.

“I never thought I could wear this color,” she said.

“So you made abundantly clear,” Lady Clara said. “I thought we should have to stupefy you with drink to get you to try on anything today.”

“That isn’t true. I didn’t make a fuss about trying on the corset. I only didn’t want to prance about in my underwear while everybody stared at me.”

She smoothed the front of the dress though Jeffreys, naturally, had made sure every seam lay precisely in place.

“The corset is comfortable,” Lady Gladys said. “I’m not sure what you did, but …” She trailed off, studying herself. “You did something,” she said.

Leonie had done a great deal. She’d designed the stays to support her ladyship’s generous embonpoint. The corset’s shape smoothed her waist in a way that made it seem smaller, though the compression was minimal.

Her figure remained much fuller and less shapely than the fashionable ideal. But fashionable ideals were only that. What was important was making a lady look as beautiful as it was possible for her to look. And the gold satin was as much a surprise to Leonie as it was to Lady Gladys.

As usual, Marcelline had imagined the dress entirely in her head. This time, though, she’d relied solely on Leonie’s detailed description of their new client.

Yet from her sickbed, and in spite of near-constant nausea, Marcelline had designed a miracle of a dress. Gold satin trimmed in black blond lace. Simple yet dramatic. The pointed waist created the illusion of a narrower waistline, and the black languets that fastened it in front enhanced the effect.

Pointed waists had supposedly fallen out of fashion, but Marcelline never concerned herself with what she considered petty fluctuations of taste.

This dress would bring pointed waists straight back into style, Leonie calculated. The black lace mantilla, attached to the tops of the sleeves, not only added drama but drew the eye upward, toward Lady Gladys’s ample bosom. It was, perhaps, not quite the thing for an unwed young lady, but Lady Gladys would look ridiculous in the types of dresses that suited the average maiden.

She brought her hand up to the edge of the bodice. “It’s very low-cut,” she said.

“But of course, my dear,” Marcelline said. “You have a beautiful bosom. We want to draw the eye to it.”

“I’ll feel naked,” Lady Gladys said.

“What’s wrong with that?” Lady Clara said. “You’ll feel naked and still look perfectly respectable.”

“Hardly perfectly respectable,” said her cousin.

“It’s all right to look tempting,” Lady Clara said.

“Will you stop it!” Lady Gladys snapped, her vehemence startling everybody. “Stop being kind. I can’t tell you how provoking it is. No, wait, yes I can. You’ve only to crook a finger to have any man you want. You have no idea what it’s like to be—to be—not to be beautiful and sweet-natured!”

“I’m not sweet at all,” Lady Clara said. “People only think that because of my looks.”

“That’s the point! You can say anything!”

“No, I can’t,” Lady Clara said sharply. “I can’t be myself. There’s Mama, looming over me all the time. You don’t know how suffocating it is.”

“Oh, yes, all those men crowding about you, clamoring for a smile.”

“They only see the outside. They don’t know who I am, or care particularly. You know me—or you ought to know. And you know I’m on your side and always have been, in spite of how difficult you make it.”

Lady Gladys went scarlet and her eyes filled. “I don’t know how to behave!” she cried. “I don’t know how to do anything! You complain because your mother is always at you. But at least you have one. You’ve had women about to teach you how to be womanly. Look at me! My father’s a soldier, and I might as well have been raised in an army camp. He treats me like a regiment. He gives orders and then off he goes, to smash some Foe of England.” She flung away and stormed back to the dressing room. “Jeffreys! Get this thing off me!”

With a panicked look at Leonie, Jeffreys trotted after her.

Lady Clara stomped to a chair and flung herself onto it.

Marcelline looked at Leonie.

Leonie lifted her shoulders and mouthed, I have no idea.

“What on earth is the matter?” Marcelline said to Lady Clara.

“I don’t know,” Lady Clara said.

“I can tell you what’s the matter,” Lady Gladys said from behind the curtain. “I’m not going to Almack’s tonight, no matter how they cajole. I told them I wouldn’t do that sort of thing ever again, yet Clara won’t stop plaguing me about it. And now you’ve given her this curst dress for ammunition!”

“You look very well in it, but you’re too obstinate to admit it!” Lady Clara cried.

“I don’t care if I look well. They should never have made it, because I’ll have no occasion to wear it. I don’t want it! I wish I’d never come to London!”

Lady Clara sighed, braced her forehead with one hand, and stared at the floor.

From behind the dressing room curtain came a choked sob.

Other than that, the consulting rooms were silent, apparently peaceful.

That was when Mary Parmenter came in, all flustered, to report that Lord Lisburne and Lord Swanton had arrived. They had business with Miss Noirot, they said. Should Mary ask them to wait in the showroom or in the office?

“We’re busy,” Leonie said. “You may tell them to make an appointment.”

She heard a gasp from behind the curtain. Then, “You can’t make Lord Swanton wait,” Lady Gladys called out shakily. “You’re not busy with me anymore. You might as well see what the gentlemen want.”

“Tell them to make an appointment,” Leonie told Parmenter.

Then she sent the others away and walked behind the curtain.

Leonie found Lady Gladys sitting on the edge of the dressmaking platform, head in her hands.

“I’m not talking to you,” her ladyship muttered. “You’re like a human thumbscrew.”

“One of the secrets of our success is knowing our ladies’ minds,” Leonie said. “We squeeze it out of you one way or another. You might as well tell me and save us both energy we can employ more happily elsewhere.”

“Happy!”

Leonie dropped onto the platform beside her.

Lady Gladys lifted her head. “You only pretend to be my friend. You only want me to order more clothes.”

“I haven’t got to pretending to be your friend yet,” Leonie said. “But I do want you to order more clothes. Why else be in business?”

“It hasn’t occurred to you that I might put you out of business? All of London knows you’ve taken me in hand. They’re already betting on the outcome.”

In truth, of all the matters that might be making Lady Gladys irrational, this hadn’t been the first to cross Leonie’s mind—probably because of the large mental distraction known as the Marquess of Lisburne.

Still, the betting didn’t surprise Leonie. Members of the ton, men and women alike, gambled, mainly because they were bored and idle. And whether they made bets or not, the women would be deeply interested in the results of Lady Gladys’s visits to the shop.

Leonie knew this. It was, in fact, part of what had propelled her toward Lady Gladys. Once Maison Noirot succeeded in showing her ladyship at her best, all the fashionable world would be pounding on Maison Noirot’s doors.

But her ladyship did have to cooperate.

“Aristocrats wager about everything,” Leonie said briskly. “Naturally, you find it galling—”

“Especially when Lady Bartham’s irritating daughter takes great pains to explain the terms,” Lady Gladys said. “As will not surprise you, the phrase ‘silk purse from sow’s ear’ came up more than once.”

Lady Bartham was a close friend and venomous social rival of Lady Clara’s mother, Lady Warford. Leonie didn’t understand why anybody would make friends—or having made them in ignorance, continue—with an adder. She was aware that one of Lady Bartham’s daughters, Lady Alda, was equally toxic.

“Some people are either so ignorant, self-centered, or deeply unhappy that hurting others makes them feel good,” Leonie said. “It’s perverse, but there it is. The best way to fight back is to find a reason to laugh or to feel pleased. It will confuse and upset them. A good revenge, I think.”

Lady Gladys scowled at her. “Tell me what’s amusing. Tell me what I ought to feel pleased about.”

“Why should she go to so much trouble to insult and hurt you unless she’s trying to undermine your self-confidence? Maybe she’s afraid you’ll turn into competition.”

Lady Gladys gave Leonie a you-need-medical-help look.

“Only imagine,” Leonie said, “if you had patted her hand reassuringly and said, ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry to worry you, but I promise to try not to steal any of your beaux, if I can help it.’ Then you could laugh. You have such a pretty laugh. And she would go away a good deal more upset than you.”

“A pretty laugh?” Lady Gladys said. She turned away to stare at a French fashion print on the opposite wall.

“A beautiful voice altogether.” Leonie rose. “Please stop wishing to look like your cousin. It makes you blind to your own assets. You’ll never look like Lady Clara. But she’ll never have your voice.”

“That hardly makes us even!”

“The biggest army, even in the smartest uniforms, doesn’t always win the battle,” Leonie said. “Did his lordship your father never tell you that cleverness and luck come into it?”

Shortly thereafter

At this time of day, when ladies of fashion were dressing for the parade in Hyde Park, Lisburne had expected to find the shop relatively quiet. Otherwise he wouldn’t have let Swanton come with him. The shop was quiet enough. The showroom held a few shopgirls restoring order after their most recent customers. They were putting ribbons and trinkets into drawers, reorganizing display cases, straightening hats their clientele had tipped askew, and rearranging mannequins’ skirts. The only remaining customer was an elderly lady who couldn’t make up her mind among several shades of brown ribbon.

Swanton was pacing at one end of the showroom when the girl returned to inform them that they needed to make an appointment.

“They must be busy with an important client,” Lisburne told him. “Why don’t you toddle up to White’s? The club will be free of women, and you can compose your turbulent mind with the aid of a glass of wine or whiskey.”

Swanton had stopped pacing when the girl returned from her errand. Now he looked about him as though he’d forgotten where he was. “White’s,” he said.

“Yes. The young ladies can’t get to you there.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to wait,” Lisburne said. “I’m perfectly capable of carrying out our errand on my own. And I can do it in a more businesslike manner if you’re not mooning about.”

“I need to write half a dozen new poems in less than a week!” Swanton said. “You’d be in a state of abstraction, too.”

“All the more reason for you to go away to a quiet place, where the women are not giggling and blushing and making up excuses to get close to you.”

Naturally Swanton didn’t realize what was going on about him. The shopgirls would have to hit him on the head with a hat stand to get his full attention. Still, unlike the young ladies of the ton, they were mainly excited to have a celebrity in their midst. They probably hadn’t time to read his poetry—if they could read. Their interest wasn’t personal, in other words.

Swanton looked about him, seeing whatever hazy version of reality he saw. “Very well,” he said. “I can take a hint.”

No, you can’t, Lisburne thought.

With any luck, Swanton would manage to cross St. James’s Street without walking into the path of an on-coming carriage. If not, and if he seemed headed into danger, a sympathetic female would rush out and rescue him, even if she was one of the two people in London who didn’t know who he was. Because he looked like an angel.

In any case, Lisburne wasn’t his nursemaid. Furthermore, he’d wrestled with enough of the poet’s problems in the past two days.

He was in dire need of mental relief.

Such as Miss Leonie Noirot.

Who was too busy to see him.

He walked about the shop, studying the mannequins and the contents of the display cases. He even allowed himself to be consulted on the matter of brown ribbons.

He was solemnly examining them through his quizzing glass, trying to decide which had a yellower cast, when Gladys hurried out into the showroom, then swiftly through the street door. Clara followed close behind. Neither noticed him, and he didn’t try to attract their attention.

“I wonder if Miss Noirot will see me now,” he said to the girl who’d told him to make an appointment.

The girl went out.

She returned a quarter hour later and led him to Miss Noirot’s office.