Читать книгу Regency Rogues and Rakes: Silk is for Seduction / Scandal Wears Satin / Vixen in Velvet / Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed / A Rake's Midnight Kiss / What a Duke Dares - Loretta Chase - Страница 19

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

Marcelline 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.

He 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.

Marcelline 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.

“You must let go,” she said.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

“We haven’t time.” She kept her voice low. “They’ll want me for dinner, and someone will come. You can’t stay, in any case. You can’t stay,” she repeated. “And you must never come back.”

She felt him tense.

“We can’t leave it like this,” he said.

“We shouldn’t have begun it.”

“Too late for that.”

“It’s done,” she said, “and I’m done with you and you’re done with me.” She pushed, and this time he let go. She found her handkerchief and made quick work of cleaning herself, then pushed her petticoat and skirt down.

While she attended to herself, he put his clothing in order.

She started to get down from the table, but he must be a glutton for punishment—or, more likely, he truly was done, and touching her again meant nothing to him—because he caught her by the waist and lifted her down in the same easy way he’d lifted her up, as though she weighed nothing.

She remembered how easily and gently he’d lifted Lucie out of his lap and into her arms. She remembered the wistful smile he’d bent on her child. Her throat tightened and she had all she could do not to weep.

She’d heard, she wasn’t sure where or when, that he’d lost a sister at a young age…

But what did it matter?

She was starting toward the door, steeling herself to watch him walk out of her life forever, when she heard the thud.

Leonie would have finished locking up the shop long before now, and she would have made sure nobody surprised Marcelline with an interruption. No one ought to be downstairs at present. The family ought all to be upstairs, setting out dinner.

“Wait,” she said in an undertone.

She went to the door and pressed her ear to it. Nothing.

“I thought I heard something,” he said softly. “Erroll? Would she—”

“No. Not after we close up shop. She’s not allowed, but she wouldn’t come, in any case. She’s afraid of the dark.” That had started after she recovered from the cholera. That and other anxieties. “Be quiet, will you?”

Another thump. Someone was out there, stumbling about in the darkness.

He reached for the door handle. “I’ll deal with—”

“Don’t be stupid,” she whispered. “You can’t be here.”

Carefully she opened the door. She looked down the passage in the direction the sound had come from. She saw a faint light in the little office where Leonie kept her ledgers. There, lately, they’d been storing Marcelline’s designs, in a locked box. And there, today, they’d set out their bait.

Her heart began to race.

She slipped through the door into the gloomy passage. She heard his soft footstep behind her. She stopped and gestured at him to stay in the workroom.

“Don’t be—”

She put her hand over his mouth. “I have to deal with this,” she hissed. “It’s business. It’s our spy. We’ve been waiting for her.”

He was shattered, still.

That was the only excuse he had for heeding her, and as an excuse, it lasted but a moment.

He ought not to be here, certainly not at this hour, after the shop was closed.

But the shop…A spy? Had not Clara said something about—

Clara!

With the thought of her, cold shame washed over him. Betrayal. He’d betrayed his friend, his future wife.

My wife, my wife, he told himself. He smoothed his neckcloth as though he could smooth over what he’d done. He tried to imbed her image in his mind, to engrave the picture of his future, the one he’d always supposed was the right, the only possible one. He would wed the sweet, beautiful girl he’d loved since she was a child, the fair, blue-eyed child he’d met when he was still grieving for his sister. She had a sweet innocence like Alice’s and she looked up to him the way Alice had looked up to her big brother. He’d always assumed he’d marry Clara and take care of her and protect her forever.

But at the first excuse, and with the slightest encouragement, he’d run away from her and stayed away; and after three years of indulging himself, he still wasn’t satisfied. No, he must betray her trust within a few days of returning to her.

But the shame wasn’t strong enough to wipe out the recollection of what had happened minutes ago or the sensation of the earth having shifted on its axis.

Never mind, never mind.

He’d had Noirot and he was done with her.

And here he was, standing like an idiot, while she—What the devil was she about?

“No!” someone shrieked.

He moved noiselessly into the passage. A faint glow a few steps down from the workroom showed an open doorway.

“I hope Mrs. Downes has paid you well for betraying my trust,” he heard Noirot say. “Because you’ll never work in this trade again. I’ll see to it.”

“You can’t hurt me,” the higher-pitched voice answered. “You’re finished. Everyone knows you’re the duke’s whore. Everyone knows you lift your skirts for him, practically under his bride’s nose.”

“Regardless what anybody knows or doesn’t know, I recommend you give me back those patterns, and not make matters worse for yourself. There’s only one way in and out, Pritchett. And you won’t get past me.”

“Won’t I?”

Another crash, as of furniture knocked over. A clatter of broken crockery. A screech of rage.

He didn’t care what Noirot had said about her dealing with this. He didn’t care that he oughtn’t to be discovered here. A business problem was none of his affair, but this was getting out of hand. In a minute, the others would hear the noise and come running downstairs. Erroll might well escape her nursemaid and run down with the others, and be hurt by a flying missile.

All this raced through his mind while he moved quietly toward the doorway. An object—a bowl or vase or pot or some such—sailed through the door and crashed against the wall inches from his head. He burst into the room in time to see a woman throw an inkstand at Noirot. As she dodged, Noirot tripped over a toppled chair and fell. He heard another crash. Looking that way, he saw an overturned lantern on the desk and the flames licking over the stacks of papers there. In the blink of an eye, the flames leapt to the window curtains and raced upward.

The woman ran past him. She was carrying something, but he did not try to stop her. Noirot was struggling to get up, and the fire was racing from the window curtains to shelves of books and papers. One corner of the room was in flames already. His mind flashed over the materials he’d seen in the showroom. There would be more materials of their trade elsewhere, in storerooms and workrooms: heaps of highly combustible wrapping papers and boxes as well as cloth of all kinds.

Already the flames were too high for him to smother easily.

He made his decision in a fraction of a heartbeat. He couldn’t chance fighting the fire. In minutes they’d be trapped in an inferno.

Clutching the precious portfolio, Pritchett pushed through the rear door into the yard, and ran without once looking back, all the way to Cary Street. Only then did she stop to catch her breath. She saw the smoke rising from the shop, and she felt a pang. She hoped the child wasn’t hurt. She’d planned so carefully, then madame had thrown everything into disarray with her abrupt decision to send the seamstresses home early. Pritchett had chased them out, saying she’d tidy the workroom. When the duke came, she’d breathed a prayer of thanks. She’d thought he’d keep madame occupied for a time.

But it had all gone wrong, and now not only madame but his grace knew what she’d done.

Never mind, never mind. She had the patterns, and Mrs. Downes’s money would allow her to start fresh elsewhere. Frances Pritchett would take a new name, and nobody would be the wiser.

She glanced upward again. Above the rooftops, against the starry sky, the smoke hovered like a black thundercloud.

Marcelline saw the flames, and stared for a moment in shocked disbelief. Then, “Lucie!” she screamed.

Clevedon was dragging her up from the floor, dragging her to the door. She heard shouts from upstairs. They’d heard the noise or smelled the smoke

“Out!” Clevedon shouted. “Everybody out! Now!”

A thumping and clatter from above. More shouting.

“Everybody!” he roared.

Marcelline started toward the stairs. He pulled her back.

“Lucie!” she cried. She heard more noise from above. “Why don’t they come?” Had the fire risen so fast? Were they trapped? “Lucie!”

But he was dragging and pushing her down the passage toward the front door. “No!” she cried. “My daughter!”

“They’re coming,” he said.

Then she heard the footsteps on the stairs and the voices.

Behind her came his voice: “Out, out, everybody. Quickly. Noirot, for God’s sake, take them all outside.”

In the dark, smoke-filled passage, she couldn’t see them. But she heard Lucie’s voice, and her sisters’ and Millie’s.

Clevedon shoved her. “Out!” he shouted, his voice savage.

She went out, and it was only then, when they were all out of the smoke and confusion that she discovered Lucie wasn’t with them after all.

“Where’s Lucie?” Marcelline shouted over the din of panicked neighbors and the clatter of carriages and neighing horses.

“But she was with us.”

“She was just here.”

“I had her, ma’am,” Millie said. “But she broke away—and I thought she was running to you.”

No. No. Marcelline’s gaze went to the burning building. Her mind shrank from the thought.

“Lucie!” she shouted. Her sisters echoed her. The street was filling with gawkers. Her gaze raced over the crowd but no, there was no sign of her. There wouldn’t be. Lucie wasn’t brave at night. She wouldn’t run into a crowd of strangers.

“The doll!” Sophy cried. “She wanted to take the doll. There wasn’t time.”

“But she couldn’t have gone back,” Leonie said, her voice high, panicked.

Marcelline started to run back into the shop. Her sisters grabbed her. She fought.

“Marcelline, look,” Sophy said in a hard voice.

Flames boiled in the windows. The showroom was a bonfire of garish colors made of silks and satins and laces and cottons.

“Lucie!” Marcelline screamed. “Lucie!”

Clevedon had counted heads as they passed through the door. He’d heard their voices outside the building. He was sure they were all safely out.

But he’d scarcely stepped out onto the pavement when he heard Noirot scream for her child.

No. Dear God, no. Don’t let her be in there.

He ran back in.

“Lucie!” he shouted. “Erroll!”

The fire was spreading over the ground floor and flowing upward, hissing, crackling. Through the smoke, he could scarcely make out the stairs. He found them mainly by memory, and ran up.

“Lucie! Erroll!”

He kept calling, straining to hear, and at last, as he felt his way along the first-floor passage, he heard the terrified cry.

“Lucie!” he shouted. “Where are you, child?”

“Mama!”

The smoke was thick and choking. He could barely hear her above the fire’s noise. He very nearly missed her. Had he passed that spot a moment sooner or later, he wouldn’t have caught the muffled cry. But where was it coming from? “Lucie!”

“Mama!”

He searched frantically, and it was partly by sight and partly by sound and partly by moving his hands over the place where the cry seemed to come from that led him to the low door. It was under the stairs leading to the second floor. She might have hidden or played there before, or it simply might have been the first door she found.

He wrenched the door open.

Darkness. Silence.

No, please. Don’t let her be dead. Give me a chance, please.

Then he made out the little form, huddled in a corner.

He scooped her up. She had the doll clutched tightly against her chest, and she was shaking. “It’s all right,” he said, his voice rough—with the smoke, with fear, with relief. She turned her face into his coat and sobbed.

He cradled her head in his hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “Everything will be all right.”

Everything would be all right, he promised himself. It had to be. She would not die. He wouldn’t let her.

Behind him the fire hissed and crackled, racing toward them.

Marcelline fought bitterly, but they wouldn’t let her go back for Lucie. Now it was too late.

The fire engine had come quickly, but not quickly enough. The hose poured water into the shop, but the flames had told her how fierce and fast the fire was. With luck, they could keep it from spreading to the adjoining shops.

As to hers…

Nothing could have survived that furious fire. She didn’t want to survive, either, but they wouldn’t let her go back.

She was sick, so sick that her legs would not hold her. She sank to her knees on the pavement, her arms wrapped about her, shivering as though she were naked. She couldn’t weep. The pain burned too deep for that. She only rocked there, in a black misery beyond any she’d ever known. Mama, Papa, Charlie, Cousin Emma—what she’d felt, losing them, was mere sorrow.

She was only dimly, distantly aware of her sisters on either side—their touch on her head, her shoulders…the sound of their sobs.

Around her was pandemonium and she was in Hell, and Hell was a black eternity where the only sensation was pain, sharp as a knife.

Lucie. Lucie. Lucie.

Clevedon had to decide in an instant, and he decided against the stairs. The fire seemed to be moving from back to front on the western side of the building. That meant a conflagration might await them at the foot of the stairs. He went the other way, to the back, but keeping to the side of the passage where he’d found Lucie, in hopes that the floor would hold. Above the showroom and workrooms, packed with combustibles, the fire would burn more fiercely.

That was the gamble, at any rate.

“Hold tight,” he told Lucie. “And don’t look.” Her arms tightened about his neck and she buried her face in his neckcloth. She didn’t release the doll, and he was aware of one of its limbs tapping his shoulder blade. A bizarre thing to notice, and he wanted to break the doll in pieces for the trouble it had caused, but she needed it, and the doll was the least of their problems.

He hurried to the back, keeping close to the wall to find his way, because the way was utter darkness. But he remembered seeing a back door on the ground floor. That would give way to a yard. All he needed was a back stair or a window or even a light closet, which would contain a window.

He came to the end of the passage, and his outstretched hand struck plaster. He’d found no door frame on the way.

Now his hand met only flat wall.

No. There had to be a way out.

The smoke was thickening, the heat unbearable. Holding fast to Lucie, he slid one hand along the hot wall and struck wood—a window. He didn’t even try to wrench it open.

“Hold very tight, sweet,” he told Lucie. “Don’t look and don’t let go, no matter what.”

Then he kicked as hard as he could, and glass shattered, and wood, too. He kicked and kicked, knocking out the glass and the crosspieces. The night was dark, and he looked down, dreading what he’d find: a long leap down, for these buildings rarely offered any purchase for climbing. But his luck held, and below, he made out the outline of the yard’s back wall. Circling Lucie with his arms, to shield her from sharp ends of glass and wood, he climbed over the sill and dropped to the wall, then down, onto the roof of a privy on the other side of the wall. Though the air was smoky, it was cooler, and he could make out the faint glow of a street lamp through the smoke.

Yes, he said silently. Thank you.

His throat closed up and, cradling the child he’d feared he couldn’t save, he wept.

Marcelline was sunk so deep in grief that she scarcely noticed anything else.

At some point, though, she became aware of the atmosphere about her lightening, and the clamor abating. The street grew so hushed that she could hear clearly the hiss and gurgle of water streaming into the shop and the voices of the fire company men giving orders.

Even while she listened, their voices subsided, too, and someone cried, “Look! Look there!”

Noise again, but different. Glad noise. Cheering.

She felt hands on her shoulders, pulling. She lifted her head and thought at first it was a dream, a cruel dream.

That could not be Clevedon…that great, hulking, blackened and ragged mess…carrying…carrying a blackened bundle. Little legs dangling out from the edge of a dress…rumpled stockings…one foot missing a shoe.

Hands were pulling Marcelline to her feet and she shook her head and closed her eyes and opened them again. But it wasn’t a dream.

It was Clevedon, and that was Lucie in his arms.

Alive?

Marcelline couldn’t make her feet move. She only stood, swaying and confused, like one come back from the dead.

He walked out of the nightmare—the black monster behind him, flames still flickering in the windows.

He walked toward her, his big hand cradling Lucie’s head. She had her arms wrapped about his neck, her face buried in his chest. But as he neared, Marcelline saw the doll dangling from Lucie’s hands. She was holding tightly, to him, to the doll.

She was alive.

“Oh,” Marcelline said. And that was all she could say.

He came to her and then he looked down at the child he held. Taking his hand away from her head, he said, “It’s all right, Erroll. You’re the bravest girl there ever was. You can look now.”

As he gave her back to her mother he said gruffly, “I made her promise not to look. I thought it best she not see.”

He’d seen, though. He’d stared in the face of a fiery death. He’d faced it to save her daughter.

“Thank you,” Marcelline said. Two words. Inadequate, beyond inadequate. But there were no words. These were all the language gave her. All else was in her heart, and that could not be said and could never be eradicated.

The shop stood in blackened ruins. The stench drifted over Chancery Lane and Fleet Street.

It might have been far worse, Clevedon heard people say. The wind had not carried the fire east to the shop on the other side of Chancery Lane, and the fire engine had arrived in time to stop it from destroying the shop next door.

He knew it might have been infinitely worse. They might have lost a child.

Lucie rode her mother’s hip, and Noirot walked with her, back and forth, back and forth, in the street. Now and again her gaze turned upward, to her shop, in ruins.

Her sisters stood nearby, under a lamp post, standing guard over a paltry pile of belongings they must have grabbed before escaping the house. He watched their gazes swing from the shop to Noirot and back to the shop. The redhead held the doll. Even through the smoky atmosphere choking the gaslight he could read the despair in their faces.

They’d lost all their materials—the most expensive element of their business—along with all their tools and records. They’d lost everything.

But the child was alive.

He was aware of the ink-stained fellows from the various London journals converging on the scene. He ought to make himself scarce. The night was dark, the smoke made it darker, and with any luck, nobody had recognized him.

But he couldn’t turn his back on the three women and the little girl, all of them on the street, literally. No shop, no home, no money. He doubted anything could be salvaged from the blackened building.

Still, they had fire insurance, else the engine wouldn’t have come. And he knew that Noirot was practical and mercenary to an aggravating degree. She would have money in a bank, or safely invested.

But money in the bank wouldn’t put a roof over her this night, and he doubted she could have saved enough to rebuild her business in short order.

He stood for a moment, telling himself he couldn’t linger. He’d already dishonored his friendship with Clara and betrayed her love. But only he and Noirot knew that. What Clara didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, and he wouldn’t hurt her for worlds.

Find another way to help them, he counseled himself. There were discreet ways. One could aid those in need without courting notoriety. It was notoriety, furthermore, that would do Noirot no good.

He remembered what the other woman had screeched at her: Everyone knows you’re the duke’s whore. Every-one knows you lift your skirts for him, practically under his bride’s nose.

He remembered what Noirot had told him, early on: What self-respecting lady would patronize a dressmaker who specializes in seducing the lady’s menfolk?

It was time to leave, long past time. The sooner he left, the sooner he could send help.

Marcelline was weary, so weary. What now? Where would they go?

She ought to know what to do, but her brain was numb. She could only hold her daughter and stare at the black ruin of her business, her home, the life she’d built for her family.

“Let me hold her for a bit,” Sophy said. “You’re tired.”

“No, not yet.” Lucie still trembled, and she hadn’t said a word since Clevedon carried her out.

“Come.” Sophy put her hands out. “Erroll, will you come to Aunt Sophy, and let Mama rest for a moment?”

Lucie lifted her head.

“Come,” said Sophy.

Lucie reached for her, and Sophy unhitched her from Marcelline’s hip and planted the child on her own. “There,” she said. “It’s all right, love. we’re all safe.” She started to walk with her, murmuring comfort.

Leonie said, “We’ve insurance. We’ve money in the bank. But above all, we’re all alive.”

Completely true, Marcelline thought. They were all alive. Lucie was alive, unhurt. Everything else…

Oh, but it would be hard. They hadn’t enough insurance. They hadn’t enough money in the bank. They would have to start over. Again.

Leonie put her arms about her. Marcelline couldn’t cry, though she wanted to. It would be a relief to cry. But tears wouldn’t come. She could only rest her head on her sister’s shoulder. She had her daughter, she told herself. She had her sisters. Right now, that was all that mattered.

All the same, they couldn’t stay like this, in the street. She needed to think. She raised her head and moved away and straightened her posture. “We’d better go to an inn,” she said. “We can send to Belcher.” He was their solicitor.

“Yes, of course,” Leonie said. “He’ll advance us some money—enough to pay for lodgings, I daresay.”

This area of London, where the Inns of Court lay, was the lawyers’ domain. Their solicitor’s office was only a short distance away. The question was whether they’d find him at his office at this hour.

“We’ll find a ticket porter, and send to Belcher,” Mar-celline said. “Sophy, give Lucie back to me. We need you to talk sweet to one of the reporters, and get a pencil and paper to write a note to Belcher. I think I saw your friend Tom Foxe in the crowd.”

While Marcelline took Lucie back, she searched the area for the publisher of Foxe’s Morning Spectacle.

She became aware of a flurry of motion.

The Duke of Clevedon emerged from the shadows, Tom Foxe hot on his heels. “Your grace, I know our readers will be eager to hear of your heroic rescue—”

“Foxe!” Sophy cried. “Precisely the man I was looking for.”

“But his grace—”

“My dear, you know he won’t talk to the likes of you.” Sophy led him away.

Clevedon came to Marcelline. “You need to come with me,” he said.

“No,” she said.

“You can’t stay here,” he said.

“We’re sending for our solicitor,” she said.

“You can send for your solicitor tomorrow,” he said. “He’ll have gone home by now. It must be close to midnight. You all need something to eat and a place to sleep.”

“You need to go away,” she said, lowering her voice. “Sophy will keep Foxe off for as long as she can, but you’ve given them a prime story, and he won’t be kept off forever.”

“In that case, we’ve not a moment to lose,” Clevedon said. He held out his soot-blackened hands to Lucie. “Erroll, would you like to see my house?”

Lucie lifted her head from Marcelline’s shoulder. “Is the c-carriage th-there?” Her voice shook, but she was talking.

Relief surged, so powerful that Marcelline swayed a little. She hadn’t realized how terrified she’d been, that Lucie would never speak again. For months after recovering from the cholera, she’d had terrible nightmares. It had left her a little more fearful and temperamental than before. Children were resilient; that didn’t mean terrible experiences couldn’t damage them.

“I’ve lots of carriages,” he said. “But we’ll need to take a hackney to get there.”

“Are there d-dolls?”

“Yes,” he said. “And a dollhouse.”

“Y-yes,” Lucie said. “I’ll c-come.”

She practically leapt out of her mother’s arms into his.

“Clevedon,” Marcelline said. But how could she lecture him, when he’d saved Lucie’s life? “Your grace, this isn’t wise.”

“It isn’t convenient, either,” he said. “But it must be done.”

And he walked away with her daughter.