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 34

NEW STYLE.— DRESS-MAKING.—Madame and Mrs Follett beg to solicit the favours of those Ladies who have not (and to return thanks to those Ladies who have) given them a trial; the decided superiority of their style and fit blended with most moderate charges never fails to give satisfaction even to the most particular. —53 New Bond street London and Rue Richelieu à Paris.

Mem the Address.

—The Court Journal, Advertisements,

Saturday 28 March 1835

Adderley.

And Clara.

In a dark corner of the terrace.

Not so dark that Longmore couldn’t see Adderley clumsily trying to help his sister get her bodice back in place.

Her dressmakers had cut the neckline of her white gown indecently low, which had already allowed every gaping hound at the ball to see a bit of the lacy thing she wore underneath. In the process of groping her, however, Lord Adderley had pushed her dress sleeves and corset straps well down over her shoulders, practically to her elbows. By the looks of things, he’d contrived to loosen her corset as well.

When she slapped his fumbling hands away, Adderley moved in front of her to shield her, but he wasn’t big enough. A fair-haired, blue-eyed beauty Lady Clara Fairfax might be. Petite she was not. As a result, her expensive underwear—not to mention a good deal of skin not usually on public view—was on display for any gawker who happened to be in the vicinity.

That included the dozen or so who’d drifted out to the terrace and were now circling like vultures over the carcass of Lady Clara Fairfax’s reputation.

“Her maid will never get the creases out of those pleats,” muttered the maidservant standing beside Longmore.

In a distant corner of his mind he marveled at anybody’s noticing at such a moment something as trivial as wrinkles in Clara’s attire. In the same distant corner he knew there was nothing to marvel at, given the speaker: Sophy Noirot.

That was only a distant awareness, though. The main part of his mind heeded only the scene in front of him, one he saw through a curtain of red flames. “I’ll take the wrinkles out of him, the cur,” he growled.

“Don’t be an id—”

But he was already storming across the terrace, knocking aside any guests who got in his way—though most of them, seeing him coming, moved out of the way, and quickly.

He marched up to Adderley and punched him in the face.

* * *

“—iot,” Sophy finished.

She swallowed a sigh.

She should have held her tongue. She was supposed to be a maidservant, and menials did not call their betters idiots. Not audibly, at any rate.

But that was the trouble with Longmore. He got in the way of everything, especially clear thinking.

She pushed away the first, emotional reaction and summoned her practical side, the one Cousin Emma had cultivated. A cousin by marriage, Emma was nothing like Sophy’s vagabond parents. Emma was not a charming wastrel like her in-laws. She was a hardheaded, practical Parisian.

Practically speaking, this was a disaster.

Lady Clara was Maison Noirot’s most important customer. She bought their most expensive creations and she bought lavishly, in spite of her mother’s hostility. It was Lord Warford’s man of business who paid the bills, and his orders were to pay promptly and in full, not to make fine distinctions among milliners.

Lord Adderley was bankrupt, or very nearly so, thanks to the gaming tables.

If Lady Clara had to misbehave with somebody, Adderley wasn’t Sophy’s first choice. Of the Upper Ten Thousand, he came in at nine thousand nine hundred fifty six.

Had Longmore been more intelligent, less impetuous, and several degrees less arrogant, she would have counseled him not to go barging in and kill his sister’s lover. Since Lord Longmore qualified in none of those categories, she didn’t waste her breath pointing out that murder would only complicate the situation and leave Lady Clara’s reputation in ruins forever.

He was furious, and he needed to hit somebody, and Adderley deserved to be hit. Sophy was tempted to hit him herself.

This wasn’t the only reason she didn’t close her eyes or turn away.

She’d seen Longmore fight before, and it was a sight to make a woman’s pulse race, if she wasn’t squeamish, which Sophy most certainly wasn’t.

The blow should have dropped Lord Adderley, but he only staggered backward a few steps.

Tougher than he looked, then. Yet all he did was hold his ground. He offered no sign of fighting back. She couldn’t decide whether he was following some obscure gentlemanly code or he held strong opinions about keeping the general shape of his pretty face as it was and all his teeth in his head.

Longmore, meanwhile, was too het up to notice or care whether Lord Adderley meant to defend himself.

Once more he advanced, fists upraised.

“Don’t you dare, Harry!” Lady Clara cried. She pushed in front of her lover to shield him. “Don’t you touch him.”

Then she burst into tears—and very good tears they were. Sophy herself couldn’t have done better, and she was an expert. Crooning over her injured lover—who was on his way to a magnificent black eye, if Sophy was any judge—tears streaming down her perfect face, her creamy, amply-displayed bosom heaving, Lady Clara played her part to perfection.

Her ladyship would awaken, along with their baser urges, the sympathies of all the gentlemen present. The ladies, satisfied to have witnessed the downfall of London’s most beautiful woman, would allow themselves to feel sorry for her. “She might have had a duke,” they’d say. “And now she’ll have to settle for a penniless lord.”

Fashionable London still wasn’t tired of repeating bits of Lady Clara’s speech rejecting the Duke of Clevedon. One of the favorite bits was the concluding remark: Why should I settle for you?

For a moment, Lord Longmore looked as though he’d push his sister out of the way. Then he must have realized it was pointless. He rolled his eyes and sighed, and Sophy watched his big chest rise and fall.

Then he threw up his hands and turned away.

The crowd closed in, blocking Sophy’s view.

No matter. Any minute now, the Marchioness of Warford would get wind of her daughter’s lapse from virtue, and Sophy owed it to the Spectacle to be there when it happened. And at some point, she’d need to look more closely into a disturbing rumor she’d heard in the ladies’ retiring room.

It was going to be a long night.

She turned away to look for a discreet route to the other end of the ballroom. Unlike the men-servants, the maids were expected to remain inconspicuous. They were to keep out of the main entertainment rooms, and travel in the serving passages as much as possible or attend the ladies in the retiring rooms, where they repaired hems and stockings, ran back and forth for shawls and wraps, applied sal volatile to the swooners, and cleaned up after the excessively intoxicated.

She was deciding which of two doorways offered the best eavesdropping vantage point when Longmore stepped into her path.

“You,” he said.

“Me, your lordship?” she said, her tongue curling round the broad Lancashire vowels. She was aware she’d forgotten herself a moment ago and spoken to him as she normally did, but Sophy was nothing if not a brazen liar, like the rest of her family. She looked up at him, her great blue eyes as wide as she could make them, and as innocent of comprehension and intelligence as the cows she prided herself on imitating so well.

“Yes, you,” he said. “I’d know you from a mile away, Miss—”

“Oh, no, your lordship, it’s no miss but only me, Norton. Can I get you something or other?”

“Don’t,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for playacting.”

“You’re going to get me into trouble, sir,” she said. She didn’t add, you great ox. She kept in character, and smiled brightly, opening her eyes wide and hoping he’d read the message there. “No dallying with the guests.”

“How the devil did he do it?” he said. “Why did she do it? Is she mad?”

Sophy scanned the area nearby. The guests were busy spreading the news of Lady Clara’s lapse from virtue. Lord Longmore, apparently, was not so interesting—or, more likely, he was alarming enough to discourage anybody from even looking at him in a way that he might not like. Since he’d made his state of mind perfectly clear to the company, no one owning a modicum of sanity would care to try his temper further at present. Everybody would take the greatest care to see nothing whatsoever of where he went or what he did.

She grabbed his arm. “This way,” she said.

If he’d balked, she would have had as much luck leading his great carcass along as she would a stopped locomotive.

But very likely the last thing he expected was to be hauled about by a slip of a female. Whether bemused or merely amused, he went along tamely enough. She led him into one of the serving passages. Since most of the servants were finding excuses to get near the principals of the scandal, she doubted anybody would wander through for a while.

Still, she looked up and down the passage.

Certain the coast was clear, she let go of his arm. “Now, listen to me,” she said.

He glanced down in a puzzled way at his arm, then at her. “Here’s one positive note. We’ve abandoned the Lancashire cow performance.”

“Have you any idea what would happen to me if I’m found out?” she said.

“What do you care?” he said. “Your sister married a duke.”

“I care, you—you great ox.”

His head went back a degree and his black eyebrows went up. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Yes,” she said between her teeth. “So don’t say anything more. Just listen.”

“Gad, we’re not going to discuss this, are we?”

“Yes, we are, if you want to help your sister.”

His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

“Believe me, I’m no happier about this recent turn of events than you are,” she said. “Have you any idea how bad this is for our business?”

“Your business,” he said.

He spoke quietly, but she knew he wasn’t calm. The violence he held in check vibrated in the atmosphere about him. She understood why people scrambled out of his way when he bore down on somebody or something.

Violence wouldn’t be useful at the moment. She needed to distract him—and for once, the truth would do well enough.

“Adderley is up to his neck in mortgages, and the moneylenders will own his first-, second-, and third-born,” she said. “Leonie can tell you to the farthing how much he’s worth, and if he’s worth a farthing, I’ll be amazed.”

“I know that,” he said. “What I want to know is how my sister ended up on the terrace with him. I know she’s naïve, but I never thought she was stupid.”

“I don’t know how it happened,” Sophy said. “I could have sworn she was only honing her flirting skills on him—on all of them. She’s never shown signs of favoring anybody.”

“You’re sure of this?” he said.

She didn’t like the tone of his voice. It boded trouble for Adderley. Much as she wished Adderley trouble, she couldn’t let Longmore break him into small pieces, as he so clearly wished to.

“I’ve heard he can be very winning,” she said. “And I know she’s been feeling—”

“Oh, good. We’re going to talk about feelings.”

If she’d had a heavy object near to hand, she would have hit him with it. He wouldn’t feel it, but the gesture would make her feel better.

“Yes, we are,” she said. “I’ll spare you all the complicated whys and wherefores and come to the point. Lady Clara is feeling a little rebellious, and I daresay she was waiting for a chance to do something naughty when her mother wasn’t looking. Apparently, Adderley saw his chance and turned a minor naughty into a major one. Apparently.” She frowned. There was something wrong with that scene. But she’d have to work it out later.

The priority was the man standing a few inches from her. He seemed to have stopped breathing fire.

“I’ll have to call him out, the swine,” he said. “Which means going off into some dismal wood at the crack of dawn. It’s the very devil on one’s boots, morning dew, not to mention the fuss Olney makes about gunpowder on my shirt cuffs.”

Sophy grabbed his lapels. “Listen to me,” she said.

He looked down at her hands in the same puzzled way he’d looked at his arm before.

But his lordship was not the world’s deepest thinker, and a great deal could be counted on to puzzle him. She gave his lapels a shake. “Just listen,” she said. “You can’t kill him in cold blood.”

“Whyever not?”

Ye gods grant me patience. “Because he’ll be dead,” she said as patiently as she could, “and Lady Clara’s reputation will be stained forever. Do not, I pray you, do anything, Lord Longmore. Leave this to us.”

“Us.”

“My sisters and me.”

“What do you propose? Dressing him to death? Tying him up and making him listen to fashion descriptions?”

“If necessary,” she said. “But pray, don’t trouble yourself about it.”

He stared at her.

“Whatever you do, do not injure, maim, or kill him,” she said, in case she hadn’t made everything perfectly clear. “The right uppercut was excellent. It expressed magnificently a brother’s outrage—”

“Did it, by Jove. You wouldn’t by any chance be composing your eulogy on my sister’s reputation? The one to appear in tomorrow’s Spectacle?”

“If I don’t do it, someone else will,” she said. “Better the devil you know, my lord. Only let me do what I can—and you go out and be all manly and protective of your womenfolk.”

“Ah.” His black eyes widened theatrically. “So that’s what I’m to do.”

“Yes. Can you manage it?”

“With one hand tied behind my back.”

“I beg you to do it the usual way,” she said. “Don’t show off.”

“Right.” He stood looking at her.

“Yes,” she said. “Time to go. Your mother will be getting the news any minute now if she hasn’t already.” She made a shooing motion.

He only stood, still looking at her in a very concentrated way, and she became aware of a heat and hurry within and a feeling of not being entirely clothed.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Not now.

“You need to go,” she said. She tried to give him a push.

It was like trying to push a brick wall.

She looked up at him.

“That tickles,” he said.

“Go,” she said. “Now.”

He went.

Mere moments earlier, Longmore had been primed for murder.

Now he had all he could do not to laugh.

There Sophy was, in her demure housemaid’s dress, the wide-eyed, stupid look fading when she lost her patience and called him an ox.

Then the darling had grabbed his arm, trying to manhandle him. That was one of the funniest things he’d seen in a long time.

Leave this to us, she’d said.

Not likely, he thought. But if it pleased her to think so, he was happy to please.

In this agreeable state of mind he sought out his mother and sister. Finding them wasn’t difficult. All he needed to do was walk in the direction of the scream.

Only one scream before Lady Warford collected her dignity and swooned.

He arranged as graceful a departure as possible for his mother and sister. He acted all manly and protective, exactly as he’d been told to do.

He’d deal with Adderley later, he promised himself.

And then …

Why, Sophy, of course.

* * *

Warford House

Saturday afternoon

Clara, how could you!” Lady Warford cried, not for the first time. “That bankrupt!”

She lay on the chaise longue of her sitting room, a tray laden with restoratives on the table at her elbow.

Clara had far greater need for restoratives than her mother did. She wished she were a man, and could solve her problems the way men did, by getting drunk and fighting and gaming and whoring.

But she was a lady. She sat straight in her chair and said, “What sort of question is that, Mama? Do you think I humiliated myself on purpose?”

“You did what you ought not to have done on purpose,” Mama said. “Of that I have not the slightest doubt.”

It hadn’t seemed so very wicked at the time. Clara and Lord Adderley had been waltzing, and she’d felt dizzy. Too much champagne, perhaps. Or perhaps he’d steered her into too many turns. Or both. He’d suggested fresh air. And it was a thrill to slip out onto the terrace unnoticed. Then he’d said things, such sweet things, and he’d seemed so passionately in love with her.

And then …

Had she been alone at present, she would have covered her face and wept.

But that’s what Mama always did. She wept and screamed and fainted.

Clara sat straighter, hands folded, and wished she could climb out of the window and go far, far away.

The door opened and Harry came in.

She wanted to leap up and run at him the way she used to do when they were children and she was frightened or brokenhearted about this or that: A robin’s nest on the ground and the eggs broken. A sick puppy. An injured horse put down.

But they weren’t children, and Mama was already using all the hysteria in the room. Harry had enough to cope with.

“There you are, at last!” Mama cried. “You must fight Adderley, Harry. You must kill him.”

“That’s a bit sticky,” he said. “I saw Father as I came in. He told me the blackguard’s offered for Clara.” He walked to Mama and dropped a light kiss on her forehead. He straightened and said, “I should have killed him when I had the chance. But Clara got in the way.”

What choice had she? She’d been afraid Harry would kill Adderley—a man who hadn’t tried to fight back. It would be murder, and Harry would hang or have to run away and live in another country forever—all because she’d been silly.

It seemed more than likely she’d ruined her own life. She wasn’t about to destroy her brother’s as well.

“Mama, if Harry kills Lord Adderley, my reputation will be ruined forever,” Clara said steadily. “The only way to mend this is marriage. Lord Adderley’s offered and I’ve accepted and that is that.”

Harry looked at her. “Is it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Since Mama is too upset to stir, and I’m sure she isn’t ready to go out in public, in any event, I wish you would take me to buy my bride clothes.”

“Bride clothes!” Mama cried. “You think entirely too much about your clothes—and all the world knows too much about them. In my day, young ladies did not make public spectacles of themselves, advertising every stitch they wore. To have your chemisette described—in detail!—in a public journal, as though you were a courtesan or a banker’s wife! You ought to be sick with shame. But nothing shames you. Small wonder you behaved last night like a common trollop. I blame those French milliners. If you set foot in their shop again, I’ll disown you!”

“Gad, what difference does it make?” Harry said. “Unless Adderley meets with a fatal accident, she’ll have to marry him, like it or not. She might as well have some frocks she likes now, since she’s not likely to have many after the wedding.”

“Adderley may take her in her shift,” Mother said. “He’s no better than a fortune hunter, and a vile seducer in the bargain. Oh, that ever I should see this day! A fresh-minted baron—swimming in debt, thanks to the gaming tables—and his mother an Irish innkeeper’s daughter! When I think that she might have had the Duke of Clevedon!”

“I strongly advise you not to think about it,” Harry said. “They’d have made each other wretched.”

“And Adderley will make her happy?” Mama sank back on the pillows and closed her eyes.

“Clara will break him to bridle,” Longmore said. “And if she can’t cure his wild ways, who knows? Maybe he’ll ride into a ditch or get run over by a post chaise, and she’ll be a young widow. Do try to look on the bright side.”

He ought to know this wasn’t the best tack to take with Mama. She wouldn’t know whether he was joking or not, and that would only add irritation to the emotional stew.

Clara took a more effective route. “I wonder what Lady Bartham will say when she hears I’m to be sent away without a trousseau, without so much as a wedding dress,” she said.

Lady Bartham and Mama were ferocious social rivals. They pretended to be the dearest of friends.

A short, sharp silence followed.

After a moment, Mama sat up again. She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and said, “My own wishes cannot signify. We must consider your father’s position. I shall persuade him to let you have bride clothes.” She waved the handkerchief. “But not from those French strumpets! You’ll go to Mrs. Downes.”

“Downes’s!” Clara cried. “Are you delirious, Mama? She’s closed her shop.”

She caught her breath. She was supposed to be the calm one. She had to be, with a hothead brother and a hysterical mother. Luckily, her mother was too taken up with her own emotions to notice anybody else’s.

“That was only temporary,” Mama said. “She sent me a note yesterday, telling me she’s reopened, thank heaven. You’ll go to her. Your morals may be all to pieces, but you shall be clothed respectably.”

“Very well, Mama,” Clara said meekly.

Harry gave her a sharp look.

She gave him a warning one back.

Meanwhile, at No. 56 St. James’s Street, the sisters Noirot were staring in disbelief at a tiny advertisement.

Today’s Spectacle hadn’t arrived until some time after the shop opened. The morning being unusually busy, they hadn’t had time to do more than skim the papers.

At present, though, their more-than-competent forewoman, Selina Jeffreys, was on duty in Maison Noirot’s showroom.

Having adjourned upstairs to Marcelline’s studio, the three dressmakers huddled over her drawing table, gazes fixed on twelve lines of print in one of the Spectacle’s advertising pages.

Therein Mrs. Downes proclaimed herself delighted to announce that, having completed a short period of “refurbishment,” she had reopened her dressmaking establishment.

Sophy had got wind of it last night at the party. She’d mentioned it to her sisters. They’d all hoped it was merely the usual idle rumor.

They had quite enough trouble as it was.

“Curse her,” Marcelline said. “We should have been finished with her. She closed her shop. She said it was for repairs, but she dismissed her staff. I was sure she’d slither out of London like the viper she is.”

The viper was Hortense Downes, proprietress of the shop known at Maison Noirot as Dowdy’s. A few weeks earlier, she and one of her minions had brought them to the brink of ruin. But the sisters had played her own trick against her, thus exposing her to the world as a fake and a cheat.

Or so they’d thought.

Marcelline shook her head. “That business of stealing my designs ought to have finished her.”

“She’s blamed it on her seamstresses,” Sophy said. “She’s told her patrons she’s dismissed the lot and hired all new staff.”

“Plague take her,” Marcelline said. “Who knew that Hortense the Horrible was clever enough to recover her reputation?”

“It’s what I’d have done in her place,” Sophy said. “Blamed the help. Cleaned house. And made sure to tell my clients the ‘truth’ of how I’d been a victim of ungrateful employees. Then I’d send my customers personal notes in advance of the public advertisement.”

“This is very bad,” Marcelline said. She looked at her sisters. “How much business have we lost because of me?”

Sophy and Leonie looked at each other.

“I see,” Marcelline said. “Worse than I thought.”

“Lady Warford is a formidable social power,” Leonie said. “No one wants to shop at a place she’s blackballed.”

“But she dresses so ill!” Marcelline said.

“She doesn’t think so and nobody has the courage to tell her,” Sophy said. “Not that most of them are any more discerning than she is. They’re like sheep, as we all know. She’s a leader, and they follow the leader.”

“And she hates me,” Marcelline said.

“With a pure, white-hot hatred, the sort of feeling her kind more usually reserve for anarchists and republicans,” Sophy said.

Marcelline began to pace.

“It wouldn’t be nearly so bad if Lady Clara had got herself into trouble with the right man,” Leonie said. “She could become a fashion leader in her own right, and she’d help us build a clientele with the younger generation.”

“But she picked the wrong man,” Marcelline said. She returned to her drawing table, pushed the newspaper aside, took up her notebook, and began sketching, in strong, angry lines. “Tell me the truth, Leonie.”

“We’re facing ruin,” Leonie said simply.

No one said a word about Marcelline’s husband, who could buy and sell the shop many times over out of his pocket change.

They didn’t want to be bought.

This was their shop. Three years ago they’d come from Paris, having lost everything. They’d come with a sick child, a few coins, and their talents. Marcelline had won money at the gaming tables. That gave them their start.

Now she must feel as though she’d destroyed everything they’d worked for. All for love.

But Marcelline had a right to love and be loved. She’d worked so hard. She’d endured so much. She’d looked after them all. She deserved happiness.

“We’ve faced ruin before,” Sophy said. “This isn’t worse than Paris and the cholera.”

“We’ve survived a catastrophe here as well,” Leonie said.

“With Clevedon’s help,” Marcelline said. “Which we didn’t like accepting. But we agreed because we hadn’t any choice.”

“And we made sure it was a loan,” Leonie said.

“Which it now seems we can’t repay,” Marcelline said, her pencil still moving angrily. “We’re so far from repaying it that we’ll have to ask for another one. Or accept failure. Leonie was right, after all. We bit off more than we could chew.”

Weeks ago, when the Duke of Clevedon had found them these new quarters, Leonie had warned that they hadn’t enough customers to support a large shop on St. James’s Street.

“We always bite off more than we can chew,” Sophy said. “We came from Paris with nothing, and built a business in only three years. We set out to capture Lady Clara and we succeeded—although not quite in the way we intended. We wouldn’t be who we are if we acted like normal women. I don’t see why we should start acting normal now, just because our best customer made a mistake with a man, as most women do, or because her mother holds grudges. I for one am not going to lie down and surrender merely on account of a little setback.”

Marcelline looked up from her sketching and smiled, finally. “Only you would call impending ruin ‘a little setback.’ “

“The trouble with you is, you’re in love, and you feel guilty about it, which is perfectly ridiculous in a Noirot,” Sophy said.

“She’s right,” Leonie said. “You married a duke. You’re supposed to be thoroughly pleased with yourself. It’s a great coup. No one else, on either side of the family, has done it, to my knowledge.”

“Not only a duke, but stupendously rich,” Sophy said. “Your daughter has actual, genuine castles to play in.”

“So stop brooding,” Leonie said.

“I’m facing failure,” Marcelline said. “A gigantic, catastrophic failure—which that horrid Dowdy reptile will laugh at. That entitles me to brood.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Sophy said. “She isn’t going to laugh, and we’re not going to fail. We’ll think of something. We always do.”

“We merely need to think fast,” Leonie said. “Because we’ve less than a month until quarter day.”

Midsummer: 24 June. When rents were due and accounts were settled.

Someone tapped at the door.

“What is it?” Marcelline called.

The door opened a crack, revealing a narrow slice of Mary Parmenter, one of their seamstresses. “If you please, Your Grace, mesdames. Lady Clara Fairfax is here. And Lord Longmore.”