At first he saw nothing. Then he looked down.
A pair of enormous blue eyes looked up at him. “Good afternoon, your grace,” said Erroll.
A nursemaid, out of breath, hurried to the carriage. “Miss, you ought not to—oh, do come away.” She took the child’s hand, muttering apologies, and tried to lead her away.
A hard, stubborn look came over Erroll’s face, and she wrenched her hand from the maid’s. “I only wished to say good day to his grace,” she said. “It would be rude to pass by without saying a word.”
“Which you was not passing by, only broke away from me and ran halfway down the street, as you know—”
“Good afternoon, Erroll,” said Clevedon.
She had turned to regard the nursemaid with a baleful eye. At his greeting, though, the thunderclouds vanished, and she beamed upon him a sunshine so pure and clear that, for a moment, he couldn’t bear it.
All those years ago . . . his little sister, Alice, shedding sunshine . . .
“It is a fine day, is it not?” she said. “A fine day to drive in an open carriage. If I had a carriage like that, I should drive in Hyde Park on such a day.”
He wrenched himself back to the present.
She was beautifully dressed, as one might expect. A little straw bonnet, adorned with heaps of ribbons and lace, set off prettily a precise miniature of one of those coat-like dresses women wore. What did they call them? The same as a man’s type of frock coat, wasn’t it? Redingotes, that was the term. Erroll’s was pink. A long row of black frog fastenings down the front gave it a vaguely—and on her, comically—military look.
“Yes, miss,” said the maid, “but the gentleman was getting ready to leave, in case you didn’t notice, which he has a lady with him as well.”
“I noticed, Millie,” said Erroll. “I’m not blind. But I can’t speak to the lady, because we haven’t been introduced. Don’t you know anything?”
Millie’s face went scarlet. “That’s quite enough, Miss Lu— Miss Er— Miss Noirot. I never heard such impertinence, and I’m sure the lady and the gentleman never did, neither. Come along now. Your mama will be vexed with you for pestering customers.” She tugged at the little gloved hand. Erroll’s countenance changed again: eyes narrowing, mouth tightening into a stubborn line. She refused to budge, and the maid seemed less than eager to try to make her budge.
Clevedon couldn’t blame the servant. While he did not approve of children disobeying those in charge of them, he was not entirely sure what one ought to do in such cases. In any event, it was not his place to interfere.
“Oh, Clevedon, don’t be obtuse,” Clara said. “It’s Miss Noirot—the dressmaker’s daughter, I take it?”
The maid nodded, biting her lip.
“Yes, it is,” he said, and marveled all over again that she was Noirot’s daughter, that Noirot was a mother. Where the devil was the father? How could he abandon . . . but men did that all the time. They carelessly brought children into the world and carelessly treated them. It was none of his concern . . . and perhaps, after all, the poor fellow was dead.
“Well, then, Mrs. Noirot knows you,” Clara said. “She won’t mind your taking her daughter up for a moment, and letting her hold the reins.”
She turned to Millie, who was sending panicked looks at the shop door. “You needn’t be anxious,” Clara said. “Miss Noirot will be perfectly safe. His grace used to let me hold the reins when I was a child. He will not let the carriage run away with her.”
For an instant, the old nightmare returned: the lurid scene his imagination had painted in boyhood, of a carriage overturning into a ditch, his mother and sister screaming, then the dreadful silence.
What was wrong with him? Old ghosts. So stupid.
Clara had always been safe with him. His father’s recklessness had taught him to be careful.
Even so, this child . . .
Erroll’s murderous expression instantly melted into childish eagerness and her eyes widened another degree. “May I, truly, your grace?” she said. “May I hold the reins?”
“Lady Clara says you may, and I dare not contradict her,” he said.
He wasn’t sure what possessed Clara at present. Still, he knew she was fond of children in general and had some notion how to manage them. In her letters she’d described numerous amusing incidents with young cousins.
He was not used to small children—not anymore, at any rate—and this was no ordinary child. But what choice had he now? His best groom, Ford, held the horses and he could be counted on to control the mettlesome pair.
In any event, how was Clevedon to deny the child the treat, when she was trembling with excitement?
He lifted her up—the small, quivering body weighed a shocking nothing—and set her next to Clara. Then he climbed up into his seat, took the child onto his lap, took up the reins, and showed her how to hold them to go straight. She watched and listened avidly. Soon her trembling abated, and before long she had the reins threaded between her little gloved fingers. She looked up, smiling proudly at him, and he smiled back. He couldn’t help it.
“How quick and clever you are,” Clara said. “You got the hang of it in no time at all. I thought you would.”
Erroll turned from him to send her beatific smile upward to Clara—and melt her ladyship’s heart, as was plain enough to see. Not that this was any difficult accomplishment. Clara was soft-hearted, and Erroll, it had become abundantly clear, was a calculating creature. Like her mother.
“How does one make them go?” she said.
He didn’t have time to decide what to answer.
Noirot burst from the shop. “Oh, the wretched child,” she said. “Has she wheedled you into taking her up? She’ll persuade you to drive her to Brighton, if you don’t look out. Come down, Erroll. His grace and her ladyship have business elsewhere.” She put up her hands. Torn between reluctance and relief, Clevedon yielded the girl to her mother.
He ought to feel relieved—he was no longer used to children and found them tedious, in fact. But she . . . ah, well, she was a cunning little minx.
He noticed that Erroll did not fight with her mother as she’d done with the maid. Docile or not, though, Noirot didn’t trust her. She didn’t set her down but carried her back into the shop.
He watched them go, Erroll waving goodbye to him over her mother’s shoulder.
He waved back, smiling, yet he was watching the sway of Noirot’s hips as she moved along, apparently unhampered by her daughter’s weight. To him, the weight was nothing, but Noirot was not the great, hulking fellow he was, nor was she built in the Junoesque mold, like Clara . . . whose presence he belatedly recalled.
He turned away hastily and gathered the reins. A moment later, they were on their way.
Clara had watched those swaying hips, too, and she’d watched him watching them.
She’d felt the atmosphere change when she and Clevedon entered the shop. She’d felt him tense, in the way of a hound scenting quarry. When the dressmaker had approached, the tension between them was palpable.
“A fetching little girl,” she said. That was the only thing she could safely say. The child was adorable. Clevedon’s? But no, she’d discerned no resemblance at all, and the Angier looks were distinctive.
“I dare not come again,” he said. “Next time Miss Noirot will wish to drive. And I’ll have you to thank. I shouldn’t have taken her up—I’m sure her mother wasn’t pleased. But she could hardly rebuke me. Shopkeepers must consider their livelihood before their own feelings.”
“Mrs. Noirot didn’t seem angry. She seemed amused, rather.”
“That’s her way. It’s her business to make herself pleasing. I told you how she had the ladies at the ball eating out of her hand. But never mind. It doesn’t signify. I have no reason to come again, in any event. You’ll persuade Longmore or one of your ot
her brothers to bring you. Or come on your own, with Davis.”
Davis was Clara’s bulldog of a maid.
“Or with Mama,” she said.
“What a nonsensical thing to say!” he said. “Your mother would never approve of this shop. It’s too fashionable, and she seems determined that you should wear the most—” He broke off, his expression taut.
“Determined I should wear the most what?” Clara said.
“Nothing,” he said. “I slept ill last night, and I’ve spent too long in a dressmaker’s shop. Women’s chatter has addled my wits. What were you three conspiring about, by the way?”
“Clevedon.”
“You three were bent over the green dress you admired, talking in whispers,” he said.
She glanced up at his face. He was looking straight ahead, his handsome face set in hard lines.