“I didn’t cheat during our last game of Vingt et Un,” she said. “I merely played as though my life depended on it. People in my family often find themselves in that position: playing a game on which their life depends. But cheating at cards is nothing. I forged names on our passports to get out of France quickly. My family often finds it necessary to leave a country suddenly. My sisters and I were taught the skill, and we practiced diligently, because we never knew when we’d need it. We were well educated in the normal ways as well. We had lessons in deportment as well as mathematics and geography. Whatever else we Noirots were—and it wasn’t pretty—we were aristocrats, and that was our most valuable commodity. To speak and carry ourselves as ladies and gentlemen do—you can imagine the fears it allays, the doors it opens.”
“I can see that it would be much easier to seduce an aristocratic English girl if you don’t sound like a clerk from the City or a linen draper,” he said. “But you married a cousin. You have a shop. You didn’t follow the same path.”
She got up abruptly from her chair and moved away in a rustle of petticoats. He rose, too, unsteadily, and he couldn’t tell whether that was the aftereffects of fighting and drinking or the hope warring with the certainty he’d lost her.
She walked to the library table and took up his notes. “Your handwriting is deplorable,” she said. She put them down and, turning back to him, said, “I haven’t told you about my mother.”
“An English aristocrat, yes? Or something else?”
She gave a short laugh. “Both.”
She returned to her chair, and he sat, too. His heart thudded. Something was coming, and it wasn’t good. He was sure of that. He was leaning forward, waiting. He was wanting it to be over with and hoping against hope it would be good news. But it couldn’t be good, else she wouldn’t be so ill at ease, she who was never ill at ease, mistress of every situation.
And what was wrong with him? She’d admitted to forgery! She’d told him she came from a line of blue-blooded French criminals!
“My mother was Catherine DeLucey,” she said.
He recognized the surname, but it took a moment for him to place it. Then he saw it: blue, vivid blue.
“Lucie’s eyes,” he said. “Those remarkable blue eyes. Miss Sophia, too. And Miss Leonie. I knew there was something familiar about them. They’re unforgettable. The DeLuceys—the Earl of Mandeville’s family.”
Her color came and went. She folded her hands tightly in her lap.
He remembered then. Some old scandal to do with one of Lord Hargate’s sons. Not the one who’d manhandled him yesterday, though. Which one? He couldn’t remember. His brain was slow and thick and aching.
She said, “Not those DeLuceys. Not the good ones with the handsome property near Bristol. My mother was one of the other ones.”
He’d been leaning toward her so eagerly, and she’d seen the hope in his eyes, and the uncertainty.
Then she saw the truth dawn. His head went back, and his posture stiffened, and he looked away, unable to meet her gaze.
Sophy and Leonie had told her he didn’t need to know. They’d said she’d only heap coals on her own head, and since when had she taken on the role of martyr?
But they didn’t know what it was to love a man, and so they didn’t know what it was to hurt at causing him pain. He’d opened his heart to her. He’d offered her the moon and the stars, knowing nothing about her. And she hadn’t had the courage to offer what she could in fair return: the truth.
She’d reminded him again and again of her trade, because she could cope with his coming to his senses and rejecting her because of what she did for a living. But to tell him who she was, then see his face change as he shut her out . . . That would hurt more than she could bear.
She saw it now, and it hurt more than she’d imagined. But the worst was over. She’d live.
She went on quickly, eager to have her sordid tale done. “My mother was a blueblood, but she wasn’t like the other Noirot wives. She hadn’t any money. They married each other for fortunes that turned out not to exist. They didn’t learn the truth until the marriage night, and then they thought it a great joke. She and Father led a nomadic life, from one swindle to the next. They would run up debts in one place, then leave in the dead of night for another. We children were inconvenient baggage. They left us with this relative or that one. Then, when I was nine years old, we ended up with a woman who’d married one of my father’s cousins. She was a fashionable dressmaker in Paris. She trained us to the trade, and she saw to our education. We were attractive girls, and Cousin Emma made sure we learned refinement. That was good for business. And of course, a pretty girl with good manners might attract a husband of wealth and quality.”
She looked up to gauge his reaction, but he seemed to be studying the carpet. His thick black lashes, so stark against the pallor of his skin, veiled his eyes.
But she didn’t need to read the expression in his eyes to know what was there: a wall.
A sense of loss swept over her, and it was like a sickness. She felt so weary. She swallowed and went on, “But I fell in love with Cousin Emma’s nephew Charlie, and he had no money. I had to continue working. Then the cholera came to Paris.” She made a sweeping gesture. “They all died. We had to close our shop—not that I would have stayed. I was terrified I’d take sick. Then who’d look after my daughter and sisters? I felt we’d be safer in London, though we were nearly penniless. But I went to the gaming hells and played cards. You saw how I won in Paris. That was how I fed and housed my family when we first came to London, three years ago. That was how I started my shop. I won the money at cards.”
She stood. “There it is. You know everything. Your friend Longmore thinks we’re the devil, and he’s not far wrong. You couldn’t ally yourself with a worse family. We seduce and swindle, lie and cheat. We have no scruples, no morals, no ethics. We don’t even understand what those things are. I did you the greatest favor in the world when I said no. No one in my family would understand why I did it.”
She started for the door, still talking, unable to help herself. It was the last time, perhaps, they’d ever speak.
“They’d see you only as a pigeon ripe for plucking,” she said. “But you needn’t believe I was being noble and self-sacrificing in declining your proposal. It was pure selfishness. I’m too proud to endure being snubbed by your fine friends.”
“You could endure it.” His low voice came from behind her.
She hadn’t heard him rise from the sofa. She’d been deaf and blind to all but despair, and too busy trying not to fall apart. She wouldn’t turn around. Nothing he said could make any difference now. He was trying to be kind, probably. She couldn’t bear kindness. She continued toward the door.
“You can stomach the obnoxious women and their demands and their treating you like a slave,” he said. “You have no trouble handling them. You have Lady Clara eating out of your hand.”
Hope was trying to claw its way up out of the dark place where she’d buried it. She stomped it down. “That’s business,” she said without turning her head. “That’s part of the guile and manipulation. My shop is my castle. But the beau monde is another world altogether.”
“It’s Lucie you’re protecting, not yourself,” he said. “You insist you have no redeeming qualities, but you love your daughter. You’re not like your mother. Your child is not an inconvenience.”
She paused, her hand on the door handle. Her chest was tight, a sob welling there, threatening to get out.
“Perhaps you don’t own the usual set of scruples and morals and ethics and such
,” he said, “but you don’t cheat your customers.”
“I manipulate them,” she said. “I want their money.”
“And in return, you give them your utmost. You make them better than they think they can be. You gave Clara the courage to stand up to her mother and to me.”
“Oh, Clevedon, you’re such a fool. You’re blinded by love.” She turned to him then. “Do you think, because you can find a redeeming quality or two in my black heart, that all of the ton will see the same? They won’t. They’ll see that you married a Dreadful DeLucey—”
“The Earl of Hargate’s son married one, and her daughter married an earl.”
“I’ve heard that old story,” Marcelline said. “You’re talking about Bathsheba DeLucey. She brought Lord Rathbourne a great fortune. What do I bring? A shop. And Rathbourne’s father, Lord Hargate, is a powerful man. You may stand higher in rank, but you’ve nothing like his power. Yesterday he walked into a crowd of bloodthirsty men as though you were a lot of schoolboys. The world respects and fears him. You’re not like that, and you’ve no one like that to throw his weight around on your behalf. You’ve lived on the Continent and in the fringe world of London where idle aristocrats play. You’ve no political power. You haven’t cultivated social power. You can’t make your world accept me. You can’t make them welcome and love Lucie.”
“If you can’t be welcome in my world,” he said, “I’d rather not live there.”
The horrid sob was building in her chest.
“I love you,” he said. “I think I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you at the opera—or, if not then, from the time you took my diamond stickpin. I’ll admit that matters are sticky—”
“Sticky!”
“But it was a mad scheme to come to Paris and attract my attention, in hopes of getting your hooks into my duchess,” he said. “It was a mad, brave scheme to come to London in the first place, with a small child and two younger sisters and a few coins. It was mad to think you could set up a dressmaking shop by winning money at cards. But you did that before you knew me, before you’d ever thought about the Duchess of Clevedon. And so I’m very, very sure that you’ll devise a mad scheme to solve our present problems, especially with my brilliant mind assisting you.”