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.”
Chapter Three
There is certainly some connexion between the dress and the mind, an accurate observer can trace some correspondencies; and the weak as well as the strong-minded never cease to be influenced by a good or bad dress.
—Lady’s Magazine & Museum, June 1835
It was sort of a brothel for women, Longmore decided.
The shop even had a discreet back entrance, reserved, no doubt, for high-priced harlots and the men who kept them.
A few minutes earlier, a modestly but handsomely dressed female had let them in that way and led them up a flight of carpeted and gently lit back stairs. Small landscape paintings and fashion plates from earlier times adorned the pale green walls.
He’d been in Maison Noirot’s showroom, but this was another world altogether.
The room into which the female had taken them looked like a sitting room. More little paintings on the pale pink walls. Pretty bits of porcelain. Lacy things adorning tables and chair backs. The very air smelled of women, but it was subtle. His nostrils caught only a hint of scent, as though a bouquet of flowers and herbs had recently passed through. Everything about him was soft and luxurious and inviting. It conjured harem slaves in paintings. Odalisques.
He was tempted to stretch out on the carpet and call for the hashish and dancing girls.
The door opened. All his senses went on the alert.
But it was only the elegantly dressed female carrying a tray. She set it upon a handsome tea table. Longmore noticed the tray held a plate of biscuits. A decanter stood where the teapot ought to be.
When the female went out, he said, “So this is how they do it. They ply you with drink.”
“No, they ply you with drink, knowing you’ll be bored,” Clara said. “Although I shouldn’t mind a restorative.” She flung herself into a chair. “Oh, Harry, what on earth am I going to do?”
Her face took on a crumpled look.
He knew that look. It augured tears.
He was taken completely unawares. She’d seemed perfectly well on the way here. Chin aloft and eyes blazing. He hadn’t been surprised when she told him to take her to Maison Noirot. The meek act with their mother hadn’t fooled him.
Clara was so angelically beautiful that people thought she was sweet and yielding. They mistook indifference for docility. She was the sort of girl who generally didn’t care one way or another about all sorts of things. But when she did care, she could be as obstinate as a pig.
Since the Noirot sisters had got their hooks in her, she’d become extremely obstinate about her clothes.
He beat down panic. “Dash it, Clara,” he said. “No waterworks. Say what’s the matter and have done.”
She found a handkerchief and hastily wiped her eyes. “Oh, it’s Mama. She wears on my nerves.”
“That’s all?” he said.
“Isn’t it enough?” she said. “I’m Society’s big joke and I’m about to marry in haste and my mother does nothing but tell me every single thing I’ve done wrong.”
“And this”—he swept his hand, indicating their surroundings—“will be one more thing.”
“What’s one more thing?” Clara said. “This, at least, will lift my spirits. Unlike a visit to that incompetent in Bedford Square Mama’s so irrationally devoted to.”
He’d taken her here because this was where she wanted to go . . . and it was where he preferred to go
.
Maison Noirot was stupendously expensive, the proprietresses were seductresses (in the way of clothes) of the first order, it was extremely French, and, above all, it was Sophy Noirot’s lair.
If a man had to hang about a dressmakers’ shop, this was the place.
But there would be trouble at home for Clara. More trouble. “Our mother’s going to kick up a fuss,” he said. “And you’ll bear the brunt of it.”
“The clothes will be worth it,” she said.
And this would be her last chance for extravagance in that regard, unless he found a way to dispose of Adderley and restore Clara’s reputation at the same time.
He wasn’t sure Clara wanted Adderley disposed of, but if she didn’t she was either stupid or mad, which meant her wishes didn’t signify.
He must have frowned without realizing, because she said, “It’ll be fun for me, but I know you’ll be bored to death. You needn’t stay. I’ll take a hackney home.”
“A hackney?” he said. “Are you mad? I’d never hear the end of it.” He laid a limp wrist against his temple, pitched his voice an octave higher, and in the put-upon tone his mother had perfected said, “How could you, Harry? Your own sister, left to a dirty public conveyance? Heaven only knows who’s seen her, traveling the London streets like a shop clerk. I shall be ashamed to look my friends in the eye.”
From behind him came the rustling of petticoats—and a stifled giggle?
He turned, his pulse accelerating.
Three young women—one brunette, one blonde, one redhead—regarded him with expressions of polite interest. The two latter had large, shockingly blue eyes. Only in the eyes did he detect any sign of the amusement he’d thought he’d heard, and it wasn’t much of a sign.
It would be more accurate to say he detected it only in her eyes, since Sophy Noirot’s sisters might as well have been shadows or a Greek chorus—or window curtains, for that matter.
They were all very well, each entertaining in her own way, and all quite good-looking, if not great beauties.
But she cast the others into the shade.
Why, only look at her. Pale gold curling hair under the frothy lace cap. Enormous, speaking eyes of deepest sapphire. A haughty little nose. A plump invitation of a mouth. A sharp, obstinate little chin. Below the neck . . . ah, that was even better. Delicious, in fact, despite the lunatic clothing style deemed the height of fashion.