Vixen in Velvet (The Dressmakers 3)

There were cries of “Madame!” and little shrieks, and they ran out from behind counters and crowded about her and Lord Lisburne, then cried, “No, no, give her air!” and dashed off the other way, then came back again. They told one another to fetch water and doctors and smelling salts, and argued about it. Meanwhile, no one was paying attention to the customers, who might have walked away with half the shop, including the mannequins, while everybody else was having hysterics.

Luckily, Selina Jeffreys, their forewoman, hurried out into the showroom, sparing Leonie the need to discipline the troops through an aching head. Jeffreys briskly called them to order and directed Lord Lisburne through the door into the back of the shop. Thence Leonie directed him to her office.

He set her down in a chair. He found a footstool and, ignoring her assurance that she was capable of moving her own foot, knelt, and gently lifted the injured limb onto it. The touch of his hands traveled like a magnetic current up her leg and spread everywhere, including parts some women didn’t even expose to themselves.

“I believe a restorative is in order,” he said as he rose.

He looked perfectly cool. She needed an ice bath.

“Have you any objections to brandy?” she said.

“I meant for you,” he said. “You’re looking peakish.”

“I made a cake of myself in front of London’s latest craze in poets,” she said. “I tripped twice in the same room, and everybody will say I was drunk. The second time, I tripped so clumsily that I turned my ankle. The Marquess of Lisburne has been carrying me about St. James’s, to the entertainment of the multitudes and the mental derangement of my employees. I ache at top and bottom, and I’m in a sweat despite not having done anything but let myself be carried. Of course I look peakish. And I’m cross besides, or I should have said thank you before launching into the complaints.”

“No thanks required, I assure you. It was the most fun I’ve had since Swanton and I came back to London.” He pulled off his gloves. “Where do you keep the brandy?”

She told him. He poured out a drink for her and a drink for him. Then he walked about the office as though he owned the place. Nothing odd in that. Aristocrats always owned the place, whether, technically, they did or didn’t, since they owned England.

But then he started touching her things.

Lisburne was fascinated.

Along one wall, ledgers stood perfectly straight and exactly aligned on three gleaming shelves. Likewise polished to within an inch of its life, the desk held, in addition to an inkstand, a tray of pencils, all sharpened to lethal points. On the other walls, French fashion prints and a few Parisian scenes hung precisely straight and equidistant from one another. Whatever else the office contained must be secreted in the firmly closed drawers and cupboards.

He tipped his head to read the spines of the ledgers, then pulled one out to look at the front. He flipped through the pages. Scrupulously ruled columns held concise descriptions of transactions. Alongside them marched, in the same rigorous order, columns of numbers.

“Not a blot anywhere,” he said. “Do you do this? How do you write all these numbers and such and never blot?”

“My lord, that is private financial information.” The faintly accented voice climbed a degree in pitch.

“Your secrets couldn’t be safer,” he said. “It’s all hieroglyphs to me. I could read it for days and come away none the wiser. No, that’s not quite true. I do know what the red ink signifies. My agent has pointed it out often enough. That is to say, he did, until I left such matters to Uttridge, my secretary. He warns me when I’m stumbling into red ink territory.”

“Your secretary manages your funds?” she said, her horror plainly audible. “You don’t look at the books at all?”

What entertaining handwriting she had! So precise and orderly yet purely feminine.

“The trouble with looking into the books is, it throws a fellow’s inadequacies in his face,” he said, adroitly sidestepping the boring truth. “I note very little in the way of red here, Miss Noirot. And do you do all this yourself, without any Uttridges or agents or such? Simply write down every accursed item and what it costs, and what somebody pays and what the total is and somehow make everything come out right at the end?”

“That’s my job,” she said. “The Duchess of Clevedon specializes in designing clothes. Lady Longmore is in charge of keeping Maison Noirot in the public eye. I manage the business.”

“You keep track of the money, you mean.”

“That’s part of it. I hire and dismiss the seamstresses, attend to their various crises and hysterias, pay everybody’s wages, and oversee all purchasing.”

He closed the book and looked at her for a time. It was a great deal to take in. Her extraordinary face, for one thing. The immense blue eyes and soft mouth and uncompromising chin.

The chin went with the columns of neat numbers and no blots.

The dress belonged to some fairyland.

White ruffles and lace cascading to her waist like ocean foam. Below the lace swelled sleeves as plump as bed pillows. From her dainty waist a skirt billowed: white embroidered with what seemed like thousands of tiny blue flowers. It was deliciously, madly feminine and it made a man want to rumple her, just to hear the rustling.

Well, not only for that reason.

What a treat to carry all that up St. James’s Street!

He looked at the face and the dress and thought about the neat numbers in their precisely ruled columns.

He put the ledger back.

She made a little sound.

“Are you all right?” he said. “Your foot is paining you? More brandy?”

“No, no, thank you,” she said. “My lord, I must detain you no longer. You’ve been so kind, so chivalrous.”

“It was my pleasure, I assure you.” He moved on to inspect her desk. “I had expected another dull afternoon of listening to Swanton being emotional.”

He picked up one of the alarmingly sharp pencils and stuck it into the end of his index finger. It made a tiny indentation. Probably not lethal, unless one stabbed ferociously, which he felt certain she was capable of doing. He examined her meticulously sharpened pens. As he put each object back, he was aware of her breathing erratically, in little huffs.

“Are you feeling overwarm, Miss Noirot?” he said. “Shall I open a window? Or will that only let in more of the day’s heat?”

She made a small strangled sound and said, “If you must pry, my lord—and I realize that noblemen must do as they please—can you not at least put my belongings back in the same order in which you found them?”

He stepped back from the desk and folded his hands behind his back. Not because he was abashed but because he was so sorely tempted to disarrange everything, including, most especially, her.

He looked down at the pencil and the pen, then at the ledgers once more. “Er, no. That is, I could try, but it mightn’t turn out as we hope. That’s the reason Uttridge intervenes, you see. I grow bored very quickly, and things go awry.” That wasn’t entirely untrue. Once he’d fully mastered a thing, he grew bored.

“Your dress is immaculate,” she said.

He glanced down at himself. “Odd, isn’t it? Don’t know how I do it. Well, there’s Polcaire, of course, my valet. Couldn’t do it without him.”

He contemplated his waistcoat for a moment. It was one of his favorites, and he was fairly sure he looked well in it. Some perspicacious genie must have whispered in his ear this day.

No, that was Polcaire.

Polcaire: But milord cannot wear the maroon waistcoat to this occasion.

Lisburne: Swanton is the occasion, which means all the girls will look at him. No one cares what I look like.

Polcaire: One never knows whom one will meet, milord.

Which proved that Polcaire was not only a genius

among valets, but an oracle, too.

Lisburne looked up from his waistcoat at Miss Noirot.

The palest pink washed over her cheekbones like a little tide, coming and going. It was delicious.

“Shall I risk trying to get it all straight again?” he said. “My work may not be up to your standards—and I have a strong suspicion that you’re going to leap up from the chair, and . . .” He thought. “Stab me with the penknife?”

He was aware of her forcing herself to be calm. It wasn’t easy to discern. Her face ought to be in a dictionary, under inscrutable. Though she was a redhead, her complexion was strangely parsimonious about blushing. Still, whatever other faults he had, he wasn’t unobservant, especially of women. In her case, he was paying hawklike attention. The way she relaxed her pose wasn’t unconscious at all. He watched her arrange her features and bring her shoulders down.

“The thought crossed my mind,” she said. “But corpses are the very devil to get rid of, especially aristocratic ones. People notice when noblemen disappear.”

The door having been left partly open, he became aware of the approaching footsteps an instant after he saw her posture grow more alert.

Following a quick tap and Miss Noirot’s “Entrez,” one of the young females who’d thronged the showroom entered.

“Oh, madame, I am so sorry to interrupt you,” the girl said, or at least, that was what he made of her excessively mangled French, before she gave up on a bad job and went on in English, “But it’s Lady Clara Fairfax and . . . another lady.”

“Another lady?”