Vixen in Velvet (The Dressmakers 3)

London’s favorite poet was smiling. He gently prompted Miss Noirot as she faltered for a stanza. It was a longish poem—not half so long as some of Swanton’s, but still a good bit to get by heart.

And she’d said she wasn’t literary, the minx.

Even the irate gentleman was smiling. “That’s more like it,” he said.

“It isn’t,” Gladys said. “It’s an amusing bit of doggerel, no more.”

“We must allow for differences of taste,” Lisburne said. “Is that a new dress, Cousin? Most elegant.”

To his amazement, she colored, almost prettily

. “I could hardly wear last year’s dress on such an occasion.”

“There, that explains,” Lisburne said to the irate gentleman. “She wore her new dress and you mentioned the emperor’s new clothes. A bit of confusion, that’s all.”

Gladys huffed. “Lisburne, how can you be so thick? But why do I ask? You know perfectly well—”

“I know you’re eager to leave before the crush,” Lisburne told the irate gentleman. “Bon voyage.”

The man’s wife took hold of her spouse’s arm and said something under her breath. After a moment’s hesitation—and another moment of glaring at Valentine—the man let himself be led away.

From the lectern came Swanton’s voice. “Thank you, Miss Noirot, for your delightful contribution. Perhaps somebody else would like to participate?”

Crawford, one of Longmore’s longtime cronies, stood up. “I’ve got a limerick,” he said.

“If it brings a blush to any lady’s cheek, I’ll gladly throttle you,” Swanton said with a smile.

“Lord Swanton is so good,” Gladys said, her voice soft for once. “A perfect gentleman.”

“Who likes a ribald limerick as well as the next fellow,” Lisburne said. “If Crawford contrives to keep it clean, he’ll be the last one to do so. Fairfax, I suggest you take the ladies home while everybody’s still on good behavior.”

“You ever were high-handed,” Gladys said, in a magnificent example of pot calling kettle black. “The lecture isn’t over, and I’m sure we’re not ready to leave.”

“I’m sure we are,” Clara said. “My head is aching, not to mention my bottom. Val, do let us go.”

“Finally, after hours of misery and tragedy, we get a little good humor, and you want to leave,” Valentine said.

“Yes, before you’re tempted to challenge anybody else over a poem,” his sister said.

Meaning, before Gladys could cause more trouble, Lisburne thought. Leave it to her to turn a poetry lecture into a riot.

A riot the redheaded dressmaker had simply stood up and stopped with a handful of verses.

He left his cousins without ceremony. More of the families and groups of women were leaving now, delaying his progress to the place where he’d last seen Miss Noirot standing in all her swelling waves of green silk, reciting her amusing poem as cleverly as any comic actress.

When he got there, she was gone.

Lisburne pushed through the departing throng out into the street. Nary a glimpse of the green silk dress or cream-colored shawl did he get. By now, hackneys and private carriages had converged outside the entrance. Drivers swore, horses whinnied, harnesses jangled. The audience jabbered about the poetry and the near riot and the modiste in the dashing green dress.

And she’d slipped away. By now she was well on her way to St. James’s Street, Lisburne calculated.

He debated whether to go in that direction or let her be. It was late, and she would be working tomorrow. He would like to keep her up very late, but that wasn’t going to happen tonight. He’d made progress, but not enough. Pursuit this night would seem inconsiderate, and would undo what he’d achieved.

He returned to the hall and eventually ran Swanton to ground in one of the study rooms.

The poet was packing papers into a portfolio in a desperate fashion Lisburne recognized all too well.

“I see you made good your escape,” Lisburne said. “No girls clinging to your lapels or coattails.”

Swanton shoved a fistful of verse into the portfolio. “The damnable thing is, that fellow who was shouting? I couldn’t have agreed more. It’s rubbish!”

“It isn’t genius, but—”

“I should give it up tomorrow, but it’s like a cursed juggernaut,” Swanton went on. “And the devil of it is, we raised more money in this one evening than the Deaf and Dumb Asylum sponsors have raised in six months, according to Lady Gorrell.” He paused and looked up from crushing the poetry so many girls deemed so precious. “I saw you come in. With Miss Noirot.”

“She tried to get in earlier, but there wasn’t room. And so I took her to the circus instead.”

“The circus,” Swanton said.

“Astley’s,” Lisburne said. “She liked it. And as a consequence of her brain not being awash in grief and sorrow when we returned, she had the presence of mind to save your bacon.”

Swanton’s harassed expression smoothed into a smile. Then he laughed outright. “I remembered Miss Leonie, of course. From Paris. Who could forget those eyes? And the mysterious smile. But I’d forgotten how quick-witted she was. That was no small kindness she did, turning the audience’s mood.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Lisburne said. “Your poetical event wasn’t the only thing she saved. My cousin Gladys almost got Valentine in a duel.”

“Was your cousin Gladys the girl who gave the noisy fellow what for?” Swanton said. “I couldn’t see her. Men were standing up, and she was behind a pillar. And I couldn’t hear exactly what she said. But her voice is splendid! So melodious. A beautiful tone.”

Lisburne had never thought about Gladys’s voice. What she said was so provoking that one never noticed the vocal quality.

“Gladys is best heard at a distance,” he said. Lancashire, he thought, would be an acceptable distance at present.

Swanton closed the portfolio, his brow furrowed. “I’ll have to thank Miss Noirot. No, that’s insufficient. I need to find a way to return the favor. Without her, we should have had a debacle. That will teach me to let these things run on for so long. An hour, no more, in future.”

“But the girls want you to wax poetic all day and all night,” Lisburne said. “Half of them had to be dragged out of the lecture hall. If you give them only an hour, they’ll feel cheated.”

Swanton was still frowning. “Something to do with girls,” he said. “They take in charity cases or some such.”

“Who does?”

“Mesdames Noirot,” Swanton said. “Somebody told me. Did Miss Noirot mention it? Or was it Clevedon?”

“I know they took in a boy they found on the street,” Lisburne said.

Swanton nodded. “They do that sort of thing. I’d better look into it. I might be able to arrange an event to raise funds for them.” He grimaced. “But something less boring and . . . funereal.”

“I’ll look into it,” Lisburne said. “You’ve got your hands full, fending off all those innocent maidens whose adulation you’re not allowed to take advantage of. I’m the one with nothing to do.”

Chapter Four

SYMMETRICAL PERFECTION.—Mrs. N. GEARY, Court Stay-maker, 61 St James’s street, has the honour to announce to the Nobility and Gentry, that she has returned from the Continent, and has now (in addition to her celebrated newly-invented boned “Corset de toilette”) a STAY of the most novel and elegant shape ever manufactured . . . totally exterminating all that deadly pressure which has prevailed in all other Stays for the last 300 years . . . two guineas, ready money.

—Court Journal, 16 May 1835

Monday 13 July

A steady routine is of first importance,” Leonie heard Matron explain. “Four hours of lessons, four hours of work, two hours for exercise and chores, half an hour for meals. As your lordship will see, the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females is a modest enterprise. We can take in but a fraction of the girls who need us. But this is only the beginning. The Philanthropic Society, as you may be aware, began in a small house on Cambridge Heath and currently accommodates some two hundred children in Southwark. We, too, expect to grow, with the aid of charitable contributions as well as sales of our girls’ work, which I will be pleased to show you.”

From where Leonie stood in the corridor, no one in the workroom could see her. However, even with only a view of his back, she had no trouble recognizing the gentleman Matron was falling all over hers

elf to accommodate.

Ah, yes, undoubtedly Lord Lisburne would like nothing better than to look at needlework.

Leonie debated for a moment. Not about what to do, because she was seldom at a loss in that regard. She did wonder, though, what had brought him here, of all places. She knew he was bored in London. He’d said he wanted to return to the Continent. In the meantime, he seemed interested merely in amusing himself, and she seemed to be one of the amusements.

Very well. Easy enough to turn that to her advantage. Business was business, he was rich, and he was here.

She swept through the open door.

“Thank you, Matron, for undertaking tour duty,” she said. “I know Monday is a busy day for you. I’ll continue Lord Lisburne’s tour, and you may return to your regular tasks.”

Matron relinquished Lord Lisburne with poorly concealed reluctance. And who could blame her? All that manly beauty. All that charm.

Unfortunately, all that manly beauty and charm must have turned Matron’s brain. Otherwise she’d have known better than to bring him into the workroom. Many of the girls in the bright, airy room stood on the brink of adolescence if not well in. Putting a stunning male aristocrat in front of them was asking for trouble.

Most sat in a stupor. Three had stuck themselves with their needles and were absently sucking the wounded fingers. Verity Sims had overturned her workbasket. Bridget Coppy was sewing to her dress sleeve the apron she was making.

They’d be useless for days, the lot of them.

Even Leonie was aware of a romantic haze enveloping her brain. Last night he’d sneaked into her dreams. And today he’d plagued her as well. Her mind made pictures of him as he’d been at Astley’s Royal Circus, the tantalizing glimpses she’d had of the openhearted boy he might have been once upon a time.

Nonetheless, she briskly led his lordship out of the workroom and into the corridor.

“We’re somewhat cramped, as you see,” she said.

“Yet what efficient use you’ve made of the quarters you have,” he said. “Given your penchant for order, I oughtn’t to be surprised. Still, it’s one thing to write numbers and such neatly in a ledger and quite another to organize a poky old building into something rather pleasant and cozy.”