Though she had her guard up, she couldn’t squelch the flutter of gratification. She and her sisters had worked hard to make the most of what they had. They hadn’t much. Their financial success was only very recent, and she knew better than to take it for granted. In the dressmaking business, failure could happen overnight, from natural catastrophes or merely the whims of fashionable women. With the Milliners’ Society, they’d proceeded cautiously, incurring no expenses they couldn’t cover with ready money.
They’d done it because of Cousin Emma, who’d given to three neglected children a real home and an education. She’d taught them how to make beautiful things and she’d saved them from the pointless, vagabond life of their parents.
And she’d died too young, with only the first taste of her own success.
Leonie thanked him calmly enough and said, “All the same, we’d prefer rather less coziness. We should like to expand into the house next door.”
“I daresay. Always room for expansion.”
By this point they’d moved out of the others’ hearing range.
“Very well, I’m stumped,” she said. “Did you merely stumble upon the place and decide to look in, or is this all part of a master plan?”
“Master plan,” he said. “Swanton charged me with finding out your charity. He wants to raise funds for you while everybody still loves him. You know how fickle the public can be, especially the female part of it.”
“He charged you,” she said.
“To be strictly accurate, I volunteered,” he said. “Eagerly. This is because I have two uses at present. One, I can watch and listen to him make poetry. Two, I can hang about him, ostensibly to shield him from poetry-maddened females, but actually to do very little and enjoy the edifying experience of being invisible to the females.”
“Despair not,” she said. “You weren’t invisible to Matron or the girls in the workroom.”
“Be that as it may, I had a good deal more fun looking into your activities,” he said.
Inside her head, a lot of panicked Leonies ran about screaming, What? What did he find? What did he see? Why?
Outwardly, not so much as a muscle twitched, and she said, “That sounds tedious.”
“It proved far more difficult than I expected,” he said. “You and your sisters are strangely quiet about your philanthropy.”
The inner Leonie settled down and said, Oh, that’s all right, then.
She said, “It isn’t much to boast about.”
“Is it not?” He glanced back toward the room they’d left. “I’ve lived a sheltered life. Don’t think I’ve ever seen, in one room, so many girls who’ve led . . .” He paused, then closed his eyes and appeared to think. “Let us say, unsheltered lives.” He opened his eyes, the green darkening as he studied her for one unnerving moment. “You keep getting more interesting. It’s rather a trial.”
“It’s business,” she said. “Some of the girls turn out to be more talented than others. We get to pick the crème de la crème as apprentices for Maison Noirot. Too, we’ve trained and educated them ourselves, which means that we know what we’re getting. We’re not as disinterested as your duchesses and countesses and such. It isn’t pure philanthropy.”
“The fact remains, you pluck them from the streets and orphanages and workhouses.”
She smiled. “We get them cheaply that way. Often for free.”
She led him into the small shop, where the girls’ productions were on display. “If your lordship would condescend to buy a few of their trinkets, they’ll be in raptures,” she said.
She moved to a battered counter and opened a glass display case.
He stood for a moment, gazing at the collection of watch guards and pincushions and handkerchiefs and sashes and coin purses and such.
“Miss Noirot,” he said.
She looked up. He was still staring at the display case’s contents, his expression stricken.
“The girls made these things?” he said. “The girls in that classroom?”
“Yes. Remember Matron telling you that we raise funds by selling their work?”
“I remember,” he said. “But I didn’t . . .” He turned away and walked to the shop’s one small window. He folded his hands behind his back and looked out.
She was baffled. She looked down into the display case then up again at his expertly tailored back.
After what seemed a long time, he turned away from the window. He returned to the counter, wearing a small smile. “I’m moved,” he said. “Perilously near to tears. I’m very glad I came on this errand instead of Swanton. He’d be sobbing all over the place and writing fifty-stanza laments about innocence lost or abused or found or some such gobbledygook. Luckily, it’s only me, and the public is in no danger of suffering verse from this quarter.”
For a moment, she was at a loss. But logic swiftly shoved astonishment aside. He might feel something on the girls’ account or he might be feigning greatheartedness and charitable inclinations, as so many aristocrats did. Philanthropy was a duty and they performed it ostentatiously but they didn’t really care. If even half of them had truly cared, London would be a different place.
But it didn’t matter what he truly felt, she told herself. The girls mattered. And money was money, whether offered in genuine compassion or for show.
“It would seem that your friend’s poetry has infected you with excessive tenderheartedness,” she said.
“That may be so, madame, yet I wonder how any man could withstand this.” He waved his hand at the contents of the display case. “Look at them. Little hearts and flowers and curlicues and lilies of the valley and lace. Made by girls who’ve known mainly deprivation and squalor and violence.”
She considered the pincushions and watch guards and mittens and handkerchiefs. “They don’t have Botticelli paintings to look at,” she said. “If they want beauty in their lives, they have to make it.”
“Madame,” he said, “is it absolutely necessary to break my heart completely?”
She looked up into his green-gold eyes and thought how easy it would be to lose herself there. His eyes, like his low voice, seemed to promise worlds. They seemed to invite one to discover fascinating depths of character and secrets nobody else in the world knew.
She said, “Well, then, does that mean you’ll buy the lot?”
Lisburne House
Later
Swanton gazed at the objects Lisburne had arranged on one of the library tables—after he’d cleared off the heaps of letters and the foolscap covered with poetic scribbling.
After what seemed to be a very long time, Swanton finally looked up. “Did you leave anything in the shop?”
“I found it hard to choose,” Lisburne said.
“Yet you claim I’m the one who’s always letting himself be imposed on,” Swanton said.
“Miss Noirot didn’t impose,” Lisburne said. “Like a good businesswoman, she took advantage of me during a moment of weakness.”
He wasn’t sure why he’d been weak. It wasn’t as though he’d never visited a charitable establishment before. With his father, he’d attended countless philanthropic dinners and visited asylums and orphanages and charity schools. He’d watched the inmates in their distinctive uniforms and badges standing stiffly at attention or parading for their benefactors’ inspection or singing the praises of deity or monarch or benevolent rich people.
He was used to that sort of thing. Yet he had wanted to sit down and put his face in his hands and weep for those girls and their dainty little hearts and handkerchiefs embroidered with pansies and violets and forget-me-nots.
Confound Swanton for planting him in his poetic hotbed of feelings!
“I suppose you didn’t realize quite how canny she is,” Swanton said.
“I did not,” Lisburne said. “She’s the very devil of a businesswo
man.”
After she’d torn his heart to pieces and cleaned out the display case as well as his purse, she’d very charmingly got rid of him.
“I’m glad you weren’t there,” he told Swanton. “It might have killed you. It nearly killed me when she said, ‘They don’t have Botticelli paintings to look at. If they want beauty in their lives, they have to make it.’ ”
Swanton blinked hard, but that trick rarely worked for him. Emotion won, nine times out of ten, and this wasn’t the tenth time. His Adam’s apple went up and down and his eyes filled.
“Don’t you dare sob,” Lisburne said. “You’re turning into a complete watering pot, worse than any of those deranged girls who follow you about. Pull yourself together, man. You’re the one who proposed to raise funds for Maison Noirot’s favorite charity. I found out all about it for you. I’ve brought you abundant evidence of their work. Do you mean to compose a lugubrious sonnet on the occasion, or may we discuss practical plans?”
“Easy enough for you to talk about pulling oneself together.” Swanton pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “You’re not the one who’s afraid to put a foot anywhere lest he step on a young female. I have to be careful not to hurt their tender feelings, and at the same time not say anything too kind, lest it be construed as wicked seduction.”
“Yes, yes, it’s a hellish job,” Lisburne said. “If you want to go back to Florence or Venice tomorrow, I’ll go with you happily.”