Vixen in Velvet (The Dressmakers 3)

He reminded himself how insufferable Gladys had been at a time when he was trying so hard to be the man of the family and not give way to the black misery engulfing him. And her father!

Lisburne was shaken, all the same, and acutely uncomfortable.

“It’s easy enough to ascertain when a young lady is popular with gentlemen and when she isn’t,” he said. “If we fail to see it, the scandal sheets will point it out. Let’s say that if my cousin Gladys acquires a following by the end of the month, you win. Will that do?”

She looked up at him. “You’re making it too easy, my lord. She’ll acquire a following in a matter of days.”

She exuded confidence.

Enough to make him doubt himself.

But no, she had to be out of her mind. In this regard, at any rate. One of the perils of her trade. Like mad hatters.

Still, she wasn’t completely insane. She couldn’t have been more lethally precise in choosing the Botticelli. Of all his possessions, the loss of that one would hurt deeply. On the other hand, it would go to a good home, to a young woman he had no doubt appreciated it as much as, perhaps even more than, he did. And she’d probably share it with those indigent girls of hers.

But losing the fortnight in which he might educate Leonie Noirot at delicious length? Now that he’d had a taste of what he could look forward to?

Out of the question.

“What then?” he said. “Shall we say half a dozen beaux? An offer of marriage?”

“But not by anybody in financial straits,” she said. “Lady Gladys’s dowry, I estimate, is something between twenty-five and fifty thousand pounds. No obviously mercenary offers.”

“Are you trying to lose?” he said. “I’m flattered, madame.”

“Half a dozen beaux,” she said. “Either men hang about her or they don’t, and that’s easy enough to judge. Social success is measured by invitations, too. She’ll have at least three invitations to country house parties. And, yes, at least one offer of marriage.”

“All by the thirty-first of July,” he said.

“Yes. Is there anything else, or would these three conditions satisfy you?”

“I have every expectation of being satisfied,” he said.

She rolled her great blue eyes.

He wanted to laugh. He wanted to kiss her witless. What a treat she was!

She took out from a desk drawer a sheet of paper.

He approached the desk.

She folded the paper in half, took up a pen, and wrote out their agreement twice. She signed her name twice. She handed him the pen. “Here and here,” she said, pointing.

He signed.

Using a ruler, she tore the sheet into two precisely equal halves. She gave one copy of the signed agreement to him, and bid him good day.

The following morning, Lisburne was at breakfast, reading Foxe’s Morning Spectacle, like nearly every other member of Fashionable Society.

And like everybody else that day, he found himself reading the account of the previous night’s assembly at Almack’s twice. Because, like everybody else, he didn’t believe what he’d read the first time.

The ball on Wednesday was numerously attended, there being present upwards of 500 persons of distinction. Weippert’s band filled the orchestra, and dancing continued until four o’clock. One of the more notable among the brilliant assembly was Lady Gladys Fairfax, who wore a dress of an altogether new style, in gold satin, ornamented with black blond, a creation by Maison Noirot’s talented mantua-makers. We are informed that her ladyship regaled a small group of the attendees with her delightful recitation of a comic poem, her own adaptation of Aristophanes’s naughty Lysistrata, which her ladyship had composed, she said, in response to a Member of Parliament’s declaring that women had no rights.

A ghastly image was painting itself in his mind’s eye when he became aware of Swanton plunking down his breakfast plate on the table.

“You look ill,” the poet said. “Has that rascal Foxe found out about the hundred pincushions you bought?”

“My cousin Gladys has been reciting poetry,” Lisburne said. “In public.”

“Is that the girl with the melodious voice? I should like to hear her recite some of mine. Maybe she can make it sound intelligent.”

Lisburne put down the paper and looked across the table. “Lysistrata,” he said. “She wrote a poem about it.”

Swanton’s pale blue eyes widened. “But that’s the one—the one about the women. The Peloponnesian War—and the women banding together to stop the fighting by refusing to—” He made the universally understood gesture for coitus. “It’s obscene. How on earth did she get hold of it? Surely it isn’t part of a lady’s curriculum. Or have I been away from England for too long?”

“Her education wasn’t feminine,” Lisburne said. “And her father was rarely at home. She learned Greek and Latin and probably read whatever she pleased. I can’t believe she did this. Is she trying to be ejected from Society?”

Yes, of course he had to win his wager with Miss Noirot. That didn’t mean he wanted Gladys to humiliate herself. Again. He hadn’t been in London for her debut, but Clara’s mother, Lady Warford, who’d sponsored her, had written to Lisburne’s mother, in despair and at length. A host of others had written, too, not so compassionately, because Gladys had, in a few short months, contrived to make everybody loathe her.

Every year, flocks of girls made their social debut. Naturally, not all of them were successful. By all accounts, Gladys’s failure had been so spectacular as to set a new standard.

“Let me see.” Swanton snatched the newspaper from him and swiftly read the entry. “It doesn’t sound scandalous. She ‘regaled’ the company and the recitation was ‘delightful.’ Obviously, her version must have been highly expurgated. If she’d shocked and offended everybody, the Spectacle would be thrilled to say so.” He gave back the paper.

“Maybe not. The Spectacle might have decided that the better part of valor is discretion. Her father is Boulsworth. You remember him, don’t you? At my father’s funeral?”

“Who could forget?” Swanton said. “He was terrifying. I reckoned that was the secret of his military success. At the mere sound of his voice, the enemy fled, screaming like girls. I certainly would. Your cousin Gladys is his daughter? The poor thing! Or perhaps not so downtrodden as one might suppose. A girl who can compose a poem based on Lysistrata—and recite it—at Almack’s—sounds like a girl of spirit.”

Lisburne stared at him. “Sounds like? You’ve met her, on more than one occasion. How can you not recall? The general brought her to my father’s funeral with him.”

Swanton shook his head. “Those days are a haze of misery. But the general stands out vividly. A personality like a charging bull.”

“She was at the British Institution the other day,” Lisburne said, striving for patience. How could anybody who’d ever seen Gladys forget her, even if he wanted to? “With Clara. Surely you remember. You must have spoken to them. And I’m sure we’ve encountered them elsewhere.”

Swanton lifted his shoulders. “There seem always to be so very many young women. Their faces become a blur.” He shook his head. “But your cousin Gladys can’t have spoken to me. Had I heard her voice before, I could not have forgotten.” He looked down at his plate, and seemed to recall what it was there for, because he picked up his cutlery and began to eat.

A day earlier, Lisburne might have dropped a hint to his cousin about Gladys’s being unforgettable in less than agreeable ways. But Miss Noirot’s remarks silenced him on that subject.

Her father, however, was fair game.

“Even Tom Foxe might decide against stirring up the wrath of Boulsworth,” Lisburne said.

“If your cousin Gladys stirred up the wrath of Almack’s patronesses, everybody will know about it. Hard to believe Foxe would ignore

such a juicy story.” Swanton chewed in silence for a moment. Then he said, “Only one way to find out whether or not she’s made herself persona non grata. She’s staying with the Warfords, is she not? Let’s pay a call at Warford House.”

If Gladys had made no impression on Swanton in person, Lisburne preferred to keep it that way. While he couldn’t believe she’d suddenly become alluring to men, he could believe that Swanton sometimes saw what he wanted to see. He wasn’t the best judge of women. He was softhearted and too easily imposed upon. This made it not entirely impossible to imagine Gladys effecting, through sheer force of personality, a capture.

The prospect of Swanton trapped by Boulsworth and his daughter, and having his sensitive soul crushed beyond recovery, was too horrible to contemplate.

Wager or no wager, sporting or not, in this case Lisburne had no choice but to intervene.

“You don’t have time for social calls,” he said. “You were the one who was moaning yesterday about having to write half a dozen poems in less than a week. I’ll call at Warford House this afternoon, after Clara’s adoring hordes have come and gone. I’ll report to you when I return.”

Chapter Six

How often do we see the same countenance change its expression, according to the influence of the feelings! And how many are the transformations of beauty when under the magic power of Fashion’s variegated wand! Inexhaustible in her resources, she rules over the female part of the human species with peculiar despotism.