“Come to buy some dresses?” Clevedon said. “Because nobody else has.”
Lisburne looked at Leonie, who did not seem overjoyed to see him.
“Not one customer, all day,” she said.
He’d supposed it would be bad. He hadn’t guessed it would be this bad.
“Have you any idea what my wife and her sisters have been through in the last few months, while you and Swanton idled abroad?” Clevedon said. “While your cousin was in Venice, murdering the English language—”
“I shouldn’t call it murder,” Lisburne said. “Flesh wounds, no more. You give him too much credit. And it was in Florence, not Venice, that he composed his latest batch of verse. In a pretty house overlooking the Arno.”
“You’d be well advised not to provoke a man whose wife is in the family way,” Clevedon said, growing bigger yet. “Her Grace is ill enough without the intolerable anxiety of losing everything she and her sisters have worked for. All because Swanton is—what? Too delicate to remember whether or not he seduced a young Englishwoman in Paris? Too busy dallying with the muse to respond to requests for help from his child’s mother? By gad, Lisburne, you know what’s owing in these cases, even if his mind is in the clouds. How the devil could you let it come to this?”
“Clevedon, do try to be rational,” Leonie said. “Swanton isn’t a child. Why do you blame Lisburne for his cousin’s errors?”
“As easily as I should blame Longmore if one of his brothers behaved so stupidly,” Clevedon said. “These two have been the same as brothers since they were children. And Lisburne has sufficient intelligence to defend himself without your leaping to his aid. I know all the women swoon over him, and think he can do no wrong, but you at least I should have thought had more sense than to be taken in by a pretty face.”
“I never knew you to be so pompously wrongheaded,” Leonie said. “Marcelline’s only pregnant, not in the last stages of a galloping consumption. And if she weren’t so nauseated at the moment—”
“I’m bored, not nauseated,” the duchess said.
“Is my face pretty?” Lisburne said. “I’m glad to know somebody thinks so, even if it’s only Clevedon.”
“Don’t be provoking,” Leonie said.
“But my dear—”
“Your dear?” Clevedon said. “Your dear what?” His green gaze went from Lisburne to Leonie. She colored a very little. “Damn you to hell, Lisburne! You’ve debauched my sister!”
He lunged at Lisburne, who pushed back. In the next instant they were at each other’s throats. They fell over a chair and crashed to the floor, bent on murder.
Stop it!”
“Not in the shop!”
“Get up! Stop it!”
The men heard nothing. They went on trying to throttle each other, first one then the other gaining the advantage.
The seamstresses heard, though.
At the sounds of battle, they rushed into the showroom, along with Selina Jeffreys, who tried in vain to herd them back to the workroom.
They arrived as the men scrambled to their feet and started throwing punches in earnest.
They were well matched, and excellent boxers, and Leonie liked a good fight as well as the next bloodthirsty woman. But not in the shop. They knocked over a hat stand, then a mannequin. The girls screamed and one of them fainted.
Leonie grabbed a vase of flowers, and flung the contents at the men. “Stop it! Now!” she shouted. She threw the vase itself at Lisburne’s back. He didn’t seem to feel it, but when it landed with a loud crash on the floor and shattered to pieces, he paused.
She rushed at him and grabbed the back of his coat and pulled him away. Marcelline pulled her husband back, too.
Both men wrenched free and started for each other again.
“Enough!” Marcelline cried. “I’m going to be sick!”
That stopped Clevedon in his tracks. Then Lisburne had to subside, too.
“Out,” Leonie told the seamstresses. They ran out again. It took Jeffreys a moment to get the fainter on her feet and drag her away, but they soon followed the others. The door closed behind them.
Leonie regarded Lisburne and her brother-in-law the same way she’d regarded her quarreling seamstresses not many days earlier. “This is ridiculous,” she said.
“Brawling,” Marcelline said. “In the shop. Clevedon, you’re impossible.”
He did not look abashed. He still looked as though he wanted to murder Lisburne. Which, in a way, was rather sweet.
When Clevedon had married Marcelline, he’d taken on the whole family. Her sisters were his sisters. Her daughter was his daughter. Yes, it was aristocratically possessive of him, and it could be annoying at times to have an older brother when one had got along perfectly well without one for all one’s life. Still, it wasn’t disagreeable to know that somebody other than one’s sisters cared about one’s well-being—and one’s virtue, when it came to that. Not that any Noirots ever cared about the last article themselves.
“I refuse to beg his pardon,” Clevedon said. “Unless I’ve wronged him, which I greatly doubt. He ever was a seducer of the first order.”
“What I do you may criticize and mock all you like,” Lisburne said. “But you seem not to notice that you call Miss Noirot’s behavior into question as well.”
“Were you both defending my honor, then?” Leonie said. “How thrilling! I’ve not the least objection to a brawl, in any case. Marcelline is more squeamish, especially now, but I love the sight of men pummeling each other. You’re welcome to continue the fisticuffs in the court behind the shop or—better yet—in St. James’s Street. It will give London something new to talk about. If Sophy were here, I’m sure she’d encourage it.”
Lisburne smiled at her then, and the world seemed to open and brighten. Her life was in dire straits, yet his affectionate smile was like sunbeams breaking through a gloom she hadn’t realized was there.
“As always, you go straight to the heart of the matter,” Lisburne said. “We’ve a scandal to undo, and I’ll be happy to pound Clevedon into oblivion if you think that will help.”
“If anyon
e’s going to be pounded, it’s you,” Clevedon said. “And I’ll be honored to undertake the task.”
“No, you will not,” Marcelline said. “I’ve had enough fighting for one day, and the seamstresses will spread the news quickly enough. Diversionary tactics are all very well, but that’s Sophy’s specialty, and she isn’t here.”
“And I have a plan,” Leonie said.
“Of course you do,” said Lisburne, still smiling.
If one wanted to believe a man was besotted, he wore precisely the look one would use for evidence. But it was a look any Noirot or DeLucey would have mastered, and Leonie knew better than to trust such flimsy evidence, merely because it fit her fantasies.
True, last night she’d believed her fantasies. To a point. But he’d made sandwiches for her! And now she was much more clearheaded. And not tipsy, certainly.
“We can discuss it in the consulting room,” she said.
It would be difficult to return to that room with Lisburne, remembering what had happened there. But the chances of being overheard were smaller there than in her office on the ground floor. In any case, Clevedon and Marcelline would be with them. And so the meeting wouldn’t be . . . fraught. Not that Leonie would allow herself to display any signs of confusion or awkwardness. She’d grown up in Paris, after all. She was a Noirot. And a DeLucey.
She used the speaking pipe to summon Mary Parmenter to look after the showroom. The shop would remain open during the usual hours, even though Leonie expected no customers. Closing early would look like surrender. In any event, thieves were as likely to turn up today as any day. They didn’t care whether a shop was under a cloud.
But this, and a quick stop at her office took time, and when Leonie reached the consulting room, her sister and brother-in-law weren’t there.
I did not murder them and hide the bodies,” Lisburne said when Leonie came in, holding a sheet of paper. “Her Grace was ill. I saw her turn white, then a curious shade of green. She darted into a little room at the back of the passage. Clevedon went with her. When they came out, he said he was taking her home. They went out the back way. We’re to meet with them at Clevedon House.”