Vixen in Velvet (The Dressmakers 3)

“I’ll admit I was amazed that his and Mr. Meffat’s Almack’s vouchers weren’t withdrawn.”

Lisburne raised his eyebrows.

“After their friend Lord Adderley’s ghastly business last month with the French widow,” she said. “Or whatever she was. I must say that something about her seemed not quite right.” She looked up at him. “But I forget. You were not in London then.”

“When was this?”

“A very short time before Lord Longmore married the dressmaker,” she said. “That is to say, Miss Noirot. I’ll admit that came as a shock. We’d all assumed something would come of the French widow. But she disappeared, and Lord Longmore recovered from his infatuation with astonishing speed. But I can’t think why my mind wandered to that shocking episode. I only meant to say that some expected Lord Adderley’s friends to be tainted by association. That seems to me not altogether fair. One ought not to judge a gentleman’s friends by his behavior.”

Lisburne didn’t ask whether she applied the same rule to women. He could guess the answer. In any case, it was the other topic that awoke his curiosity. She didn’t need much prodding to explain the “shocking episode.”

The story didn’t enlighten Lisburne much about Theaker and Meffat, and everything else she said only demonstrated her mastery of the oblique insult. On the other hand, the tale of the mysterious French lady was most interesting.

Wednesday, while not the worst day in Maison Noirot’s history, would not qualify as one of Leonie’s favorites. Only a handful of customers had entered the shop and they didn’t come to buy anything. They fingered the hats and shawls, sneered at the mannequins, stage whispered insolent remarks, and stared the shopgirls out of countenance. Luckily, most of the girls, like Selina, had developed tough hides. Even so, tears were shed in the workroom. The girls feared for their futures.

Thursday proved marginally better. One of the shop’s first important clients, Mrs. Sharp, remained loyal because she felt she had an image to uphold as a leader of fashion, at least among her set. While this group did not include the cream of the beau monde, it did comprise some of London’s wealthiest families.

Her daughter Chloe had somehow snared one of London’s most elusive bachelors. Since she’d soon become a countess, nothing but the best would do for bride clothes. Not that anything less would do, in any event. After all, the eldest Sharp daughter had recently married a prince, and her dress and those of her attendants had been the talk of London. Several ladies’ magazines had described her wardrobe at length, thanks to Sophy.

“I told Mr. Sharp, it’s either Maison Noirot or Paris,” Mrs. Sharp said. “He drew the line at Paris, as I knew he would. He doesn’t realize, as I do, that even Victorine cannot produce work superior to yours.”

For all that she might disparage Paris’s foremost modiste, Mrs. Sharp was furtive about Maison Noirot. She brought her daughter early in the day, while most of the fashionable world was still abed, and she asked Leonie to be discreet. Her princely son-in-law’s family compensated for their lack of wealth with an excess of morality. Mrs. Sharp had no desire to hear her in-laws preach at her.

Keeping quiet about a large, costly order was not a good way to improve business prospects. Sophy would have been wild.

Meanwhile, Fenwick had been gone for most of the past two days. When he did turn up, shortly after Leonie closed the shop on Thursday night, his report was short: “Nuffin’ yet. Better try Covent Garden.”

He consumed two meat pies only at Leonie’s insistence. He did this while protesting that he’d be too stuffed to eat when he got to Jack’s Coffee House.

“You’re not to eat anything in that place,” Leonie said. “It’s filthy.”

The ancient coffee house in Covent Garden was as disgustingly unclean as it was disreputable. She’d rather he didn’t go there, but she knew he’d promise not to and do it anyway. She told herself he’d survived London for this long, a feat not many unwanted children achieved, and one couldn’t lock him up. She reminded herself that she’d survived the streets of Paris at much the same age.

“What do you expect to find there?” she said.

“Dunno,” he said. “Lodgings thereabouts? I know a cove as goes there. He might know fings. Things.”

“No word of the hackney driver, then,” she said. “Charlie Judd.”

Since they had the hackney coach’s number, discovering the driver’s name hadn’t been difficult. Finding him was another matter. A hackney coachman had to accept anybody who wanted to hire him, at any time, no matter how many hours he’d already worked, and he might drive a fare ten miles into the country.

The boy shook his head. “He’ll turn up, miss.”

But when? For all the confidence she’d shown Lisburne, Leonie had known the search might take a great deal of time. They hadn’t much left. In August, most of Fashionable Society left London for their country estates. July ended in eight days.

August was always a troublesome month financially. This year, it could be a fatal one, though Mrs. Sharp’s ambitions and Mr. Sharp’s money might allow the shop to scrape by.

Leonie was on her way to her office, to review expenses and decide where she might cut and which bills to pay first, when she heard the peremptory knock at the back door. Fenwick, who was on his way out, must have opened it, because she heard him talking, and a familiar voice answering.

Her heart sped up. She wanted to run to the door. She made herself pause in the corridor outside her office, don her politely amiable expression, and wait with what looked on the outside like absolute calm.

She watched Fenwick go out and Lisburne close and bolt the door after him.

Then he turned to her, and there was his perfectly sculpted face and the gold glimmering in his hair and in his green eyes, and the wicked mouth that had touched every inch of her skin, including the secret parts. Her heart turned over and over.

“I still don’t understand a word he says,” he said. “I barely recognized him. He’s grown remarkably grubby.”

“He can hardly prowl about the underworld in lavender and gold livery,” she said. “If he looks too pretty, somebody will steal him.”

“Tell me something,” he said. “When Sophy found him, was she pretending to be a French widow, or somebody else?”

Leonie was confused and happy and afraid all at the same time but she didn’t blink. Even deranged by love, she remained a Noirot and a DeLucey. She knew how to play cards.

“I find it best not to inquire too closely into Sophy’s doings,” she said. “I hope you have some useful news for us.”

He hadn’t come in the dead of night, as he’d promised. She hadn’t seen him since Tuesday afternoon. Not that she’d expected to. Naturally he’d make promises he wouldn’t keep. A man who looked and sounded and made love the way he did could play by his own rules.

“Lady Alda believes there was something ‘not quite right’ about Longmore’s French widow,” he said. “After great efforts of cogitation—not easy while Lady Alda is shooting poison darts everywhere, in between trying to captivate and bewitch the unwary—a situation requiring a man to keep his wits about him.” He frowned. “A task I find strangely difficult lately. I wonder why that is. Where was I?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t strike me as useful news.” She walked into her office.

He followed. He closed the door.

She went to her desk and began putting papers in order. Bills. Two letters canceling orders.

“Now I remember,” he said. “After a great labor of thinking, I brought forth an idea. Lady Longmore can’t come back to London yet because some people might confuse her with Longmore’s French widow and the great love affair from which he recovered with astounding rapidity.”

“He’s a man,” Leonie said. “What was it Byron said about men versus wo

men in love?”

“Byron? I thought you weren’t literary.”

“We read Don Juan because it was reputed to be naughty,” she said.

“ ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,’ ” he quoted. “ ‘’Tis woman’s whole existence.’ Swanton worships Don Juan. And Beppo. He dotes on Tom Moore, too. And you have successfully diverted me from my objective.” His voice deepened. “Come here.”

“Certainly not,” she said. “I need to add two and two and make it come out ten or twenty. I need to see whether one commission can be made to keep us solvent for all of August, and perhaps into September. I need—”

“I’ve missed you,” he said.

At that moment, all sense flew out of her brain and all she needed was him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. She hadn’t time for this, for being ridiculous and irresponsible.

“It’s been an age,” he said. “The balls and assemblies don’t end until dawn, and I know the seamstresses arrive at nine o’clock in the morning and the shop must open at ten, even though nobody comes at that inhuman hour. I knew I mustn’t disturb your rest.”

He didn’t have to be here to do that.

“It’s been scarcely more than two days since you were last here.” She took out her pocket watch. “I make it to be about fifty-four hours.”

“Can you not be more precise?” he said. “I love it when you’re precise.”

Her heart beat too fast. Love. But not love you. It was only a carelessly used word and it meant only that she amused him. Something she’d known from the beginning.

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,

’Tis woman’s whole existence.

Not hers. She had a life, a full, busy life. The life she’d had before he sauntered into it.

“Furthermore, customers do come at what your great ladies deem the crack of dawn,” she said crisply. “They are not great ladies, but they pay their bills promptly. So bourgeois of them, I know, but—”

“I considered standing in the street beneath your window, and howling like a dog at the moon, the unreachable moon,” he said. “But I didn’t like to spoil your sleep. And perhaps people would throw shoes at me, or empty their chamber pots on my head. And I wasn’t sure which was your bedroom window. We never reached it, you may recall.”

She went hot all over.

“And so I went quietly home,” he continued, “to my bed, and imagined you in your bed, your face a little flushed. Perhaps you’d thrown off the bedclothes, because the night was warm. Or perhaps you thought of me, and that made you overwarm. I pretended you thought of me, the way I was thinking of you . . .”