Vixen in Velvet (The Dressmakers 3)

Lisburne woke with a smooth, rounded backside pressed to his groin. From the silken shoulder where his face rested a delicious scent wafted to his nostrils: lavender and Leonie. His arm curved around her waist, his hand lay on her belly. Naked, entirely naked.

He didn’t remember clearly the undressing, but when he opened his eyes, the bed curtains, not fully closed, revealed the aftermath of an orgy. The flickering light of a single candle illumined scattered pieces of clothing, some flung over chairs, some on the floor, some tangled about the bedposts.

Then he remembered.

A hurried undressing, and a long, slow time of lovemaking.

He smiled.

He kissed her shoulder and she turned in his arms, and her arms came up and went round his neck. He kissed her, and his heart began to race, he didn’t know why. He ought to be content. Satiated. But the feeling wasn’t recognizable. It was—

She broke the kiss. “What’s that?” she said. She let go of him, and pulled herself up on the pillows. “Someone’s at the door.”

He had to strain to hear it, and mightn’t have succeeded had the window not been open. From far below came several quick knocks in succession, echoing faintly in the court. Someone was at the shop’s back door. Or at one of the doors facing the cramped court behind No. 56.

“It must be after midnight,” he said. “Who the devil calls on you at this hour?”

Before he could collect his wits, she’d leapt from the bed. She hurried to the wardrobe, opened it, and pulled something out. A blue velvet dressing gown, very like a man’s, embroidered with exotic flowers. It was nothing like the obscene wrapper she’d donned the other night. This was no wisp of a thing, but cut in a style that seemed oriental, and lined with silk. When she wrapped it about her, it concealed everything but her shape. For some reason, this struck him as lewder than the bit of gossamer.

He sat up. “You can’t be meaning to answer the door,” he said. “And not in that. Come back to bed. Let the servants deal with whomever it is. Unless you’ve another lover who calls in the dead of night.”

“When do you imagine I have time for another lover?” she said. “I barely have time for you.”

She hurried out.

He dragged himself out of bed and began hunting for his shirt. It took a while because he became distracted. He found her stockings and his, then her corset, and a garter. Only one garter. Where was its mate?

He couldn’t leave her garments where he found them. He gathered them up as he’d done the other night, and sorted them into his and hers at the foot of the bed. By the time he’d found his shirt and pulled it over his head and was wondering where his trousers had got to, she was back.

“Make haste, make haste!” she said. “We’ve not a minute to lose.”

He was still dazed. Her undergarments, draped at the foot of the bed, made his mind cloudy. He wasn’t ready to make haste. He didn’t want to. What he wanted to do was drag her back to bed. He wasn’t done with her yet. He wasn’t done with this night yet. He’d felt so comfortable. As though . . .

His mind shied away from completing the thought.

He said, “Who’s come? Must I climb out of the window? Is the house afire?”

“Afire, indeed. Don’t say that.” She flung off the dressing gown and began rummaging in the wardrobe again.

Her back, her beautiful back . . . the sweet curve of her bottom . . .

He made himself think. “Leonie, who was at the door?”

She turned her head to look at him. Her hair was a riot of garnet curls, touched by streaks of fire where the candlelight caught it. Tendrils dangled at her temples and trailed down her neck . . . down her back, her beautiful back. The fog swept into his mind again, and he was starting toward her, forgetting everything else but the warmth of her body and the feel of her skin against his and—

“Isn’t it obvious?” she said.

“What?” he said. “No.”

“It’s Fenwick,” she said. “He’s found her.”

Chapter Fourteen

Are you struck with her figure and face?

How lucky you happened to meet

With none of the gossipping race

Who dwell in this horrible street!

They of slanderous hints never tire;

I love to approve and commend.

And the lady you so much admire.

Is my very particular friend!

—Mrs. Abdy, “My Very Particular Friend,” 1833

Environs of Tottenham Court Road

Small hours of Friday morning

Fenwick hadn’t gone as far as Jack’s disgusting coffee house, Leonie learned. He’d stopped at all the hackney stands on his way there—just in case, he said. This time he’d found his man. On discovering that Charlie Judd clearly remembered the fare in question, Fenwick decided he’d better not lose him again. He hired the driver to take him to Maison Noirot and wait, in case Leonie wanted to interrogate him directly.

Since the coachman wasn’t going anywhere, she’d hurried back upstairs to dress and to persuade a skeptical and uncooperative Lisburne to dress, too.

A few inquiries when they reached the vehicle were enough to change Lisburne’s attitude. Though Judd had taken up the passengers in question on Monday night, and he’d ferried hundreds of passengers about London and its environs since, he clearly remembered the woman, child, and “gentleman.”

“To and from Lambeth, wasn’t it?” he said. “Only time I went to Vauxhall in this last week and more. And it weren’t much of a tip he give me, was it?”

This told them they’d found the right trail. Before long, Leonie, Lisburne, and Fenwick were in the hackney coach and on their way.

Judd easily remembered the lodging house as well, because he stopped here frequently. Theatrical folk frequented the place, coming and going at odd hours. More than once he’d taken the performers’ friends home after revelries.

This explained why the untidy maid who answered the door didn’t blink at callers at such an hour, and why, after giving Leonie and Lisburne a quick assessment, she sent them up to the “widder on the second floor.”

Clearly the “widder” was expecting somebody else. She flung open the door, her pale countenance expectant. Her eyes widened when she saw who it was, and she tried to shut them out. But Lisburne had already put his foot in the way, and Leonie said, “We came to help.”

“I know you, Miss Noirot,” the woman said. “You were at Vauxhall that night. Asking for money. For fallen women. Don’t you know that helping them only encourages licentious behavior?” She gave a short laugh. But she backed away from the door and let them in. She closed it after them.

Leonie swiftly assessed her surroundings. The lodgings seemed to comprise two rooms. The one they stood in, relatively large and airy, was being used as a parlor. A door stood partly open, leading to what Leonie guessed was a smaller back room. Given the neighborhood and condition of the building, she estimated the rent at between seven and ten shillings a week.

The place was neat—neater than the maid, certainly—though it held little in the way of furnishings to keep clean, and these looked well used if not worn out. On a table near the door an open scrapbook lay, along with a handbill, a newspaper page, an open paste pot, and a pair of scissors.

Leonie moved to the table and read the handbill. It advertised a benefit night, the honoree’s name printed large. “You’re an actress,” she said. “Dulcinea Williams, is it?”

The woman got in her way, threw newspaper and handbill into the scrapbook, closed it, and clutched it to her chest.

“I wondered whether you were a professional,” Leonie said. “The graceful attitude of supplication, not to mention your dexterity in holding on to the child while pleading so beautifully with Lord Swanton.”

Mrs. Williams’s color heighte

ned. She raised her chin. “The audience believed it.”

Had Leonie obtained a closer or clearer view, she wouldn’t have believed it. Now, even in a dimly lit room, the evidence was plain. All Noirots and DeLuceys were actors in some degree, and a few had even gone upon the stage. But family talent or no, Leonie had seen enough theatrical performances to recognize, in the way the woman carried herself and spoke, signs of one who’d trod the boards from an early age. Many actors couldn’t shed their stage mannerisms altogether.