“But the hackney stand is this way,” he said.
“Oh, am I too heavy for you?” she said. “Put me down, and I’ll walk.”
“No,” he said.
A taut pause then, “Where are you taking me?” she said.
“Home,” he said.
“It’s only up the street a few paces.”
“I didn’t say whose home,” he said.
How could she have been so stupid, to believe he’d give in so easily?
He was an aristocrat. Once they got an idea in their heads, all the horses in the Augean stables, pulling at once, couldn’t drag it out.
“This is not the Dark Ages,” she said. “You can’t carry me to your lair.”
“Watch me,” he said.
She struggled. “Put me down!”
His grip only tightened.
“Put me down or I’ll scream,” she said.
“I have an idea how to stop the screaming,” he said.
He would kiss her and she’d melt and give in and abandon everybody who depended on her. She’d abandon herself.
She wriggled and punched and pushed and made such a frenzy that he had to let her down. But before she could start up the street, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder and marched down toward St. James’s Palace.
“Lisburne, put me down!” she said.
“Simon,” he said.
“I will never call you that, my lord! Put me down you—you—”
“Brute,” he said. “Brute is a good word. A bit clichéd, but clichés are apt, else they wouldn’t be clichés. Ah, here we are.” He stopped at the first hackney in line, and wrenched open the door.
“I’m being abducted!” she called. “Help me!”
Lisburne threw her inside. “My wife,” he told the driver. “Drunk, I’m afraid. Gets lively.” He tossed a coin to the driver. It was probably a guinea, curse him.
“The Regent’s Park,” he said.
Chapter Eighteen
We looked in vain for many fashionists belonging to the higher order of society, who had gradually disappeared; and though the town cannot yet be called empty, it is very visibly thinned; and the few stragglers that still remain, are hastening from us, to overtake their modish contemporaries at the different summer recesses.
—La Belle Assemblée, August 1823
The night being warm, previous passengers had let down the coach window. Knowing she could reach the door handle without much trouble, Leonie pretended to slump in a corner of the seat while Lisburne settled into the seat opposite. But when she jumped up to open the door, he was up, too, and pulling her back.
She remembered the swiftness with which he’d caught her when she tripped at the British Institution. Of all the men in the world to carry her off, she had to have the one with impossibly quick reflexes.
“Faster!” he called to the coachman. Then Lisburne put the window up more than halfway. “A fine abduction this would be, if you escaped when we’d hardly set out,” he said as he settled back into his seat.
At this hour St. James’s Street was not congested, and the coachman made speed. Even if she succeeded in getting the window down quickly enough, if she tried to jump out she’d break her neck.
She was in a panic. She was not suicidal.
She sat back and folded her arms. Think, she told herself. She was a Noirot. And a DeLucey. She could get out of this.
But she needed to be calm to think, and she couldn’t make herself calm. She tried estimating the number of guests at the ball, the proportion of men to women, and the percentage of ladies who were not wearing Maison Noirot creations. It didn’t work. She tried planning instead.
The coach traveled Piccadilly and turned into the Quadrant while plan after plan presented itself, only to be discarded as impossible or insane. She was at a loss, a state of mind she hated. Tears started to her eyes, which only made her angrier. The farther they progressed from St. James’s Street the more difficult it would be for her to get home. She had no money for another hackney. The return walk was growing longer by the minute, and the gaslights couldn’t drive away the darkness altogether. Lit or not, even Regent Street held danger for a woman alone at this hour.
For the average woman, perhaps, but not Leonie Noirot. Hadn’t she traveled alone in far less salubrious neighborhoods in Paris and other cities?
But then she’d been a child, a young girl, dressed so as not to attract attention. In those days she’d never worn such finery or such expensive jewelry. Marcelline had insisted on lending her pearls, and the ones about Leonie’s throat were monstrous. Even if she concealed the jewelry . . .
Stupid. Futile. Walking alone was out of the question.
“I hate you,” she said.
“Come, madame, you can do better than that.”
“I detest you,” she said. “You’re loathsome to me. You are no gentleman.”
“That’s more like it.”
She felt stupid and helpless, and she wanted to throw herself into his arms and cry like the child she wasn’t. She was a grown woman who ran a business, possibly London’s most successful dressmaking shop. She’d seen more of life than gently bred ladies twice her age. She’d been in far worse situations than this.
But she was falling to pieces.
And so she made herself angrier, and launched into French, the better to scourge him with. Bitter words came more easily to her in French, and she hadn’t yet run out of execrations when the hackney stopped at the door of Lisburne’s villa in the Regent’s Park.
He alit and held his hand out to her.
What could she do? Run? Whatever else she was, she wasn’t a coward. He’d brought her here to exploit her weaknesses, that was all.
Her weakness for him, certainly. Which meant seduction was on the menu. Physical and financial. He’d show her his splendid house—and this was only one of several—and make her realize how ridiculous she was, to refuse to marry him.
Everybody in the world would think her ridiculous. Or mad.
Because nobody else could understand.
Very well. Let him do his worst. She’d survived Paris during the cholera epidemic. She’d survive this.
She lifted her chin, took his hand, and let him help her out of the hackney.
She looked up at the front of the house—a modern house, not ten years old, she estimated. With its classical-style portico and austere, elegant lines conjuring Greek and Roman temples, it was a residence eminently suited to a Roman god.
He glanced up, too. “It’s Burton’s work, like so many other handsome modern structures in London. My father built it. He loved this house. A shame he had so little time to enjoy it.”
She caught the odd, taut note in his voice and looked at him, but his face had closed.
Had she put that shuttered look there?
Had she hurt him, truly?
Guilt flooded her, and she was ashamed of herself, so ashamed.
She had her own troubles, and they loomed large. Yet he hadn’t hurt her. Never once, in all the time she’d known him, had Lisburne been unkind. Annoying, yes, but never hurtful.
What was wrong with her that she should hurt him?
“Are you quite, quite sure,” she said, “you don’t want to toss me into the hackney and send me back?”