Vixen in Velvet (The Dressmakers 3)

She hunted down Mrs. Downes’s maid, whom she found packing her bags.

“Sent me out, she did, on about a hundred errands today,” the maid said. “That was to keep me away.” After jamming aprons, chemises, stockings, and so on into a valise, she started stripping as much of her little room’s contents as she could stuff into her bags. “Owed me since Midsummer Quarter Day, didn’t she? Don’t you look at me like that. You’ll be grabbing what you can, too. You don’t think she left wages for you, do you?”

“There are men downstairs,” Madame Ecrivier said. She still couldn’t take it in. She’d worked so hard to build a new clientele, and retain the few older customers who still patronized the shop. She’d fought for higher wages, in order to attract more skilled help. She’d mounted an attack on inefficiency and shoddiness, and she was seeing—slowly, admittedly—signs of improvement. It only wanted patience. And time.

“They’ve come with a writ of execution, I don’t doubt,” the maid said.

Madame clutched her throat.

The girl gave an exasperated snort. “It don’t mean the guillotine, you noddy. It means they’ll take an inventory, then more men will come and take whatever isn’t nailed down. The missus borrowed a lot of money from somebody, and never paid it back.”

“But this is not possible!” Madame cried. “What of all my customers? What of all my orders?”

“Well, she must’ve spent whatever you earned for her, don’t you think? On her fine carriage and dinner parties and a box at the opera and who knows what else. What I do know is, we haven’t none of us seen any money lately. I recommend you take what you can, and slip out the back way before them men realize she’s bolted.”

Madame Ecrivier had come from Paris to London to make a fresh start. It hadn’t taken her long to realize she’d chosen her employer unwisely. At the time, however, she’d been desperate for work, and Mrs. Downes had offered a position of responsibility and higher wages than the seamstresses made.

Madame Ecrivier felt desperate now. She’d saved what she could, but London was expensive, and her wages did not go far.

This day she’d receive no wages.

Still, she wasn’t a thief.

She returned to the showroom and told the unpleasant men that Mrs. Downes had run away. Then Madame Ecrivier told the seamstresses they were unemployed. She did her best to comfort them and offer advice.

Then she collected her hat and shawl and set out for Maison Noirot.

Warford House

Wednesday 26 August

Italy, indeed!” Lord Boulsworth boomed. “Whoever heard such nonsense?”

He strode back and forth across Lord Warford’s study carpet, in the manner of one inspecting unsatisfactory troops. These comprised his daughter and Lord Swanton.

Though Lord Boulsworth had delegated his cousin Warford to act in loco parentis, the latter knew better than to allow the wedding to proceed without Boulsworth there to bless the proceedings. Lord Warford’s wife provided more than sufficient displays of temperament. He did not want to give Boulsworth reason to storm into Warford House and roar at everybody. Not that Boulsworth needed a reason.

“I’ve a house standing empty outside Manchester and a lot of idle servants in dire need of discipline,” the general went on. “Since duty calls me elsewhere, I look upon you as the next ranking officer. Your father acted bravely at Waterloo. Long past time you lived up to him, instead of writing rhymes for silly girls and gadding about the Continent. You and Gladys will take up residence in Lancashire.”

“Lancashire?” Swanton echoed. And fainted.

“What the devil?” cried the general.

Gladys knelt beside her lover and lifted his head and held it against her bountiful bosom. She looked up at her father, eyes blazing. “How could you, papa!”

“I? What the devil did I do? What sort of milksop have you given your hand to?”

“This milksop nearly killed a man with his bare hands!”

Lord Boulsworth eyed the fallen hero dubiously. “I suppose he had bricks in them at the time. Otherwise—”

“Gladys.” The poet’s eyes fluttered open. “My dear girl. Please forgive me. The shock overcame me. But only for a moment. Let me rise.” Gently he put her helping hands away and pushed himself up and onto his feet.

He squared his shoulders and jutted out his chin. “Sir, you seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. In three days’ time Gladys will be my wife. We will travel to Italy, where I shall continue to write poetry—better poetry, I hope, with her as my muse—”

“Muse! Ballocks! I won’t have her traipsing about the Continent on the whim of a fellow who faints at trifles.”

“The shock of your presuming to command both myself and the lady who is to be my wife left me temporarily deprived of my senses,” Swanton said. “I could scarcely believe my ears. Your lordship seems to forget that Gladys will swear a sacred vow to love and obey her husband. Will you have her violate sacred vows? Will you have me violate mine? Am I not bound to love and honor her? Does not this love require my respecting her wishes for me to continue in my vocation?”

The general stared at him, his face a shade of red inferior officers had learned to dread.

Swanton only smiled with angelic patience and said, “Whether you will or not, makes no matter. I shall do whatever is necessary to make Gladys my wife.”

Lord Boulsworth had fought and won too many battles to accept defeat easily. He sputtered and argued and threatened. Swanton bore it like a stoic, only reiterating his intention of being the head of his own family. He might have continued forbearing but Gladys, who knew how obstinately domineering her father could be, sank into a chair and began to cry.

Swanton looked at her and at her father. He clenched his hands and set his jaw. “Very well,” he said. “I’ve tried to fight fair. But I won’t have Gladys distressed.”

Then he began to recite:

We fled a far but happier clime,

From kindred’s pow’r and foeman’s hate;

Our crime was love—if love be crime,

She was my hope, my fate.

The poem went on for an infinite number of stanzas.

At the end, Lord Boulsworth, in tears—of rage or desperation or possibly even sentiment—surrendered.

On 29 August, Lord Swanton and Lady Gladys Fairfax were married by special license in the room of Warford House containing the wedding scene.

According to Foxe’s Morning Spectacle, “The bride wore a dress of white satin, with a close-fitting corsage en pointe, a richly embroidered pelerine over short sleeves, and embroidered crepe flounce. Her hair was ornamented with flowers, and an arrow from which descended on each side a blond lappet.”

The following day, Lady Warford wrote to Lisburne’s mother, reporting that the wedding had gone off without a hitch the previous day. The general, she said, appeared strangely subdued.

“Gladys looked very well, indeed,” Lady Warford wrote.

She glowed with happiness, and I’m sure I’m happy for her. I know she will look after your nephew Swanton, and he has been surprisingly protective of her. In any event, you’ll see them soon enough, and can judge for yourself. But oh, my dear, what is to be done about Clara? I fear that if she keeps on as she does, the gentlemen will give up on her. Who would have thought that such a beautiful girl should remain unwed all this time? Sophy claims the only trouble is that no one is worthy of her, but you know Clara has always had a rebellious streak, like her father’s mother. She has had more than one narrow escape and I fear—I greatly fear—that she’ll err again, and this time no one will be able to get her out of the scrape, and she’ll be disgraced forever, or else married to a Monster like That Man with whose name I will not sully my pen. (We have confirmation, by the way, that his confederates, those scoundrels Theaker and Meffat, have followed his

lead and fled their creditors as well as disgrace, to wander penniless about the Continent, I sincerely hope.)

But Clara is safe from them, in any event, and I desperately hope she has learned something from that Mrs. Williams’s horrible experience. I know it is useless to press my daughter about marrying. She gets her back up and then won’t listen to a word—but my dear Enid, I am at my wits’ end. I wish you would look about you for a gentleman of maturity and backbone, for she will need a strong hand. And truly, I no longer care whether he is of the highest rank, if only he can keep her comfortably.

Oh, but what do I ask? Never mind, my dear. I begin to think my eldest daughter a lost cause. It would be wiser, you will tell me, to put my energies into the others.

Thence followed domestic matters, of little interest to those but the correspondents.

In February, the Duchess of Clevedon gave birth to a healthy little boy. His sister and her best friend, Bianca Williams, made his christening bonnet.