The Mad Earl's Bride (Scoundrels 3.50)

“Her mother’s dressmaker, to be precise,” said Leonie.

“Hortense the Horrible,” they said in grim unison.

Hortense Downes was the proprietress of Downes’s, the single greatest obstacle to their planned domination of the London dressmaking trade.

At Maison Noirot, the hated rival’s shop was known as Dowdy’s.

“Stealing her from Dowdy’s would be an act of charity, really,” said Marcelline.

Silence followed while they dreamed their dreams.

Once they stole one customer, others would follow.

The women of the beau monde were sheep. That could work to one’s advantage, if only one could get the sheep moving in the right direction. The trouble was, not nearly enough high-ranking women patronized Maison Noirot because none of their friends did. Very few were ready to try something new.

In the course of the shop’s nearly three-year existence, they’d lured a number of ladies, like Lady Renfrew. But she was merely the wife of a recently knighted gentleman, and the others of their customers were, like her, gentry or newly rich. The highest echelons of the ton—the duchesses and marchionesses and countesses and such—still went to more established shops like Dowdy’s.

Though their work was superior to anything their London rivals produced, Maison Noirot still lacked the prestige to draw the ladies at the top of the list of precedence.

“It took ten months to pry Lady Renfrew out of Dowdy’s clutches,” said Sophy.

They’d succeeded because her ladyship had overheard Dowdy’s forewoman, Miss Oakes, say the eldest daughter’s bodices were difficult to fit correctly, because her breasts were shockingly mismatched.

An indignant Lady Renfrew had canceled a huge order for mourning and come straight to Maison Noirot, which her friend Lady Sharp had recommended.

During the fitting, Sophy had told the weeping eldest daughter that no woman in the world had perfectly matching breasts. She also told Miss Renfrew that her skin was like satin, and half the ladies of the beau monde would envy her décolleté. When the Noirot sisters were done dressing the young lady, she nearly swooned with happiness. It was reported that her handsomely displayed figure caused several young men to exhibit signs of swooning, too.

“We don’t have ten months this time, ” Leonie said. “And we can’t rely on that vicious cat at Dowdy’s to insult Lady Warford. She’s a marchioness, after all, not the lowly wife of a mere knight.”

“We have to catch her quickly, or the chance is gone forever,” said Sophy. “If Dowdy’s get the Duchess of Clevedon’s wedding dress, they’ll get everything else.”

“Not if I get there first,” Marcelline said.

An Excerpt from

SCANDAL WEARS SATIN

Chapter One

For the last week, the whole of the fashionable world has been in a state of ferment, on account of the elopement of Sir Colquhoun Grant’s daughter with Mr. Brinsley Sheridan . . . On Friday afternoon, about five o’clock, the young couple borrowed the carriage of a friend; and . . . set off full speed for the North.

—The Court Journal, Saturday 23 May 1835

London

Thursday 21 May 1835

WAVING A COPY of Foxe’s Morning Spectacle, Sophy Noirot burst in upon the Duke and Duchess of Clevedon while they were breakfasting in, appropriately enough, the breakfast room of Clevedon House.

“Have you seen this?” she said, throwing down the paper on the table between her sister and new brother-in-law. “The ton is in a frenzy—and isn’t it hilarious? They’re blaming Sheridan’s three sisters. Three sisters plotting wicked plots—and it isn’t us! Oh, my love, when I saw this, I thought I’d die laughing.”

Certain members of Society had more than once in recent days compared the three proprietresses of Maison Noirot—which Sophy would make London’s foremost dressmaking establishment if it killed her—to the three witches in Macbeth. Had they not bewitched the Duke of Clevedon, rumor said, he would never have married a shopkeeper.

Their Graces’ dark heads bent over the barely dry newspaper.

Rumors about the Sheridan-Grant elopement were already traveling the beau monde grapevine, but the Spectacle, as usual, was the first to put confirmation in print.

Marcelline looked up. “They say Miss Grant’s papa will bring a suit against Sheridan in Chancery,” she said. “Exciting stuff, indeed.”

At that moment, a footman entered. “Lord Longmore, Your Grace,” he said.

Not now, dammit, Sophy thought. Her sister had the beau monde in an uproar, she’d made a deadly enemy of one of its most powerful women—who happened to be Longmore’s mother—customers were deserting in droves, and Sophy had no idea how to repair the damage.

Now him.

The Earl of Longmore strolled into the breakfast room, a newspaper under his arm.

Sophy’s pulse rate accelerated. It couldn’t help itself.

Black hair and glittering black eyes . . . the noble nose that ought to have been broken a dozen times yet remained stubbornly straight and arrogant . . . the hard, cynical mouth . . . the six-foot-plus frame.

All that manly beauty.

If only he had a brain.

No, better not. In the first place, brains in a man were inconvenient. In the second, and far more important, she didn’t have time for him or any man. She had a shop to rescue from Impending Doom.

“I brought you the latest Spectacle,” he said to the pair at the table. “But I wasn’t quick enough off the mark, I see.”

“Sophy brought it,” said Marcelline.

Longmore’s dark gaze c

ame to Sophy. She gave him a cool nod and sauntered to the sideboard. She looked into the chafing dishes and concentrated on filling her plate.

“Miss Noirot,” he said. “Up and about early, I see. You weren’t at Almack’s last night.”

“Certainly not,” Sophy said. “The Spanish Inquisition couldn’t make the patronesses give me a voucher.”

“Since when do you wait for permission? I was so disappointed. I was on pins and needles to see what disguise you’d adopt. My favorite so far is the Lancashire maidservant.”

That was Sophy’s favorite, too.

However, her intrusions at fashionable events to collect gossip for Foxe were supposed to be a deep, dark secret. No one noticed servant girls, and she was a Noirot, as skilled at making herself invisible as she was at getting attention.

But he noticed.

He must have developed unusually keen powers of hearing and vision to make up for his very small brain.

She carried her plate to the table and sat next to her sister. “I’m devastated to have spoiled your fun,” she said.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I found something to do later.”

“So it seems,” Clevedon said, looking him over. “It must have been quite a party. Since you’re never up and about this early, I can only conclude you stopped here on your way home.”

Like most of his kind, Lord Longmore rarely rose before noon. His rumpled black hair, limp neckcloth, and wrinkled coat, waistcoat, and trousers told Sophy he hadn’t yet been to bed—not his own, at any rate.

Her imagination promptly set about picturing his big body naked among tangled sheets. She had never seen him naked, and had better not; but along with owning a superior imagination, she’d seen statues, pictures, and—years ago—certain boastful Parisian boys’ personal possessions.

She firmly wiped her mind clean.