Silk Is for Seduction (The Dressmakers 1)

He jerked his head up from the desk.

Halliday stood on the other side.

“What?” Clevedon said. “What? What time is it?” He looked toward the window. Dawn had broken, but not long ago. Good.

“A quarter past seven, your grace.”

“Good. Thank you for waking me. I did not want to oversleep.”

“There’s someone to see you, sir,” said Halliday.

“From the police?” Clevedon said. “Have they found her?”

He saw that Halliday was having difficulty maintaining his composure.

Clevedon leapt up from his chair. There was a great rushing noise in his head. His heart pounded. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“If I may, sir.”

“May what?”

But Halliday went out.

“Halliday!”

The house steward came back in. He was carrying a very dirty, very wet little girl.

“His majesty presents his compliments, your grace, and requests to know whether this article belongs to you,” Halliday said.

The Duke of Clevedon’s carriage arrived later than promised. The sun was climbing upward, and Marcelline had already tried and failed to eat the tea and toast her sisters made for her. She hadn’t slept a wink. She’d been afraid to.

She was ready and waiting, pacing the closed shop, when the carriage stopped at the front door. She ran out, and nearly collided with Joseph hurrying toward her. “It’s all right, Mrs. Noirot,” he said. “We’ve got her safe and sound and his grace sends his compliments and apologizes for not bringing Miss Erroll straightaway, but she wouldn’t come. And so I was to come and ask would the mountain please come to Mahomet? That is to say, those were his words exactly, madam.”

Marcelline found them in the drawing room—one of the drawing rooms. They were on the rug. Strewn about them were tin soldiers, horses, miniature cannons, and all the other artifacts of war.

Lucie was wearing what appeared to be page’s livery, a coat and breeches made for a boy some inches taller. She had on red stockings and no shoes. Her hair had been tied up behind with what seemed to be a man’s handkerchief. She was watching Clevedon line up some cavalrymen. He looked up toward the door first, and hastily rose.

Lucie looked up then. “Mama!” she cried.

Marcelline crouched down and opened her arms. Lucie jumped up and ran into them.

“My love, my love,” Marcelline said. She nuzzled Lucie’s warm neck, and inhaled her familiar scent, mixed with something flowery. Perfumed soap. Her hair was damp.

She held her tight for a long time, until Lucie grew impatient and pulled away. “We’re playing soldiers,” she said.

Marcelline grasped her shoulders and looked into her vivid blue eyes, her grandmother DeLucey’s eyes.

“You ran away,” Marcelline said. “You frightened Mama and your aunts to death.”

Lucie’s lower lip jutted out. “I know,” she said. “His grace says I am not to do it again, and ladies do not climb out of windows. But I was desperate, Mama.”

“And then you wouldn’t come home,” Marcelline said. “I had to come for you. What next, Miss Lucie Cordelia?”

“I’m Erroll. I had to have a bath. I was very dirty. I hid in the stables when they tried to take me home. I fell in a trough.”

Marcelline looked to Clevedon. He’d risen when her daughter ran toward her. He still had a cavalryman in his hand and he was turning it this way and that.

“As near as we can ascertain, she made very good progress toward Clevedon House until she reached Pall Mall East,” he said. “It would appear she turned into that street instead of Cockspur Street and wandered in the new construction until she ended up in the Queen’s Mews. Naturally, she was soon noticed: Solitary children aren’t thick on the ground thereabouts. But by this time, she’d found out where she was, and so, when they kindly asked whether she was lost, and where she lived, she said she was the Princess Erroll of Albania, and she wanted to speak to the Princess Victoria.”

“Mon dieu,” Marcelline said. “You asked to speak to the princess? You claimed to be a princess?”

“I am Princess Erroll, Mama. You know that.”

“Lucie, you know that isn’t your proper name,” Marcelline said. “That’s your play name, your make-believe name.”

“Yes, Mama. But her highness wouldn’t come to talk to Miss Lucie Cordelia Noirot, would she?”

Marcelline met Clevedon’s gaze.

“I wish I could have seen their faces,” he said. “They were vastly puzzled what to do. She insisted on speaking to the Princess Victoria. When they told her that her royal highness wasn’t at liberty at present, she offered to wait. What could they do? They’d never heard of the Princess Erroll of Albania, but they could see she was quality.”

Marcelline rose, her heart skittering. Matters were complicated enough. The last thing she needed was for the world to have any inkling of her background. People would shun her—and her shop—as though she were the cholera itself. “She’s no such thing,” she said. “It’s acting.”

He gave her an odd look. “In any event, they couldn’t let her wander about London on her own.”

“It never occurred to them to contact the police?”

“I’m sure it did, but one doesn’t, you know,” he said. “For all they knew it was a delicate royal matter, and the police would not be welcome.”

She understood what he meant. The Royal Family had not been renowned for chastity. The king had ten children by a former mistress, an actress.

“They tried to sort matters themselves,” Clevedon was saying. “Various forms of bribery were tried. But her highness the Princess Erroll of Albania accepted all tribute as her due. Then she fell asleep in one of the royal carriages. They didn’t get news of our missing child until early this morning, after they’d sent to the palace for instructions. They had the devil’s own time catching her, I understand, once she realized they meant to take her home. A truce was effected when they promised to take her here. She was presented to me some hours after dawn, with royal compliments.”

Marcelline didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She feared she’d do both, and fall into hysterics.

The whole absurd story was so typical. It was the sort of thing her parents did all the time: brazenly pretend to be something they weren’t. The Countess of This and the Prince of That.

“Well, I’m sorry His Majesty had to be bothered about it,” she said as coolly as she could.

“Lucie, your mother and I need to talk privately,” Clevedon said. “While we’re gone, I recommend you form squares as I explained before, if you hope to repel the French as effectively as the Duke of Wellington did.”

Chapter Fifteen

The quadrangle within the gate is in a better style of building, but rather distinguished by simplicity than grandeur; and the garden next the Thames, with many trees, serves to screen the mansion from those disagreeable objects which generally bound the shores of the river in this vast trading city.

Leigh Hunt (describing Northumberland House),

The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events,

Vol. 1, 1848

Clevedon took her into the garden. They were plainly visible from all the windows facing the quadrangle. It was the best place for a private conversation. Knowing that curious servants would be watching, he’d keep a proper distance from her.

Then he wouldn’t have her scent in his nostrils, in his head, weakening his mind and his resolve.

They stood in the center of the quadrangle, where several paths converged.

“I should never have agreed not to see you again,” he said. “I hadn’t considered how Lucie would take it.”