Though Rowntree promptly sent a strongly worded note to the Spectacle’s publisher, he explained to his employers that very little could be done. The Spectacle not only named no names but did not, in fact, accuse Lord Swanton of any ill-doing.
“They’re clever,” he said.
“Yes, and they’ll hang me with denials,” Swanton said.
“Mr. Foxe will trip over his own cunning in time,” Rowntree said. “And your lordship may be sure we shall deal with him then, and summarily—as half the ton have longed to do this age.”
“In time, in time,” Swanton said. “Meanwhile my name is dragged through the mud with ‘It isn’t true!’ ” He turned to Lisburne. “You did well to tell me to make haste with our charity event. At this rate, my reputation will be in shreds before another week is out.”
“Not if somebody else makes a bigger scandal,” Lisburne said. “Which I’ll do, if necessary.”
“Why should you get into trouble, because some vile-minded creature is determined to make a fool of me?”
“It isn’t trouble but a diversionary tactic,” Lisburne said. “And I should do it because, firstly, I should have to exercise my imagination, which is deplorably out of practice. And secondly, because I suspect it will be great fun. Stop fretting about these rumors that aren’t rumors. Some jealous scribbler’s behind it, I don’t doubt. Let’s let Rowntree go on about his lawyerly tasks while you and I settle a few last bits of business for Monday. Then I’ll carry the results to all necessary corners of London, leaving you at leisure to throw yourself back into your verse.”
Later on Saturday
One necessary corner of London was Maison Noirot.
It was a good thing Lisburne had a scandal to think about, because he found he was obliged to cool his heels in Maison Noirot’s showroom. Madame, he was told, was busy with customers in the consulting rooms.
He had kept away on Friday because, after all, he wasn’t a moony schoolboy. He was a gentleman with other things to do besides hang about a girl, waiting for her to take notice of him.
He had, along with Swanton’s trials and tribulations, the poet’s personality to deal with. Getting him to concentrate on practical or logistical matters when he was in the throes of composing verse was, even at the best of times, like trying to hold the undivided attention of a dog when a squirrel chittered nearby. The whispering campaign or whatever it was made him more shatterbrained than he was normally.
No one in his right mind would send Swanton to the shop in such a state, and not on a busy Saturday, when he’d cause more than the usual uproar.
In other words, Lisburne had excellent reasons for being there.
So, unfortunately, did Gladys, who turned up shortly after he arrived. She came with Clara, whose maid Davis trailed after them as she always did. But there was Bates as well, part of the entourage.
Since Gladys’s voice made its entrance shortly before her person did, Lisburne wasn’t taken unawares. The showroom at this point was crowded. He ducked behind one of the mannequins elevated on pedestals. Given the wide skirts, ballooning sleeves, and enormous hats adorning the figures—not to mention the customers swarming about them—it was very good odds his relatives wouldn’t notice him.
Because his cousin’s allegedly “melodious” voice carried as well as an opera singer’s, he had no trouble hearing her above the general chatter.
“No, Parmenter, I do not object in the least to waiting,” she said. “My eyesight being in excellent order, I can see this is a busy day. Everyone and her great aunt Theodosia must be wishing to have a new dress for Vauxhall on Monday. You must be run off your feet. But it’s all in a worthy cause. And so I must be patient and you must be strong.”
Bates said something.
“Do try not to be excessively inane, sir,” said Gladys. “While I support Lord Swanton in his literary endeavors, I should not patronize every charity case strictly on his say-so. For one thing, you know I’m as softhearted as a curbstone. For another, sadly enough, I’m a good deal less naïve than I ought to be. That’s the trouble with always having military men lounging about the place.”
Bates laughed, and Clara said something and he answered.
“My cousin exaggerates not at all,” Gladys said. “I dragged Clara there because I wanted to see for myself. The Deaf and Dumb Asylum is one thing. Everyone has heard of that. But whoever heard of the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females? No, no, of course I must see the place with my own two beady eyes. And having seen, I have put my name down as a sponsor, and Clara very kindly did the same, to indulge me—or perhaps out of fear I’d sit on her.”
Clara said something and laughed.
Bates said something.
Gladys said, “Oh, there you are, Lisburne.”
He looked to his right, and found her looming there. For a large girl, she walked quietly—more quietly, certainly, than he recalled her doing. She wore a handsome rose-beige promenade dress and an excessively feminine bonnet that ought to have looked ridiculous on her, but in fact became her round, plain face shockingly well.
She’d looked well in Hyde Park yesterday, he recalled, but he’d had only a passing awareness, Leonie occupying the front of his mind. Now he saw how grossly he’d underestimated Maison Noirot’s skills. Had he been a superstitious man, he’d have suspected witchcraft.
“Playing with mannequins?” she said. “Or come to play with the seamstresses and shopgirls?”
“Business with Madame,” he said.
“I daresay,” she said, eyebrows aloft.
“The charity event on Monday,” he said. “Were you not speaking of it a moment ago? You can’t be surprised that Swanton and I have details to settle with one of the Milliners’ Society’s founders.”
Her expression softened. “Oh, yes, of course. Lord Swanton cannot be expected to attend personally to tiresome practical matters. The poetic imagination is not always coupled with a pragmatic nature. It is so with many artists. Someone must act as his representative. I quite understand.”
She turned to Bates. “While it would be stretching a point to commend my cousin Lisburne for making a great personal sacrifice in attending to this particular matter, we’re obliged to admit he has a point. I’m afraid we’ll have to save teasing him for another time. What a pity. I had composed at least three silly puns the instant he said, ‘business with Madame.’ ”
“But my dear Lady Gladys, I was looking forward so much to teasing him,” Bates said.
“You’ll have to make do with teasing me, as unrewarding as that is,” she said. “Or Clara, if you dare. Or both of us, if you’re feeling especially reckless.”
She wandered away to examine a mannequin. A number of women watched her every move.
Clara went with her but Bates lingered behind.
“In case you were wondering,” he said, “I’ve got fifty pounds riding on your cousin, and I’m keeping an eye on my dark horse.”
“Not trying to influence the outcome, by any chance?” Lisburne said.
“As though I had any influence,” Bates said. “No one cares what I do. Having neither funds nor title, I’m no marital prize, and no one’s ever mistaken me for a leader of fashion. The fact is, those two ladies, especially together, are more interesting than any ten other people I know. I began hanging about in curiosity. I continue because it’s so deuced entertaining.”
Until a moment ago, Lisburne had found Gladys as entertaining as a toothache. Though Leonie’s analogy of the ugly dog was burned into his brain, that didn’t explain how Gladys had disarmed him today. The kindly reference to the Milliners’ Society? The understanding of Swanton’s nature and the job it was to look after him? The jokes at her own expense?
Or it might simply have been the becoming bonnet.
“She did tell me I was a damned fool, throwing my money away
on her,” Bates went on when Lisburne, momentarily preoccupied with working out the riddle, failed to answer. “At first I was amazed she’d heard about the betting.”
“Then, when you thought about it, you weren’t so amazed,” Lisburne said.
“Cats,” Bates said. “I can guess which one told her, too.”
So could Lisburne. Lady Alda Morris, Lady Bartham’s fair-haired younger daughter, who had made it her business to enlighten Lisburne at Lady Jersey’s party the other night.
At that moment, the back of his neck prickled.
“No, no, I’m content to wait, madame,” came Gladys’s voice from somewhere behind him. “Here’s my cousin Lisburne on important literary business. You’d better see him first. He has nothing to do but hide behind mannequins, hoping he won’t be accosted by annoying women, while Clara and I have this shawl to argue about, and I was on the brink of demolishing her with my logic.”
A heartbeat later, Madame appeared at Lisburne’s side.
“My lord,” she said coolly. “Be so good as to come this way.”
Lisburne found Leonie’s office this day not as painfully neat as previously. Papers strewed her desk and one of the ledgers had fallen half an inch out of alignment with its mates. He walked to the shelf and adjusted it.
“I don’t know how you retain your sanity,” he said. “A hundred women must be swarming in the showroom, all of them talking at once. My head is still vibrating.”
“Eighty-seven, not counting my employees,” she said. “It’s wonderful. And it’s all thanks to Lord Swanton and you.”
“Not me,” he said. “I’m merely the pragmatic fellow who executes his brilliant ideas.”
“Ideas are useless without execution,” she said. “Someone has to keep his feet on the ground. Someone has to see to everyday boring details.”