Scandal Wears Satin (25 page)

“Not I, certainly,” said Longmore.

“The time, he run away from us,” she said. “One cannot attend.” She closed her eyes. “That word is not correct.”

“The word you want, madame, is
wait
,” Longmore said. He’d learned her trick of using English words that sounded similar to French but whose meaning was not quite the same.
Demand
when she meant
ask
.
Succeed
instead of
follow
. “I believe you meant that because time does not wait for us, you will not wait for time.”

“This is so true,” said Madame. “I make haste. My Lady Clara—
la très belle sœur
of Lord Lun-mour—let us make an acquaintance with each other. Let us encounter again.” She sent a fleeting glance Adderley’s way. “Tomorrow, yes? We attend the exhibition of the paintings at—What is the place, Lord Lun-mour?”

“The British Institution,” he said.

“That place,” said Madame. “I persuade Lord Lun-mour to accompany me to regard the art.”

“Oh, yes, I should like that above all things,” Clara said. She did not break into hysterical laughter or mention how many times her brother had said he’d rather have his eyes put out with hot pokers than join a mob shuffling about, gaping at paintings and making pompous, and inevitably wrong, comments about them.

She simply turned to Adderley and donned a sympathetic look and said, “But perhaps you’ll find it dull, Lord Adderley? If so, there’s no need to try your patience. My brother can easily escort two ladies. He can borrow Papa’s landau.”

“Milord does not enjoy to regard the paintings?” said Madame, looking up at Adderley, her mouth turning down in an adorable little pout.

“In the company of two such beautiful and charming ladies, I should enjoy looking at paving stones,” Adderley said.

Exclusive to
Foxe’s Morning Spectacle

Friday 12 June

A Curious Coincidence? An intriguing piece of information has been brought to this correspondent’s attention. We recently learned that, mere days before the King’s Birthday Drawing Room on the 28
th
of May, a certain gentleman was denied further credit at a number of establishments where he has large accounts substantially in arrears. As we are all aware, many of our tailors, purveyors of furnishings, vintners, tobacconists, boot makers, &c, often find themselves obliged to wait months, sometimes years, for their patrons to attend to accounts. His late Majesty, it may be recollected, left debts amounting to many tens of thousands of pounds. To what extremity a merchant must be driven, to refuse one of his lordly patrons further credit, we can only speculate. We need not puzzle our minds quite so much, perhaps, regarding the close proximity between this turn of events and the one leading to the same lord’s hasty engagement, a consequence of his luring to her disgrace a certain lady. The lady concerned, as everybody knows, will bring to her marriage a dowry reported to be in the vicinity of one hundred thousand pounds.

That afternoon

I
t was the British Institution’s annual summer exhibition of old masters, featuring works from the collections of everybody who was anybody, from His Majesty on down through a selection of dukes, marquesses, earls, lords, ladies, and sirs. A privileged few had attended a private viewing on the previous Saturday. On Monday, the exhibition had opened to the public.

In spite of his aversion to pretentious mobs shuffling past fusty works of art, Lord Longmore might have found some entertainment in paintings of battle scenes and grisly deaths.

He wasn’t in the mood. Within a very short time of their arrival, Adderley and Madame had begun trailing behind Longmore and his sister. Now they’d moved out of hearing range though still within sight. Adderley stood quite close to Madame as they ostensibly discussed No. 53, Rocco Marconi’s “Woman Taken in Adultery.”

“You saw the
Spectacle
, I suppose,” Clara said, drawing him out of a darkly enjoyable fantasy whose highlight was the breaking of Adderley’s teeth.

“Like the rest of the world,” he said.

“Adderley was furious,” she said. “We had another scene when he came to collect me. He’s threatening to have Foxe arrested for
scandalum magnatum
. I feigned sympathy, but pointed out that the week before our wedding seemed not the ideal time to get involved in legal wrangles. I told him that Papa said they couldn’t hope to prosecute Foxe, since he named no names. Papa pointed out that if the previous king hadn’t been able to arrest every man who wrote scandal about him, a nobody like Adderley hadn’t a chance.”

“ ‘A nobody like Adderley,’ ” Longmore said. “You said that to his face.”

She turned an innocent gaze on him. “I was only repeating what Papa said.”

“How unfeeling of you,” he said.

“Yes. I daresay he’s telling his troubles to Madame.” Clara threw them a glance. “She looks
very
sympathetic, don’t you think?”

Madame was gazing up at Adderley, listening for all she was worth, one gloved hand resting over the center of her extremely tight bodice.

“She missed her calling,” Longmore said. “She belongs on the stage.”

“I’m amazed you can watch them with a straight face,” Clara said. “She’s so funny, is she not? So clever while seeming so thoroughly bubble-headed. I quite love her.”

“Which
her
do you mean?”

“Both,” Clara said. Her gaze came back to her brother. “You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself.”

“I’m not supposed to,” he said. “The fellow’s poaching on my preserve. That’s the scene. I’m supposed to be sending suspicious looks their way.” This had turned out to be extremely easy. “Then, after running out of patience, I’m supposed to have a blazing great row with Madame.”

“Perfect,” she said. “She’ll run into his arms for comfort.”

That ought to be very funny. It wasn’t.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s the plan.”

He started toward them.

Chapter Fourteen

British Institution. As pilgrims approach a hallowed shrine in adoration mingled with fear and trembling so do we ever regard the summer exhibition of the works of the old masters at the British Institution . . . Here are 176 pictures . . . and there is hardly one amongst them the possession of which might not be coveted as a gem.

—
The Court Journal
, Saturday 13 June 1835

T
hough one would have thought it impossible for Adderley to look more conceited, he managed it. He wore a provoking smirk while he took his time about drawing away from Madame, into whose ear he’d been whispering.

“Lord Lun-mour, Lady Clara,” said Madame with a too-innocent smile. “We are too slow for you, I think.”

“No hurry,” Longmore said. “The paintings will be here for some time. We merely grew curious as to what you find so fascinating about this one.”

“
Eh bien
, it gives me a memory of another thing, and so I tell Lord Add’lee a little anecdote.” She blushed.

She actually blushed.

Longmore knew she possessed astounding acting skill. She’d demonstrated time and again. He knew she could weep on command. She could even let her eyes fill with tears that didn’t fall. He’d never heard of anybody who could blush on command.

“I should like to hear it,” he said.

Adderley glanced at Clara. “I’m afraid it isn’t suitable for an unwed lady’s ears,” he said.

“But it’s perfectly suitable for a bridegroom-to-be?” Clara said, eyebrows aloft, eyes chilly. It was a look their mother had perfected.

“I pray,
ma chère
—my dear lady—you will take no offense,” said Madame. “It is only a naughty little joke. Lord Add’lee will tell it to you after you marry.”

Clara turned her icy gaze to the painting. “It’s interesting, is it not, what a vile crime adultery is when a woman commits it. But with men, it’s practically a badge of honor. I daresay this is a fine painting, but it is not to my taste.”

She walked away, spine stiff, chin aloft.

After a moment’s hesitation, Adderley went after her.

“I should have a care, madame, if I were you,” Longmore said. “Some might misinterpret your—erm—friendliness.”

“A care must I have?” she said. “You English. So stiff in the neck. I flirt a little. What is the harm? It is a privilege of the married woman.”

“In the circumstances, it might be misunderstood as more than flirtation.”

She waved a hand. “English ways are so strange. Here, everyone attends to the unmarried girls. They flirt and dance, and all the men chase them. In France, these mademoiselles sit tranquil with their chaperons. They must be quiet and modest, like nuns. It is the married ladies who have the flirtation and the
affaire
, but very discreet.”

“You’re not in France anymore, madame.”

“You do not approve of me, milord? You find my manners not amiable?”

“On the contrary, I find your manners rather too amiable,” he said.

“But what does this mean? In what regard am I too amiable? To converse with your friend?”

“With my sister’s betrothed,” Longmore said.

“What then?” she said with a careless laugh. “You have fear I will take him from her? And if I do this thing, perhaps it is best for her. If I were the girl betrothed, I would not desire a man who goes so easily to another woman. And this to happen only a few days before the wedding! Ah, well. Perhaps it is a great favor I do for her.”

Clara’s voice—not loud enough to be understood but vehement enough to convey her displeasure—drew their attention thither.

Whatever she was saying was making Adderley stand very stiffly. A dull red darkened his fair skin and he didn’t look so angelic and poetic.

“But there, you see?” said Madame. “Already they quarrel.”

“So it would seem.”

Clara was gesticulating and her chin was up. She started away from Adderley, her walk radiating anger. Adderley went after her. They disappeared through a door.

“To make a jealous scene is not wise,” said Madame. “She makes him angry. So soon before the marriage, this is foolish. This is how to chase the man away.” She shook her head.

“Maybe he’s too dashed eager to be chased away,” Longmore said.

She gave that laugh again, that distinctively Gallic laugh, and followed it with a distinctively Gallic shrug. “
C’est la vie.
What one loses, another gains, yes?”

If he didn’t know—if he didn’t remind himself he knew—he’d think she was an adventuress, experienced in the ways of men, in the ways of the world. He’d believe she’d had a raft of lovers.

But no, only me.

He knew that. He knew he’d been the first.

And maybe that was the trouble.

Had he created a monster? Had he opened the floodgates? Had he—

Gad, what was he thinking? He was thinking like
Sophy
.

The attendant who appeared at his elbow ejected Longmore from his lunatic reverie. “I beg your pardon, my lord,” the man said, “but Lord Adderley has asked me to express his regrets to the lady and to you. I am to tell you that her ladyship your sister is unwell, and has expressed a wish to go home.”

Longmore glanced about him. The quarrel with Madame, quiet though it was, was attracting attention.

The performance isn’t over
, he told them silently.

Madame was shaking her head. “They are not suited,” she said. “At once I saw this.”

“Did you, indeed?” Longmore said. “And to whom did you think he might be better suited?”

She regarded him with narrowed eyes. “It is strange, Lord Lun-mour, but I myself discover that I am not so well. It is the air in this place, I believe. It oppresses me. Or perhaps it is the company. I think I would prefer to return to my hotel.”

Exclusive to
Foxe’s Morning Spectacle

Saturday 13 June

The British Institution’s annual summer exhibition has drawn a number of distinguished visitors. Those attending yesterday, however, might have observed, as well as works of art, a drama unfolding under the paintings. A certain recently engaged couple, mentioned previously in our pages, made their appearance. With them were the lady’s brother and the French lady his lordship has escorted on so many occasions since her arrival in London. We are sorry to report that discord has arisen between the couples. While we will not say the green-eyed monster appeared on the scene, certain visitors might have noticed a frosty atmosphere between the two ladies prior to their early—and separate—departures. The chill in the air might have arisen as a result of one gentleman’s paying more marked attention to his future brother-in-law’s companion than to the lady he is to marry in a matter of days. We would be remiss if we failed to add that, when the future bridegroom departed the scene, it was not his intended who cast a languishing eye after him.

Maison Noirot

Sunday afternoon

“N
o,” Longmore said. He crumpled the note and threw it into the empty grate.

“I was not asking your permission,” Sophy said.

They stood in the room on the second storey where, he’d discovered, the sisters worked according to their individual talents. Here Her Grace of Clevedon designed her exuberant creations. Here Miss Leonie labored over her ledgers. And here Miss Sophia composed her fashion dramas for the
Spectacle
and devised schemes for keeping Maison Noirot in the front of Fashionable Society’s mind.

Longmore had found her hard at work. She had ink on her fingers and a spot on her cheek. A curly golden tendril had escaped its pin to dangle against her left eyebrow.

“You have ink on your face,” he said.

“Don’t change the subject,” she said. “That invitation is
perfect
.”

“It’s a perfect opportunity for you to get into trouble,” he said.

According to the note Longmore had thrown away, Lord Adderley wished to seek Madame’s advice on a private matter. Would she do him the honor of dining with him this evening at the Brunswick Hotel?

“No, he’s saved us trouble,” she said. “Now you can break into his house.”

He stared at her. “Are the ink fumes rotting your brain?” he said. “You never said anything about housebreaking. Why on earth should I do such a thing?”

“To find Incriminating Evidence.”

In his mind’s eye he saw the words writ large and Capitalized.

“Haven’t you found enough?” he said. “All the reports you get from Fenwick and his numerous criminal associates? The gossip Clevedon’s passed on, from the clubs and his aunts? The private financial reports Miss Leonie obtains, I will not ask how. What more do you need?”

“Letters from the physicians attending his wife, who’s locked up in a madhouse against her will,” she said.

“
What?
”

“It would be useful to find that he already has a wife,” she said. “Preferably well and living in Ireland, but mad will do.”

“That would be useful,” he said. “But it’s highly unlikely. Those sorts of things happen in horrid novels—the mad wife in the attic—the long-lost true heir to the title he’s kept locked in a dungeon for twenty years. Not likely in his case, I’m sorry to say.”

“We need something powerful,” she said. “It’s nothing to Society when a gentleman is up to his ears in debt, or games, or chases women. It’s not enough to counteract Lady Clara’s heinous crime of letting him kiss her in a less than brotherly manner and disarrange her clothing.”

“What about that last bit in the
Spectacle
dealing with the creditors and the curious coincidence?” he said. “It made my blood boil. It’s sure to put him in bad odor with some of the high sticklers.” He hadn’t known of that interesting detail until it appeared in the scandal sheet.

“That was quite good, but I’d like something stronger,” she said. “Letters from the creditors or the moneylenders. Interesting promises—such as, ‘You’d better marry quickly, my lord, or expect severe bodily harm.’ That sort of thing.”

He had to take a moment to make his mind calm enough to consider what she was saying. She had a way of sweeping one into the raging current of drama that filled her teeming brain.

He quickly sorted matters and said, “Sophy, what kind of idiot would put something like that in writing? And what kind of imbecile would keep it?”

“You’d be amazed,” she said. “Most criminal types don’t have very large brains. They have little squirrel brains that think of nothing but nuts, nuts, nuts and how to get more nuts. The unsavory moneylender, for instance, doesn’t need to be a financial genius. He merely needs to be good at amassing large piles of nuts. Ask Leonie. Now, hers
is
a great financial mind. But most of them—”

“Sophy.”

“Adderley isn’t very clever, either,” she said.

“Neither am I,” he said. “But I’m perfectly capable of seducing a woman if I put my mind to it—and he—”

“You’re much cleverer than he is,” she said. “I can’t believe he’s so great a moron as to invite a woman to dine with him mere days before his wedding. And to invite her to a hotel he not only can’t afford but one where he’s sure to be recognized? It grows very clear to me how he got himself into such shocking debt. He’s one of those men who assumes everything will turn out in his favor: the next throw of the dice, the next deal of the cards. In short, he’s a dolt, and he hasn’t a prayer of seducing me. I’m seducing
him
, remember?”

“No. I never agreed to your seducing anybody.”

She smiled, advanced on him, and took hold of his lapels. “Listen to me,” she said, looking up into his eyes, hers all brilliant blue.

“No,” he said. “You talk mad talk.”

“I’m not Clara,” she said. “I can look after myself.”

“Not always.”

“Always,” she said. “And certainly in this case. Adderley is in far more danger from me than I am from him. I’m going to dine with him, as he asks, at the Brunswick. I’ll keep him there for two hours at the minimum. That ought to give you plenty of time to search his house. It isn’t a big one.”

It wasn’t. Adderley had had to sell off most of his property. What he couldn’t sell he’d mortgaged. The family estate was let to a military gentleman and his family. At present, Adderley leased a small townhouse near Leicester Square.

“It’s a private property,” he said. “A house. With servants—though everybody wonders how he pays them. My career hasn’t been the most reputable, as you know, but one thing I’ve never done is break into a gentleman’s private house.”