Scandal Wears Satin (26 page)

“It’s not very different from breaking into lodgings,” she said. “Or breaking out of school after curfew. You’ve done that, I’m sure.”

“How do you know?” he said. She was standing too close. Her scent drifted in the air about him. It drifted into his brain and acted on it the way honey would act on a clockwork mechanism.

“You went to public school,” she said, “and I know you didn’t win prizes for good behavior.”

“I mean, how do you know the two things aren’t different?” he said. “How do you know these things, Sophy?”

She released his lapels and stepped back a pace. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s obvious. They’re
buildings
. With doors and windows. Housebreakers either pick locks or pry open unlocked windows or smash locked ones.” She waved a hand. “I’m not sure which is the best method—but Fenwick will know.”

“Then let Fenwick do it,” he said. “He’s small and less noticeable. He can wriggle in and out of tight places—and being an experienced desperado, he’s much less likely to get caught and have to answer annoying questions. If he does get caught, we can easily arrange to get him out of trouble.”

“He can’t read,” she said.

She tipped her head to one side, studying him, thinking, thinking, thinking. That busy little brain.

“I thought you’d relish the prospect of breaking into Adderley’s house and discovering his evil secrets,” she said.

“I would relish it, if he were in his house at the time. While you were elsewhere.”

“Do try to be logical,” she said. “Nothing is going to happen to me. It can’t. If Adderley gets what he’s after from me, he’ll lose interest.”

“Or maybe not.” Longmore hadn’t lost interest. On the contrary, he was far too interested for his peace of mind. He couldn’t remember spending as much time thinking about a woman as he’d done thinking about her.

Not enough amorous activity, that was the trouble.

“If I succumb to him, he won’t be so eager to please,” she said. “He won’t be watching for an opportunity to get me alone. He won’t be on the prowl. He won’t be in a high state of excitement. He needs to be thwarted a little—not enough to discourage him, but enough to increase his zest for the chase. Why must I explain this? You’re a man. You know how men think.”

“Actually, we don’t really think all that much.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know these situations can get out of hand.” He remembered the drunken boys. His mind painted images of her at Adderley’s mercy.

“I should like to know how it could possibly get out of hand with a man one finds repellent,” she said. “Or do you imagine that all women are slaves to desire, and all men have to do is kiss and fondle them to make them lose their minds?”

“He is
not
going to kiss and fondle you,” he said.

“And I am not going to lose my mind,” she said.

“You weren’t completely rational with me, I recall.”

“That was
you
,” she said. “That was completely different. I know the difference—and really, I find it disheartening that you don’t. Are all women interchangeable to you? But no—don’t answer that question. I find, on the whole, that I’d rather not know. I prefer to keep some girlish delusions.”

“Girlish delusions? Have you got any, by Jupiter? Because it seems to me . . .” He trailed off. It dawned on him then that women had always been more or less interchangeable. Except for her. “Never mind. I don’t know what I think anymore.”

“Don’t think,” she said. “All you need to do is get into his house and find Incriminating Evidence. I’ll keep him occupied.”

She was going to go and he couldn’t stop her—short of tying her to a chair and locking her in a room—and she’d find a way to wriggle out of that, he had no doubt.

“Very well,” he said.

She came close again. She put her hand on his chest. “Thank you,” she said. “I know you’re worried about me, and I know you’d tell me to go to the devil, if it weren’t for your sister.”

That wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he cupped her face and kissed her once, firmly, possessively, on the mouth. He held her so and looked into her brilliant blue liar’s eyes and said, “I should like it if you would try not to be kissed or fondled,” he said. “By him.”

“Trust me,” she said softly.

He wanted her and thought about her too much and he worried about her to an extent that made him slightly ill. But he didn’t trust her.

And so he didn’t trust her not to do what she’d made up her mind to do, whether he cooperated or not. Seeing no alternative but to cooperate, he might as well look on the bright side: It would be great fun to break into Adderley’s house and find something that would wipe the smirk off his face permanently.

And if that didn’t work, one could always shoot him.

That night

G
etting into Adderley’s house was easy enough.

After reconnoitering, Fenwick reported that the staff had gathered belowstairs, where they were smoking, drinking, and playing a noisy game of cards.

Fenwick’s mode of entry was perfectly straightforward. He climbed up a drainpipe, thence into the house through one of several unlatched windows. He made his way inside to the front of the house and opened the door to Longmore. Anyone watching would have supposed a servant had let in one of Lord Adderley’s friends.

After that, the main difficulty was making one’s way through an unfamiliar, poorly lit house without running into furniture or knocking over breakables. After a few heart-stopping creaks and bumps, Longmore relaxed.

He took his mind off Not Getting Caught and set it on Finding Something.

This turned out to be much less straightforward.

The rooms they searched bore all the signs of a discouraged if not outright hostile staff. That explained the party belowstairs and the unlatched windows.

He and Fenwick found a great deal of paper: heaps of newspapers and sporting magazines and racing sheets and
Foxe’s Morning Spectacle
. Piles of invitations. Mounds of unsorted correspondence. There were tradesmen’s bills aplenty, but none held any secrets that Leonie and Clevedon hadn’t already uncovered.

Longmore took special care in searching the study desk, looking for false bottoms and hidden compartments. It hadn’t any. Not without distaste, he proceeded to Adderley’s bedroom. He searched the writing table, the bed stand, the wardrobe, and under pillows and mattress. He found a great deal of rubbish and evidence of bad housekeeping. It was tedious work, and it seemed as though he and Fenwick had hardly begun when a clock somewhere in the house began to strike. In the same moment, Longmore heard church bells in the neighborhood tolling the same long count: ten strokes.

Ten o’clock.

Already.

Fenwick, who’d been charged with guard duty, said, “They’re stirring down below, yer majesty.” A pause. Then, “Somebody’s on the stairs.”

A moment later Longmore heard the voices approaching.

“You, into the wardrobe,” he said.

The boy instantly vanished into the wardrobe.

Lord Longmore dropped to the floor and crawled under the bed.

U
nlike Clevedon’s aunts, many nobles who came to London for short stays put up at one of the West End’s many luxury hotels. The Clarendon in New Bond Street, like others of its ilk, was accustomed to accommodating its guests’ requirements, and doing so discreetly.

Madame de Veirrion had taken one of the largest suites. If she chose to regard her rooms as private apartments, the Clarendon’s staff were happy to support that vision. It was not for them to question, and certainly it would have been as much as their positions were worth to tattle about what she did there or whom she saw. This was why Clevedon had chosen it for the scheme.

Late as it was when Madame returned, her entrance brought guests and staff alike to rapt attention. She wore a spectacular dinner dress, for which she’d already provided the
Spectacle
a detailed description, to appear in Monday’s edition. It was one of Marcelline’s more glorious creations, and Maison Noirot would receive full credit in the paper.

In Paris, black taffeta mantelets were all the rage, worn usually with a contrasting softer textured dress, made of
mouselline de laine
or muslin. But Marcelline had paired a deep rose satin with the black taffeta mantelet, which created a rich, sensuous rustling as one moved.

Every woman who’d seen Madame de Veirrion this night had regarded the dress with the kind of lustful expression one observed more usually in a man’s face.

Lord Longmore never looked at her in that way.

But he was different, Sophy told herself. His card-playing face could be as good as hers. One had to study him closely to catch the way his dark eyes glittered when he was noticing her in a more intent way than usual . . . and there was a certain slant of his mouth or tilt of his head . . .

She shivered, recalling when last he’d regarded her that way, only a few hours ago, an instant before he’d kissed her.

She was in a very bad way.

If she hadn’t had to rescue Lady Clara, with almost no time at all to do it, Sophy could have easily made a great fool of herself over him. She could have wept into her pillow at night. She could have written sickening poetry about Lovers Torn Apart by Fate. She could have quoted whole scenes from
Romeo and Juliet
, and sobbed because those young lovers hadn’t had it so bad, compared to her.

But she hadn’t time to act like a sentimental moron.

She was obliged to play Cleopatra to Adderley’s Mark Antony—and really, she’d never thought Mark Antony worthy of the Queen of Egypt. A bit dim, she’d always thought.

She was contemplating the role of wicked seductress and thinking it mainly took patience, when the footman standing outside the door of her suite informed her, as he opened the door, that Lord Longmore awaited her in the drawing room.

Her heart sped up.

She’d thought she’d have time to rest and compose herself before Longmore arrived. Being calm with him wasn’t as simple as it ought to be. Too often she felt he was looking straight into her brain and seeing what he ought not to see. It was like being undressed, with the difference being that she didn’t mind his seeing her body unclothed. She minded very much his seeing inside her head.

Keeping her guard up was not going to be easy, after a draining evening with Lord Adderley.

His mind was slow. She’d had to slog through their conversation while keeping him, not at arm’s length, but not too close, either. She’d had to work carefully, to bring his mind to the right position. It was like dancing with a man with two left feet. He’d tried to be subtle, and it had been difficult to pretend she didn’t understand what he was trying to ascertain.

It was hard work, and it sapped one’s energy—and the project had taken longer than she’d planned.

Still, she’d had success, and that was what she set at the front of her mind. And that was what animated her when she sailed into her drawing room, the picture of confidence.

A maid hurried out, but Sophy ignored her. Longmore stood by the window, a glass in his hand. His dark hair was rumpled and so was his neckcloth. She couldn’t tell whether he’d been in a fight or had slept in his clothes. He looked thoroughly disreputable, and his dark eyes held a dangerous gleam.

She waved the girl away. “Go to bed,” she said. “I’ll ring if I need you.”

When the door had closed behind the maid, Sophy stripped off her gloves. “I hope they’ve looked after you well,” she said. She noted a decanter, three-quarters empty, on one of the room’s elegant tables.

“They fed me and they kept my glass filled,” he said. “Where the devil have you been?”

She dropped the gloves on the nearest chair, unfastened her mantelet, and carelessly flung it on top of them. Dressmakers neatly folded garments and put everything in its proper place. Great ladies left that job to servants.

“How much have you had to drink?” she said. “Have you forgotten that I was dining with Lord Adderley?”

“For five hours?”

“Certainly not. It can’t be—what time is it?”

He slanted her a look, took out his pocket watch, and flicked it open with a sharp click. He said, in a too-quiet voice, “It’s half past midnight.”

“That’s not five hours,” she said.

“What the devil have you been doing for all this time?”

“Keeping him occupied.”

“Two hours, you said.”

“I said I could give you at least two,” she said.

“That isn’t what you said.”

“What difference does it make?” she said. “Or are you vexed because you had to cut short your search, thinking you had only two hours?”

“Never mind my search.”

“Never mind? That was the whole point of this exercise.”

“Apparently not,” he said. “Apparently, you found a good deal to occupy you.”