Scandal Wears Satin (5 page)

“But she picked the wrong man,” Marcelline said. She returned to her drawing table, pushed the newspaper aside, took up her notebook, and began sketching, in strong, angry lines. “Tell me the truth, Leonie.”

“We’re facing ruin,” Leonie said simply.

No one said a word about Marcelline’s husband, who could buy and sell the shop many times over out of his pocket change.

They didn’t want to be bought.

This was
their
shop. Three years ago they’d come from Paris, having lost everything. They’d come with a sick child, a few coins, and their talents. Marcelline had won money at the gaming tables. That gave them their start.

Now she must feel as though she’d destroyed everything they’d worked for. All for love.

But Marcelline had a right to love and be loved. She’d worked so hard. She’d endured so much. She’d looked after them all. She deserved happiness.

“We’ve faced ruin before,” Sophy said. “This isn’t worse than Paris and the cholera.”

“We’ve survived a catastrophe here as well,” Leonie said.

“With Clevedon’s help,” Marcelline said. “Which we didn’t like accepting. But we agreed because we hadn’t any choice.”

“And we made sure it was a
loan
,” Leonie said.

“Which it now seems we can’t repay,” Marcelline said, her pencil still moving angrily. “We’re so far from repaying it that we’ll have to ask for another one. Or accept failure. Leonie was right, after all. We bit off more than we could chew.”

Weeks ago, when the Duke of Clevedon had found them these new quarters, Leonie had warned that they hadn’t enough customers to support a large shop on St. James’s Street.

“We
always
bite off more than we can chew,” Sophy said. “We came from Paris with nothing, and built a business in only three years. We set out to capture Lady Clara and we succeeded—although not quite in the way we intended. We wouldn’t be who we are if we acted like normal women. I don’t see why we should start acting normal now, just because our best customer made a mistake with a man, as most women do, or because her mother holds grudges. I for one am not going to lie down and surrender merely on account of a little setback.”

Marcelline looked up from her sketching and smiled, finally. “Only you would call impending ruin ‘a little setback.’ ”

“The trouble with you is, you’re in love, and you feel guilty about it, which is perfectly ridiculous in a Noirot,” Sophy said.

“She’s right,” Leonie said. “You married a duke. You’re supposed to be thoroughly pleased with yourself. It’s a great coup. No one else, on either side of the family, has done it, to my knowledge.”

“Not only a duke, but stupendously rich,” Sophy said. “Your daughter has actual, genuine castles to play in.”

“So stop brooding,” Leonie said.

“I’m facing failure,” Marcelline said. “A gigantic, catastrophic failure—which that horrid Dowdy reptile will laugh at. That entitles me to brood.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Sophy said. “She isn’t going to laugh, and we’re not going to fail. We’ll think of something. We always do.”

“We merely need to think fast,” Leonie said. “Because we’ve less than a month until quarter day.”

Midsummer: 24 June. When rents were due and accounts were settled.

Someone tapped at the door.

“What is it?” Marcelline called.

The door opened a crack, revealing a narrow slice of Mary Parmenter, one of their seamstresses. “If you please, Your Grace, mesdames. Lady Clara Fairfax is here. And Lord Longmore.”

Chapter Three

There is certainly some connexion between the dress and the mind, an accurate observer can trace some correspondencies; and the weak as well as the strong-minded never cease to be influenced by a good or bad dress.

—
Lady’s Magazine & Museum
, June 1835

I
t was sort of a brothel for women, Longmore decided.

The shop even had a discreet back entrance, reserved, no doubt, for high-priced harlots and the men who kept them.

A few minutes earlier, a modestly but handsomely dressed female had let them in that way and led them up a flight of carpeted and gently lit back stairs. Small landscape paintings and fashion plates from earlier times adorned the pale green walls.

He’d been in Maison Noirot’s showroom, but this was another world altogether.

The room into which the female had taken them looked like a sitting room. More little paintings on the pale pink walls. Pretty bits of porcelain. Lacy things adorning tables and chair backs. The very air smelled of women, but it was subtle. His nostrils caught only a hint of scent, as though a bouquet of flowers and herbs had recently passed through. Everything about him was soft and luxurious and inviting. It conjured harem slaves in paintings. Odalisques.

He was tempted to stretch out on the carpet and call for the hashish and dancing girls.

The door opened. All his senses went on the alert.

But it was only the elegantly dressed female carrying a tray. She set it upon a handsome tea table. Longmore noticed the tray held a plate of biscuits. A decanter stood where the teapot ought to be.

When the female went out, he said, “So this is how they do it. They ply you with drink.”

“No, they ply
you
with drink, knowing you’ll be bored,” Clara said. “Although I shouldn’t mind a restorative.” She flung herself into a chair. “Oh, Harry, what on earth am I going to do?”

Her face took on a crumpled look.

He knew that look. It augured tears.

He was taken completely unawares. She’d seemed perfectly well on the way here. Chin aloft and eyes blazing. He hadn’t been surprised when she told him to take her to Maison Noirot. The meek act with their mother hadn’t fooled him.

Clara was so angelically beautiful that people thought she was sweet and yielding. They mistook indifference for docility. She was the sort of girl who generally didn’t care one way or another about all sorts of things. But when she did care, she could be as obstinate as a pig.

Since the Noirot sisters had got their hooks in her, she’d become extremely obstinate about her clothes.

He beat down panic. “Dash it, Clara,” he said. “No waterworks. Say what’s the matter and have done.”

She found a handkerchief and hastily wiped her eyes. “Oh, it’s Mama. She wears on my nerves.”

“That’s all?” he said.

“Isn’t it enough?” she said. “I’m Society’s big joke and I’m about to marry in haste and my mother does nothing but tell me every single thing I’ve done wrong.”

“And this”—he swept his hand, indicating their surroundings—“will be one more thing.”

“What’s one more thing?” Clara said. “This, at least, will lift my spirits. Unlike a visit to that incompetent in Bedford Square Mama’s so irrationally devoted to.”

He’d taken her here because this was where she wanted to go . . . and it was where he preferred to go.

Maison Noirot was stupendously expensive, the proprietresses were seductresses (in the way of clothes) of the first order, it was extremely
French
, and, above all, it was Sophy Noirot’s lair.

If a man had to hang about a dressmakers’ shop, this was the place.

But there would be trouble at home for Clara. More trouble. “Our mother’s going to kick up a fuss,” he said. “And you’ll bear the brunt of it.”

“The clothes will be worth it,” she said.

And this would be her last chance for extravagance in that regard, unless he found a way to dispose of Adderley and restore Clara’s reputation at the same time.

He wasn’t sure Clara wanted Adderley disposed of, but if she didn’t she was either stupid or mad, which meant her wishes didn’t signify.

He must have frowned without realizing, because she said, “It’ll be fun for me, but I know you’ll be bored to death. You needn’t stay. I’ll take a hackney home.”

“A hackney?” he said. “Are you mad? I’d never hear the end of it.” He laid a limp wrist against his temple, pitched his voice an octave higher, and in the put-upon tone his mother had perfected said, “How
could
you, Harry? Your own sister, left to a dirty public conveyance? Heaven only knows who’s seen her, traveling the London streets like a shop clerk. I shall be ashamed to look my friends in the eye.”

From behind him came the rustling of petticoats—and a stifled giggle?

He turned, his pulse accelerating.

Three young women—one brunette, one blonde, one redhead—regarded him with expressions of polite interest. The two latter had large, shockingly blue eyes. Only in the eyes did he detect any sign of the amusement he’d thought he’d heard, and it wasn’t much of a sign.

It would be more accurate to say he detected it only in
her
eyes, since Sophy Noirot’s sisters might as well have been shadows or a Greek chorus—or window curtains, for that matter.

They were all very well, each entertaining in her own way, and all quite good-looking, if not great beauties.

But she cast the others into the shade.

Why, only look at her. Pale gold curling hair under the frothy lace cap. Enormous, speaking eyes of deepest sapphire. A haughty little nose. A plump invitation of a mouth. A sharp, obstinate little chin. Below the neck . . . ah, that was even better. Delicious, in fact, despite the lunatic clothing style deemed the height of fashion.

“Duchess,” Clara said, rising from her chair and curtseying.

“Pray don’t ‘Duchess’ me,” said Her Grace. “This is business. While on the premises, why do we not pretend we’re in France, where you’d address a duchess as
madame
, much as one addresses a modiste. Meanwhile, think of me simply as your dressmaker.”

“The world’s
greatest
dressmaker,” Sophy said.

“And that would make you . . . ?” Longmore said.

“The other greatest dressmaker in the world,” Sophy said.

“Someone ought to explain superlatives to you,” he said. “But then, I’m aware that English isn’t your first language.”

“It isn’t my only first language, my lord,” she said. “
Le français est l’autre.
”

“Perhaps someone ought as well to explain the meanings of
only
and
first
,” he said.

“Oh, yes, please do enlighten me, my lord,” she said, opening her extremely blue eyes very wide. “I never had a head for figures. Leonie always complains about it. ‘Will you never learn to count?’ she says.”

“And yet,” he began.

It was then he realized she’d drawn him away from his sister—who was moving with the other two toward another door.

“Where are you slipping off to?” he said.

“To look at patterns,” said Clara. “You’ll find it exceedingly tedious.”

“That depends,” he said.

“On what?” Sophy said.

“On how bored I feel.” He looked around. “Not much entertainment hereabouts.”

“Your club is only a few steps up the street,” Sophy said. “Perhaps you’d rather wait there. We can send to you when Lady Clara is done.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel I ought to hang about and exert a calming influence.”

“You,” Sophy said. “A calming influence.”

“Excitable women. Clothes. The possible rape and pillage of our father’s bank account. A man’s cool head seems to be needed.”

“Harry, you know Papa doesn’t care how much I spend on clothes,” Clara said. “He likes us to look well. And I know you don’t care what I buy. It was kind of you to take me here, but you needn’t watch over me. I’m perfectly safe.”

His gaze traveled over the three sisters, and lingered on Sophy. He thought hard and fast and picked his words carefully. “Very well. A man can think more clearly when he isn’t surrounded by women, and I need to create an alibi.”

She took the bait, her gaze sharpening. “Why?” she said. “Are you planning to murder somebody?”

“Not yet,” he said. “You won’t let me murder the bridegroom. No, I want an alibi for Clara, who isn’t supposed to be here.”

“Mama said I must go to Downes’s,” Clara said, “but Harry took pity on me.”

“I took pity on
me
,” he said. His gaze returned to Sophy. “I brought her here to prevent scolding, ranting, and sobbing, that’s all.”

“Then the least I can do in gratitude is give you an alibi,” Sophy said.

He could think of any number of pleasing acts of gratitude, but this would do for a start.

“Not too complicated,” he said.

She rolled her great blue eyes. “I know that.”

“I’m a simple man.”

“This is so simple, even a dolt could remember it,” she said. “When Lady Clara returns home, she’ll say that you were intoxicated and drove her here instead of to Downes’s, drunkenly insisting this was the place.”

“Oh, that’s perfect!” Clara said.

“That will do admirably,” he said. “She can say I stood over her and
made
her order sixty or seventy dresses, and a gross of chemises and . . .”

His mind went hazy then, and images of muslin and lace underwear strewed themselves about his brain, and somewhere in that dishevelment was a blue-eyed angelic devil, mostly unclothed. He waved a hand, waving the images away. Now wasn’t the time. He was only beginning his siege, and he knew—he could always tell—he faced a very tricky fortress. All sorts of hidden passages and diversions and booby traps.

But then, if it were easy, it would be boring.

He continued, “ . . . and all those other sorts of trousseau things. And when our mother regains consciousness, and demands that Clara cancel the order, Clara will appeal to our overly conscientious sire, who’ll say one can’t simply cancel immense orders on a whim.”

Sophy folded her arms. Something flickered in her blue eyes. Otherwise, her expression was unreadable. “Good,” she said. “Keep with that. Don’t embellish.”

“No danger of that,” he said. “At any rate, it’s easy enough to make it partly true. I’ve only to toddle into my club and drink steadily until you’ve finished bankrupting my father. Then, when I return Clara to Warford House, no one will have any trouble believing in my inebriated obstinacy.”

He sauntered out of the sitting room.

He walked to the stairs and started down.

He heard hurried footsteps and rustling petticoats behind him.

“Lord Longmore.”

She said his name as everybody else did, not precisely as spelled but in the way of so many ancient names, with vowels shifted and consonants elided. Yet it wasn’t quite the same, either, because it carried the faintest whisper of French.

He looked up.

She stood at the top of the stairs, leaning over the handrail.

The view was excellent: He could see her silk shoes and the crisscrossing ribbons that called attention to the fine arch of her instep and her neat ankles. He saw the delicate silk stockings outlining the bit of foot and leg on view. His mind easily conjured what wasn’t on view: the place above her knees where her garters were tied—garters that, in his imagination, were red, embroidered with lascivious French phrases.

For a moment he said nothing, simply drank it in.

“That was a beautiful exit,” she said.

“I thought so,” he said.

“I hated to spoil it,” she said. “But I had an idea.”

“You’re a prodigy,” he said. “First an alibi, then an idea. All in the same day.”

“I thought you could help me,” she said.

“I daresay I could,” he said, contemplating her ankles.

“With your mother.”

He lifted his gaze to her face. “What do you want to do to her?”

“Ideally, I should like to dress her.”

“That would be difficult, considering that she hates you,” he said. “That is, not you, particularly. But you as a near connection to the Duchess of Clevedon, and your shop as harboring same.”

“I know, but I’m sure we can bring her round. That is, I can bring her round. With a little help.”

“What do you propose, Miss Noirot? Shall I drug her ladyship and carry her, senseless, to your lair, where you’ll force her into dashing gowns?”

“Only as a last resort,” she said. “What I have in mind for you at present is quite simple—and no one will ever know you aided and abetted the Enemy.”

“This is London,” he said. “There’s no such thing as ‘no one will ever know.’ ”