Vixen in Velvet (6 page)

“When I see so many people crowded together,” she said slowly, “I tend to see a mob.”

A moment’s pause, then, “That’s what I see, too, Miss Noirot. I should have remained and stood guard. But . . .” He paused for a very long time.

“But,” she said.

“I had a chance to steal a pretty girl from the crowd, and I took it.”

L
eonie and Lord Lisburne arrived in time for the concluding event of the poetic evening when, according to the program, Lord Swanton would debut one of his recent compositions.

As Lord Lisburne had predicted, the crowd had thinned. Though the hall remained full, the men had moved out of their cramped quarters along the walls and into seats in the back rows. The galleries no longer seemed in danger of collapsing.

While she and Lord Lisburne paused in the doorway, looking for a place to sit, what looked like a family group bore down on them. He drew her back and, either out of courtesy or because he wasn’t in a hurry to join the audience, made way for the departing family. When the other gentleman thanked him, Lord Lisburne smiled commiseratingly and murmured some answer that made the other man smile.

That was charm at work, charm of the most insidious kind: humorous, self-deprecating, and disarmingly frank and confiding.

Leonie well understood that type of charm. Her family specialized in it.

She of all people knew better than to let it work on her. The trouble was, it truly was insidious. One was drawn closer without realizing. One believed one had found a true intimacy when what was there was only a masterful imitation.

She lectured herself while he led her in the direction the group had come from, to the recently vacated seats at the far end of the rearmost row.

Though she’d prefer to sit closer to a door, for an easy escape, this was preferable to any place she’d have found for herself earlier. With reduced crowding, air could circulate, and when the doors opened for departing audience members, cooler night air drifted in.

Having a large, strong male nearby—even the kind who was dangerous to a woman’s peace of mind—helped keep her calm, too.

Since she truly didn’t want to listen to the poetry, and it was unintelligent to dwell too much on the large, strong male, she let her attention drift about the room. She counted twenty-two Maison Noirot creations. That was a good showing. Maybe writing the article for
Foxe’s Morning Spectacle
wouldn’t be so difficult after all.

Among the ladies in Maison Noirot dresses were Lady Clara and— Oh, yes! Lady Gladys Fairfax had worn her new wine-colored dress! A victory!

Leonie smiled.

Her companion leaned nearer. “What is it?” he whispered.

She felt the whisper on her ear and on her neck. Thence it seemed to travel under her skin and arrow straight to the bottom of her belly.

“An excess of emotion from the poetry,” she murmured.

“You haven’t heard a word Swanton’s uttered,” he said. “You’ve been surveying the audience. Who’s made you smile? Have I a rival?”

Like who, exactly? Apollo? Adonis?

“Dozens,” she said.

“Can’t say I’m surprised.” But his green gaze was moving over the crowd. She watched his survey continue round the hall, then pause and go back to the group sitting in the last row, as they were, but to their right, nearer to the doors.

“Clara,” he said. “And Gladys with her. I never saw them when we came in, thanks to the gentleman desperate to drag his family away. But there’s no more room on that side, in any event, and so we’re not obliged to join them—oh, ye beneficent gods and spirits of the place! Well, then . . .” He tilted his head to one side and frowned. “Not that I should have known Gladys straightaway.”

He turned back to Leonie, his green eyes glinting. “She isn’t in rancid colors for once. Is that your doing?”

Leonie nodded proudly.

He turned back again to look. “And there’s Valentine, roped in for escort duty, poor fellow.”

Lord Valentine Fairfax was one of Lady Clara’s brothers. Unlike Lord Longmore, who was dark, Lord Valentine was a typical Fairfax: blond, blue-eyed, and unreasonably good-looking.

“He’s been here the whole time, unfortunate mortal,” Lord Lisburne said. “Whiling away the hours weaving luscious fantasies of killing himself, I don’t doubt. Or, more likely, Val being a practical fellow, his dreamy thoughts are of ways to kill Swanton without getting caught.”

“If the men dislike the poetry so much, why do they come?” she said.

“To make the girls think they’re
sensitive.
”

She smothered a laugh, but not altogether successfully or quickly enough. A young woman in front of her turned round to glare.

Leonie pulled out a handkerchief and pretended to wipe a tear from her eye. The girl turned away.

The audience wasn’t as hushed as it had been earlier in the evening, when Leonie had peeked through the door. Though many occupying the prime seats on the floor sat rapt—or asleep, in the men’s case—others were whispering, and from the galleries came the low hum of background conversation that normally prevailed at public recitations.

The increased noise level didn’t seem to trouble Lord Swanton. Someone had taught him how to make himself heard in a public venue, and he was employing the training, his every aching word clearly audible:

. . . Aye, deep and full its wayward torrents gush,

Strong as the earliest joys of youth, as hope’s first radiant flush;

For, oh! When soul meets soul above, as man on earth meets man,

Its deepest, worst, intensity ne’er gains its earthly ban!

“No, dash it, I won’t hush!” a male voice boomed over the buzz of the audience.

Leonie looked toward the sound. Not far from the Fairfaxes, a well-fed, middle-aged gentleman was shooing his family toward the door.

“A precious waste of time,” he continued. “For charity, indeed. If I’d known, I’d have sent in twice the tickets’ cost and stayed at home, and judged it cheap at the price.”

His wife tried to shush him, again in vain.

“Give me Tom Moore any day,” he boomed. “Or Robbie Burns. Poetry, you call this! I call it gas-bagging.”

Lord Lisburne made a choked sound.

Other men in the vicinity didn’t trouble to hide their laughter.

“It’s a joke, it surely is,” the critic went on. “I could have gone to Vauxhall, instead of wasting a Friday night listening to this lot maunder on about nothing. Bowel stoppage, I shouldn’t wonder. That’s their trouble. What they want is a good physicking.”

Gasps now, from the ladies nearby.

“I never heard anybody ask your opinion, sir,” came Lady Gladys’s musical voice. “None of us prevented your going to Vauxhall. Certainly none of us paid for a ticket to hear
you
. I don’t recollect seeing anything on the program about ill-educated and discourteous men supplying critiques.”

“Glad to supply it gratis, madam,” came the quick answer. “As to
uneducated
—at least some of us have wit enough to notice that the emperor’s wearing no clothes.”

Lord Valentine stood up. “Sir, I’ll thank you not to address the lady in that tone,” he said.

“She addressed me first, sir!”

“Blast,” Lord Lisburne said. He rose, too. “Leave it to Gladys. Valentine will be obliged to call out the fellow, thanks to her.”

Men were starting up from their seats. Lord Swanton became aware of something amiss. He attempted to go on reading his poem, but the audience’s attention was turning away from him to the dispute, and the noise level was rising, drowning him out.

Leonie became aware of movement in the galleries. She looked up. Men were leaving their seats and moving toward the doors. A duel would be bad enough, but this looked like a riot in the making.

Images flashed in her mind of the Parisian mob storming through the streets, setting fire to houses where cholera victims lived . . . her little niece Lucie so sick . . . the tramp of hundreds of feet, growing louder as they neared . . .

Panic swamped her.

She closed her eyes, opened them again, and shook her head, shaking away the past. She counted the rows in the hall and estimated the audience size, and her mind quieted.

This was London, an altogether different place. And this was a different time and circumstance. These people were dying of boredom, not a rampaging disease.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if I might have your attention,” Lord Swanton said.

“You’ve had it these three hours and more!” someone called out. “Not enough?”

Other hecklers contributed their observations.

By this time Lord Lisburne had reached his cousins and the irate gentleman, who was growing more irate by the second, if the deepening red of his face was any clue.

Meanwhile, the audience grew more boisterous.

Leonie reminded herself she was a Noirot and a DeLucey. Not nearly as many of her French ancestors had got their heads cut off as deserved it. Hardly any relatives on either side had ever been stupid or incompetent enough to get themselves hanged. Or even jailed.

Marcelline or Sophy could have handled this lot blindfolded, she told herself.

She swallowed and rose. “Thank you, my lord, for your kind invitation,” she said, pitching her voice to carry. “I should like to recite a poem by Mrs. Abdy.”

“More poetry!” someone cried. “Somebody hang me.”

“Hold your tongue, you bacon brain! It’s a girl!”

Lord Swanton cut through the commentary. “Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Noirot—that is to say, Madame, of Maison Noirot—has kindly agreed to contribute to our poetic mélange.”

Leonie had dressed for the occasion. She knew she’d get the men’s attention because she was young and not unattractive, and the women’s because her dress was beautiful.

She was aware of the argument continuing to her right, and more aware of how hard her heart pounded, and how she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. She told herself not to be ridiculous: She performed every day, for extremely difficult women, and she got
them
under control.

She began, “ ‘I’m weary of a single life—’ ”

“Why didn’t you say so?” someone called out. “Come sit by me, my poppet.”

“Oh, stifle it!” somebody else said. “Let the lady say her piece.”

Leonie started again:

I’m weary of a single life,

The clubs of town I hate;

I smile at tales of wedded strife,

I sigh to win a mate;

Yet no kind fair will crown my bliss,

But all my homage shun—

Alas! my grief and shame is this,

I’m but a Second Son!

A burst of laughter.

That first sign of glee was all the encouragement she needed. Anxiety and self-consciousness washed away, and the DeLucey in her took over.

She went on, this time with dramatic gestures:

My profile, all the world allows,

With Byron’s e’en may vie,

[—she turned her head this way and that]

My chestnut curls half shade my brow,

[—she toyed with the curls at her ears]

I’m almost six feet high;

[—she stretched her neck, to laughter]

And by my attitudes of grace,

Ducrow is quite undone,

[—she mimicked one of the equestrian’s elegant poses]

Yet what avail the form and face

Of a poor Second Son?

Amid the men’s laughter she heard women giggling.

She had them.

She continued.

F
or an instant, while the angry gentleman grew more incensed, his complexion darkening from brick red to purple, Lisburne had felt sure the only outcome would be pistols at dawn. The only hope he had was for a riot. Once men started knocking one another about and women commenced screaming, Valentine and the other fellow might stop making asses of themselves.

When he heard Miss Noirot call out to Swanton, Lisburne had wanted to shake her. Was she mad? To offer more of the poetry that was driving every rational man in the hall to distraction? And to taunt them now, when he hadn’t a prayer of getting to her fast enough?

All hell should have broken loose.

But he’d reckoned without . . .

. . . whatever it was about her: the quality, so obvious, and so hard to put a satisfactory name to. The same power of personality that had attracted and held captive his attention at the British Institution seemed to work on a general audience.

Add that compelling quality to her appearance, and the men could hardly help responding. She was exceedingly pretty and a redhead besides, and the green silk dress, insane as it was, was voluptuous.

But the women, too?

Ah, yes, of course. The green silk dress.

Furthermore, Mrs. Abdy had written, along with the usual sentimental claptrap, a number of comic poems, which Swanton would give a vital organ to replicate.

London’s favorite poet was smiling. He gently prompted Miss Noirot as she faltered for a stanza. It was a longish poem—not half so long as some of Swanton’s, but still a good bit to get by heart.

And she’d said she wasn’t literary, the minx.

Even the irate gentleman was smiling. “That’s more like it,” he said.

“It isn’t,” Gladys said. “It’s an amusing bit of doggerel, no more.”

“We must allow for differences of taste,” Lisburne said. “Is that a new dress, Cousin? Most elegant.”

To his amazement, she colored, almost prettily. “I could hardly wear last year’s dress on such an occasion.”

“There, that explains,” Lisburne said to the irate gentleman. “She wore her new dress and you mentioned the emperor’s new clothes. A bit of confusion, that’s all.”

Gladys huffed. “Lisburne, how can you be so thick? But why do I ask? You know perfectly well—”

“I know you’re eager to leave before the crush,” Lisburne told the irate gentleman. “Bon voyage.”

The man’s wife took hold of her spouse’s arm and said something under her breath. After a moment’s hesitation—and another moment of glaring at Valentine—the man let himself be led away.

From the lectern came Swanton’s voice. “Thank you, Miss Noirot, for your delightful contribution. Perhaps somebody else would like to participate?”