скачать книгу бесплатно
“Do you ever take children for a drive in that carriage?” Erroll said, calling him back to the moment. “Not little children, I mean, but proper grown-up girls who would sit quietly—not climbing about and spoiling the cushions or putting sticky fingers on the glass. Not them, but well-behaved girls who keep their hands folded in their laps and only look out of the window.” The great blue eyes regarded him steadily.
“I—”
“No, he does not,” her mother said. “His grace has many claims on his time. In fact, I am sure he has an appointment elsewhere any minute now.”
“Do I?”
Noirot gave him a warning look.
“Yes, of course,” he said. He took out his pocket watch and stared at it. He had no idea where the hands pointed. He was too conscious of the little girl with the great blue eyes watching him so intently. “I nearly forgot.”
He put the watch away. “Well, Erroll, I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Yes, I’m glad to meet you, too,” she said. “Please come again, when you’re not so busy.”
He made a polite, non-committal answer, and took his leave.
He climbed into his coach and sat. As the vehicle started to move, he looked out through the louvered panel. That was when he finally took notice of the other two women, a blonde and a redhead. Even through the wooden slats, at this distance, he discerned the family resemblance, most especially in the way they carried themselves.
He had mistaken her. He’d formed an idea that was entirely wrong.
Her shop was not a little hole-in-corner place but a proper, handsome establishment. She had a family. She had a child.
She was not to be trusted. Of that he was quite, quite sure.
As to everything else—he’d misjudged, misunderstood, and now he was at sea again, and it was a rough sea, indeed.
“Well done,” Sophy said, when the shop door had closed behind them. “I know you, of course, and I should never underestimate you—”
“But my dear,” said Leonie, “you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw the crest on the carriage door.”
“And then to see him spring out of the carriage—”
“—the prints don’t half do him justice—”
“—to see him hand you out—”
“—I thought for a minute I was dreaming—”
“—It was very like a vision—”
“I saw it first, Mama,” Lucie/Erroll cut into her aunts’ chatter. “I was sitting in the window, reading my lessons, when I heard a noise, and I looked out—and I thought the king was passing by.”
“The king, with a paltry two footmen?” Marcelline said. “I think not.”
“Oh, yes. It might have been, Mama. Everyone knows King William doesn’t like to make a show. I’m sorry, too, because they say the old king, the one before this one…” She frowned.
“King George the Fourth,” Leonie prompted.
“Yes, that one,” Lucie said. “Everyone says he was vastly more splendid, and you always knew who it was when he went by. But a duke is grand, too. I thought he was very handsome, like the prince in the fairy tale. We did not expect you so soon, but I’m glad you came early. Was it very agreeable to travel in that fine carriage? I collect the seat cushions were thick and soft.”
“They were, indeed,” Marcelline said. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted two women approaching the shop. It would not do for Lucie to be interrogating her about the Duke of Clevedon in front of customers, but it wasn’t easy to distract her daughter from a fascinating object, especially a large, expensive fascinating object. “I shall tell you all about it down to the last detail, but I’m perishing for a cup of tea. Shall we go upstairs, and will you make Mama a cup of tea?”
“Yes, yes!” Lucie jumped up and down. “I’ll send Millie to the pastry shop. We’re so glad you’re home, and we shall have a party, a wonderful party, with cakes!”
Hours later, when Lucie was safely abed, the sisters gathered in the workroom.
There they drank champagne, to celebrate Marcelline’s return—with her quarry, no less—and while they drank, Marcelline described her experiences with the Duke of Clevedon in all their lurid detail. Though her sisters were virgins, so far as she knew—and she couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t tell her if they were not—they were by no means innocent. In any case, one could hardly expect them to help her deal with the complications if they did not fully understand what had happened.
“I’m truly sorry,” she said. “I had promised I wouldn’t bollix it up—”
“So you did,” said Leonie. “Yet none of us expected him to be quite so…quite so—”
“Everyone said he was handsome,” said Sophy. “But really, he’s beautiful. He took my breath away.” She patted Marcelline’s hand. “I’m so sorry you had to restrain yourself. I’m not sure I could have done it.”
“It’s not his beauty,” Marcelline said.
Both sisters eyed her skeptically.
“It’s his curst ducal-ness,” she said. “Those fellows are the very devil to manage. They’re not merely accustomed to having their way: The alternative simply doesn’t enter their heads. They don’t think the way normal people do. Then, too, he can think. He’s quicker-witted than I had allowed for. But what sort of excuse is that? I should have adjusted my methods, but for reasons that still elude me, I didn’t. The fact is, I played it very ill, and now Sophy must turn my error to account.”
She went on to explain the advertisements she and Jeffreys had devised immediately after the comtesse’s party—a lifetime ago, it seemed…before the storm…when he’d looked after her…
His hands, his hands…
“I’ll plant a story in the Morning Spectacle,” Sophy said. “But it may be too late to make tomorrow’s edition. Confound it, you haven’t left us much time.”
“I came as quickly as I could. We were nearly ship-wrecked!”
“Sophy, do be reasonable,” said Leonie. “And only think, if the storm delayed their packet, others were delayed as well. The mail will be late. That gives you as much as an extra day, if you’ll only be quick about it.”
“We can’t rely on the mail’s arriving late,” Sophy said. “I’ll have to find Tom Foxe tonight. But that might answer very well: a late-night summons…a story whispered in the dark. I’ll wear a disguise, and let him think I’m Lady So-and-So. He won’t be able to resist. We’ll have the front of the paper, a prime spot.”
“The ladies will flock to see the dress,” said Leonie. “We may even see some as early as tomorrow afternoon. I know for a fact that the Countess of Bartham reads the Spectacle devotedly.”
“The dress had better be on display, then,” Marcelline said. “It needs repairs. Jeffreys was able to clean it before the packet sailed, but she was too sick afterward to stitch the bodice. And I lost at least one papillon bow. What else?” She rubbed her head.
“We’re perfectly capable of seeing for ourselves what needs to be done,” Leonie said. “I’ll work on it while Sophy goes out to her clandestine meeting with Tom. You’d better go to bed.”
“You’ll want to be rested,” Sophy said. “We’ve got a—”
She broke off, and Marcelline looked up in time to catch the look Leonie sent Sophy.
“What?” Marcelline said. “What are you not telling me?”
“Really, Sophy, you might learn to curb your dramatic impulses,” Leonie said. “You can see she’s weary.”
“I did not say—”
“What haven’t you told me?” Marcelline said.
There was a pause. Her two younger sisters exchanged reproachful looks. Then Sophy said, “Someone is stealing your designs and giving them to Horrible Hortense.”
Marcelline looked to Leonie for confirmation.
“It’s true,” Leonie said. “We’ve a spy in our midst.”
On Monday night, Lady Clara Fairfax received a note from the Duke of Clevedon, informing her of his return to London and of his wish to call on her on Tuesday afternoon, if convenient.
The family were not usually at home to callers on Tuesday, but the usual rules did not apply to the Duke of Clevedon. For one thing, as her father’s former ward, his grace was considered a part of the family; for another, he was no better at following rules than her brothers were. Papa had forbidden Clevedon and Harry to go abroad three years ago, citing the raging cholera epidemic. They went anyway, leaving Papa no alternative but to shrug and say Clevedon needed to sow his wild oats, and since Longmore was bound to do damage somewhere, it might as well be in another country.
The Tuesday appointment was not, in short, inconvenient to anybody else, and Lady Clara told herself it wasn’t inconvenient to her, either. She had missed Clevedon, truly, especially when Longmore was behaving in a particularly obnoxious manner and in dire need of one of the duke’s crushing setdowns—or, better yet, his powerful left fist.
But Clevedon in person was a different proposition than Clevedon via letter.
Now that he was here, she wasn’t sure she was ready for him to be here.
But any doubts or shyness she’d felt vanished the instant he entered the drawing room on Tuesday. He wore the same affectionate smile she knew of old, and she smiled at him in the same way. She loved him dearly, always had, and she knew he loved her.
“Good grief, Clara, you might have warned me you’d grown,” he said, stepping back to look her over, quite as he used to do when he came home from school. “You must be two inches taller at least.”
He didn’t remember, she thought. She’d always been a tall girl. She hadn’t grown at all since last he saw her. He was used to French women, she supposed. The observation, which she wouldn’t have hesitated to put in a letter, she wouldn’t dream of uttering aloud, most certainly not in front of her mother.
“I should hope she is not such a gawky great Amazon as that,” said Mama. “Clara is the same as she ever was, only perhaps a little more womanly than you recollect.”
Mama meant more shapely. For a time, she’d claimed that Clevedon had “run away” because Clara was too thin. A man liked a woman to have some flesh on her—and she would never have a good figure if she would not eat.
It hadn’t occurred to Mama at the time that Grand-mama Warford had died only a few months earlier, and Clara, still grieving, had no appetite and did not particularly care what Clevedon thought of her figure.
But a great deal did not occur to Mama. She’d ordered tray upon tray of refreshments, and plied Clevedon with cake, which he took politely, though Mama ought to know by now he did not have a sweet tooth. And while she fed him sweets he didn’t want, she dropped what she thought were exceedingly subtle hints about Clara’s numerous beaux, with the obvious intent of stirring his competitive instincts.
In her mind’s eye, Clara saw herself jumping up, covering her mother’s mouth, and dragging her from the room. A tiny snort of laughter escaped her. Mama, happily, was too busy talking to hear it. But Clevedon noticed. He shot her a glance, and Clara rolled her eyes. He sent her a small, conspiratorial smile.
“I’m relieved I didn’t have to fight my way through hordes of your beaux, Clara,” he said. “I’m still a little tired, I confess, after the Channel tried so determinedly to drown me.”
“Good heavens!” Mama cried. “I read in the Times of a near shipwreck in the Channel. Were you aboard the same vessel?”
“I sincerely hope ours was the only one caught in that storm,” he said. “Apparently it took our mariners unawares.”
“I would not be too sure of that,” said Mama. “They’re supposed to know about the wind and that sort of thing. Those steam packets take too many risks, and as I have told Warford any number of times…” She went to repeat one of Papa’s harangues about the steam trade.
When she paused for breath, Clevedon said, “Indeed, I’m glad to be on English ground again, and to breathe English air. I drove here today because I woke up wishing to take a turn round Hyde Park in an open vehicle. If you would be so kind as to give your permission, perhaps I might persuade Clara to join me.”
Mama threw Clara a triumphant glance.
Clara’s heart began to pound.
He can’t be meaning to propose. Not yet.
But why should he not? And why should she be so alarmed? They’d always been meant to marry, had they not?
“I should like it above all things,” Clara said.
“An original design!” Lady Renfrew cried. She pushed the ball gown that lay on the counter at Marcelline. “You assured me it was an original design, your own creation. Then how, pray, did Lady Thornhurst come by precisely the same dress? And now what am I to do? You know I meant to wear the dress to Mrs. Sharpe’s soirée this very night. You cannot expect me to wear it now. Lady Thornhurst will attend—and she’ll recognize it. Everyone will recognize it! I’ll be mortified. And I know there isn’t time to make up another dress. I’ll have to wear the rose, which everyone has seen. But that isn’t the point. The point is, you assured me—”
A clatter behind her made her break off. She turned an indignant look in that direction. But the irritation vanished in an instant, and wonder took its place. “Good heavens! Is that it?”
Clever, clever Sophy. She’d stepped away from the temper tantrum to the other side of the shop. There stood a mannequin, wearing the gown Marcelline had worn to the comtesse’s ball. Sophy had knocked over a nearby footstool accidentally on purpose.
“I beg your pardon?” Marcelline said innocently.
She wasn’t sure what exactly Sophy had done to or with Tom Foxe. Perhaps it was better not to know. What mattered was, the tale—of Mrs. Noirot’s gown and her dancing with the Duke of Clevedon at the most exclusive ball of the Paris Season—had appeared in today’s Morning Spectacle.
Lady Renfrew was a reader, apparently, because she moved away from the counter to the famous poussière gown. When she’d first entered the shop, His Majesty might have been there, telling his favorite sailor jokes, and she wouldn’t have noticed. She’d been in too hysterical a state to heed anything but her own grievances and Marcelline, the ostensible cause of them.
“Is this the gown you wore to the ball in Paris, Mrs. Noirot?” her ladyship said.
Marcelline admitted that it was.
Lady Renfrew stared at it.
Marcelline and Sophy exchanged looks. They knew what the lady was thinking. The highest sticklers of the Fashion Capital of the World had admired this gown. Its designer stood, not in Paris, but a few feet away, behind the counter.
They let Lady Renfrew study it. She had a great deal of money, and she had taste—which was not the case with all of their customers. She was socially ambitious, which they understood perfectly well, for they were, too.
After Marcelline reckoned her ladyship’s meditations upon the wondrous dress had calmed her sufficiently, she said, “Was it precisely like?”
Lady Renfrew turned back to her, still looking slightly dazed. “I beg your pardon.”
“Was the gown Lady Thornhurst wore precisely like this one?” Marcelline ran a loving hand over the beautiful green gown lying rejected upon the counter.
Lady Renfrew returned to the counter. She considered the dress. “Not precisely. Now I think of it, her gown was not so—not so…” She trailed off, gesturing helplessly.
“If your ladyship would pardon me for speaking plainly, I should suggest that the other was not so well made,” Marcelline said. “What you saw was a mere imitation, of inferior construction. I’m sorry to say this is not the first case that has been brought to our attention.”
“There’s shocking skullduggery at work,” Sophy said. “We haven’t yet got to the bottom of it—but that is not your ladyship’s problem. You must have a magnificent gown for the ball tonight—and it must not be in any way like the other lady’s.”
“I shall remake this dress,” Marcelline said. “I shall remake it myself, in private. When I’m done, no one will see the smallest resemblance to the thing Lady Thornhurst wore. I call it a thing, your ladyship, because it would shame any proper modiste to call those abominations dresses.”
The shop bell tinkled.
Neither Marcelline nor Sophy so much as glanced toward the door. Lady Renfrew was their best customer to date. They could not afford to lose her. All their world—their very beings—revolved around her. Or so it must appear.
“I or one of my sisters will personally deliver it to you, at not later than seven o’clock this evening, at which time we shall make any final adjustments you require,” Marcelline continued. “The dress will be perfect.”
“Absolutely perfect,” said Sophy.
Lady Renfrew was not listening. Not being a shopkeeper in danger of losing her most profitable and prestigious customer, she did look over her shoulder at the door. And she froze.
