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Clara clapped her hand over her mouth.
Noirot folded her arms.
A dangerous glint came into Clara’s blue eyes.
Noirot regarded her with the same cool lack of expression she would have bestowed on a promising hand of cards.
The fool! She could not treat a marquess’s daughter like a temperamental child, even if she was behaving like one. Noirot would lose any hope of a commission—she’d lose Clara forever—and she’d be lucky if Lady Warford didn’t have her driven from London.
“If I may interpose a—”
“No, Clevedon, you may not,” Clara said. “I told her to come. I made her come. She left me no choice. Nothing she’s proposed bears the smallest resemblance to what I normally wear, and I can’t believe I am such a provincial, so lacking in taste and discernment—but you know I’ve never cared very much, and Mama always advises me. But now I’m told to throw everything out, and what am I to tell Mama? And I am not to have a green dress!”
She stamped her foot. Clara actually stamped her foot.
“It must be blue-green,” Noirot said. She put the tip of her index finger to her chin and regarded Clara with narrowed eyes. “I envision embroidered poult de soie, the corsage decorated with a mantilla of blond lace.” Her finger came away from her chin to lightly glide over her shoulder. As she indicated the fall of the mantilla she imagined, her finger lingered at the place where he’d touched her, on that night when they’d played cards, when he’d helped her with her shawl. He remembered the tiny hitch in her breath and the heated triumph he’d felt, because finally, finally he’d affected her.
“But that is for later,” she went on. “For the present, as your ladyship has reminded me repeatedly, we are wearing white. And as I have reminded your ladyship repeatedly, it must be a soft white. No ivory.” She made a dismissive gesture at a dress draped over a chair. “Too yellow. And not that blinding white.” She indicated another dress, hanging over the back of a small sofa.
“Speaking of blinding,” Clevedon said. “Might we have the curtains drawn? I’ve the devil of a headache—”
“I wonder where you got it,” Clara said. “The same place Longmore gets his, I daresay. Well, you must grin and bear the light. Madame can’t work in the dark.”
“I thought she could do anything,” Clevedon muttered, retreating to the darkest corner of the room. “She told me—more than once—that she’s the greatest modiste in the world.”
“Beyond a doubt she’s the most exacting modiste in the world,” Clara said. “She’s been showing me how colors affect one’s complexion. We came to this room because it has the best light at this time of day.” She paused, frowning. “If you have a headache, why are you here?”
“You were screaming,” he said.
“It’s upsetting when someone takes one’s clothes away,” Clara said. “I find I’m not as philosophically detached as I had supposed. But why are you here, at the house, I mean? You know Papa is never at home on Tuesdays, and you would never come to see Mama, even if she were at home, which she isn’t, else Mrs. Noirot wouldn’t be here. She’s my dark secret, you know.”
“I came to take you for a drive,” Clevedon said. Had she always used to be so talkative?
“But you can see I’m not at liberty. Why did you not tell me you meant to come?”
“I did, on Saturday.”
“You did not. You did not spare me above five minutes on Saturday, and if you uttered ten words to me, that’s all you did. Today, obviously, is inconvenient.”
“We’re nearly done,” Noirot said.
“Hardly,” Clara said. “Now we must decide what to tell Mama.”
Noirot didn’t roll her eyes, which he considered evidence of superhuman self-control. Clara was driving him mad, and he’d only been here for a few minutes. Noirot must be wanting to throttle her.
But her expression only became kindly. “Tell her, my lady, that one can’t expect a fashionable gentleman—who has spent time in Paris—to come up to scratch—”
“Come up to what?” Clevedon said.
“—when one looks like a dowd and a fright and elderly to boot,” Noirot continued past the interruption. “Be sure to hold your head high when you say it, and make it sound like a fact that ought to be obvious to the meanest intelligence. And if there’s a difficulty, throw a tantrum. That’s what high-bred girls generally do.”
“But I never did,” Clara said aghast.
“A moment ago you stamped your foot,” Clevedon said. “You pouted, too.”
“I did not!”
“Your ladyship was too distressed to realize,” Noirot said. “However, you must do it with greater force and with absolute confidence in the rightness of your cause. Still, we must remember that a temper fit is simply a way to obtain the audience’s notice. Once you have her ladyship’s full attention, you will become sweet reason itself, and tell her this anecdote.”
Noirot folded her hands and, while Clevedon and Clara watched, astonished, her eyes filled. The tears hung there, glistening, but did not fall. She said, “Dearest Mama, I know you do not wish for me to be mortified in front of all my acquaintance. And here,” Noirot added in a more normal voice, “be sure to mention somebody your mother loathes. And when her ladyship says this is all nonsense, as she well might, you will tell her about the French gentleman who was mad in love with a married woman—”
“That isn’t the sort of thing for Clara to—”
“Pray let her finish,” Clara said. “You’re the one who brought me to this aggravating person, and I’ve steeled myself to suffer with her in order to be beautiful.”
“Your ladyship is already beautiful,” Noirot said. “How many times must I repeat it? That’s what’s so infuriating. A perfect diamond must have the perfect setting. A masterpiece must have the perfect frame. A—”
“Yes, yes, but we know that argument won’t work with Mama. What about the gentleman and the married woman?”
“His friends reasoned with him, pleaded with him— all in vain,” Noirot said. “Then, one night, at an entertainment, the lady asked him to fetch her shawl. He hastened to serve her, imagining the silken softness of a cashmere shawl, the scent of the woman he loved enhancing its perfection…”
Clevedon remembered Noirot’s scent, the memory reawakened only minutes ago: the scent her bonnet held. He remembered inhaling her, his face in her neck.
“…a cashmere shawl that would put all the other ladies’ cashmeres to shame. He found the garment but—quelle horreur!—not cashmere at all. Rabbit hair! Sick with disgust, he fell instantly and permanently out of love, and abandoned her.”
Clara stared at her. “You’re roasting me,” she said.
Clevedon collected himself and said, “You’ll find the anecdote in Lady Morgan’s book about France. It was published some years ago, but the principle remains. I wish you’d seen my friend Aronduille’s face when I asked him whether it mattered what a woman wore. I wish you could have heard him and his friends talking about it, quoting philosophers, arguing about Ingres and Balzac and Stendhal and David, art and fashion, the meaning of beauty, and so on.”
Clara glanced at him, then returned to Noirot. “Well, then, I shall try it, and I shall say it is all because Clevedon is so infernally discriminating, worse even than Longmore—”
“Clara would it not be better if you—”
“But what am I to wear to Almack’s tomorrow night?” Clara said. “You’ve rejected everything.”
Almack’s, he thought. Another dreary evening among the same people. He would have to pluck Clara from her hordes of admirers and dance with her. Whatever she wore, he would know Noirot had touched it.
He said, “Since no one was being murdered, and I seem to be de trop—”
“Not at all, your grace,” Noirot said. “You’ve arrived in the nick of time. Her ladyship has been remarkably patient and open-minded, considering that I’ve upset her universe.”
“You have, rather,” Clara said.
“But here is his grace, come to take you for a drive. Fresh air, the very thing you need after this trying morning and afternoon.”
“But Almack’s—”
“I shall send you a dress tomorrow,” Noirot said. “I or one of my sisters will personally deliver it to you, at not later than seven o’clock, at which time we shall make any final adjustments you require. The dress will be perfect.”
“But my mother—”
“You will have already dealt with her, as I suggested,” Noirot said.
Clara looked at Clevedon. “She is the most dictatorial creature,” she said.
“His grace has been so kind as to mention this character flaw before,” Noirot said with nary a glance at Clevedon. “I serve women of fashion all day long, six days a week. One must either dominate or be dominated.”
Ah, there it was: the disarming frankness, leavened with a touch of humor.
Gad, she was beyond anything!
“I have had enough of being dominated for the present,” Clara said. “Clevedon, pray be patient another few minutes, and I shall be glad to take the air with you. I promise to be back in a trice. Mrs. Noirot has left me a few paltry items she finds not completely abhorrent. My maid shall not have any momentous decisions to make regarding bonnets or anything else.”
She started toward the door, and hesitated. Then, with the look of one who’d made up her mind, she went out.
She had exactly what she wanted, Marcelline told herself. More than she’d hoped for. She hadn’t even had to wait for the betrothal. She had Lady Clara already, and a large order. Tomorrow night, the crème de la crème of Society would see Lady Clara Fairfax wearing a Noirot creation.
Maison Noirot would soon be the foremost dressmaking establishment in London.
Marcelline had accomplished everything—and more—than she’d planned when she set out for Paris, mere weeks ago.
She could not be happier.
She told herself this while she set about sorting the various rejected items of Lady Clara’s wardrobe.
“Are you going to burn them?” came Clevedon’s voice from the corner to which he’d withdrawn.
“Certainly not,” she said.
“But they have no redeeming qualities,” he said. “I should never have noticed the poor choices in color before you poisoned my mind, but even I can discern inferior cut and stitchery.”
“They can be taken apart and remade,” Marcelline said. “I am a patroness of a charitable establishment for women. Her ladyship was so generous as to allow me to take half the discards for my girls.”
“Your girls,” he said. “You—you’re a philanthropist?” He laughed.
She longed to throw something at him.
A chair. Herself.
But that was her shallow Noirot heart speaking. He was beautiful. Watching him move made her mouth go dry. It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t have him without complications. In bed—or on a carriage seat or against a wall—it wouldn’t matter that he was idle and arrogant and oblivious. If only she could simply use him and discard him, the way men used and discarded women.
But she couldn’t. And she’d used him already, though not in that way. She’d used him in a more important way. She’d got what she’d wanted.
A maid entered, and Marcelline spent a moment directing her. When she went out again with a heap of clothing, Marcelline did not take up the conversation where it had stopped. She did not take up the conversation at all.
She wouldn’t let him disturb her in any way. She was very, very happy. She’d achieved her goals.
“Which set of unfortunate women is it?” he said. “I’ll tell my secretary to make a donation. If they can make anything of those dresses, they’ll have earned it.”
“The Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females.” She could have added that she and her sisters had founded it last year. They’d learned at an early age more than they wanted to know about indigence and the difficulties of earning a living.
But her past was a secret under lock and key. “Some of our girls have gone on to become ladies’ maids,” she said. “The majority find places as seamstresses, for which there’s always need, particularly during mourning periods.” Luckily for them, the court was frequently in mourning, thanks to the British royal family’s penchant for marrying their Continental cousins.
The butler entered, followed by a footman carrying a tray of refreshments to sustain his grace during the wait for her ladyship.
Marcelline was famished. She’d been waiting on Lady Clara since this morning, and had not been offered a bite to eat or anything to drink. But mere tradesmen did not merit feeding.
Oh, would the girl never be dressed? How long did it take to tie on a bonnet and throw a shawl about one’s shoulders? One would think, given her anxieties about Marcelline ruining his life, Lady Clara would not leave them alone together for above half a minute.
But they were hardly alone, with servants going to and fro. Not that Lady Clara had anything to worry about, servants or no servants.
The only designs Marcelline had were upon her lady-ship’s statuesque person—and her father’s and future husband’s purses.
That was all.
She was very, very happy.
The silence stretched out, broken only by the servants’ comings and goings.
Then, at last, at long last, Lady Clara reappeared.
Marcelline stopped sorting for long enough to make an adjustment to her ladyship’s bonnet—it was not tilted precisely as it ought to be—and to twitch her cashmere shawl into a more enticing arrangement. Her shawls were very fine. One could not fault her there.
Having arranged Lady Clara to her satisfaction, Marcelline stepped away, made a proper curtsey, and returned to her work.
She was aware of Clevedon’s big frame passing not far from her. She was aware of the muffled sound of his boots on the carpet. she heard the low murmur, his voice mingling with Lady Clara’s, and the latter’s soft laughter.
Marcelline kept busy with her work and did not watch them go.
And when they were gone, she told herself she’d done a fine job, and she’d done nobody any great wrong—a miracle, considering her bloodline—and she had every reason to be glad.
That evening
The gown Mrs. Whitwood had returned lay on the counter. the enraged customer had come and gone while Marcelline was dancing attendance upon Lady Clara Fairfax at Warford House.
Sophy had soothed Mrs. Whitwood. Sophy could soothe Attila the Hun. The dress would be remade. The cost was mainly in labor, the smallest cost of making a dress. Still, it cost time—time that Marcelline, her sisters, and her seamstresses could be spending on other orders.
If this kept up, they’d be ruined. It wasn’t simply that they couldn’t afford to keep remaking dresses. They couldn’t afford the damage to their reputation.
Marcelline was studying the dress, deciding what to change. “Who worked on it?” she asked Pritchett, her senior seamstress.
“Madame, if there is a fault with the workmanship it must be mine,” Pritchett said. “I supervised every stitch of this dress. But madame can see for herself. It is precisely as madame ordered.”
“Indeed, and the details, as you know, are of my own design,” Marcelline said. “It’s very strange that another dress should appear, bearing these same details. The angle and width of the pleats of the bodice was my own invention. How curious that another dressmaker should have precisely the same idea, in the same style of dress.”
“Most unfortunate, madame,” Pritchett said. “Yet some would think it a miracle we haven’t had this problem before, when you consider that we take in all sorts of girls, from the streets, practically. One doesn’t wish to be uncharitable. Some of them don’t know any better, I daresay. Never taught right from wrong, you know. I shall be happy to work late—as late as needed—to make the dress over, if madame wishes.”
“No, I’ll want you fresh tomorrow,” Marcelline said. “Lady Clara Fairfax’s ball dress must be ready to deliver at seven o’clock sharp in the evening. I shall want all my seamstresses well rested and alert. Better to come in early. Let us say eight o’clock in the morning.” She glanced at her pendant watch. “It’s nearly eight. Send them all home now, Pritchett. Tell them we want them here at precisely eight o’clock tomorrow morning, ready for a very busy day.”
