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And this game was played out. It was time, long past time, they were gone from here.
Yet his hand slid down her back, and he thought nothing in the world was as velvety soft as her skin. Her hair tickled his chin, and he bent his head a little, to feel the soft curls against his face, and to breathe her in.
But for this night, I love you.
She’d said it and he’d heard in blank shock. His mind had stopped and his tongue, too. He’d sat, like an idiot, dumbstruck. At the same moment, he’d believed and refused to believe. He’d felt an instant’s shattering grief before he smothered it. He’d told himself he was a fool. He’d argued with himself. He knew what was right and what was wrong. He mustn’t stay, no matter what she said. He knew what was going to happen, and he couldn’t let it happen again. That would be selfish and thoughtless and unkind and dishonorable.
He’d argued with himself, but there she was, and he wanted her.
And he was weak.
Perhaps not as weak and dissolute as his father, but bad enough.
And so, of course, he lost the battle, that feeble battle with Honor and Kindness and Respect and all the other noble qualities Warford had tried to drum into him.
He could have simply got up from the bed—where he ought not to have sat in the first place…
Oh, never mind could and should and ought to.
He’d faced a test of character and he’d failed.
He’d stayed.
He wanted to stay, still.
“We have to leave,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
It was late. They had to leave. No time to make love again. No time to simply linger, touching her, being touched. No time to bask in lovemaking’s afterglow.
This time he helped her dress and she helped him. It didn’t take long, not nearly long enough.
The drive back to Clevedon House was far too short.
He hadn’t time enough to study her profile as she looked out of the window into the gaslit street. He hadn’t time enough to burn the fine contours of her face into his mind. He’d see her again, he supposed. She wanted him to keep away and he knew he must, but he’d see her again, perhaps, by accident. He might see her stepping out of a linen draper’s or a wineshop.
But He’d never see her in exactly this way: the play of light and shadow on her face as she looked out onto Pall Mall. He would not, he supposed, ever be close enough again to catch her scent, so tantalizingly light but impossible to overlook. He’d never be close enough to hear the rustle of her clothes when she moved.
He told himself not to be a fool. He’d forget her. He’d forget all the details that at this moment seemed to mean so much.
He’d forget the way he’d stood on the pavement this day, pretending not to look at her ankles while he watched her step down from or up into the carriage. He’d forget the elegant turn of her ankle, the arc of her instep. He’d forget the first time he’d looked at her ankles. He’d forget the first time they’d made love, and the way she’d wrapped her legs about his waist and the choked sounds of pleasure he’d heard when he thrust into her, again and again. He’d forget his own pleasure, so violent that pleasure seemed too feeble a word, a word meant for ordinary things.
He’d forget all that, just as he would forget this night.
The memories would linger for a time, but they’d grow dull. The ache he felt now, the frustration and anger and sorrow—all those would fade, too.
She’d given him a night to remember, but of course he’d forget.
Marcelline and her sisters rose early the following day. By half-past eight they were at the shop. The seamstresses arrived shortly thereafter, in a flutter of excitement. But they settled down before the morning had much advanced. At one o’clock in the afternoon, the shop opened for business, as promised in the individual messages Sophy had dispatched and the advertisements she’d published in all the London newspapers.
At a quarter past one, Lady Renfrew and Mrs. Sharp appeared for their fittings. A steady stream of ladies followed them. Some came to shop. Some came to stare. But they kept Marcelline and her sisters busy until closing time.
She was happy, very happy, she told herself.
She’d be a fool to want anything more.
Chapter Fourteen (#ulink_fc0beb47-a396-5708-ab0e-e777d9dd878f)
The rank which English Ladies hold, requires they should neglect no honourable means of distinction, no becoming Ornament in the Costume.
La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Advertisements for June 1807
Sunday 3 May
Clevedon House seemed oppressively quiet, even for a Sunday. The corridors were silent, the servants having reverted to their usual invisibility, blending in with the furnishings or disappearing through a backstairs door. No one hurried from one room to the next. No Noirot women appeared abruptly in the doorway of the library.
Clevedon stood at the library table, which was heaped with ladies’ magazines and the latest scandal sheets. Of the latter, Foxe’s Morning Spectacle was the most prominent, its front page bearing a large advertisement for “Madame Noirot’s newly-invented VENETIAN CORSETS.”
He felt a spasm of sorrow and another of anger, and wondered when it would stop.
He told himself he ought to throw the magazines in the fire, and Foxe’s rag along with them. Instead, he went on studying them, making notes, forming ideas.
It staved off boredom, he supposed.
It was more entertaining than attending to the stacks of invitations.
It was a waste of time.
He rang for a footman and told him to send Halliday in.
Three minutes later, Halliday entered the library.
Clevedon pushed to one side the provoking Spectacle. “Ah, there you are. I want you to send the dollhouse to Miss Noirot.”
There was an infinitesimal pause before Halliday said, “Yes, your grace.”
Clevedon looked up. “Is there a problem? The thing can sustain a twenty-minute journey to St. James’s Street, can it not? It’s old, certainly, but I thought it was in good repair.”
“I do beg your pardon, your grace,” Halliday said. “Naturally there is no problem whatsoever. I shall see to it immediately.”
“But?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“I hear a but,” Clevedon said. “I distinctly hear an unsaid but.”
“Not precisely a but, your grace,” Halliday said. “It is more of an impertinence, for which I do beg your pardon.”
When Clevedon only looked at him expectantly, Halliday said, “We had been under the impression that Miss Erroll—that is, Miss Noirot—would be visiting us again.”
Clevedon straightened away from the table. “What the devil gave you that impression?”
“Perhaps it was not so much an impression as a hope, sir,” Halliday said. “We find her charming.”
We meant the staff. Clevedon was surprised. “I should like to know what it is about them. They seem to charm everybody.” The housemaid Sarah had gone happily enough to live above a shop and act as interim nursemaid until the Noirots had time to hire a suitable person. Miss Sophia had even disarmed Longmore.
“Indeed, they possess considerable charm,” Halliday said. “But Mrs. Michaels and I both remarked their manner. We agreed that it was nothing like what one expected of milliners. Mrs. Michaels believes the women are ladies.”
“Ladies!”
“She is persuaded that they are gentlewomen in reduced circumstances.”
Clevedon remembered his first impression of Marcelline—his confusion. She’d sounded and behaved like the ladies of his acquaintance. But she wasn’t a lady. She’d told him so.
Hadn’t she?
“That’s romantic,” Clevedon said. “Mrs. Michaels is fond of novels, I know.”
“I daresay that is the case,” Halliday said. “In any event, they were not what one would be led to expect. Mrs. Michaels was greatly shocked when I informed her we had milliners to wait upon. But she told me that she was entirely taken aback when she met them. They did not strike her as milliners at all.”
Servants were more sensitive to rank than their employers. They could smell trade at fifty paces. They could detect an imposter a minute after he opened his mouth.
Yet his servants, keenly aware of their position in the employment of a duke, had believed the Noirots were gentlewomen.
Well, it only showed how clever those women were. Charming. Enticing. Three versions of Eve, luring men to…
Gad, what the devil was wrong with him? It was reading all the damned magazines, with their serialized sentimental tales.
“You saw them at work,” Clevedon said. “They know their trade.”
“That is undoubtedly why Mrs. Michaels imagined they were women of rank who’d fallen on hard times,” Halliday said. “I must confess that at first I thought it was one of your jokes. I beg you will forgive me, sir, but it did cross my mind that these were some cousins from abroad, and you were testing us. Only for an instant, sir. Naturally, it was obvious there had been a fire, and it was no joke.”
The footman Thomas appeared in the doorway. “I beg your pardon, your grace, but Lord Longmore is here to see you, and—”
Longmore pushed past Thomas, strode past Halliday, and marched up to Clevedon.
“You cur!” Longmore said. He drew back his arm, and his fist shot straight at Clevedon’s jaw.
Meanwhile, at Maison Noirot
Lucie sat in the window, gazing down into St. James’s Street.
She’d been sitting there for hours.
Marcelline knew what she was watching for, and she was dreading what was to come. “It’s time for your tea,” she said. “Sarah has laid out the tea things on your handsome tea table, and your dolls are in their places, waiting.”
Lucie didn’t answer.
“Afterward, Sarah will take you to the Green Park. You can see the fine ladies and gentlemen.”
“I can’t go out,” Lucie said. “What if he comes, and I’m not here? He’ll be very disappointed.”
Marcelline’s heart sank.
She moved to sit next to Lucie on the window seat. “My love, his grace is not coming here. He looked after us for a time, but he’s very busy—”
“He’s not too busy for me.”
“We’re not his family, sweet.”
Lucie’s eyes narrowed and her mouth set.
“He made a beautiful home for us,” Marcelline said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. “Only look at all the fine things he bought for you. Your own tea set and tea table. Your own little chair and the prettiest bed in the world. But there are others in his life—”
“No!” Lucie jumped down from the window seat. “No!” she screamed. “No! No! No!”
“Lucie Cordelia.”
“I’m not Lucie. I’m Erroll. I’ll never be Lucie again. He’s coming back! He loves me! He loves Erroll!”
She threw herself on the rug. She shrieked and sobbed and kicked her feet.
Sophy and Leonie ran into the nursery. Sarah raced in, and stopped short, her expression horrified. This was her first experience of Lucie in a tantrum.
She started toward the raging child.
Marcelline put up a hand, and the maid backed away. “Lucie Cordelia, that is quite enough,” she said, keeping her voice calm and firm. “You know ladies do not throw themselves on the floor and scream.”
“I’m not a lady! I hate you!”
Sarah gasped.
“Come, Erroll,” Sophy said. “You’ll only make yourself sick.”
“He’s coming back!” Lucie shrieked. “He loves me!”
Marcelline squared her shoulders. She moved to Lucie and scooped the child into her arms, in spite of flailing arms and feet and deafening shrieks. She held Lucie tight against her and rocked her, as though she were still the tiny infant she’d been once.
“Stop it,” Marcelline said. “Stop it, love. You need to be a big girl.”
The kicking and punching stopped, and the screaming softened into weeping. “Why c-can’t we st-stay th-there? Why d-doesn’t he k-keep me?”
Marcelline carried her to the window seat and held her, rocking her and stroking her back. “If everyone who loved you kept you, where would you live?” she said. “Then where should Mama be? Don’t you want to live with Mama and Aunt Sophy and Aunt Leonie? Have you grown too fine for us? Do you want to go away and live in a castle? Is that it? What do you think, Aunt Sophy? Shall we dress Erroll in a princess gown and send her away to live in a castle?”
It was nonsense, most of it, but it quieted Lucie. She tightened her hold of her mother’s neck. “I can live here,” she said. “Why can’t he come?”
“He’s a great man, sweetheart,” Marcelline said. “He has his own family. Very soon he’ll be married and have his own children. You can’t have every handsome gentleman who takes your fancy, you know.”
