Vixen In Velvet

The gentlemen, beyond a doubt. They’d be wild to be made known to any attractive woman, especially in the present circumstances, when it was nigh impossible to get any attention from the lot swarming about Swanton.

But the ladies? Wishing to be introduced to a shopkeeper?

Perhaps not out of the question in this case, Lisburne decided. The three Noirot sisters had made themselves famous. He’d heard of them on the Continent recently. Their work, it was said, rivaled that of the celebrated Victorine of Paris, who required even queens to make appointments and attend her at her place of business.

Lisburne watched the dazzling gaze and smile sweep over the assembled audience.

“You’re too kind, my lord,” she said. “But I’ve disturbed everybody sufficiently today. The ladies will know where to find me: around the corner, at No. 56 St. James’s Street. And the ladies, as you know, are my primary concern.”

At the end of the speech, she shot a glance at somebody in the crowd. Cousin Clara? Then Madame curtseyed and started away.

The others turned away, the women first. Swanton resumed poeticizing or romanticizing or whatever he was doing, and they all moved on to Veronese’s Between Virtue and Vice.

Lisburne, however, watched Miss Noirot’s departure. She seemed not altogether steady on her feet, not quite so effortlessly graceful as before. At the top of the stairs, she took hold of the railing and winced.

Leonie was not allowed to make a quiet escape.

She heard the Marquess of Lisburne coming behind her. She knew who it was without looking. This was probably because he’d made her so keenly attuned to him, thanks to the extremely improper way he’d set her on her feet a moment ago. She was still vibrating.

Or perhaps he sent some sort of pulsation across the room, in the way certain gods had been believed to herald their arrival with strange lights or magical sounds or divine scent.

“You seem to be in pain,” he said. “May I assist you?”

“I was hoping to slink off quietly,” she said.

“No difficulty there. Everybody else is hovering about my cousin. He’s spouting about Virtue and Vice, and they all believe he’s saying something.” While he spoke, he took possession of her left arm and arranged it around his neck. He brought his arm round her waist.

She caught her breath.

“It must hurt like the devil,” he said. “On second thought, I’d better check your ankle before we proceed. It might be more damaged than we think.”

If he touched her ankle she would faint, and not necessarily for medical reasons.

“I only turned it,” she said. “If I’d done worse, I’d be sitting on the step, sobbing with as much mortification as pain.”

“I can carry you,” he said.

“No,” she said, and added belatedly, “thank you.”

They proceeded down the stairs slowly. She did sums in her head to distract her from the warmth of the big body supporting hers. It wasn’t easy. She had stared too long at the Botticelli, and her mind was making pictures of the muscular arms and torso with no elegant covering whatsoever.

By the time they reached the first landing, her usually well-ordered brain was wandering into strange byways and taking excessive notice of physical sensations.

She made herself speak. “I can only hope that people assume I was dazzled by my brief encounter with Lord Swanton,” she said.

“That’s what I’ll tell them, if you like,” he said. “But I received the impression you knew each other.”

“Paris,” she said. “Ages ago.”

“It can’t be a very long age,” he said. “You’re somewhat damaged but not quite decrepit.”

“It was his first visit to Paris,” she said.

“More than five years ago, then,” he said.

When Leonie was nearly sixteen, happy in her work and her family and especially her beautiful infant niece, and reveling in the success of Emmeline, Cousin Emma’s splendid dressmaking shop.

Before the world fell apart.

“Lord Swanton came to my cousin’s shop to buy a gift for his mother,” she said. “He was sweet-tempered and courteous. In Paris, gentlemen often mistook a dressmaker’s shop for a brothel.”

Those who persisted in the mistake tended to have unfortunate accidents.

One of the first rules Leonie had ever learned was, Men only want one thing. Cousin Emma had taught her young charges as much about defending themselves against encroaching men as she had about dressmaking. She had not, however, taught her girls anything about dealing with Roman gods. It was trickier than one would think to maintain a businesslike attitude, even though Leonie was the most businesslike of the three sisters. That wasn’t saying much, when you came down to it. Marcelline and Sophy had always had their heads in the clouds: dreamers and schemers and typical Noirots, typical DeLuceys.

He smelled so clean, like the air after rain. How did he do that? Was it scent? A miraculous new soap?

By the time they reached the ground floor, the throbbing in her ankle seemed to have lessened somewhat.

“I think I can make do with your arm,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“My ankle is better,” she said. “I needn’t lean on you quite so much.”

The fact was, she didn’t have to lean at all, because he held her so firmly against him. She was aware of every inch of his muscled arm and—through all the layers of chemise, corset, dress, and pelerine—exactly where his fingers rested at the bottom of her rib cage.

She let go of his neck. He let go of her waist and offered his arm. She placed her gloved hand on his, and he grasped it as firmly as he’d grasped her waist.

She told herself this was hardly intimacy, compared to his holding her along the length of his body, but the fact was, no man had got this close to her in years. Still, that didn’t explain why she wanted to run away. She knew how to defend herself, did she not? She knew better than to let herself fall under the spell of a handsome face and form and low, seductive voice.

She couldn’t allow panic to rule. Her ankle was only marginally better. Without help, she’d have to limp back to the shop on a hot day. Though she had only a short distance to travel, the last bit was uphill. By the time she got there, she’d have worsened the injury and wouldn’t be fit for anything.

Business first, last, and always. As they passed through the door and out into Pall Mall, she set her mind to calculating his net worth, reminded herself of imminent wives and/or mistresses, and beat down unwanted emotions with numbers, as she so often did. Her clumsiness might well have put off Lady Clara’s companion. This might be the only new business Leonie would attract today.

“You said something about business,” he said.

“I did?” Her heart raced. Was she speaking her thoughts aloud without realizing? Had she suffered a concussion without noticing?

“Before, when you hurried away to my cousin.”

“Oh, that,” she said. “Yes. Where Lord Swanton goes, one usually finds a large supply of young ladies. He’d mentioned to one of our customers his intention of visiting the British Institution this afternoon. It seemed a good opportunity to make the shop’s work known to those unfamiliar with it.”

“Nothing to do with his poetry, then.”

She shrugged, and paid for it with a twinge in her ankle. “I run a shop, my lord,” she said. “I lack the romantic sensibility.” She’d worked since childhood. The young women who worshipped Lord Swanton hadn’t lived in Paris during the chaos, misery, and destruction of the cholera. Grief, suffering, and death weren’t romantic to her.

“It stumps me, I’ll admit,” he said. “I don’t see what’s romantic about it. But then, neither do most men. The ailment seems to strike young women, with a few exceptions. Though she’s at the vulnerable age, Cousin Clara looked bored, I thought. My cousin Gladys looked sour-tempered, but that’s the way she usually looks, so it’s hard to tell whether she’s an idolater or not.”

“Cousin Gladys,” she said. “The young lady with Lady Clara?”

“Lady Gladys Fairfax,” he said. “Lord Boulsworth’s daughter. Clara’s great uncle, you know. The military hero. I’m not sure what’s lured Gladys back to London, though I do have an unnerving suspicion. I say, you’re not well, Miss Noirot.”

They’d reached the bottom of St. James’s Street, and the day’s extreme warmth, already prodigious in Pall Mall, now blasted at them on a hot wind, which carried as well the dust of vehicles, riders, and pedestrians. Leonie’s head ached at least as much as her ankle did. She was trying to remember when last she’d heard Lady Gladys Fairfax mentioned, but pain, heat, and confusion overwhelmed her brain.

“That does it,” he said. “I’m carrying you.”

He simply swooped down and did it, before she got the protest out, and then it was muffled against his neckcloth.

“Yes, everyone will stare,” he said. “Good advertising, don’t you think? Do you know, I do believe I’m getting the hang of this business thing.”

Meanwhile, back at the British Institution

Sir Roger Theaker and Mr. John Meffat, Esquire, were among the few who’d paid attention to Lord Lisburne’s departure with Miss Noirot. The pair had arrived with Lord Swanton’s coterie, but were not exactly part of it, even though they were former schoolmates of the poet.

They were not Lord Swanton’s favorite old schoolmates, having bullied him mercilessly for nearly a year until his cousin got wind of it and thrashed them. Repeatedly. Because they were slow to catch on. They were even slower to forget.

They’d withdrawn some paces from the crowd following Lord Swanton, partly in order to maintain a safe distance from the dangerous cousin.

Theaker’s gaze lingered on the stairwell. Once Lisburne and the ladybird were out of sight he said, “Lisburne’s done for, I see.”

“If anyone’s a goner, it’s the French milliner,” said Meffat. “Ten pounds says so.”

“You haven’t got ten pounds,” said Theaker.

“Neither do you.”

Theaker’s attention reverted to the poet. They watched for a time the young women not-so-surreptitiously pushing to get closer to their idol, while he held forth about the Veronese.

“Annoying little snot, isn’t he?” Theaker said.

“Always was.”

“Writes pure rot.”

“Always did.”

No one could accuse them of not doing all they could to enlighten the reading public. Before Swanton had returned to England, they’d contributed to various journals half a dozen anonymous lampoons of his poetry, as well as two scurrilous limericks. Most of the critics had agreed with them.

But one fashionable young woman had ignored the critics and bought Alcinthus and Other Poems, Swanton’s book of lugubrious verse, and cried her eyes out, apparently. She told all her friends he was the new Lord Byron or some such. The next anybody knew, the printers couldn’t keep up with the demand.

Since watching the little snot wasn’t much fun, Theaker and Meffat turned their attention to the unhappy artist who, having righted his easel, was trying to repair his damaged painting.

They drew nearer to offer jocular advice and accidentally on purpose knock over items he’d carefully restored to their proper places. They suggested their own favorite subjects and argued about whether a corner of the painting more closely resembled a bonnet or a woman’s privates. Being preoccupied with tormenting somebody too weak, poor, or intimidated to fight back—their usual modus operandi—they never noticed the woman approach until she’d cornered them.

And when she said, “I must have your help,” they didn’t laugh, as was also more usual when a person of no importance sought their aid or protection. They didn’t even make lewd suggestions, which was odd, considering she was extremely pretty—fair and slender and young. John Meffat looked at her once, then twice, then seemed very puzzled indeed. He turned an inquiring look upon his friend, who frowned briefly, seeming to be struck by something.

Theaker shot him a warning look, and Meffat held his tongue.

Then Theaker broke out in a kindly smile—it must have hurt his face a little—and said, “Why certainly, my dear. Let’s find us a place a bit less public, and you can tell us all about it.”

Chapter Two

Although the Toilet should never be suffered to engross so much of the attention as to interfere with the higher duties of life, yet, as a young lady’s dress, however simple, is considered a criterion of her taste, it is, certainly, worthy of her attention.

—The Young Lady’s Book, 1829

Lord Lisburne carried Leonie up St. James’s Street in the sweltering heat, past a stream of gaping faces. A couple of vehicles got their wheels tangled, and a gentleman crossing the street walked into a curb post.

Sophy would have seen this as a golden opportunity, Leonie reminded herself. She ignored the headache and throbbing ankle and made her face serene, as though this were an everyday occurrence, being carried to the shop. By a Roman god. Who didn’t even breathe hard.

Darting a glance upward, she discerned a hint of a smile on his perfectly sculpted mouth.

“This is fun,” he said. “Which number did you say? Right, fifty-six. Oh, look. Charming. So French. Does that boy in the breathtaking lilac and gold livery belong to you?”

“Yes,” Leonie said without looking. “That’s Fenwick, our general factotum.”

“Does he open the door or simply stand there looking excessively decorative?”

“One of his jobs is to open the door,” she said.

A stray Sophy had picked up on one of her excursions, Fenwick had been an apprentice pickpocket. Once scrubbed of layers of accumulated street grime, his exterior had proved surprisingly angelic-looking. He was a great success with the ladies. He …

That was when Leonie remembered. Sophy had found Fenwick on the day she’d gone to spy on a business rival. To get into Mrs. Downes’s shop, Sophy had disguised herself as Lady Gladys Fairfax. Or what she imagined Lady Gladys looked like, given Lady Clara’s description and Sophy’s lurid powers of invention.

But Leonie hadn’t time to think further about Lady Gladys. Fenwick had opened the door, Lord Lisburne carried Leonie in, and all the shopgirls promptly went to pieces.

There were cries of “Madame!” and little shrieks, and they ran out from behind counters and crowded about her and Lord Lisburne, then cried, “No, no, give her air!” and dashed off the other way, then came back again. They told one another to fetch water and doctors and smelling salts, and argued about it. Meanwhile, no one was paying attention to the customers, who might have walked away with half the shop, including the mannequins, while everybody else was having hysterics.

Luckily, Selina Jeffreys, their forewoman, hurried out into the showroom, sparing Leonie the need to discipline the troops through an aching head. Jeffreys briskly called them to order and directed Lord Lisburne through the door into the back of the shop. Thence Leonie directed him to her office.

He set her down in a chair. He found a footstool and, ignoring her assurance that she was capable of moving her own foot, knelt, and gently lifted the injured limb onto it. The touch of his hands traveled like a magnetic current up her leg and spread everywhere, including parts some women didn’t even expose to themselves.

“I believe a restorative is in order,” he said as he rose.

He looked perfectly cool. She needed an ice bath.

“Have you any objections to brandy?” she said.

“I meant for you,” he said. “You’re looking peakish.”

“I made a cake of myself in front of London’s latest craze in poets,” she said. “I tripped twice in the same room, and everybody will say I was drunk. The second time, I tripped so clumsily that I turned my ankle. The Marquess of Lisburne has been carrying me about St. James’s, to the entertainment of the multitudes and the mental derangement of my employees. I ache at top and bottom, and I’m in a sweat despite not having done anything but let myself be carried. Of course I look peakish. And I’m cross besides, or I should have said thank you before launching into the complaints.”

“No thanks required, I assure you. It was the most fun I’ve had since Swanton and I came back to London.” He pulled off his gloves. “Where do you keep the brandy?”

She told him. He poured out a drink for her and a drink for him. Then he walked about the office as though he owned the place. Nothing odd in that. Aristocrats always owned the place, whether, technically, they did or didn’t, since they owned England.

But then he started touching her things.

Lisburne was fascinated.

Along one wall, ledgers stood perfectly straight and exactly aligned on three gleaming shelves. Likewise polished to within an inch of its life, the desk held, in addition to an inkstand, a tray of pencils, all sharpened to lethal points. On the other walls, French fashion prints and a few Parisian scenes hung precisely straight and equidistant from one another. Whatever else the office contained must be secreted in the firmly closed drawers and cupboards.

He tipped his head to read the spines of the ledgers, then pulled one out to look at the front. He flipped through the pages. Scrupulously ruled columns held concise descriptions of transactions. Alongside them marched, in the same rigorous order, columns of numbers.

“Not a blot anywhere,” he said. “Do you do this? How do you write all these numbers and such and never blot?”

“My lord, that is private financial information.” The faintly accented voice climbed a degree in pitch.

“Your secrets couldn’t be safer,” he said. “It’s all hieroglyphs to me. I could read it for days and come away none the wiser. No, that’s not quite true. I do know what the red ink signifies. My agent has pointed it out often enough. That is to say, he did, until I left such matters to Uttridge, my secretary. He warns me when I’m stumbling into red ink territory.”

“Your secretary manages your funds?” she said, her horror plainly audible. “You don’t look at the books at all?”

What entertaining handwriting she had! So precise and orderly yet purely feminine.

“The trouble with looking into the books is, it throws a fellow’s inadequacies in his face,” he said, adroitly sidestepping the boring truth. “I note very little in the way of red here, Miss Noirot. And do you do all this yourself, without any Uttridges or agents or such? Simply write down every accursed item and what it costs, and what somebody pays and what the total is and somehow make everything come out right at the end?”

“That’s my job,” she said. “The Duchess of Clevedon specializes in designing clothes. Lady Longmore is in charge of keeping Maison Noirot in the public eye. I manage the business.”

“You keep track of the money, you mean.”

“That’s part of it. I hire and dismiss the seamstresses, attend to their various crises and hysterias, pay everybody’s wages, and oversee all purchasing.”

He closed the book and looked at her for a time. It was a great deal to take in. Her extraordinary face, for one thing. The immense blue eyes and soft mouth and uncompromising chin.

The chin went with the columns of neat numbers and no blots.

The dress belonged to some fairyland.

White ruffles and lace cascading to her waist like ocean foam. Below the lace swelled sleeves as plump as bed pillows. From her dainty waist a skirt billowed: white embroidered with what seemed like thousands of tiny blue flowers. It was deliciously, madly feminine and it made a man want to rumple her, just to hear the rustling.

Well, not only for that reason.

What a treat to carry all that up St. James’s Street!

He looked at the face and the dress and thought about the neat numbers in their precisely ruled columns.

He put the ledger back.

She made a little sound.

“Are you all right?” he said. “Your foot is paining you? More brandy?”

“No, no, thank you,” she said. “My lord, I must detain you no longer. You’ve been so kind, so chivalrous.”

“It was my pleasure, I assure you.” He moved on to inspect her desk. “I had expected another dull afternoon of listening to Swanton being emotional.”

He picked up one of the alarmingly sharp pencils and stuck it into the end of his index finger. It made a tiny indentation. Probably not lethal, unless one stabbed ferociously, which he felt certain she was capable of doing. He examined her meticulously sharpened pens. As he put each object back, he was aware of her breathing erratically, in little huffs.

“Are you feeling overwarm, Miss Noirot?” he said. “Shall I open a window? Or will that only let in more of the day’s heat?”

She made a small strangled sound and said, “If you must pry, my lord—and I realize that noblemen must do as they please—can you not at least put my belongings back in the same order in which you found them?”

He stepped back from the desk and folded his hands behind his back. Not because he was abashed but because he was so sorely tempted to disarrange everything, including, most especially, her.

He looked down at the pencil and the pen, then at the ledgers once more. “Er, no. That is, I could try, but it mightn’t turn out as we hope. That’s the reason Uttridge intervenes, you see. I grow bored very quickly, and things go awry.” That wasn’t entirely untrue. Once he’d fully mastered a thing, he grew bored.

“Your dress is immaculate,” she said.

He glanced down at himself. “Odd, isn’t it? Don’t know how I do it. Well, there’s Polcaire, of course, my valet. Couldn’t do it without him.”

He contemplated his waistcoat for a moment. It was one of his favorites, and he was fairly sure he looked well in it. Some perspicacious genie must have whispered in his ear this day.

No, that was Polcaire.

Polcaire: But milord cannot wear the maroon waistcoat to this occasion.

Lisburne: Swanton is the occasion, which means all the girls will look at him. No one cares what I look like.

Polcaire: One never knows whom one will meet, milord.

Which proved that Polcaire was not only a genius among valets, but an oracle, too.

Lisburne looked up from his waistcoat at Miss Noirot.

The palest pink washed over her cheekbones like a little tide, coming and going. It was delicious.

“Shall I risk trying to get it all straight again?” he said. “My work may not be up to your standards—and I have a strong suspicion that you’re going to leap up from the chair, and …” He thought. “Stab me with the penknife?”

He was aware of her forcing herself to be calm. It wasn’t easy to discern. Her face ought to be in a dictionary, under inscrutable. Though she was a redhead, her complexion was strangely parsimonious about blushing. Still, whatever other faults he had, he wasn’t unobservant, especially of women. In her case, he was paying hawklike attention. The way she relaxed her pose wasn’t unconscious at all. He watched her arrange her features and bring her shoulders down.

“The thought crossed my mind,” she said. “But corpses are the very devil to get rid of, especially aristocratic ones. People notice when noblemen disappear.”

The door having been left partly open, he became aware of the approaching footsteps an instant after he saw her posture grow more alert.

Following a quick tap and Miss Noirot’s “Entrez,” one of the young females who’d thronged the showroom entered.

“Oh, madame, I am so sorry to interrupt you,” the girl said, or at least, that was what he made of her excessively mangled French, before she gave up on a bad job and went on in English, “But it’s Lady Clara Fairfax and … another lady.”

“Another lady?”

Miss Noirot’s face lit, and she bounded up from the chair, momentarily forgetting the injured ankle. She winced and swore softly in French, but her eyes sparkled and her face glowed. “Send them up to the consulting room, and bring them refreshments. I’ll be there in a moment.”