She could still feel his hands at her back and his warm breath on her neck. She could still hear his voice, so low and husky, at her ear.
Her willpower had oozed away.
She’d actually felt her brain melting, and her muscles going the same way, and she had very nearly leaned back into his hands and let him do whatever he wanted to her.
He hadn’t, apparently, wanted to do anything, luckily for her.
Luckily, too, she was done with him. He’d served his purpose, and she hadn’t done anything catastrophic, and now all she had to do was get home and pour herself a glass or four of brandy and tell her sisters what she’d learned.
When they reached the shop, she practically leapt from the curricle.
She turned to run into the shop when she remembered the boy. Good grief! How could she forget him?
She turned back. “Well, what are you waiting for? Come along, Fenwick.”
He eyed the shop warily, but he started to climb down.
“No, you don’t,” Longmore said.
The boy paused, looking from her to him.
“You’ll come along with me,” Longmore said. “I’ll see that you get fed and find a berth. There’s a fine pie shop over—”
“Absolutely not,” Sophy said. “I was the one who made the promise.”
“She did, yer highness,” Fenwick said.
“Would you trust her before you’d trust me?” Longmore said. “You know what that is?” He nodded toward Maison Noirot. “A dressmaker’s shop. All women.”
“Maybe I better stay with him, miss,” said Fenwick. “He’s bigger than you.”
“No, you won’t,” she said. “I found you first.” She strode toward the curricle. The boy drew back to the far corner of the seat.
“No offense, miss, but he saved me from being drug to the workhouse,” said Fenwick. “Not to mention he could squash me like a bug if he took it into his head.”
“I saved your life by pulling you out of that fight before one of them accidentally stepped on you,” Sophy said. “And if his lordship was meaning to squash you, he would have done it right after you tried to rob him. Now come along, and stop being ridiculous.”
She reached up to grab Fenwick’s arm. He shrank back.
“I don’t have time for this nonsense,” Longmore said. “Good day, Miss Noirot.”
Then she had to back away because he signaled the horses and they started eagerly.
He drove away. Hands clenched, she watched him go.
Longmore knew it wasn’t a good idea to leave her fuming on the pavement. It was a far worse idea, though, to let her harbor young felons. Who knew who the boy’s confederates were? Who knew how hardened in crime he was? Hardened or not, he could be intimidated by more calloused individuals, and unlock the shop’s back door to a gang of thieves and cutthroats.
After a moment, Fenwick spoke. “I thought her name was Gladys.”
“She has a hundred names, as suits her convenience,” Longmore said. “Don’t try to keep track of them. You’ll only hurt your head.”
He heard a high-pitched cry.
He looked in that direction. Sophy/Gladys was trotting alongside the vehicle. “You give that boy back!” she cried.
“Go home!” he shouted.
She let out an unearthly shriek. Then she swayed and sank into a heap on the pavement.
Instantly, people hurried to the spot.
Longmore stopped the carriage, threw the reins to Fenwick, and thrust through the rapidly gathering crowd. “Get out of the way, confound you! Are you trying to trample her?”
He scooped her up. She lay completely limp in his arms.
He told himself not to panic. Women always fainted. They were used to it. It hardly ever killed them.
Yet he knew she worked long hours, and she’d been in a fight only a short time ago—a fight that had left him winded. She’d thrown herself into the fray and she’d done splendidly, demonstrating unusually quick thinking, especially for a female.
His conscience smote him. As smitings go, it wasn’t much, his conscience being in poor fighting condition.
“Damn me, damn me, damn me,” he muttered.
He carried her down St. James’s Street, a small parade following, and turned into Bennet Street. At that point he looked over his shoulder at the gawkers. “Be off,” he said.
The parade melted away.
He carried her into the narrow court and kicked the private door.
One minute.
All Sophy had needed was one more minute, and she would have been able to get Fenwick away. As soon as she shrieked, people got interested. The onlookers would have taken her side because she’d play the helpless mother whose child had been torn from her. And she could make herself so piteous that the boy would have felt sorry for her and come, she knew.
But Longmore, curse him, hadn’t given her the minute, or even an instant to think. He’d scooped her up as easily as if she’d been a packet of ribbons.
And now she was crushed against his big, hard, warm torso, one muscled arm under her knees, the other bracing her back.
She opened her eyes. “You can put me down now.”
She felt him tense. Then a narrowed black gaze met hers. “How hard?” he said.
He didn’t let go of her.
“You’re not taking that boy,” she said. “I found him. You would have taken him to the police.”
“I should have done,” he said. “He’s no use minding horses, what with being wanted by the authorities. I’ll wager we’ll find handbills seeking his capture.”
His body was very warm and her muscles were softening and her body wanted to melt itself all over his big, hard one. “Put me down or I’ll scream,” she said.
“That’s playing dirty,” he said.
“That’s the way I play,” she said.
He let her down, but not hard and not quickly. He made a show of taking excessive care, easing his grip only a bit at a time, so that she slid down slowly against his body, traversing a large expanse of wool and linen and silk, all imbued with the dizzying scene of male, before her feet quite touched the ground.
She’d known he was dangerous. He had that reputation.
She’d assumed he was dangerous merely in the obvious way: big and wild and reckless.
This wasn’t merely. This was deadly.
“I recommend you save yourself a great deal of bother and stop fighting me,” she said. “I want that boy, and I will stop at nothing.”
She watched while he took this in and mulled it over, his dark gaze growing distant.
After a moment, he said, “Do you know, I don’t find that hard to believe.”
“We need a boy for the shop,” she said.
“You told me you don’t need them. You said so a moment before he crashed into our lives.”
“We don’t need bullies,” she said patiently. “But we do need a lad to run errands and carry messages and packages. He’s not too young or too old to train. He’s quick and clever and well-looking. With a bath—”
“And de-lousing—”
“And proper clothes and a little instruction, he’ll be perfect.”
Longmore grimaced with what she had no doubt was the pain of cogitation.
She waited, aware of sweat trickling between her breasts. If she hadn’t been a Noirot, she would have clenched her hands and gritted her teeth to keep herself from doing something fatally stupid.
Given that she was a Noirot, it was amazing that she could keep her mind on the boy at all.
But thanks to Cousin Emma, Sophy and her sisters were made of sterner stuff than many of their kind. She stood and waited, and wondered why the devil no one came to the door. She could use some sisterly reinforcement about now.
“Very well,” he said gruffly.
His voice had dropped a full octave, and the sound made her head thick.
“I’ll admit it’s not a completely lunatic idea,” he said. “But you’d better let m
e break it to him. I’ll feed him first and soften him up. Then I’ll bring him back.”
“This had better not be a trick,” she said.
He gave her an exasperated look.
“What?” she said.
“Trickery is your department, Miss Noirot,” he said. “Mine is knocking people about. But I’m flattered that you imagine I’m clever enough to trick you.”
He gave a short laugh and left.
“Tell my sisters I’m back,” Sophy said, moving quickly past Mary, the maidservant who’d finally opened the door.
She hurried up the stairs and on to her room. She needed to wash and change. She needed to wash in cold water.
She tore off the ugly cloak and the ugly dress and then had a struggle with the corset strings. The struggle reminded her of that endless, tormenting time while Longmore had been working on her dress hooks.
She didn’t need reminders.
She stomped to the chimneypiece and pulled the bell cord.
She moved away and filled a bowl with water. She peeled off the mole and scrubbed her face.
She hadn’t time to wash her hair. That was a time consuming project. But she needed to get out of these clothes. Where the devil was Mary?
The door flew open. It wasn’t Mary but Marcelline.
“My dear, are you all right?”
“No. Undo me, will you? I hate these clothes. They’re nothing but trouble. When I get them off, I want them to go straight into the fire.”
“Sophy.”
“I need to get out of this corset,” Sophy said. “I’ve three extra layers underneath and I think I’m going to suffocate.”
“Sophy.”
“I’ll talk when I get these blasted clothes off,” Sophy said.
Marcelline went quickly to work on the corset. A moment later, Sophy flung it to the floor.
“I take it that matters didn’t go well,” Marcelline said.
“Matters went beautifully,” Sophy said.
She told herself not to be a nitwit. Longmore didn’t matter. He was a means to an end. What mattered was the shop.
She started pulling off her clothes. While she removed layer after layer with Marcelline’s help, she told her sister how splendidly Longmore had been himself: the thickheaded, overbearing aristocrat. She explained how, thanks to him, she’d had a good look at the pattern as well as the silk Lady Warford had selected. She told Marcelline about Dowdy’s refurbishment and the French modiste.
“That’s not good,” Marcelline said.
“It isn’t what I’d hoped for, but it could be worse,” Sophy said. “Our furnishings are still superior to Dowdy’s. All we need to do is make them even more beautiful and exciting. Maison Noirot needs to look different. It needs to look ten steps ahead of Dowdy’s. People don’t notice subtle differences.”
That would take money they didn’t have. But Leonie would think of something. She had to. Sophy couldn’t think of everything.
“And the patterns?” Marcelline said. “Lady Warford’s dress?”
“We’d give it to the girls at the Milliners’ Society to pick apart and remake,” Sophy said. “Of course, Lady Warford won’t see its flaws.”
“How can she stand next to her daughter and not see the difference?”
“She’s the way Lady Clara was before we took her in hand,” Sophy said. “Her eye is untrained. And at the moment, I don’t see a way to train her. I’m thinking I need to give my attention to Lady Clara’s problem first. Right now, she’s all that stands between us and failure. If she continues to shop with us, we have a prayer. If she marries Adderley, she can’t shop with us.”
Marcelline paced for a few minutes.
“Leonie would say we need to set priorities,” Sophy said. “We’ve three problems, and rating them from simplest to hardest, I’d put Lady Warford as the hardest nut to crack, Lady Clara’s difficulty as next hardest, and Dowdy’s as the most manageable. Do you agree?”
Marcelline nodded, still pacing.
“We know what to do about Dowdy’s—at least for the moment,” Sophy said. “So I’m tackling Lady Clara next.”
Marcelline paused in her pacing. “It would help to know what’s going on in her head.”
Lady Clara had come by on Wednesday, to order another riding dress and two more hats, but Sophy had been busy with Lady Renfrew, one of their earliest and most loyal customers of rank.
“Can we bring her in for a fitting tomorrow?” Sophy said. “If I can get her to myself, I’ll get her to talk.”
“We can send a seamstress with a message,” Marcelline said. “But I hate to remind anybody at Warford House that she’s patronizing her mama’s enemies.”
“We can ask Lord Longmore to take the message,” Sophy said. “He’s supposed to come back in an hour or so.”
Marcelline’s eyebrows went up.
Sophy told her sister about Fenwick, and about Longmore’s attempt to make off with him.
“How sweet of him!” Marcelline said with a laugh “He’s trying to protect you from the dangerous criminal. If only he knew.”
Fenwick was a little innocent, compared to them. Not that they’d ever picked pockets. But there wasn’t a game or a trick of the streets they didn’t know. In Paris, they’d had to deal with every sort of knave and villain, from minor to major. For a time, during the cholera, Paris had been almost completely lawless. But they’d survived.
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Sophy said. “I was too furious with his highhandedness. So angry that for a moment I couldn’t even think what to do. But it was only for a moment. Then I made a scene, and fainted. Unfortunately, I had to faint on the pavement, which is vile.”
Marcelline smiled. “I can picture it. But couldn’t you have thought of a less disgusting measure?”
“Maybe, but I hadn’t time. I was afraid he’d get away. He drives like a drunken charioteer, headlong, and never mind what might be in the way.”
Marcelline kicked to one side the heap of ugly clothing on the floor. “I agree we’d better burn them. And I’ll send Mary to run you a proper bath.” She eyed Sophy’s stringy tresses. “We ought to wash that mess out of your hair.”
“That will have to wait until tonight,” Sophy said. “I’ve left you and Leonie on your own all day, and I have a customer expecting to see me this afternoon. I’ll pin it up tight and put on a pretty lace cap, and no one will notice.”
“You’re not going out tonight?”
“There’s only Lord Londonderry’s party, and no one there will be wearing our dresses.”
“Good,” Marcelline said. “You could use a proper night’s sleep.”
What Sophy could use was some big hands on her body, leading her into temptation.
One of these days, she promised herself. But they wouldn’t be Longmore’s hands. Nothing but horrible consequences there.
She told herself she had enough difficult matters to deal with, and she ought to deal with the ones that weren’t completely impossible.
All she needed to know about Longmore was whether he’d bring the boy back or force her to take drastic measures.
She cheered herself up by devising the measures.
More than two hours after making off with Fenwick, Longmore returned to the rear entrance of the dressmakers’ shop. He told the maidservant Mary who answered the door to tell Sophy Noirot that he’d brought back her “young ruffian.”
The maid led them into a room on the ground floor. It was more Spartan in appearance than the parlor upstairs, being reserved, the numerous cupboards and drawers told him, for more commercial uses.
Though this wasn’t a room customers would enter, it was as scrupulously clean as every other part of the shop he’d seen.
Fenwick kept looking the floor as though he’d never seen one before.
He’d probably never seen a clean one before.
They had only a few minutes to wonder what was in the cupboards and drawers before Sophy appeared.
&nbs
p; She’d completely shed her Lady Gladys persona.
Fenwick didn’t recognize her at all. For a long time he stood uncharacteristically silent, staring at her.
“Yes, it’s the same lady,” Longmore said impatiently. “As I mentioned, she has a hundred names, and becomes a hundred different people. And this,” he told her, “is your dear Fenwick.”
“What did you do to him?” she said.
“We removed some layers of dirt,” he said.
“It looks as though you removed some layers of skin as well,” she said.
Fenwick found his tongue. “His worship made me have a baff,” he said. “I told him I had one last week. I fink they rubbed my face off.”
“Bath,” Longmore said. “Not baff. Think, not fink. You put your tongue between your teeth, as I showed you.”
“Think,” Fenwick said with exaggerated care.
“My head got tired, translating from whatever language it is he speaks,” Longmore told her.
“I had pie,” Fenwick said. “A meat pie big as my head.” He gestured with his hands. “We went to some shop and he found me these fings.”
Longmore looked at him.
The boy put his tongue between his teeth. “Things.”
“We called on a dealer in readymade clothing near the baths,” Longmore said. “I know you mean to stitch him into wildly gorgeous livery, but it made no sense to have him scrubbed clean, only to put him back into those—what he was wearing.”
She looked up at him. Her eyes wore a softer expression than usual.
Was that approval? Good gad.
He’d inched forward another step.
“Fenwick and I talked the matter over at length,” he said. “We concluded that he was likely to be happier in your service than anywhere else I could think to place him. He’ll have a roof over his head, regular meals, unusually fine clothing, and a place to sleep where he’s unlikely to be robbed or assaulted or dragged off to jail or the workhouse.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” she said.
“Perhaps not, but you would have used more adjectives,” Longmore said. “In any event, I couldn’t ascertain his real name or where he came from or who he belongs to, if anybody. It’s more than possible he truly doesn’t know.”
London’s streets teemed with abandoned children who weren’t sure what parents were, let alone whether they had any.