The Warfords were not at home to visitors on Tuesdays. That was why he’d called today rather than yesterday or tomorrow. On Tuesday he need not make his way through the scrum of Clara’s beaux, the infatuated puppies who swarmed about her at social events. Whenever he approached, he was disagreeably aware of casting a pall over the activities, whatever they were: fellows composing odes to her eyes and such, he supposed. Squabbling over who had which dance. And competing, no doubt, in point of fashion—which was amusing, since Clara didn’t care about fashion. She could not tell one lapel from another, let alone evaluate the quality of a waistcoat.
Still, he might have mistaken the day. He had drunk more than agreed with him last night, and his head still ached. Perhaps it would be better to come back on the correct day. Maybe the damned sun wouldn’t be shining so brightly then.
After confirming that this was indeed Tuesday, Timms apologetically led Clevedon to the small drawing room to wait while he sent a footman to inform Lady Clara of his grace’s arrival.
Unaccustomed to be made to wait when he called anywhere, least of all at Warford House, Clevedon grew restive.
It was exceedingly odd, Clara being engaged on a Tuesday afternoon. He was sure he’d told her—on Saturday, wasn’t it?—he’d take her for a drive today.
He needed to settle this marriage business today. Already a week had passed since he’d decided to put his life in order and make his formal offer. After that, they’d put all in train for a wedding at the earliest opportunity.
The trip to the dressmaker’s had thrown him off balance. Seeing Noirot again . . . and the child . . .
He’d been unable to collect his thoughts, let alone remember what he’d meant to say to Clara. The time hadn’t felt . . . right. He and Clara needed to get used to each other again, he’d told himself. Hadn’t Longmore said so?
But now it seemed they’d have to get used to each other after they were married. Now a formal—and short—engagement seemed the best way to put an end to speculation and gossip.
He’d heard rumors of a mad tale that had traveled from Paris, and would, he knew, reach Warford House before long. Last week he’d confided in Clara—to a point. He knew she was too sensible a girl to fret over idle gossip. In her letters, hadn’t she ridiculed one after another piece of scandal making the London rounds? Her mother, though, was another matter altogether.
When Lady Warford heard the rumors, she’d throw one of her fits. She’d say nothing to Clevedon directly. Instead, she’d harass her family, carrying on about the shame of Clara’s being ignored in favor of a dressmaker, a milliner, a common shopkeeper! She’d grow more and more hysterical until one of the men took Clevedon to task.
In Paris, only last month, he’d borne one awkward visit from Longmore—instigated, no doubt, by Lady Warford. Clevedon doubted his friend was any more eager than he to repeat the experience.
He had nothing to feel anxious or guilty about, he told himself. He’d done nothing improper since he’d returned to London. Before that didn’t count.
Dreams, however torrid, were nothing to feel in the least uneasy about. Fantasies were nothing more than that. Men had fantasies regarding women, all sorts of women, suitable and unsuitable. They had them all the time, waking and sleeping.
As to the discontent: That would stop after he was married.
But his mind, not shy in the least, shied away from contemplating his wedding night.
Where the devil was the footman? Why hadn’t Timms gone himself? What on earth was Clara about? With whom was she engaged on a Tuesday? Had he not told her he would come? He was sure he had . . . but his mind strayed from time to time—and how could he recollect now, with this vile headache?
He realized he was pacing. He stopped, and told himself he was out of sorts. This was not a suitable humor for a casual call, let alone a momentous one.
She had something else to do. He must have forgotten to tell her about driving today. Or she’d forgotten.
He’d see her tomorrow night at Almack’s. When he did, he’d make an appointment to speak to her.
No, he ought to speak to her father first. That was the proper way to go about it. He’d return another day, when Lord Warford was at home. On Tuesdays his lordship customarily visited one of his charities.
Clevedon left the drawing room. Having run tame in this house since boyhood, he knew every inch of it. Best to slip out quietly, before he ran into other family members.
He strode to the antechamber nearby, where he knew he’d find his hat, gloves, and walking stick.
He entered, and his heart began to beat very hard.
It happened before he was fully conscious of what had set it going.
A bonnet. An absurd conglomeration of ribbons and flowers and feathers, it sat on the table where the servants customarily put visitors’ hats and such.
He stared at it for a moment, then started for the door.
But there was something . . . in the air.
He paused at the door. Then he turned back and walked to the bonnet. He picked it up, and brought it close to his face. The scent, the familiar, tormenting scent swam about him, as light and as inescapable as a gossamer net: the faint scent of jasmine, mingled with the scent of her hair and her skin.
Noirot.
He set the bonnet down.
He stepped out into the corridor.
A maid passed, carrying a heap of clothing.
He started in the direction she’d come from.
He heard an anguished cry.
Clara.
He ran toward the sound.
He pulled open the door to the music room. Bright sunlight burst upon him, blinding him for a moment and making lightning bolts in his head.
“Clara, are you—”
“Clevedon! What on earth—”
But Clara was gaping at him, astonished, and his gaze shot to the other woman.
Noirot stood, eyes wide and mouth slightly parted. She closed it promptly, and her face closed down into her playing-cards look.
“What are you about?” he said. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“Look at her,” Clara cried. “That’s my favorite dress—the one I was wearing when Lord Herringstone composed an ode to my eyes.”
Look at her. At Noirot. Look at her.
He looked, his gaze sliding down from the slightly disordered coiffure, loose strands of dark, silken hair clinging to her neck . . . down over her dark, brilliant eyes . . . down over her dangerous mouth while he remembered the taste of her, the feel of her mouth against his . . . down over the firm bosom while he remembered the velvet of her skin under his hand and against his mouth . . . and down at last to the dress she was holding.
Clara crossed to her and snatched the dress away.
“She says we must give it away,” Lady Clara said. “She objects to everything. Nothing is right—even this, my favorite.”
“The dress is jade green,” Noirot said. “Your eyes are blue and very beautiful, and that’s what prompted Lord Herringstone to compose an ode. Had you been wearing a more suitable color, you would have inspired him to compose an epic. Very few women can wear this color successfully. You may not wear very many shades of green. I should recommend against it—”
“That woman—Lady Renfrew—you made her a beautiful dress, exactly this color.”
“It was not exactly this color,” Noirot said. “It was an entirely different shade of green—and one that would suit you no better. It would seem that your ladyship cannot distinguish hues. Whether it was your governess or your painting master, whoever failed to train your eye ought to be pilloried. You must give me the dress, my lady.”
“Oh, you are horrible, cruel! You’ve taken all my favorite things!”
Noirot pulled the dress away from her and threw it on the floor and kicked it aside.
/>
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 ti
me. 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.