“I’ll admit I was amazed that his and Mr. Meffat’s Almack’s vouchers weren’t withdrawn.”
Lisburne raised his eyebrows.
“After their friend Lord Adderley’s ghastly business last month with the French widow,” she said. “Or whatever she was. I must say that something about her seemed not quite right.” She looked up at him. “But I forget. You were not in London then.”
“When was this?”
“A very short time before Lord Longmore married the dressmaker,” she said. “That is to say, Miss Noirot. I’ll admit that came as a shock. We’d all assumed something would come of the French widow. But she disappeared, and Lord Longmore recovered from his infatuation with astonishing speed. But I can’t think why my mind wandered to that shocking episode. I only meant to say that some expected Lord Adderley’s friends to be tainted by association. That seems to me not altogether fair. One ought not to judge a gentleman’s friends by his behavior.”
Lisburne didn’t ask whether she applied the same rule to women. He could guess the answer. In any case, it was the other topic that awoke his curiosity. She didn’t need much prodding to explain the “shocking episode.”
The story didn’t enlighten Lisburne much about Theaker and Meffat, and everything else she said only demonstrated her mastery of the oblique insult. On the other hand, the tale of the mysterious French lady was most interesting.
Wednesday, while not the worst day in Maison Noirot’s history, would not qualify as one of Leonie’s favorites. Only a handful of customers had entered the shop and they didn’t come to buy anything. They fingered the hats and shawls, sneered at the mannequins, stage whispered insolent remarks, and stared the shopgirls out of countenance. Luckily, most of the girls, like Selina, had developed tough hides. Even so, tears were shed in the workroom. The girls feared for their futures.
Thursday proved marginally better. One of the shop’s first important clients, Mrs. Sharp, remained loyal because she felt she had an image to uphold as a leader of fashion, at least among her set. While this group did not include the cream of the beau monde, it did comprise some of London’s wealthiest families.
Her daughter Chloe had somehow snared one of London’s most elusive bachelors. Since she’d soon become a countess, nothing but the best would do for bride clothes. Not that anything less would do, in any event. After all, the eldest Sharp daughter had recently married a prince, and her dress and those of her attendants had been the talk of London. Several ladies’ magazines had described her wardrobe at length, thanks to Sophy.
“I told Mr. Sharp, it’s either Maison Noirot or Paris,” Mrs. Sharp said. “He drew the line at Paris, as I knew he would. He doesn’t realize, as I do, that even Victorine cannot produce work superior to yours.”
For all that she might disparage Paris’s foremost modiste, Mrs. Sharp was furtive about Maison Noirot. She brought her daughter early in the day, while most of the fashionable world was still abed, and she asked Leonie to be discreet. Her princely son-in-law’s family compensated for their lack of wealth with an excess of morality. Mrs. Sharp had no desire to hear her in-laws preach at her.
Keeping quiet about a large, costly order was not a good way to improve business prospects. Sophy would have been wild.
Meanwhile, Fenwick had been gone for most of the past two days. When he did turn up, shortly after Leonie closed the shop on Thursday night, his report was short: “Nuffin’ yet. Better try Covent Garden.”
He consumed two meat pies only at Leonie’s insistence. He did this while protesting that he’d be too stuffed to eat when he got to Jack’s Coffee House.
“You’re not to eat anything in that place,” Leonie said. “It’s filthy.”
The ancient coffee house in Covent Garden was as disgustingly unclean as it was disreputable. She’d rather he didn’t go there, but she knew he’d promise not to and do it anyway. She told herself he’d survived London for this long, a feat not many unwanted children achieved, and one couldn’t lock him up. She reminded herself that she’d survived the streets of Paris at much the same age.
“What do you expect to find there?” she said.
“Dunno,” he said. “Lodgings thereabouts? I know a cove as goes there. He might know fings. Things.”
“No word of the hackney driver, then,” she said. “Charlie Judd.”
Since they had the hackney coach’s number, discovering the driver’s name hadn’t been difficult. Finding him was another matter. A hackney coachman had to accept anybody who wanted to hire him, at any time, no matter how many hours he’d already worked, and he might drive a fare ten miles into the country.
The boy shook his head. “He’ll turn up, miss.”
But when? For all the confidence she’d shown Lisburne, Leonie had known the search might take a great deal of time. They hadn’t much left. In August, most of Fashionable Society left London for their country estates. July ended in eight days.
August was always a troublesome month financially. This year, it could be a fatal one, though Mrs. Sharp’s ambitions and Mr. Sharp’s money might allow the shop to scrape by.
Leonie was on her way to her office, to review expenses and decide where she might cut and which bills to pay first, when she heard the peremptory knock at the back door. Fenwick, who was on his way out, must have opened it, because she heard him talking, and a familiar voice answering.
Her heart sped up. She wanted to run to the door. She made herself pause in the corridor outside her office, don her politely amiable expression, and wait with what looked on the outside like absolute calm.
She watched Fenwick go out and Lisburne close and bolt the door after him.
Then he turned to her, and there was his perfectly sculpted face and the gold glimmering in his hair and in his green eyes, and the wicked mouth that had touched every inch of her skin, including the secret parts. Her heart turned over and over.
“I still don’t understand a word he says,” he said. “I barely recognized him. He’s grown remarkably grubby.”
“He can hardly prowl about the underworld in lavender and gold livery,” she said. “If he looks too pretty, somebody will steal him.”
“Tell me something,” he said. “When Sophy found him, was she pretending to be a French widow, or somebody else?”
Leonie was confused and happy and afraid all at the same time but she didn’t blink. Even deranged by love, she remained a Noirot and a DeLucey. She knew how to play cards.
“I find it best not to inquire too closely into Sophy’s doings,” she said. “I hope you have some useful news for us.”
He hadn’t come in the dead of night, as he’d promised. She hadn’t seen him since Tuesday afternoon. Not that she’d expected to. Naturally he’d make promises he wouldn’t keep. A man who looked and sounded and made love the way he did could play by his own rules.
“Lady Alda believes there was something ‘not quite right’ about Longmore’s French widow,” he said. “After great efforts of cogitation—not easy while Lady Alda is shooting poison darts everywhere, in between trying to captivate and bewitch the unwary—a situation requiring a man to keep his wits about him.” He frowned. “A task I find strangely difficult lately. I wonder why that is. Where was I?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t strike me as useful news.” She walked into her office.
He followed. He closed the door.
She went to her desk and began putting papers in order. Bills. Two letters canceling orders.
“Now I remember,” he said. “After a great labor of thinking, I brought forth an idea. Lady Longmore can’t come back to London yet because some people might confuse her with Longmore’s French widow and the great love affair from which he recovered with astounding rapidity.”
“He’s a man,” Leonie said. “What was it Byron said about men versus wo
men in love?”
“Byron? I thought you weren’t literary.”
“We read Don Juan because it was reputed to be naughty,” she said.
“ ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,’ ” he quoted. “ ‘’Tis woman’s whole existence.’ Swanton worships Don Juan. And Beppo. He dotes on Tom Moore, too. And you have successfully diverted me from my objective.” His voice deepened. “Come here.”
“Certainly not,” she said. “I need to add two and two and make it come out ten or twenty. I need to see whether one commission can be made to keep us solvent for all of August, and perhaps into September. I need—”
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
At that moment, all sense flew out of her brain and all she needed was him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. She hadn’t time for this, for being ridiculous and irresponsible.
“It’s been an age,” he said. “The balls and assemblies don’t end until dawn, and I know the seamstresses arrive at nine o’clock in the morning and the shop must open at ten, even though nobody comes at that inhuman hour. I knew I mustn’t disturb your rest.”
He didn’t have to be here to do that.
“It’s been scarcely more than two days since you were last here.” She took out her pocket watch. “I make it to be about fifty-four hours.”
“Can you not be more precise?” he said. “I love it when you’re precise.”
Her heart beat too fast. Love. But not love you. It was only a carelessly used word and it meant only that she amused him. Something she’d known from the beginning.
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence.
Not hers. She had a life, a full, busy life. The life she’d had before he sauntered into it.
“Furthermore, customers do come at what your great ladies deem the crack of dawn,” she said crisply. “They are not great ladies, but they pay their bills promptly. So bourgeois of them, I know, but—”
“I considered standing in the street beneath your window, and howling like a dog at the moon, the unreachable moon,” he said. “But I didn’t like to spoil your sleep. And perhaps people would throw shoes at me, or empty their chamber pots on my head. And I wasn’t sure which was your bedroom window. We never reached it, you may recall.”
She went hot all over.
“And so I went quietly home,” he continued, “to my bed, and imagined you in your bed, your face a little flushed. Perhaps you’d thrown off the bedclothes, because the night was warm. Or perhaps you thought of me, and that made you overwarm. I pretended you thought of me, the way I was thinking of you . . .”
He trailed off, and she was amazed to see color climb his neck to his jaw and as far as his cheekbones. “Devil take him! That cousin of mine is contagious. What am I saying?”
“Poetry,” she said. “Of a sort. Of the wooing sort.”
As though he hadn’t already wooed her and won with practically no effort at all. She’d been infatuated from the moment she’d looked away from the painting and up at him at the British Institution. From infatuation to falling in love . . . how absurdly easy it was, even for a sensible girl who kept her feet on the ground.
Or perhaps it was easy for her because she wasn’t used to it.
Or maybe it was the sandwiches.
“I feared so,” he said. “Is it working?”
“Not at all,” she said. She turned her back to him and took up a bill and stared at it though the words and numbers might as well have been written in Greek or Arabic or Chinese.
She heard him cross the room. She didn’t look up. She didn’t need to. She could feel him behind her. The air became fraught—with the scent of a man and the tension between them or whatever it was he did to make the air seem to vibrate like harp strings.
“What have you got there?” he said softly. “A mercer’s bill?”
She made herself focus. “I shall have to speak to him. The quantities are odd, and I’m sure he’s raised his prices since last week. Nine shillings sixpence for lutestring?”
“How much lutestring?” his voice deepened another degree.
She could feel his breath at the back of her neck. It was all she could do not to shiver. She swallowed. “Fifty-six yards. This must be Sophy’s doing. She ever did—”
“Fifty-six yards of lutestring at nine and six per yard,” he said, much in the same tone he used when she was in his arms.
“Yes,” she said.
“What else?”
“What does it matter?”
“Read it to me,” he said.
She could feel his voice in the pit of her stomach. He wasn’t touching her, yet it seemed as though his hands were everywhere. His mouth, too.
“Ninety-eight ells of armoisin,” she said. “At eleven shillings ninepence per ell.”
“Per ell,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“Sixteen yards of fine velvet at fifteen shillings threepence per yard.”
“Mmm.” His cheek brushed hers. “Don’t stop.”
“One hundred twelve yards—”
“One hundred twelve. So much.” He kissed a sensitive place behind her ear.
She trembled.
“Don’t stop,” he said.
“One hundred twelve yards of black princetta at twelve shillings ninepence per yard.”
She went on, reading the bill, while he went on kissing her, murmuring in her ear, encouraging her. “More numbers,” he whispered. “More numbers.”
He kissed the side of her neck while he moved his hands to the front of her dress and cupped her breasts. She went on reading, though her knees were dissolving.
Three hundred fifty-six yards of green Persian, twenty-seven yards of mode, and on and on, though she could barely see straight, because of his hands, his hands, everywhere.
“Leonie, Leonie,” he murmured. “When you talk in numbers, you drive me mad.”
He slid his hands lower, and fabric rustled as he drew up her skirts, and her eyes were crossing as she tried to read. She ought to stop him but she didn’t want to. It was too wicked, and she wanted to find out where it would lead. She wasn’t sure she could stop, even if she had to, because she was melting in his hands and under the spell of his voice. She felt him lift her skirt and petticoat. Then he had his hands on her thighs, sliding over her drawers.
“Silk,” he said. “Silk drawers, you naughty girl.”
“White sarcenet, three shillings ninepence.”
He was kissing the back of her neck. She heard sounds. She knew what they were. Buttons being undone, the whisper of wool against muslin.
He slid his hand between her legs and she moaned. “Keep counting,” he said.
“Satin, nine shillings sixpence per yard. Genoa velvet, twenty-seven shillings sixpence per yard. Oh.”
He’d slid his fingers into the opening of her drawers. He was stroking her and she was shaking. Warmth flooded through her as though she swam in a pool, and hot mineral waters swirled about her.
“Mon Dieu!” A low, involuntary cry as pleasure raced through her and shot her straight up, into that place, that bursting joy.
He pushed inside her then and she braced herself on the desk. His cheek was against hers.
“Naughty, naughty girl.” His voice was rough, his breath warm against her neck. “I missed you. Wicked thoughts while I lay in my bed, wishing I were in your bed, in your arms. I thought of so many interesting things we could do, so much I wanted to teach you, and all I might learn about you, all the secrets of your skin and your mouth and . . .” He withdrew a degree and pushed in again. “And here. Inside you. I wanted to be inside you.”
And she wanted him there, inside her, though it was dangerous—perhaps because it was dangerous. She was who s
he was, and all the numbers in the world, lined up exactly in the proper columns and tallied correctly, couldn’t change that. She was the sensible one, yet she was a Noirot and a DeLucey, and they’d been sinners for centuries.
He took her here, at her desk, and she took him, too, shamelessly, gladly, almost laughing as the heat and urgency built and built. She laughed even when she groaned. She laughed at their half-stifled cries of pleasure. She laughed at the foolish whispered words between them and at the naughtiness of it all.
It was a great joke, and a great joy, and she was happy, and happier still, and happier again, until there was no farther to go, and everything became absolutely perfect for one, glorious moment.
She savored that moment for the time it lasted, and remembered it when it was over. And she knew she’d remember it forever, long after he was gone and he’d forgotten her.
Later
What Lisburne had meant . . .
. . . when he still had a functioning mind . . .
. . . was to woo her—or seduce her—and by degrees lead her to bed or at least to the chaise longue upstairs.
But there she’d been, at her desk, frowning over a bill and reciting quantities and prices in her brisk, businesslike voice. And his mind went dark, abandoning thinking to the other, very small brain, much lower down.
Then, after the sort of lovemaking more usually associated with courtesans and knowing country wenches—most certainly not recently initiated young women—she laughed.
There he was, still bent over her backside like a dog, trying to catch his breath and recover his reason, and she planted her elbows on the desk and her face in her hands and laughed.
And the sound caught at his heart and what was left of his brain and he laughed, too.
She turned and came up from the desk and took his face in her hands and kissed him. He felt the kiss to his toes and to the ends of his fingers and the roots and tips of his hair, as though he’d been struck by lightning.
Then she broke the kiss and said, “Come upstairs.”
Later