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Her dress was made of silk, in an odd, sandy color he would have thought bland had he seen the cloth in a shop. But it was trimmed with puffy red bows, and they seemed like flowers blooming in a desert. Then there was black lace, yards of it, dripping like a waterfall over her smooth shoulders and down the front, under a sash, down over her belly.
He made a twirling gesture with his finger. Obligingly she turned in a complete circle. She moved as effortlessly and gracefully as water, and the lace about her shoulders floated in the air with the movement.
When she finished the turn, though, she didn’t pause but walked on toward the carriage. He walked on with her.
“What is that dreadful color?” he said.
“Poussière,” she said.
“Dust,” he said. “I congratulate you, madame. You’ve made dust alluring.”
“It’s not an easy color to wear,” she said. “Especially for one of my complexion. True poussière would make me appear to be suffering from a liver disease. But this silk has a pink undertone, you see.”
“How can I make you understand?” he said. “I don’t see these things.”
“You do,” she said. “What you lack is the vocabulary. You said it’s alluring. That is the pink undertone, which flatters my complexion, and the magnificent blond lace, close to my face, is even more flattering as well as adding drama.”
“It’s black,” he said. “Noir, not blond.”
“Blond lace is a superior silk lace,” she said. “It doesn’t mean the color.”
This exchange took them to the carriage. He had braced himself for a continuation of last night’s battle, but she behaved as though they were old friends, which disarmed and bothered him at the same time. Too, he was so preoccupied with the nonsense of blond referring to every color under the sun that he almost forgot to look at her ankles.
But instinct saved him, and he came to his senses in the nick of time. As she went up the steps and took her seat, she gave him a fine view of some six inches of stockinged, elegantly curving limb, from the lower part of her calf down.
Last night came back in a dark surge of recollection, more feeling than thought, that sent heat pumping through him. He saw himself bending and grasping one slim ankle and bringing her foot onto his lap and sliding his gloved hand up her leg, up and up and up . . .
Later, he promised himself, and climbed into the carriage.
A short time later
“I hope you will do me the kindness of allowing me to present Madame Noirot, a London dressmaker of my acquaintance,” the Duke of Clevedon said to his hostess.
For a time, the noise about them continued. But about the instant the Comtesse de Chirac realized she hadn’t misunderstood the duke’s less-than-perfect French and that he had actually uttered the words London dressmaker in her presence and referring to the uninvited person beside him, the news was traveling the ballroom, and a silence spread out like ripples from the place where a large rock had landed in a small pond.
Madame de Chirac’s posture grew even tighter and stiffer—though that seemed anatomically impossible—and her chilly grey gaze hardened to steel. “I do not understand English humor,” she said. “Is this a joke?”
“By no means,” Clevedon said. “I bring you a curiosity, in the way that, once upon a time, the savants brought back remarkable objects from their travels in Egypt. I met this exotic creature the other night at the opera, and she was the talk of the promenade yesterday. I beg you will forgive me, and in the interests of scientific inquiry, overlook this so-great imposition upon your good nature. You see, madame, I feel like a naturalist who has discovered a new species of orchid, and who has carried it out of the hidden places of its native habitat and into the world, for other naturalists to observe.”
He glanced at Noirot, whose stormy eyes told him she was not amused. The tan and black she wore made her look like a tigress, and the bursts of red might have been her victims’ blood.
“Perhaps, on second thought, a flower is not the most apt analogy,” he added. “And all things considered, I might have done better to put her on a leash.”
The tigress slanted him a smile promising trouble later. Then she bowed her head to the countess and sank into a curtsey so graceful and beautiful—the lace wafting gently in the air, the butterfly bows fluttering, the fabric shimmering—that it took his breath away.
All about him, he heard people gasp. They were French, and couldn’t help but see: Here were grace and beauty and style combined in one unforgettable, tempestuous masterpiece.
The comtesse heard the onlookers’ reactions, too. She glanced about her. Everyone in the room was riveted on the tableau, all of them holding their breath. This scene would be talked about for days, her every word and gesture anatomized. It would be the most exciting thing that had ever happened at her annual ball. She knew this as well as Clevedon did.
The question was whether she would break tradition and allow excitement.
She paused, with the air of a judge about to deliver sentence.
The room was quite, quite still.
Then, “Jolie,” she said, precisely as though Clevedon had presented an orchid. With a condescending little nod, and the slightest motion of her hand, she gave the modiste leave to rise. Which Noirot did with the same dancer’s grace, eliciting another collective intake of breath.
That was all. One word—pretty—and the room began to breathe again. Clevedon and his “discovery” were permitted to move on, along the short reception line and thence into the party proper.
“A dressmaker? From London? But it is impossible. You cannot be English.”
The men had attempted to surround her, but the ladies elbowed them aside and were now interrogating her.
Marcelline’s dress had awakened both curiosity and envy. The colors were not unusual. They were fashionable colors. The style was not so very different from the latest fashions displayed at Longchamp. But the way she combined style and color and the little touches she added—all this was distinctively Noirot. Being French, these ladies noticed the touches, and were sufficiently intrigued to approach her, though she was a social anomaly—not a person but an exotic pet.
Clevedon’s exotic pet.
She was still seething over that, though a part of her couldn’t help but admire his cleverness. It was the sort of brazen nonsense members of her family typically employed when they found themselves in a tight spot.
But she’d deal with His Arrogance later.
“I am English and a dressmaker,” said Marcelline. She opened her reticule and produced a pretty silver case. From the case she withdrew her business cards: simple and elegant, like a gentleman’s calling card. “I come to Paris for inspiration.”
“But it is here you should have your shop,” said one lady.
Marcelline let her gaze move slowly over their attire. “You don’t need me,” she said. “The English ladies need me.” She paused and added in a stage whisper, “Desperately.”
The ladies smiled and went away, all of them mollified, and some of them charmed.
Then the men swarmed in.
“This is a mystery,” said Aronduille.
“All women are mysteries,” Clevedon said.
They stood at the fringes of the dance floor, watching the Marquis d’Émilien waltz with Madame Noirot.
“No, that is not what I mean,” said Aronduille. “Where does a dressmaker find time to learn to dance so beautifully? How does an English shopkeeper learn to speak French indistinguishable from that of the comtesse? And what of the curtsey she made to our hostess?” He lifted his gaze heavenward, and kissed the tips of his fingers. “I will never forget that sight.”
I’m not a lady, she’d said.
“I admit she’s a bit of a riddle,” Clevedon said. “But that’s what makes her so . . . amusing.”
“The
ladies went to her,” said Aronduille. “Did you see?”
“I saw.” Clevedon hadn’t imagined they’d approach her. The men, yes, of course.
But the ladies? It was one thing for the hostess to admit her, politely overlooking a high-ranking guest’s bad manners or eccentricity. It was quite another matter for her lady guests to approach his “pet” and converse with her. Had Noirot been an actress or courtesan or any other dressmaker, for that matter, they would have snubbed her.
Instead, they’d pushed men aside to get to her. The encounter was brief, but when the women left, they all looked pleased with themselves.
“She’s a dressmaker,” he said. “That’s her profession: making women happy.”
But the curtsey he couldn’t explain.
He couldn’t explain the way she talked and the way she walked.
And the way she danced.
How many times had Émilien danced with her?
