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“Don’t speak of her,” he said.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said. “You say it as though my uttering her name will somehow contaminate her. That must be your guilty conscience speaking, because it most assuredly isn’t your intellect. You know that she’s the one I want. She’s the one I came to Paris for. ‘Don’t speak of her,’ indeed.” She imitated his haughty tone. “Is that what you do with everything uncomfortable? Pretend it isn’t there? She’s there, you stubborn man. The woman you’re going to marry by summer’s end. You ought to speak of her. You ought to be reminding me of her vast superiority to me—except as regards dress, that is.”
“I had originally planned,” he said levelly, “to write to Clara as I always do. I had planned to repeat the most fatuous conversations to which I was subjected in the course of the evening. I had planned to give my impressions of the company. I had planned to describe my sufferings from boredom—a boredom endured entirely on her account, in order provide her entertainment.”
“How noble of you.”
Something flickered in his eyes, and it was like the flash of a lighthouse, seen through a storm.
She knew she approached dangerous waters, but if she didn’t get him under control, she risked smashing her business to pieces.
“And you’d completely disregard my part in events?” Marcelline said. “Stupid question. It’s tactless to mention the women of dubious character you encounter in the course of your travels and entertainments. On the present occasion, however, I’d recommend against that approach. News of our exciting arrival at the party will soon be racing across the Channel, to arrive in London as early as Tuesday. I suggest you tackle the subject straight on. Tell her you brought me to win a wager. Or you did it for a joke.”
“By God, you’re the most managing female,” he said.
“I’m trying to manage my future,” she said. She heard the slight wobble in her voice. Alarmed, she took a calming breath. His gaze became heavy-lidded and shifted to her neckline. Her reaction to that little attention was the opposite of calming.
Devil take him! He was the one who belonged on a leash.
She started for the gate. The porter hastily opened it.
“The carriage hasn’t arrived yet,” Clevedon said. “Do you mean to wait on the street for it, like a clerk waiting for the omnibus?”
“I am not traveling in that or any other carriage with you,” she said. “We’ll go our separate ways this night.”
“I cannot allow you to travel alone,” he said. “That’s asking for trouble.”
And traveling with him in a closed carriage, in the dead of night, in her state of mind—or not mind—wasn’t? She needed to get away from him, not simply for appearances’ sake, but to think. There had to be a way to salvage this situation.
“I’m not a sheltered miss,” she said. “I’ve traveled Paris on my own for years.”
“Without a servant?”
She wished she had something heavy to throw at his thick head.
She’d grown up on the streets of Paris and London and other cities. She came from a family that lived by its wits. The stupid or naïve did not survive. The only enemy they hadn’t been able to outwit or outrun was the cholera.
“Yes, without a servant,” she said. “Shocking, I know. To do anything without servants is unthinkable to you.”
“Not true,” he said. “I can think of several things to do that do not require servants.”
“How inventive of you,” she said.
“In any event, the point is moot,” he said. “Here’s my carriage.”
While she’d been trying not to think of the several activities one might perform without servants’ assistance, the carriage had drawn up to the entrance.
“Adieu, then,” she said. “I’ll find a fiacre in the next street.”
“It’s raining,” he said.
“It is not . . .”
She felt a wet plop on her shoulder. Another on her head.
A footman leapt down from the back of the carriage, opened an umbrella, and hurried toward them. By the time he reached them, the occasional plop had already built to a rapid patter. She felt Clevedon’s hand at her back, nudging her under the umbrella, and guiding her to the carriage steps.
It was the touch of his hand, the possessive, protective gesture. That was what undid her.
She told herself she wasn’t made of sugar and wouldn’t melt. She told herself she’d walked in the rain many times. Her self didn’t listen.
Her self was trapped in feelings: the big hand at her back, the big body close by. The night was growing darker and colder while the rain beat down harder. She was strong and independent and she’d lived on the streets, yet she’d always craved, as any animal does, shelter and protection.
She was weak in that way. Self-denial wasn’t instinctive.
She couldn’t break way from him or turn away from the open carriage door where shelter waited. She didn’t want to be cold and wet, walking alone in the dark in Paris.
And so she climbed the steps and sank gratefully onto the well-cushioned seat, and told herself that catching a fatal chill or being attacked and raped in a dirty alley would not do her daughter or her sisters any good.
He sat opposite.
The door closed.
She felt the slight bounce as the footman returned to his perch. She heard his rap on the roof, signaling the coachman to start.
The carriage moved forward gently enough, but the streets here were far from smooth, and despite springs and well-cushioned seats, she felt the motion. The silence within was like the silence before a thunderstorm. She became acutely conscious of the wheels rattling over the stones and the rain drumming on the roof . . . and, within, the too-fierce pounding of her heart.
“Going to find a fiacre,” he said. “Really, you are ridiculous.”
She was. She should have risked the dark and cold and rain. It would be for only a few minutes. In a fiacre, at least, she might have been able to think.
The night was dark, the sheeting rain blotting out what little light the street and carriage lamps shed. Within the carriage was darker yet. She could barely make out his form on the seat opposite. But she was suffocatingly aware of the long legs stretched out over the space between them. He seemed to have his arm stretched out over the top of the seat cushions, too. The relaxed pose didn’t fool her. He lounged in the seat in the way a panther might lie on its belly in a tree, watching its prey move along the forest floor below. If he’d owned a tail, it would have twitched.
“I was an idiot to attend this event with you,” she said.
“You seemed to be having a fine time. You certainly did not lack for dance partners,” he said.
“Yes, I was doing quite well, thank you, until you had to turn medieval—”
“Medieval?”
“Out of my way, peasants. The wench belongs to me.” She mimicked the Duke of Clevedon at his haughty best. “I thought Monsieur Tournadre would wet himself when you bared your fangs at him.”
“What a grotesque
imagination you have.”
“You’re big and arrogant, and I think you know exactly how intimidating you can be.”
“Alas, not to you.”
“Still, perhaps all is not lost,” she said. “That sort of possessive behavior is typical of your kind. Furthermore, I am your pet. You brought me to the party for your amusement. And I did make it abundantly clear to the company that I’d come to drum up business and was using you for that purpose.”
“But that isn’t what happened,” he said.
“That is exactly what happened,” she said.
“What happened was, we waltzed, and it was plain to everyone what we were doing even though we had our clothes on,” he said.
“Oh, that,” she said. “I have the same effect on every man I dance with.”
“Don’t pretend you weren’t affected as well.”
“Of course I was affected,” she said. “I never danced with a duke before. It was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened in my mediocre little bourgeois life.”
“A pity I am not medieval,” he said. “In that case, I shouldn’t hesitate to make your mediocre little life even more exciting, and a good deal littler.”
“Perhaps I ought to put it in an advertisement,” she said. “Ladies of distinction and fashion are invited to the showrooms of Mrs. Noirot, Fleet Street, West Chancery Lane, to inspect an assemblage of such elegant and truly nouvelle articles of dresses, mantles, and millinery, as in point of excellence, taste, and splendor, cannot be matched in any other house whatever. Often imitated but never surpassed, Mrs. Noirot alone can claim the distinction of having danced with a duke.”
The carriage stopped.
“Have we reached the hotel already?” she said. “How quickly the time flies in your company, your grace.” She started to rise.
“We’re nowhere near your hotel,” he said. “We’ve stopped for an accident or a drunk in the street or some such. Everyone’s stopped.”
She leaned forward, to look out of the window. It was hard to make out anything but the sheen of the rain where the lamp lights caught it.
