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The Tuesday appointment was not, in short, inconvenient to anybody else, and Lady Clara told herself it wasn’t inconvenient to her, either. She had missed Clevedon, truly, especially when Longmore was behaving in a particularly obnoxious manner and in dire need of one of the duke’s crushing setdowns—or, better yet, his powerful left fist.
But Clevedon in person was a different proposition than Clevedon via letter.
Now that he was here, she wasn’t sure she was ready for him to be here.
But any doubts or shyness she’d felt vanished the instant he entered the drawing room on Tuesday. He wore the same affectionate smile she knew of old, and she smiled at him in the same way. She loved him dearly, always had, and she knew he loved her.
“Good grief, Clara, you might have warned me you’d grown,” he said, stepping back to look her over, quite as he used to do when he came home from school. “You must be two inches taller at least.”
He didn’t remember, she thought. She’d always been a tall girl. She hadn’t grown at all since last he saw her. He was used to French women, she supposed. The observation, which she wouldn’t have hesitated to put in a letter, she wouldn’t dream of uttering aloud, most certainly not in front of her mother.
“I should hope she is not such a gawky great Amazon as that,” said Mama. “Clara is the same as she ever was, only perhaps a little more womanly than you recollect.”
Mama meant more shapely. For a time, she’d claimed that Clevedon had “run away” because Clara was too thin. A man liked a woman to have some flesh on her—and she would never have a good figure if she would not eat.
It hadn’t occurred to Mama at the time that Grandmama Warford had died only a few months earlier, and Clara, still grieving, had no appetite and did not particularly care what Clevedon thought of her figure.
But a great deal did not occur to Mama. She’d ordered tray upon tray of refreshments, and plied Clevedon with cake, which he took politely, though Mama ought to know by now he did not have a sweet tooth. And while she fed him sweets he didn’t want, she dropped what she thought were exceedingly subtle hints about Clara’s numerous beaux, with the obvious intent of stirring his competitive instincts.
In her mind’s eye, Clara saw herself jumping up, covering her mother’s mouth, and dragging her from the room. A tiny snort of laughter escaped her. Mama, happily, was too busy talking to hear it. But Clevedon noticed. He shot her a glance, and Clara rolled her eyes. He sent her a small, conspiratorial smile.
“I’m relieved I didn’t have to fight my way through hordes of your beaux, Clara,” he said. “I’m still a little tired, I confess, after the Channel tried so determinedly to drown me.”
“Good heavens!” Mama cried. “I read in the Times of a near shipwreck in the Channel. Were you aboard the same vessel?”
“I sincerely hope ours was the only one caught in that storm,” he said. “Apparently it took our mariners unawares.”
“I would not be too sure of that,” said Mama. “They’re supposed to know about the wind and that sort of thing. Those steam packets take too many risks, and as I have told Warford any number of times . . .” She went to repeat one of Papa’s harangues about the steam trade.
When she paused for breath, Clevedon said, “Indeed, I’m glad to be on English ground again, and to breathe English air. I drove here today because I woke up wishing to take a turn round Hyde Park in an open vehicle. If you would be so kind as to give your permission, perhaps I might persuade Clara to join me.”
Mama threw Clara a triumphant glance.
Clara’s heart began to pound.
He can’t be meaning to propose. Not yet.
But why should he not? And why should she be so alarmed? They’d always been meant to marry, had they not?
“I should like it above all things,” Clara said.
“An original design!” Lady Renfrew cried. She pushed the ball gown that lay on the counter at Marcelline. “You assured me it was an original design, your own creation. Then how, pray, did Lady Thornhurst come by precisely the same dress? And now what am I to do? You know I meant to wear the dress to Mrs. Sharpe’s soirée this very night. You cannot expect me to wear it now. Lady Thornhurst will attend—and she’ll recognize it. Everyone will recognize it! I’ll be mortified. And I know there isn’t time to make up another dress. I’ll have to wear the rose, which everyone has seen. But that isn’t the point. The point is, you assured me—”
A clatter behind her made her break off. She turned an indignant look in that direction. But the irritation vanished in an instant, and wonder took its place. “Good heavens! Is that it?”
Clever, clever Sophy. She’d stepped away from the temper tantrum to the other side of the shop. There stood a mannequin, wearing the gown Marcelline had worn to the comtesse’s ball. Sophy had knocked over a nearby footstool accidentally on purpose.
“I beg your pardon?” Marcelline said innocently.
She wasn’t sure what exactly Sophy had done to or with Tom Foxe. Perhaps it was better not to know. What mattered was, the tale—of Mrs. Noirot’s gown and her dancing with the Duke of Clevedon at the most exclusive ball of the Paris Season—had appeared in today’s Morning Spectacle.
Lady Renfrew was a reader, apparently, because she moved away from the counter to the famous poussière gown. When she’d first entered the shop, His Majesty might have been there, telling his favorite sailor jokes, and she wouldn’t have noticed. She’d been in too hysterical a state to heed anything but her own grievances and Marcelline, the ostensible cause of them.
“Is this the gown you wore to the ball in Paris, Mrs. Noirot?” her ladyship said.
Marcelline admitted that it was.
Lady Renfrew stared at it.
Marcelline and Sophy exchanged looks. They knew what the lady was thinking. The highest sticklers of the Fashion Capital of the World had admired this gown. Its designer stood, not in Paris, but a few feet away, behind the counter.
They let Lady Renfrew study it. She had a great deal of money, and she had taste—which was not the case with all of their customers. She was socially ambitious, which they understood perfectly well, for they were, too.
After Marcelline reckoned her ladyship’s meditations upon the wondrous dress had calmed her sufficiently, she said, “Was it precisely like?”
Lady Renfrew turned back to her, still looking slightly dazed. “I beg your pardon.”
“Was the gown Lady Thornhurst wore precisely like this one?” Marcelline ran a loving hand over the beautiful green gown lying rejected upon the counter.
Lady Renfrew returned to the counter. She considered the dress. “Not precisely. Now I think of it, her gown was not so—not so . . .” She trailed off, gesturing helplessly.
“If your ladyship would pardon me for speaking plainly, I should suggest that the other was not so well made,” Marcelline said. “What you saw was a mere imitation, of inferior construction. I’m sorry to say this is not the first case that has been brought to our attention.”
“There’s shocking skullduggery at work,” Sophy said. “We haven’t yet got to the bottom of it—but that is not your ladyship’s problem. You must have a magnificent gown for the ball tonight—and it must not be in any way like the other lady’s.”
“I shall remake this dress,” Marcelline said. “I shall remake it myself, in private. When I’m done, no one will see the smallest resemblance to the thing Lady Thornhurst wore. I call it a thing, your ladyship, because it would shame any proper modiste to call those abominations dresses.”
The shop bell tinkled.
Neither Marcelline nor Sophy so much as glanced toward the door. Lady Renfrew was their best customer to date. They could not afford to lose her. All their world—their very beings—revolved around her. Or so it must appear.
“I or one of my sisters will personally deliver it to y
ou, at not later than seven o’clock this evening, at which time we shall make any final adjustments you require,” Marcelline continued. “The dress will be perfect.”
“Absolutely perfect,” said Sophy.
Lady Renfrew was not listening. Not being a shopkeeper in danger of losing her most profitable and prestigious customer, she did look over her shoulder at the door. And she froze.
“Well, then, here we are,” said a familiar, deep voice. “You may see for yourself, my dear. And there is the dress itself, by gad.”
And the Duke of Clevedon laughed.
His heart was beating in an embarrassingly erratic way.
