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He looked at Lucie. “What do you say, Erroll?”
“May I play with the dollhouse?”
“Of course you may, sweetling.”
To Noirot he said, “You three drive a hard bargain. A loan it is.”
“Thank you,” Noirot said. Her sisters echoed her. At her glance, they all rose. “May I leave Lucie in your servants’ care, your grace?” she said. “You’re all determined to spoil her, and she’s not going to discourage you, and I haven’t time for a battle of wills. We haven’t a minute to lose. We absolutely must have Lady Clara’s dress ready by seven o’clock this evening.”
He stared at her. “You must be joking,” he said. “Your shop burnt down. Surely your customers won’t expect you to complete orders today.”
“You don’t understand,” Marcelline said. “Lady Clara has nothing to wear to Almack’s tonight. I threw out all of her clothes. She must have that dress. I promised.”
Five o’clock that afternoon
Clevedon House was in a state of what its owner hoped was controlled chaos.
Servants hurried to and fro, some carrying in the goods the women had shopped for in the morning—what seemed to Clevedon like bales of fabric, along with boxes containing who knew what—while others raced from one part of the house to another, carrying messages or sustenance, fetching this or that from cupboards and closets and even the attics.
A bevy of seamstresses had arrived in the late morning, gaping at their surroundings before they disappeared into the rooms on the first floor set aside for the temporary workplace.
The redhead—Miss Leonie Noirot she turned out to be—at some point assured him that all would settle by tomorrow, once everyone was properly installed and their materials in place. She thanked him more than once for his rescue of the account books and only smiled when he told her that was none of his doing; he wouldn’t know a ledger from a book of sermons, never having looked into either item.
The blonde, meanwhile—she was Miss Sophia Noirot—had borrowed paper and pens and ink to write advertising for the newspapers. He’d offered his private study for her use, because Miss Leonie had told him that Sophy needed quiet in which to compose—really, it was like writing a chapter of a novel, she explained—and their work area was too busy, with people coming and going and Marcelline giving orders right and left.
Clevedon had retreated to the library. He could have fled the house altogether, but that seemed irresponsible. He’d started this; he ought to see it through. As it turned out, he was needed more than he’d supposed. Every now and again someone came by with a question only he could answer or a problem only he could solve. Usually, this was one of Noirot’s sisters, for madame herself kept scrupulously away, but sometimes it was Mrs. Michaels and occasionally Halliday, regarding one issue or other that puzzled even his omniscience.
The truth was, Clevedon didn’t want to flee. He found the enterprise vastly interesting. Every so often, he would stand in the library doorway to watch the hurrying to and fro. He would have liked to watch the women make Clara’s dress, but Miss Sophia had tactfully warned him away: The seamstresses would never be able to concentrate with a gentleman about, she said. As it was, the big footmen in their finery threw the women into a flutter.
Clevedon still had doubts they’d be able to finish the dress in time. The materials had not arrived until early afternoon, and what hints he’d caught of the design told him the labor involved would be prodigious.
At present he was scanning a copy of a woman’s magazine, La Belle Assemblée, that one of his aunts had left behind. Hearing approaching footsteps, he put the magazine down and pushed a heap of invitations on top of it.
The door opened and the footman Thomas announced Lord Longmore, who stormed in close on the servant’s heels, black eyes blazing. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” he demanded.
Thomas quietly made himself scarce.
“Good afternoon, Longmore,” Clevedon said. “I’m in excellent health, thank you. I regret to say that you seem to be in a state of delirium. I hope it isn’t a contagious fever. I’ve a rather large company in the house at present, and I should hate for them all to come down with whatever is ailing you.”
“Don’t talk rubbish,” Longmore said. “When I read this morning’s papers, I thought it was another of their lunatic fantasies—like that nonsense about suicidal scenes with a temperamental dressmaker. And so I attempted to tell my mother, who, as you can well imagine, is in a frenzy.”
That brought Clevedon back to earth with a thud.
He’d forgotten about Lady Warford. But what difference did it make? He refused to let her nerves and hysterias control his behavior. She was her husband’s problem.
“I come here because nothing must do, Mother says, but I must see for myself what my friend is about,” Longmore went on. “And what do I discover when I arrive? It turns out that the newspapers, not to mention my mother, have sadly understated the case. I find that my friend has settled three unwed women, not in a discreet cottage in Kensington, but in his ancestral home! And along with them another half dozen females—and the servants sweating like coal-carriers, fetching and carrying for shopkeepers! With my own eyes I saw Halliday carrying what looked to be a laundry basket. A laundry basket!”
The house steward oversaw the household. He kept his master’s books and acted as his secretary. He gave orders. He did not sully his hands with fetching and carrying. If he’d carried a basket, then Halliday was doing it for his own amusement—or as an excuse to appease his curiosity about the strangers in their midst.
Longmore was still ranting. “I know you like to play with convention,” he said, “but this— Plague take it, words fail me! Never mind my mother, how am I to look my sister in the eye?”
“Well, that’s amusing,” Clevedon said.
“Amusing?”
“Considering the women are here still only because of your sister,” Clevedon said. “They engaged to make a dress for Clara for this evening, and they seem to believe that nothing—acts of God or man, plague, pestilence, flood, famine, or fire—excuses them from keeping their promise. It is very curious. They seem to view a promise to make a dress in the same uncompromising light you and I would view a debt of honor.”
“The dress be damned,” Longmore said. “Have you been eating opium? Drinking absinthe? Contracted a fever? The clap, perchance? I understand it goes to the brain. That dressmaker—”
“Which one do you mean?” Clevedon said. “There are three of them.”
“Don’t play with me,” Longmore snapped. “By God, you’re enough to try the patience of all the saints and martyrs combined. You’ll drive me to call you out. I will not let you make a fool of my sister. You will not—”
He broke off because the door flew open and Miss Sophia hurried into the room. “Your grace, I wonder—”
She stopped short, apparently noticing Longmore belatedly. Or maybe she’d noticed the instant she came through the door, if not before. Clevedon suspected that both sisters were as well supplied with guile as Noirot. For all he knew, Miss Sophia had interrupted on purpose. They’d probably heard Longmore at the other end of the house.
In any case, he would have been hard for her to miss, not only because he was as tall as Clevedon but also because he was standing in her way.
But maybe she’d mistaken him for Clevedon. People did sometimes, from the back or from a distance. They were both large dark-haired men, though Longmore dressed more carelessly.
Whatever the reason, she appeared surprised and stopped short. “I do beg your pardon,” she said. ?
??How rude of me to burst in.”
“Not at all,” Clevedon said. “I told you not to stand on ceremony with me. We haven’t time for ceremony. This is only my friend—or perhaps former friend—Lord Longmore. Longmore, though you don’t deserve it, I’ll allow you to meet Miss Noirot, one of our esteemed dressmakers.”
Longmore, meanwhile, who’d spun around at her abrupt entrance, had not taken his eyes off her. For a moment he appeared dumbstruck. Then he bowed. “Miss Noirot.”
“My lord.” She curtseyed.
And, oh, it was one of those curtsies, not precisely like Noirot’s, but something equally impressive in its own way.
Longmore’s black eyes widened.
“What is it, then?” Clevedon said.
Sophia’s blue gaze, suspiciously innocent, came back to him. “It’s about the notice we’re putting in the papers, your grace. I write these all the time, and you would think it’d give me no trouble at all, but I continue to struggle, in spite of having quiet.”
She’d heard, Clevedon thought. She’d heard Longmore raging, and she’d stepped in. She was the one who’d written the account for the papers of the famous gown Noirot had worn. She was the one in charge of turning difficulties and scandal to the shop’s advantage.
“It’s the shock,” Clevedon said, playing along. “You can’t expect to recover overnight, especially when everything is in a turmoil.”
“To be sure, I can’t judge my own prose,” she said. “Will you give me your opinion?” She shot a glance at Longmore. “If his lordship would pardon the intrusion.”
Longmore stalked away and flung himself onto the sofa.
“ ‘Mrs. Noirot begs leave to inform her friends and the public in general,’ ” she read, “ ‘that she intends re-opening her showrooms very shortly, with a new and elegant assortment of millinery and dresses, in the first style of fashion, on reasonable terms—’ ”
“Leave out ‘reasonable terms,’ ” Clevedon cut in. “Economies matter to the middling classes. If you want the custom of my friends’ ladies, it’s better to be unreasonable. If it isn’t expensive, they won’t value it.”
