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“It’s good to know a duke,” Miss Leonie said. “This place may give Marcelline’s genius scope, but it’s going to be deuced expensive to furnish, never mind the materials.”
Noirot was already beginning a circuit of what he supposed would be the showroom. “The drawers and counters will do,” she said, “but everything must be cleaned and polished within an inch of its life. All else must be purchased. Working our way down from the ceiling—chandeliers, wall sconces, mirrors . . .”
Clevedon took out his little pocket notebook and started making notes.
They had no trouble dividing responsibilities. Marcelline and her sisters had been at this long enough to know who did what best.
Sophia returned to Clevedon House to compose her deathless prose and supervise the seamstresses. Leonie remained at the shop to accept deliveries and supervise the servants and workmen who, they were told, Halliday had already begun organizing, and would be arriving shortly.
Clevedon was to take Marcelline shopping.
She saw no alternative. She needed him. She’d simply have to suppress her lust and longings and other inconvenient feelings and be stoical. She’d had plenty of practice with that.
“If we’re to get this done by the end of the day, you must come with me,” she told him at the end of her inventory of the place. “I’ve no time to waste while a clerk dithers or tries to sell me something I don’t want. I haven’t time for dickering about prices. I need prompt, preferably obsequious attention. Entering with the Duke of Clevedon is a sure way to get that and more.”
“I assumed I’d come with you,” he said. “Did you not notice how diligently I took notes?”
She had noticed and wondered at it. She held her tongue, though, until they were in his carriage. And then it wasn’t the notebook she asked about.
“I thought you loathed shopping with women above all things,” she said, remembering what he’d said to Lady Clara.
“That was before,” he said. “Now you’ve made it interesting, curse you.”
“Interesting?”
“All the bustling about,” he said. “All the drama. All that naked ambition coupled with passionate belief in the rightness of your vision. All that . . . purpose. It amuses me to catch the occasional stray bit of purpose by trailing in your wake.”
“What nonsense!” she said. “I found a way to make a living that doesn’t require me to drudge endlessly for someone else—and one that offers an avenue for advancement as well. If I weren’t obliged to work, I shouldn’t. I should be happy to have no purpose but to enjoy myself and occasionally bestow some generosity upon lesser mortals.”
“You’re the one talking nonsense,” he said. “You live for what you do. You live and breathe your work. It isn’t employment. It’s your vocation.”
“I look forward to the day when I can live in idleness,” she said. “That’s my goal.”
“The day will never come,” he said. “No matter what heights you achieve, you won’t be able to stop doing what you do. You can’t see yourself. I can. I saw you throw down Clara’s dress and kick it aside. It wasn’t merely unsatisfactory. In your view, it was criminal. You tore those clothes from her hands as though they’d do her grievous bodily harm. You made that dress overnight because it was a matter of life and death to you. It would have killed you if she’d gone to Almack’s wearing one of her old dresses.”
She looked out of the carriage window. “Talk of drama,” she said. “ ‘Life and death’ . . . ‘killed’ me.” She was uncomfortable. She’d never thought of herself in that way. She was stubborn, hardheaded, practical, mercenary. Everything she did was for gain, for ambition. Yet now he’d said it, she realized he wasn’t wrong. And she had to wonder at his noticing such a thing. She’d thought he noticed mainly what weakness or unguarded moment of emotion could get her on her back or against a wall . . . or onto a worktable.
“Oh, very well,” she said. “It wouldn’t have killed me—but it might have made me a little sick.”
He laughed.
The carriage stopped. They climbed out, the conversation ended, and the shopping commenced.
It was one of the most hectic days Clevedon had spent in his life—with the exception of the day he’d raced across France after her.
They went quickly from one shop to the next: linen drapers and furniture warehouses, shops specializing in lighting and shops specializing in mirrors.
He and Noirot received all the prompt, obsequious attention she’d wanted and more. The shop owners themselves came out to wait upon his grace, the Duke of Clevedon. They were prepared to move heaven and earth to get him precisely what he needed and to have it delivered that very day. If they hesitated, he had only to say to Noirot, “We had better try the next shop—Colter’s, is it?” As soon as a competitor’s name was mentioned, what had been impossible a moment ago became “the easiest thing in the world, your grace.”
Once the shopping began, there was no more personal conversation. Noirot hadn’t time to debate about what to purchase or wait to be shown the latest this or that. When she entered a shop, she had to know exactly what she wanted. And so, in those short intervals while they were traveling in the privacy of his carriage, the talk was purely practical, all about furnishings and what size was best, and what colors set off what.
He should have been bored witless. He should have been frantic to get away, to his club, to a card game, to a bottle or two or three with Longmore.
The Duke of Clevedon was so far from bored that he never noticed the time passing. At some point, they’d stopped to eat from a basket his cook had prepared for them. He couldn’t say when that was, an hour ago or five.
Then they left a warehouse, and when they reached the pavement she said, “Mon dieu, it’s done. I think. I hope. That’s everything, isn’t it?”
He took out his pocket notebook, and it was only when he had to squint at it that he realized evening had fallen. He’d stepped out of the shop and joined the flow of activity on the street without noticing that it had grown dark. He’d been too intent on his own plans and calculations. While she was occupied with choosing articles for her shop, he hadn’t been idle.
Now he looked about him at the gaslit streets. The shops would soon be closing, but the streets were busy, the pavements crowded with people passing to and fro, some pausing to look in the shop windows, others going inside—no doubt to the despair of shopkeepers eager for their dinners and the quiet of their hearths. Before long workers would spill from the various establishments, some hurrying home, others to their favorite chop houses and public houses.
What was the last place he’d wanted to hurry to? he wondered. When had he been eager for his own hearthside?
“If we’ve forgotten anything, it’s minor,” he said.
“We’ll see soon enough,” she said.
He told his coachman to take them back to the shop on St. James’s Street.
After what seemed an eternity of crawling through London’s streets at a snail’s pace, Marcelline climbed down from the carriage and faced a darkened, empty shop.
“I can’t believe they’re all gone,” she said. She heard her voice wobble. She couldn’t remember when last she’d felt so deeply disappointed. “I thought—I thought—”
“We were more efficient than we guessed,” he said. “I’ll wager anything they’ve
gone home—to Clevedon House, I mean—for a well-earned dinner and rest. As we shall do—as soon as we’ve had a look round.” He took out a key and brandished it. “I am the landlord, you know.”
Enough light entered from the street to allow them to make their way into the shop without tripping over furniture. After a moment, Clevedon got a gas lamp lit, then another.
Marcelline stood in the middle of the showroom, her hands clasped tightly against her stomach, against the butterflies quivering there—eagerness mixed with anxiety at once. She turned, slowly, taking it in: the gleaming woodwork, the elegant chandeliers, the artfully draped curtains, the furniture arranged as though in a drawing room.
“Does it pass the test?” Clevedon said. “Satisfactory?”
“More than that,” she said. “My taste is impeccable, I know—”
“Really, Noirot, you must strive to overcome this excessive humility.”
“—but to see it in its proper setting . . .” She paused. “Well, I shall need to rearrange the furniture tomorrow morning. Leonie is very good with numbers and legal gibberish, and her eye for artistic detail is better than most, but she can be a little conventional in her arrangements. The showroom is most important, because that’s what our patrons see. The first impression must be of elegance and comfort and the little something else that sets me apart from others.”
“The little touches,” he said.
“Nothing too obvious,” she said.
“The French would say je ne sais quoi,” he said. “And so would I, because while I know it’s there, I can’t for the life of me say what it is.”
She let herself look at him, but only for an instant. “You’ve come a long way from Paris,” she said. “Then you claimed not to notice such things.”
“I’ve tried not to notice,” he said. “But everywhere I look, there it is. There you are. I’ll be glad to be rid of you. When a man sinks to reading fashion journals—no, it’s worse than that. When a man finds himself plumbing their depths, seeking arcane knowledge of no use to him whatsoever . . . Oh, it’s your corrupting influence. I shall be so glad to see the back of you Noirots, and return to my life.”
