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Wednesday afternoon
The Green Park
“You ran away,” Marcelline said.
She’d taken Lucie to the park, and Lucie was pushing a child-size baby carriage, one of the numerous presents Clevedon had filled the nursery with. Susannah, who was still the favored doll, sat in it, staring at her surroundings with her wide blue glass eyes.
Marcelline had taken pains to make him hate her forever. Yet in spite of all said, Clevedon had come back.
He’d gone to the shop, and not finding her there, and getting no information from her sisters, he’d insisted on speaking to Sarah. Since the nursemaid was still, officially, his employee, Sophy and Leonie had to let her talk to him, and Sarah had to tell him that Mrs. Noirot had taken Lucie to the Green Park.
He’d come to the park and hunted Marcelline down—to confide his romantic tribulations, of all things!
He was intelligent, caring, and sensitive. He was an artful and passionate lover.
He was obstinate and oblivious, too.
She reminded herself that dukes were not like other men. Getting their own way all their lives damaged their brains.
Her brain was damaged, too, probably from spending so much time with him. No, her heart was what was damaged. In a not-so-secret corner, she was glad that he and Lady Clara were not yet engaged.
But they soon will be, and you’ll simply have to live with it.
“You leapt at the first excuse not to propose,” Marcelline said. “If you had persevered, I promise you, her headache would have vanished. Your behavior is what pains her, you obtuse man.”
“I know I’ve made a muck of everything,” he said. “It was true what you said the other day. But the mess is so horrendous, I’m having the devil’s own time finding my way out.”
“You’re not helping matters, being here,” she said.
“You’re the expert on everything I do wrong,” he said. “You’re the autocratic female who knows exactly what everyone ought to do.”
“No, I know how everyone ought to dress,” she said.
“I’ll wager anything she knew why I was there,” he said. “I saw Lady Gorrell as I was leaving the jeweler, and she was bound to tell everybody. But I know Clara, and she didn’t seem very happy to see me—and when I offered to go, she looked relieved.”
“And you have no idea why she’d want you gone?” Marcelline said. “You’ve neglected her for weeks. You’ve made a spectacle of yourself with a lot of milliners.” Then you go out and buy a ring. And without any warning, you turn up, all braced for matrimony.”
“It was hardly like that,” he said.
“It was wrong, in any event,” she said. “You haven’t spent a minute wooing her.”
“I’ve known her since she was five years old!”
“Women like to be courted. You know that. What is wrong with you? Have you a blind spot when it comes to Lady Clara?”
He stopped in his tracks and looked at her while a comical look of horror overspread his beautiful face. “Are you telling me I have to chase her and make sheep’s eyes at her and hang on her every word the way her sodding idiot beaux do?”
“Don’t be thick,” Marcelline said. “You of all men know how to cast your lures at a woman. The trouble is, you treat her like a sister.”
He stiffened, but recovered immediately. In the blink of an eye, he was moving again, walking alongside her in his usual easy, arrogant way, expecting all the world to give way before him. Why shouldn’t he demand she solve his romantic difficulties? It was her purpose in life, as it was the purpose of all ordinary beings, to serve him. And wasn’t that her job, serving people like him? Not merely her job, but her ambition?
It wouldn’t occur to him that this was a thoroughly unreasonable way to behave with a woman he’d driven himself mad trying to make love him.
It wouldn’t occur to him how painful this was for such a woman.
She reminded herself the pain was nobody’s fault but hers for letting herself fall in love with him. She was a Noirot. She of all women ought to know better.
And being a Noirot, she needed to be thinking with her head—and not the soft bit, either.
He had to marry Lady Clara. All Marcelline’s plans had one objective: making the Duchess of Clevedon her loyal client. If this marriage didn’t take place, who knew how long it would be before he found someone else? It could be days. It could be years. And regardless how much time it took, how many other women in London could provide as splendid a framework for Marcelline’s dresses?
Furthermore, that framework wouldn’t provide nearly as good advertising were Lady Clara to marry a lesser being than the Duke of Clevedon.
In any case, she’d already cultivated Lady Clara and was grooming her to be a leader of fashion. Marcelline had already won her loyalty. In spite of all the rumors and scandal. In spite of Lady Warford.
In fact, Lady Clara had a fitting this afternoon.
A nursemaid walking with a little girl stopped to admire Lucie’s doll. She obligingly stopped the baby carriage and took out Susannah for inspection.
“What a pretty dress!” the little girl exclaimed.
“My mama made it,” Lucie said. “She makes dresses for ladies and princesses.”
She put Susannah back and the nursemaid led the little girl away. The latter dragged her feet, looking back over her shoulder at Lucie’s doll.
“You ought to give Lucie business cards to hand out,” Clevedon said. “Have you thought of adding a line of doll dresses?”
“No.”
“Think about it.”
She had too much to think about as it was. “Lady Clara is coming for a fitting later today,” she said. “A dress for Friday night. One of the Season’s most important balls, I understand.”
“Friday?” He frowned, thinking. “Damn. That must be Lady Brownlow’s do. I suppose I’d better attend.”
“Of course you’ll attend,” she said. “It’s one of the high points of the Season.”
“That doesn’t say much for the Season.”
“What is the matter with you?” she said. “I know you like to dance.”
“In Paris,” he said. “In Vienna. In Venice.”
“Do you know how many men and women would give a vital organ to be invited to that ball?” she said.
“You?” he said. “Wouldn’t you like to be there, showing off one of your creations?” A smile caught at the corner of his mouth and devilment danced in his eyes. “I should like to see you get into that party, uninvited.”
She wanted to scream.
“Are you not paying attention?” she said. “You need to court Lady Clara. What you don’t need is the woman everybody thinks is your latest liaison calling attention to herself. And what I don’t need is to alienate precisely the people I want to come into my shop. How many times must I explain this to you? How can you be so thick?”
He looked away. “I was picturing you at the ball, and it amused me. Well, I’ll imagine it while I’m there. That should allay the tedium.”
She could picture herself there, too—not the self she was, but the self she might have been, a gentleman’s daughter. But then, if she’d been welcome to that ball, she wouldn’t have Lucie. She would never have learned how to make clothes. She would never have truly found herself.
Not to mention she’d look like the rest of them.
Her life wouldn’t be so hard but it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun. One need only consider how bored he was, the great, spoiled numskull! Lady Brownlow had recently been elected a patroness of Almack’s. She was one of Society’s premier hostesses. Her parties were famous. And he acted as though he was forced to attend a lecture in calculus or one of those other horrible mathematical things.
“You will attend,” she said. “And you will not arrive late. You’ll make it clear that you want
only to see Lady Clara, to be with Lady Clara. You’ll act as though no other woman in the place exists for you. You’ll act as though you haven’t known her for ages, but have only now truly discovered her. It will seem as though she has suddenly appeared to you, like a vision, like Venus rising from the sea.”
She wished Sophy were here to offer less clichéd dramatic imagery.
“You’ll sweep her off her feet,” she went on. “If the weather allows, you’ll lure her out onto the terrace or balcony or someplace private, and you’ll make it very romantic, and you’ll make it impossible for her to say anything but yes. It’s a seduction, Clevedon. Do keep that in mind. This isn’t your dear friend or your sister. This is a woman, a beautiful, desirable woman, and you are going to seduce her into becoming your duchess.”
Countess of Brownlow’s ball
Friday night
The Duke of Clevedon resolved to do exactly as Noirot advised. He refused to let himself think about what he was doing because, he told himself, there was nothing to think about. He wanted Clara to marry him. She’d always been meant for him. He’d always loved her.
Like a sister.
He crushed the thought the instant it popped into his mind. He went to Lady Brownlow’s ball. He followed Noirot’s instructions to the letter. He arrived not too early, because that would be gauche, but in good time. And he hunted Clara as he would have hunted a popular demimondaine or a dashing matron.
He exerted himself to amuse her, whispering witty remarks into her shell-shaped ear whenever he could get close enough. She was looking quite handsome this evening, and the sodding idiot beaux couldn’t keep away.
