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“Business!”
“And do not tell me you’re not a customer.”
“I’m not, you nitwit. When was the last time I bought a dress?”
“Any man who has the means to pay our bills is likely to acquire, sooner or later, a woman we want in our dress shop,” she said. “She won’t patronize us if we have a reputation for poaching the men.”
“Business,” he said. “This is about the shop.”
“Yes,” she said. “Which means I couldn’t be more serious. If you kiss me again, I’ll stab you.”
She turned and marched out, slamming the door behind her.
She poured herself another glass of wine, but this one she drank more slowly. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt. She couldn’t remember when last she’d done something so difficult and terrifying and so completely the opposite of what she wanted to do.
No wonder Marcelline had lost her head over Clevedon.
No wonder she’d insisted on explaining to Sophy, for the hundredth time, how babies were made.
Lust was a dangerous force.
Like any Noirot, Sophy liked danger, risk, a gamble.
But she could not, would not, gamble with Maison Noirot. If she let the dangerous force sweep her away, it would sweep away everything they’d worked and suffered for.
She rose, walked to the bathtub, and took out the dressing gown he’d drowned there. She wrung it out and draped it over the chair—near the fire but not too near. It wasn’t completely unsalvageable. The girls at the Milliners’ Society could take it apart and make something of it.
The dressing gown wasn’t important. It was the shop Sophy needed to save—and that meant saving Lady Clara. That was all she had to do, and it wasn’t going to be easy.
She smiled. But she was a Noirot, after all, and if it were easy, it wouldn’t be much fun.
Chapter Eight
Richmond-park is eight miles in circumference, and contains 2253 acres, of which scarcely one hundred are in this parish; there are 650 acres in Mortlake, 265 in Petersham, 230 in Putney, and the remainder in Kingston. The ground of this park is pleasingly diversified with hill and vale; it is ornamented also with a great number of very fine oaks and other plantations.
—Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London, 1810
Warford House
Saturday 6 June
“Ill?” Adderley said. “It’s nothing . . . serious, I trust?”
Clara was as healthy as a horse. A cow. She was anything but weak or sickly.
“We hope it isn’t,” Lord Valentine said. “She might have caught a chill last night, at Great-Aunt Dora’s. Drafty old house. Wet night.”
“A chill,” Adderley said. He felt chilled, too. Gloom hung in the air of Warford House today.
More than the usual gloom, that was to say. He’d found the atmosphere frigid at best. Toward him Lady Warford had been strictly polite while contriving to look as though she smelled something good manners did not permit her to mention. Clara had started out warm enough—or as warm as she knew how—but had grown a little more distant every day.
Not that their feelings mattered. Clara had to marry him, and everybody knew it. They might kick all they wanted, and Lady Warford might lose no opportunity to remind him—with scrupulous politeness—of his low origins, but he was not going to go away, and they couldn’t let him go away.
The one thing he hadn’t reckoned on was Clara’s falling ill.
Gravely ill, judging by the signs.
Lord Valentine’s face was positively funereal.
Alarm stirred in Adderley’s gut.
She couldn’t die. Not before the wedding.
“Is there anything I can do?” he said.
Lord Valentine shook his head sadly. “Sorry. Nothing to be done. Our mother is with her. Hasn’t left her bedside.”
“You’ve sent for a physician, of course?”
“I assure you, my sister is being well looked after. I daresay she’ll be right as a trivet in a day or two.”
Lord Valentine did not say this with much conviction.
Anxious and angry, Adderley left.
He’d devoted months to cultivating her. Months he could have devoted to someone else.
She’d better not die.
It would be deuced inconvenient. He knew of no other well-dowered female who’d be nearly so easy to win over. And he’d have to win the alternate over in a hurry. His creditors wouldn’t even wait until the funeral.
By the time they were seated in the carriage again, Longmore was wondering what had possessed him last night, not to take advantage of a perfect opportunity.
It was the surprise, he decided. He’d been completely taken aback to discover Sophy was so inexperienced.
Normally, he rebounded quickly from shocks. But it had been a trying day. His sister had bolted, and it was the first time in years he’d needed to worry about her. Then Sophy had set herself on fire.
No wonder his wits had scattered.
After some tossing and turning—no doubt on account of his parts getting all primed for a woman for nothing—he’d slept well enough. The day had dawned fair. And his wits were back in working order. He could see the thing clearly now.
Perhaps she wasn’t greatly experienced. That didn’t mean she’d had none. She was French. She had taste. She was simply a discriminating girl who hadn’t had much practice in the amorous arts.
Someone was going to advance her education, one of these days. Why shouldn’t it be him?
True, he’d never had to teach anybody before, but there was a first time for everything, and he was always open to new experiences.
True, too, she’d told him to keep off.
But that was after.
Until he’d made the imbecile mistake of returning to his room, she’d been enthusiastic enough.
She’d greeted him cheerfully at breakfast today.
He saw nothing sulky or subdued in her appearance, certainly.
Today’s fashion extravaganza was a greyish-pinkish traveling dress. One of those capelike things women doted on these days spread itself over stupendously swollen sleeves. At the neck of the capelike item fluttered a collar of white lace, below which marched the line of bows, all the way down the front of the cape, which ended in a point below her waist—as though a man needed any directions there. The bows continued down two sides of the skirt, along an inverted V—yes, pointing to the same area. Today’s hat sported flowers all around the inner brim that framed her face, and more flowers sprouting up from the back. Green ribbons quivered among the flowers.
It made a man giddy, simply looking at it.
He preferred her mostly naked, but this was certainly entertaining.
Since the prospect of searching Richmond Park lay ahead of them, entertainment was sorely needed.
They’d scarcely left the inn when Fenwick, at the back of the carriage, started sniffing loudly.
Longmore glanced back. “You’d better not be sickening,” he said. “We haven’t time to nurse chills.”
“I was only smelling somefing,” Fenwick said.
Longmore scowled at him.
“Something,” Fenwick said. “What’s that smell?”
“What smell?” Longmore said. The only scent he was aware of was Sophy’s lavender and the something else that underlay it. He doubted that F
enwick, from his seat well behind the folded-down hood and the pile of luggage, could detect a fragrance that was more not there than there.
“I believe he means the air,” Sophy said. “That’s country air you smell, Fenwick.” She inhaled deeply, and her bosom rose and fell. It was easy to ascertain the degree of rise and fall because of the bows.
Undoing them was definitely something to look forward to.
What Sophy saw of Richmond Park appeared beautiful. Although city bred, she could understand the appeal of a broad expanse of nature, and this was an immense area, some five times as large as Hyde Park, Longmore had told her. She could easily imagine Lady Clara looking out from the summit of a hill and seeing London, a haze hanging over it, stretching out in the distance. She would feel she was a safe distance away from her troubles.
But she wasn’t safe. She hadn’t the first idea how to look after herself, and one maid wasn’t enough.
Since it wouldn’t help matters to let the world know an innocent was on the loose, the search team had to be careful what they said when questioning people. To avoid giving anybody else ideas of looking for Lady Clara, they’d devised a simple story: The cabriolet’s driver had left behind at an inn her pocketbook, containing a little money and some papers, and they were trying to return it.
They didn’t attempt to search the park itself. That would take days, Longmore said. Instead, they asked at the various hostelries near the gates. Even so, hours passed, and they’d made nearly a complete circuit of the park, as well as a detour to Richmond Hill, before they learned anything.
It was mid afternoon when they finally found an inn where Clara had stopped. There she’d asked for the best route to Hampton Court Palace.
“So much for hoping she’d return to London,” Longmore said, when they were on their way once more.
“At least we have news,” Sophy said.
“Yes. Back to the Portsmouth Road we go—after a prodigious wild goose chase. When I get my hands on her—”
“It’s so easy for you,” she said.
“Easy? What the devil do you mean?”
“If somebody offends or insults you, you punch him or call him out. If you’re wronged, you can act. What can your sister do?”
