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“No, indeed, Lady Durwich. Please allow me to present Miss Noirot, a famous dressmaker.”
Sophy sank into an excessive curtsey, exactly like the one she’d treated Valentine to—ribbons and bows fluttering and flowers quivering.
“My, my, one seldom sees that anymore,” said Lady Durwich as Sophy rose. “A dressmaker, is it? What do you call that color, Miss Noirot?”
r /> “Cendre de rose, my lady.”
“Pink ash?” he said.
Both women gave him the same what-a-moron look.
“Miss Noirot is Clara’s dressmaker,” Longmore said. “She’s deeply worried about Clara’s trousseau.”
“Stop talking rubbish,” said the old lady. “I know it’s difficult for you, but make an effort. I haven’t a great deal of time left to waste—ten or twenty years at most. Perhaps it would be better to let the young woman speak for herself.” She let the quizzing glass fall to her lap and bent a bright, expectant gaze upon Sophy.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, my lady, it occurred to me that Lord Longmore, for all his many fine qualities—”
“Oh, you’ve discovered some, have you?” he said.
“For all his many fine qualities,” Sophy went on, with a little toss of her head, which set the ribbons fluttering. “For instance, a prodigious uppercut, an air of command, and excellent tailoring. These are merely a few examples. In these and many other matters, one cannot fault his lordship. However, I believe it is not unreasonable to declare him less than overburdened with the gifts of tact and persuasion. I strongly suspect Lady Clara will need a good deal of persuasion.”
“You may well think so,” said Lady Durwich. “I began to believe she was all about in the attic.”
A maidservant entered then, with tea. A hiatus followed, while Lady Durwich performed as hostess. Though they had no time to lose, Longmore supposed that the lady didn’t often have guests—or young ones, at any rate. Though he was wild to get his information and be gone, he knew it would be churlish to hurry matters.
The trouble was, she found Sophy much more interesting than Clara’s difficulties. And no wonder, with Sophy pouring on the charm.
When Lady Durwich, making small talk over tea and sandwiches, asked if she’d toured the palace before, Sophy instantly reverted from sophisticated French milliner to excited English girl.
“Lord Longmore could barely get me to move along,” she said. “I kept stopping and gaping like the veriest child. How wonderful it must be for you, to live here. I hadn’t realized anybody did—that is, apart from the staff, you know.”
“Good heavens, where has the girl been?” said Lady Durwich. “You’d never heard of the grace and favor apartments?”
“Miss Noirot lived in Paris until quite recently,” Longmore said. “She’s rather French.”
“My parents were English,” Sophy said. “But yes, I spent the better part of my growing-up time in Paris. I’m a city bumpkin, you see.”
“Miss Noirot has told me this is the first time she’s ever been so far from London since she came,” Longmore said.
“And now that I’ve seen the countryside, I wonder at Lady Clara’s temerity, in driving out on her own,” Sophy said. “The roads are all well enough, but one must stop to eat, and deal with ostlers and such. One must pay the tolls at the gates, and be careful not to make a wrong turning. It isn’t at all like traveling about London. She must have felt desperate, indeed, to run away.”
“She always was a headstrong girl,” Lady Durwich said. “People think she isn’t.”
“The angelic beauty,” Longmore said. “Her beaus write the most idiotish poems about her. Don’t know her at all.”
“They underestimate her,” Sophy said. “Because she’s so beautiful, they think she can’t have any brains.”
“She’s a woman,” Longmore said. “What does she need brains for?”
“For dealing with men who haven’t any,” Sophy said. “It isn’t easy.” She reverted to Lady Durwich. “Perhaps, my lady, if you would tell me as much as you can recall of your conversation, we might find a clue to her intentions.”
This was going to take forever.
Longmore left his chair, and went to the window. Since the apartment comprised an extensive set of rooms on the ground floor, and this window looked north into the court through which they’d come, he hadn’t much of a view to distract him: a cobblestone walkway below and rose brick walls climbing another three stories and blocking the daylight.
Old ladies were garrulous and forgetful. They rarely told a tale in its proper order, instead taking detours here, there, and everywhere. In a few hours the light would be gone. Still, he and Sophy could travel by night, as long as the weather didn’t betray them again.
He listened as well as he could to the women’s conversation.
No easy job. His mind wanted to wander into twisted byways and nooks and crannies, like the ones in this, the oldest part of the palace.
He thought about his sister and what Sophy had said about her. That hadn’t been pleasant.
He thought about Sophy’s hair streaming down her back, and over her breasts, the long locks curling and turning gold as they dried . . . the outlines of her breasts under the thin muslin nightdress . . . the outlines of her thighs . . . the place between them, the triangle he knew would be dusted with gold.
That was much more agreeable.
Still, he felt stifled. The room was too cozy and warm. The apartments in Hampton Court were notoriously ramshackle, dark, and dank. Her ladyship had a fire going, against the damp. The accumulated bric-a-brac of decades filled the place. Behind him the women’s voices were low as they conversed like old friends.
He was of no use here, obviously. He might as well go out. While the females gossiped, he could question the officers. He could find Fenwick and get his report. He’d just decided to excuse himself, when Lady Durwich cried, “But there! I knew you looked familiar. Now I have it! Those eyes. Those are DeLucey eyes. I’d know them anywhere.”
Sophy was aware of Longmore turning away from the window, his gaze sharpening.
She smiled politely at Lady Durwich. “Your ladyship is not the first to say so.”
“And small wonder,” said the old lady. “One doesn’t forget those eyes. It took me a moment, though, to recall the connection. But the previous Earl of Mandeville was a great friend of my husband’s, you know. And then there was Eugenia, the Dowager Lady Hargate. Her eldest son, Rathbourne, married a girl from the cadet branch—the wild set. Lady Rathbourne’s daughter was a great favorite of Eugenia’s. I saw the girl at Eugenia’s funeral. You recall meeting Lady Lisle, do you not, Longmore? Pretty red-haired girl. Are those not the DeLucey eyes?”
His expression changed very little but it was enough for Sophy. She noticed the slight widening of his dark eyes and the change in his stance: a degree more alert, like a wolf catching a scent.
“Ah, yes, the wild set of DeLuceys,” Sophy said, her voice amused. “I’ve been told that most of them lived abroad. It’s not entirely impossible that one of my ancestors was born on the wrong side of the blanket.”
From the time they’d arrived in London, she and her sisters had been aware of the risk they ran. Marcelline could get by easily, having taken after Papa. But Sophy and Leonie had inherited Mama’s DeLucey eyes, and those large, vividly blue eyes were, as even a lady near or in her ninth decade could see, all too distinctive.
The “wild set” of the DeLuceys—more commonly known in England as the Dreadful DeLuceys—were still, and with good reason, mistrusted at best, loathed at worst. Marcelline, Sophy, and Leonie were the last of the lot, so far as they knew. The cholera had killed everybody else.
“Most of us could say the same,” Lady Durwich said. But she took up her quizzing glass and scrutinized Sophy again. Sophy met the scrutiny calmly. She’d had years of practice playing cards—not to mention waiting on extremely trying customers.
“Not to cut short the fascinating gossip about olden times,” Longmore said, “but the day is wearing away, and we seem not to have discovered where Clara went after leaving here.”
“The impatience of youth,” Lady Durwich said. “That’s what I told Clara. She wouldn’t say what possessed her to wander out unchaperoned with Adderley, of all men. I suspect it was nothing to do with him at all.”
“How can it have nothing to do
with Adderley, when he was the one who got half her clothes off?” Longmore said.
“Actually, he didn’t,” Sophy said. “He’d pushed her neckline down about an inch or so, and spoiled the delicate folds of the bodice.”
Knowing that arcane dressmaking detail would drive Longmore wild and take his mind off DeLuceys, she continued, “The corsage was quite low, you see, my lady, the drapery crossed on the front in narrow folds. We embroidered a wreath of moss roses, with buds, stems, and leaves, to go round the bottom of the skirt and up the front. She had a brooch—emeralds, to set off the embroidered foliage. We fastened it low—so.” She indicated the area between her breasts corresponding to the spot where Lady Clara’s brooch had been placed. “This allowed a pretty display of a bit of her chemisette, of a very fine blond—”
“Yes, yes, I daresay Lady Durwich read the infinity of dressmaking details in the Spectacle,” Longmore cut in. “As did we all.”
“I was merely pointing out that Lady Clara may have appeared to your brotherly eyes to be in a greater state of dishabille than was objectively the case,” Sophy said.
“What difference does it make, whether it was a little or a lot?” he said. “She was alone with him and he’d disarranged her dress and pretended to be gallant by trying to hide the fact when he knew it couldn’t be hidden.”
“Ah, but if he’d truly been gallant, he wouldn’t have needed to hide anything,” said Lady Dunwich. “If he truly cared for her, he wouldn’t have led her out to the terrace in the first place. Naturally I didn’t say so, not wanting to upset the child further. But she knew already. That was what threw her into such a tizzy, you see. She told me that wretched Bartham woman had said it to her face—or hinted it broadly enough. And Clara said it was bad enough to bear the humiliation—but to bear it for a man who despised her was intolerable. I tried to reason with her, but you know how she takes things to heart. Her grandmother might have persuaded her. She always knew the way. But I might as well have talked to the chimneypiece. I don’t see how this matter can be put right. She certainly doesn’t believe it can—and so I can only fear for her.”
Chapter Nine
