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He couldn’t have done it. He was the last man on earth who’d make a declaration.
But her mouth still tingled from the passion of that last kiss, and she remembered the wry look of his mouth and the odd note in his laughter in the instant before he turned away.
She ran out, through the door, and into the next room and the next . . .
And stopped short when she reached the door to the corridor.
What was she doing?
She couldn’t run out into the corridor in her nightdress. And to accomplish what, exactly?
As it was . . .
But no. She’d taken care. It was not entirely shocking, she knew, for a widowed foreigner to entertain a gentleman until the early morning hours. Most of the ton was only now returning home after their entertainments, and her apartments, like those of a foreign ambassador, were designed to entertain guests. Those who heard of Longmore’s early morning departure from here might speculate, but they wouldn’t have a story, unless she gave them one in the Spectacle. The servants were well paid not to gossip about Madame, in any language.
If she ran out in her nightclothes into the corridor after his lordship, others would see—and that would most definitely be a story.
She returned to her sitting room.
“Wouldn’t make a whit of difference in any event,” she muttered. What would she get if she ran after him? More cryptic remarks, no doubt.
She sat at the writing table and stared at the pen she’d set down only a short time ago.
Her heart was still pounding. The words he’d uttered were not too cryptic for it. Her heart understood I love you well enough.
“It seems I love you, too, Harry, imbecile me,” she whispered. “Much good will it do us.”
She sat for a time, contemplating the hopelessness of the situation, even while a part of her mind hunted and hunted for a scheme, as was its nature to do. But no scheme existed that would make everything come out right.
She couldn’t be his mistress: It was bad for the shop.
As to marriage . . .
That was laughable. Even if he were mad and reckless enough to ask, she couldn’t accept. Society still seethed over Marcelline’s conquest of Clevedon. Another misalliance would finish Maison Noirot forever. And Lady Warford would be leading the annihilation army.
At least Marcelline had had the good sense to fall in love with an orphan.
Sophy contemplated the Fairfaxes, all of them allied against her. Even Lady Clara. After all, it was one thing to be fond of one’s dressmaker or one’s maid. It was quite another proposition to accept that person as a sister.
And then, there was the thorny matter of her antecedents.
No, it was ridiculous and hopeless, and really, she hadn’t time to mope and dream mad schemes. She already had one scheme in hand, and that wasn’t mad at all. But she’d need all her wits to carry it out.
Chapter Sixteen
The Marquess of Hertford has invited a large party of the fashionable world, on Monday next, to his first fête during the season, at his mansion in the Regent’s Park . . . We understand upwards of five hundred invitations have been issued.
—The Court Journal, Saturday 13 June 1835
Exclusive to Foxe’s Morning Spectacle
Monday 15 June
In light of the recent incident at the British Institution’s annual summer exhibition, we can only shake our heads in wonder at a certain gentleman’s persistence in folly. This lord has won—whether by fair means or foul, we leave to our readers’ judgment—the hand of London’s premier belle, a diamond of the first water: a title which even our most hardened misogynists cannot begrudge her. A lady of rank, incomparable beauty, and grace, she ought, we should have thought, to arouse feelings of purest devotion in any masculine heart not hardened into adamantine obduracy by years of self-indulgence and callous disregard of obligations. True, the gentleman’s depredations upon the once prosperous family estate left to him by a loving father have reduced his dependents to beggary. True, London has not in many years seen so shameful a case of financial recklessness and disregard, even of the unwritten code which permits a gentleman to ignore the clamor of his creditors yet requires him to pay promptly all debts of honor to his friends. Indeed, to find a case comparable in egregiousness, we must look back to the date in 1816 when Beau Brummell fled these shores in the dead of night, leaving his friends responsible for some thirty thousand pounds in a mutually raised loan, in addition to sums owed to divers parties who were not his friends.
At present, we hardly know what to think. We can only present to our readers a singular incident: On Sunday night, the gentleman in question was observed in a quiet alcove of the Brunswick Hotel. Admittedly, it is nothing out of the ordinary to discover groups of gentlemen enjoying the hotel’s fine food and drink. Yet no other gentleman joined his lordship. His only companion at table was a young French widow last seen on the arm of his affianced bride’s brother.
Maison Noirot
Tuesday afternoon
“No, no!” Marcelline cried. “What are you thinking, Sophy? It’s essential that Lady Clara wear the white. And you must wear the blue.”
“I thought you made the plum expressly for this party,” Sophy said.
Marcelline waved her hands near her head, dismissing the plum dress and her plans for it. “That was before I saw the two dresses together, and you and Lady Clara standing together. No, no, it will never do. It’s out of the question. The contrast is too strong.”
A trio of mannequins wore the dresses at the moment. They were part of a set, twelve in all, and represented an extravagance Leonie hadn’t enthusiastically endorsed. But the mannequins made a splendid show, and impressed the customers. Dowdy’s had only two antiquated specimens.
“Of course there’s a contrast,” Sophy said. “I’m a dashing young widow. Lady Clara is an unwed young lady.”
“I know that,” Marcelline said impatiently. “But if Lady Clara wears the white and you wear the plum, the difference will seem too extreme, and you’ll seem fast by comparison. Dashing is all very well. It’s exciting. But fast is a judgment. And you’re not the one we want judged.” She turned to Lady Clara’s brother. “I appeal to you, Lord Longmore.”
He retreated a step. “Ah, no, thank you. When it comes to ladies’ clothes, I’m like Mad Dick. He refuses to get near their hooks and buttons and such, and I refuse to enter disputes about style.”
He, Lady Clara, Marcelline, and Sophy stood in the private consulting room on the first floor, away from the hubbub on the ground floor—a much greater hubbub than they’d anticipated for the Season’s remaining ten days.
The ton liked to end the Season with a series of lavish events, rather like the concluding explosions of a fireworks display, and hosts competed to make the biggest explosion. Likewise, the women’s competition for envy-arousing dress was as grim and fierce as preparations for war.
On Thursday, Lady Bartham would hold her annual ball. Her intent, as always, was to cast into the shade, if not the void, all other end-of-Season events, including the Marquess of Hertford’s fête in Regent’s Park yesterday, the Duke and Duchess of St. Albans’s ball and supper this evening, and the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland’s fête champetre at Sion House on Friday.
Outdoing everyone else was the obvious reason Lady Bartham had invited not only the principals of the exciting Adderley scandal, but a couple who had appeared on precious few guest lists: the Duke and Duchess of Clevedon.
When the Great World learned that both Lady Clara Fairfax and her rumored rival for Lord Adderley’s affections, Madame de Veirrion, patronized Maison Noirot, half a dozen of the female members of that world abandoned their own dressmakers and made posthaste for No. 56 St. James’s Street. Doubtless they hoped to get a glimpse of the two women, preferably trying to scratch each other’s eyes out—not to mention a closer look at the glamorous new Duchess of Clevedon.
But these were lesser motives. The gre
ater was to outdo everyone else, including the Parisian sensation, Madame de Veirrion. It seemed that having a dress made at Maison Noirot was the only way to achieve this aim—even if it meant getting put on the Marchioness of Warford’s enemies list.
Since a delighted Leonie gave Sophy full credit for the influx of desirable customers, she’d been more affectionate and less tiresome about accounts than usual. Today, she was taking advantage of Sophy’s being on duty at Maison Noirot by visiting the linen drapers. Leonie’s eye for fabric was as sharp and discerning as her eye for numbers.
Still, Marcelline was the acknowledged design genius. Had Leonie been present, she would have told Sophy, “But of course you’ll wear the blue. Didn’t Marcelline say you must?”
Lady Clara, who’d moved to study the dresses, now added her opinion. “You’ll be divine in the blue,” she said. “It’s the perfect shade for your eyes. And it will set off the diamonds splendidly.”
“Diamonds?” Longmore said.
“Of course,” Lady Clara said. “Madame must be dripping diamonds, to whet a certain gentleman’s appetite.”
His dark gaze swung to Sophy. She had not seen him since early Monday morning. This was the first time he’d actually looked at her since he’d arrived with his sister. She thought the glint in his eyes was humor.
Perhaps he wasn’t in love after all. Perhaps he’d had the ailment for a moment, then recovered, much in the way he’d recover from a morning after too much carousing.
A man in love ought to seem at least a little troubled, perhaps pale and ill. He ought to feel love’s pangs, as Lord Adderley so tritely put it.
