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He knew the truth about her.
Countess of Bartham’s ball
Thursday night
Longmore watched Lady Bartham approach. “Whatever you do,” he said in an undertone, “do not treat my mother to that curtsey.”
“But what curtsey is this?” Madame said.
“You know the one I mean,” he said. “The ballet dancer dying swan Queen Mab curtsey.”
“This is absurd,” she said. “Why should I do these things?”
He hadn’t time to answer because Lady Bartham was upon them, all smiles. A moment later she was leading Madame to meet his mother.
He let them go ahead, while he watched everybody watching Madame. The blue dress had been pretty enough in the shop. Now it was breathtaking, Delicate silver embroidery made a twining pattern over the top layer of blue crepe, which floated upon the satin layer beneath. Gossamer lace fluttered and brilliants sparkled in the sleeves. Under the chandeliers, it was like watching sunlight shimmering on a blue sea.
The dress was cut low, the better to display the eleven tons of diamonds she wore—and which, with any luck, no one would discover had been charged to the Duke of Clevedon’s account at Rundell and Bridge.
Longmore glanced about the room, casually taking note of Lord Adderley, lounging near the refreshment room, wearing a self-satisfied smirk.
“My dear Lady Warford, may I present Madame de Veirrion,” Lady Bartham said.
Lady Warford sat up a degree straighter and a shade more stiffly. Her blue gaze bored straight into Madame as though she were prepared to read entrails, without the usual preliminaries.
For a moment Madame wondered whether Lady Bartham had made a mistake or misunderstood. Ladies were supposed to ask other ladies if they desired such and such an introduction, to avoid awkward moments. Maybe Lady Warford had agreed but had changed her mind.
Mon dieu, I’m about to be snubbed, she thought. The cut direct—at the biggest event of the Season.
But nothing of what happened inside Madame showed on the outside. Outside she wore enough of a smile to be amiable but not at all fawning.
After all, Madame de Veirrion had a great fortune, and in Paris she was Somebody.
Lady Warford gave a gracious nod. “Madame.”
“Lady Warford.” Madame didn’t return the nod. She sank into a Noirot curtsey, the one Longmore had told her not to perform.
She heard everybody in the vicinity catch their breath.
When she rose, Lady Warford was wearing a speculative look.
Longmore appeared at Madame’s elbow. “Good gad, madame, it’s my mother, not Louis XIV. You French, always carrying everything to excess.”
“What is this excess you speak of?” said Madame. “This is madame la marquise, yes? What is wrong in this way I make my courtesy to your so elegant maman? Of whom, yes, I beg the pardon.” She turned her attention to Lady Warford. “You will pardon, I beg you please, Madame de—ah, no. It is Lady Warford I must say. My English is not yet of perfection.”
“I’m sure you’ll master it in time, Madame de Veirrion,” Lady Warford said. “As you seem to have mastered . . . other things.” She shot a glance at her son before returning to his companion. “I believe this is your first London ball?”
“Yes, Madame—Lady Warford. I make my debut, thanks to the great kindness of your friend Lady Bartham.”
“But of course I must have you,” Lady Bartham said. “Unthinkable not to have the most-talked-about lady in London at my party.”
“Of course you must,” Lady Warford said, smiling sweetly.
Lady Bartham said, with a laugh. “And I must have, too, the second most-talked-about, the Duchess of Clevedon.”
“Since most of the talk is in English,” Longmore said, “Madame is in the fortunate position of not understanding most of it. I daresay she barely comprehends three words in ten of the present conversation. Madame, you’re looking a trifle dazed. I think you need a drink. Lady Bartham—Mother—Clara—if we may be permitted to exit your exalted presence?”
He swept her away.
Chapter Seventeen
Had Mr. Brinsley Sheridan been a low, worthless, extravagant profligate, whose marriage was a skilful arrangement with his impatient creditors, we should have been the first to condemn and deplore the step which has been taken.
—The Court Journal, Saturday 13 June 1835
They danced.
It wasn’t what Sophy had expected. She’d been so fixed on her scheme and playing her part that she’d almost forgotten she wasn’t an actor in a stage drama but a lady attending a ball.
The music had started as Longmore was leading her away from his mother. In another moment, Lord and Lady Bartham began to dance, not with each other but with the partners etiquette dictated.
Then Longmore was saying, “Ah, the perfect excuse not to make polite conversation.” He led Sophy out among the swirling couples, and his arm went round her waist, and she caught her breath and said, “I’m not sure . . . It’s been an age since I—”
“I’ll lead,” he told her in French. “Leave it to me, Madame. Trust me.”
Moments later, he’d swept her into the waltz, and she forgot business and schemes and villains. For this time, there was only this man, and the motion of his athletic, confident body, as sure and thoroughly masculine in dancing as in everything else.
Round and round the ballroom they went, and it seemed she was floating among clouds of silks and satins, whites and pastels and vivid jewel tones and black and grey, all swirling about her, while rainbow stars sparkled among the clouds: emeralds, sapphires, rubies, pearls, and diamonds—above all, diamonds—glittering under another thousand stars in the crystal chandeliers.
It was like a fairyland.
How many such events had she attended, playing a maid? How many times had she described such scenes for the Spectacle’s readers?
But always, she described from the outside looking in.
She hadn’t danced in ages, as she’d tried to tell him. Not since Paris. And then she’d never attended a gathering like this. She’d never before danced in the arms of a man she . . .
Loved.
She looked up and found him gazing down at her, wearing a hint of a smile while amusement glinted in his dark eyes: amusement and something else she couldn’t read.
“You naughty girl,” he said in French. “What did I tell you about the curtsey? And why did I imagine you’d pay me the slightest heed?”
“I had a reason,” she answered in the same language. It was much easier to converse that way than in Madame’s mangled English. French came naturally. Murdering the English language in a believably French style needed thought.
“You always do,” he said.
“Firstly, like a ballet dancer’s movement, it captivates the eye,” she said. “Secondly, it displays the dress in a way that no other movement can.”
“Even this?” he said. “Was it not designed to appear at its most enticingly beautiful during dancing?”
/> “You’re learning,” she said.
“In self-defense,” he said. “Like Clevedon.”
He looked away and she followed his gaze. Marcelline and the duke were dancing, and it had to be obvious to all onlookers why he’d broken a cardinal rule of his class and married a shopkeeper. It had to be obvious as well, that he’d married a woman who loved him. Marcelline wasn’t wearing her card-playing face. She was herself: a woman deeply, deeply in love with her husband.
She deserved her good fortune, Sophy thought. Marcelline had worked since she was a child. She’d made the best of a bad marriage to a charming philanderer of a cousin. And when the cholera had come and destroyed their world, everyone in it, and everything they’d worked for, she’d gathered what remained of her family and brought them to England, with a handful of coins and a ruthless will to succeed.
Sophy tore her gaze from her sister. “If you understand this much about the dress design, then you know my motives were ulterior,” she said. “It’s true that this and all our gowns are meant to appear beautiful at rest and even more so in motion. But I ask you to bring to mind my earlier mission—the one that took us to Hortense the Horrible. Do you recall?”
“As though I could forget,” he said. “Your mole, in particular, is deeply etched—or should I say permanently sprouting—in my recollection.”
“We went there so that I could see whether it was the same old Dowdy’s or something different and more of a threat,” she said. “I needed to see your mother’s dress because they’d do their best work for her. It was better than their usual thing, but it still couldn’t hold a candle to ours. But how to make your mother see this?”
“I don’t see what this has to do with the curtsey,” he said.
“It didn’t occur to you,” she said, “that at the moment I was being introduced to your mother, she was surrounded by the work of Maison Noirot: Lady Bartham, Lady Clara, and I were all wearing Marcelline’s creations. Your mother couldn’t fail to notice the difference between what she was wearing and what we were wearing. It may take her a while to fully comprehend, but we’ve planted the seed.”
