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He said what was necessary, because it was habit, and required no thinking, which was just as well, since he was too angry and frustrated to think.
Gladys drew a little nearer, obliging Lady Susan to step back a pace.
“I do beg your pardon, Lisburne,” Gladys said sotto voce. “I wouldn’t interrupt your tête-à-tête for worlds. We can wander about the shop for a while, if you wish. Or we might walk down to the palace and try to stare the guards out of countenance.”
“You needn’t,” he began. He found himself pausing to rethink his answer, because she tipped her head to one side and searched his face.
Though he was sure she could read nothing there, he felt exposed. And at the same time he had a sense of what some men saw in her: intelligent eyes, a fine complexion . . . and a surprising kindness in the way she looked at him.
“You’re very good,” he said. “But my business can easily wait for another day.”
“We shouldn’t have come so early,” Gladys said. “But the party, you know. On Friday. All the world will be there, and now everybody wants a dress from Maison Noirot, and so we came early to avoid the mobs. Madame and her accomplices have made me yet another beautiful dress, and you’d think all they needed to do was fit it to the nearest barrel, but no, they’re so fussy, and I must stand still and let them pin and trim and mutter.”
“The party,” he said blankly.
“Mama’s party,” Clara said. “Of course, you and Lord Swanton must be drowning in invitations, and I daresay it’s slipped your mind. But Mama gives a grand ball every year at the end of the Season. The last day of July. An immense, elaborate affair, meant to make all the other hostesses gnash their teeth.”
“This time it’s to be quite shocking,” Gladys said in a conspiratorial whisper. “For one thing, I’ll be there.” She laughed. “In bronze or sunset or whatever they call the color. And I’ll set the entire ballroom alight.”
“And we’re to have my new sister,” Clara said. “Lady Longmore is coming. And the duchess will be there. And all we need do is persuade Leonie—and we’ll be the talk of London!”
He looked at Leonie. He saw the very faint wash of color in her cheeks.
“Yes, yes, we’ll discuss that later,” she said. “But for the present, if your ladyships will be so kind as to proceed to the fitting room? We have a great deal to do, and not very much time in which to do it, yes? Come, come. No dawdling, if you please.”
And in this imperious manner she shooed them on their way, and Jeffreys hurried along with them.
Once they’d passed through the door of the showroom and into the inner sanctum, Leonie said, “I can guess why you’ve come.”
“Why should I not come?” he said. “Do you think I forget as easily as you do?”
She went still.
“I understand your reasons,” he said. “I’ve understood it until I’m sick with understanding. Your business. I know. I must respect it else I don’t respect you. But my pride is badly hurt and so I’m not behaving well. I should keep away, and not make any more talk. I should adjust the terms of our wager—”
“Which terms exactly?” she said, in a small, tight voice.
“No one’s going to offer for her,” he said, lowering his own voice. “Not soon, at any rate. Not because of her—you’ve performed miracles with her. Even I like her.”
“I’ve dressed her,” she said. “The rest she’s done herself.”
“With your guidance, I don’t doubt. And whatever love potions you brew in the cellar. But anybody who offers for her must face her father, and I believe it will take considerable time and a wild, unthinking passion, to bring any of her current set of beaux to the point. I’ve no doubt that some of them have conceived an attachment—but unbridled passion, the kind that drives a man to enter a lion’s den or undergo the labors of Hercules? That’s another matter entirely.”
“You don’t think love is enough?” she said.
“It must be a potent love, indeed,” he said.
She folded her hands at her waist. “Are you afraid I’ll lose our wager?” she said.
“Yes, actually,” he said. “True, you might win. Stranger things have happened. The transformation of Gladys, for instance. But in all likelihood, yes, you’ll lose, and . . .” He paused.
“I shouldn’t worry, if I were you,” she said. “And I know exactly where I mean to hang the Botticelli.”
It was a fine exit line and she started away, and he almost let her go, but, “Leonie.”
She stopped and turned back to him, her expression inscrutable.
“Are you going to the ball?” he said.
She shook her head. “Lady Warford has resigned herself to Sophy and will put up with Marcelline mainly to aggravate her friends. But I haven’t got a title and I’m still working in the shop and most of the ladies at the party will be ladies I’ve waited on this week. It’s a ridiculous state of affairs.”
He moved to her. “I’ll tell you what’s ridiculous,” he said. “You’ve gone to incredible lengths to transform Gladys—and I know it can’t have been easy, because I know Gladys. Or the Gladys she was, at any rate. This is a chance to see your handiwork.”
“I saw it at Vauxhall,” she said.
“Vauxhall is nothing,” he said.
“Nothing,” she said with a small smile.
“I was there, after you left. Gladys was the belle of a small party. But it was like a picnic. You’ve seen the dancing area. A small space, with trees in the middle. Mixed company, and a lot of gawking onlookers in the supper boxes. It’s pretty and romantic, especially under the stars, when one dances with a beautiful girl. But it isn’t a great ball at Warford House, with the crème de la crème of Society dressed in their finest, drinking champagne and dancing to London’s most expensive musicians. You need to see your protégée in her proper milieu. And you ought to have, at least once, a proper milieu in which to show off one of your beautiful gowns.”
He caught the look of longing in her eyes before she masked it. “I hear the voice of the serpent in the garden,” she said. “You know I wasn’t tempted, truly, until you mentioned showing off a gown.”
“Advertising,” he said. “When have you ever had such an opportunity?”
“Never,” she said. “As you well know.”
“And to make it even more irresistible, I promise to do you the great honor of dancing with you,” he said.
She rolled her eyes and let out a theatrical sigh.
“Leonie.”
“Oh, very well, if only to stop you plaguing me.”
Then she turned away and flung up her hand in a gesture of dismissal, and went out.
He wanted to lunge at her and drag her back.
He let her go.
Chapter Seventeen
A partner, ’tis true, I would gladly command,
But that partner must boast of wealth, houses, and land;
I have looked round the ball-room, and, try what I can,
I fail to discover one Marrying Man!
—Mrs. Abdy, “A Marrying Man,” 1835
Friday 31 July
This had not been Lisburne’s favorite day of his life.
It had started with this morning’s Spectacle, and Lisburne’s spilling his coffee onto his eggs as he read:
Was that a poet of late pugilistic renown observed yesterday slipping into Rundell and Bridge jewelers? And what was it the clerk put into the little box, and the gentleman tucked into his waistcoat pocket?
But the world cannot be surprised, and will not require more than one guess as to the identity of the lady for whom the little box’s contents are intended.
We wish the gentleman well, in the general sense, as well as the specific acquisition of the hand of his fair one.
In case one was in any doubt, the p
un on general was a sledgehammer reminder.
Swanton, meanwhile, had breakfasted early and gone out.
Then, at White’s in the early afternoon, Lisburne encountered Longmore, who confessed that the news about Swanton and Gladys had floored him.
“When I first described Gladys to her, Sophy told me, only let Maison Noirot get their hands on her,” Longmore said. “Well, what do I know about frocks, except that they’re the very devil to get off these days? Not to mention I knew it’d take more than a frock to make Gladys tolerable. I vow, when I saw her, I couldn’t believe it was the same girl. Thought they must have killed the original and put another in her place. But I hadn’t seen her in ages, you know.”
