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I’m not a lady, she’d said.
“I admit she’s a bit of a riddle,” Clevedon said. “But that’s what makes her so ... amusing.”
“The ladies went to her,” said Aronduille. “Did you see?”
“I saw.” Clevedon hadn’t imagined they’d approach her. The men, yes, of course.
But the ladies? It was one thing for the hostess to admit her, politely overlooking a high-ranking guest’s bad manners or eccentricity. It was quite another matter for her lady guests to approach his “pet” and converse with her. Had Noirot been an actress or courtesan or any other dressmaker, for that matter, they would have snubbed her.
Instead, they’d pushed men aside to get to her. The encounter was brief, but when the women left, they all looked pleased with themselves.
“She’s a dressmaker,” he said. “That’s her profession: making women happy.”
But the curtsey he couldn’t explain.
He couldn’t explain the way she talked and the way she walked.
And the way she danced.
How many times had Émilien danced with her?
It was nothing to Clevedon. He’d never do anything so gauche as dance with her all night.
But considering he’d risked humiliation for her, he was entitled to one dance, certainly.
Though Marcelline appeared to heed only the partner of the moment, she always knew where Clevedon was. It was easy enough, his grace standing a head taller than most of the other men, and that head being so distinctive: the profile that would have made ancient Greece’s finest sculptors weep, the gleaming black hair with its boyish mass of tousled curls. Then there were the shoulders. No one else had such shoulders. But then, no one else had that body. Very likely he could have spouted any nonsense he pleased at their hostess, and she would have accepted whatever he said, for aesthetic reasons alone. Well, prurient ones, too, possibly. The countess was old and cold but she wasn’t dead.
For a time he’d danced, and now and again, the steps took them within inches of each other. But he always appeared as attentive to his partner as Marcelline did to hers. One might have believed he was completely indifferent to what she did. He’d got her into the party, and anything after that was her affair.
But one must be an extremely stupid or naïve woman to believe such a thing, and she was neither.
She knew he was watching her, though he excelled at seeming not to. In the last hour, though, he’d shed the pretense. He’d been prowling the ballroom, his friend trailing him like a shadow—a talkative one, by the looks of it.
Then at last the Duke of Clevedon’s seemingly casual wanderings brought him to her.
Men crowded about her, as they had from the instant she’d satisfied the ladies’ curiosity. He seemed not to notice the other men. He simply walked toward her, and it was as though a great ship sailed into port. The pack of men offered no resistance. They simply gave way, as though they were mere water under his hull.
She wondered if that was what it had been like, once upon a time, for her grandfather, when he was young and handsome, a powerful nobleman of an ancient family. Had the world given way before him, and had it likewise never occurred to him that the world would do anything else?
“Ah, there you are,” Clevedon said, as though he’d stumbled upon her by accident.
“As you see,” she said. “I have not shredded the curtains, or scratched the furniture.”
“No, I reckon you’re saving your claws for me,” he said. “Well, then, shall we dance?”
“But Madame has promised this next dance to me,” said Monsieur Tournadre.
Clevedon turned his head and looked at him.
“Or perhaps I misunderstood,” said Monsieur Tournadre. “Perhaps it was another dance.”
He backed away, as a lesser wolf would have withdrawn before the leader of the wolf pack.
Oh, she ought not to be thrilled. Only a giddy schoolgirl would thrill at a man’s snarling over her, the way a wolf snarled when another wolf dared to approach his bitch.
Still, this was the most desirable man in the ballroom, and his little show of possessiveness would have excited any woman in the room. Whatever else she was, she was still a woman, and a young one, and for all her worldly experience, she’d never had a peer of the realm warn another man away from her.
Before she could tell herself not to be a ninny, he led her out into the dancing. Then his hand clasped her waist, and hers settled on his shoulder.
