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So was Marcelline. She was alert with panic. “We need to leave as early as possible tomorrow. Today, I mean,” she said.
It was only two o’clock in the morning on Friday. If they could get seats on a steam packet to London on Saturday, they could be home as early as Sunday. The guests at the ball would not be writing their letters until later today, which meant they mightn’t be posted until Saturday. And the London post was closed on Sundays.
With any luck, she and Jeffreys would be in London before any letters arrived from Paris. That would give Sophy time to devise a way to capitalize on any rumors about Mrs. Noirot and the Duke of Clevedon.
“We haven’t a minute to lose,” she said. “By Tuesday or Wednesday, the rumors will be flying. We have to manage them.”
Jeffreys didn’t say, “What rumors?” She was not naïve and she was not stupid. She knew Marcelline had attended the ball with the Duke of Clevedon. She’d noticed the torn dress. She’d even raised an eyebrow. But it was an interested eyebrow, not a shocked or censorious one. Jeffreys was no innocent lamb. She’d had dealings with the upper orders, especially its male contingent. That was how she’d ended up as “an unfortunate female.”
No one had to tell her how the dress had come to be damaged. Her concern was whether the damage was reparable.
“It’s all a matter of interpretation,” Marcelline said. “We simply reinterpret. Something like—let me see—‘Duke of C captivated by Mrs. Noirot’s gown of poussière silk displayed to magnificent advantage in the course of a waltz,’ ” Marcelline said, thinking aloud. “No, it wants more detail. ‘Gown of poussière silk, dotted with crimson papillon bows, a black lace pelerine completing the ensemble ... met with the approval of one of the highest ranking members of the peerage.’ Yes, that could do it.”
“I can mend it easily,” said Jeffreys. “Everyone will want to see it.”
“They will see it, if we manage this properly,” Marcelline said. “But that means taking charge of the tale before anyone else gets it. Sophy can give her contact at Foxe’s Morning Spectacle an exclusive, early report. She’ll tell him the Duke of Clevedon took me to the party as one of his jokes. Or to win a wager.”
“Wouldn’t a joke be better?” said Jeffreys. “To some people, a wager might sound disreputable.”
“You’re right. My being there started out as a joke, but the dress captured the other guests’ attention—”
“Something ought to be put in about ‘the effect of the color arrangement while in motion—’ ”
“Exactly,” said Marcelline. “Then something about a waltz as the perfect showcase for the dress’s unique effects. Struck by my appearance, even the Duke of Clevedon danced with me.”
“Madame, how I wish I had been there,” said Jeffreys. “Any lady who reads a story like that will feel the same. They’ll all be wild to see the dress—and the shop it came from—and the women who made it.”
“We’ll have time enough to work out the details while we’re on the boat,” Marcelline said. “But we have to catch it first. Pack as if your life depended on it.”
And, I’ve done that more times than I can count, she thought.
“Certainly, madame. But the passports?”
“What about them?”
“You recall that the ambassador’s secretary told us that before leaving, we must send him our passports to be countersigned. Then we must take them to the prefecture of police. Then to—”
“We don’t have time,” Marcelline said.
“But, madame—”
“It will take all day, even two days,” Marcelline said. She ran this gauntlet twice a year, spring and autumn, when she visited Paris. She knew the entire tedious routine by heart. “The different offices are open at different hours. The British ambassador only deigns to put his name to the passports between the hours of eleven and one. Then one must wait upon the prefecture of police. After that comes the nonsense with the foreign minister—again who allows only two hours, and demands ten francs to take up his pen. You know it’s ridiculous.”
They need rules. They make so many.
She could hear Clevedon’s low voice, the tone implying a shared joke about the French and their rules. The first night, at the opera, came back in a rush of sensation: her hand on the costly neckcloth, exchanging his pin for hers ... the way he’d watched her, so still, like a cat: the panther lying in wait.
She pushed him from her mind. She hadn’t time to brood about him.
“I know it’s silly, madame, but the secretary said we were liable to be detained if our papers are not perfectly in order.”
“You see to the packing,” Marcelline said. “Leave the passports and the officials to me.”
Saturday evening
“Ican’t believe it,” Jeffreys said as she looked about the tiny cabin. They had been unable to obtain a chief cabin—but then, they were lucky to have been allowed aboard the steam packet at all, considering all the rules they’d disregarded. “You did it.”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” said Marcelline. Especially, she thought, when the will belonged to a Noirot. It was amazing how much could be accomplished with a little forgery, a little bribery, a little charm, and a good deal of décolleté.
