Dressed to Kiss

by Madeline Hunter, Caroline Linden, Megan Frampton, Myretta Robens

  Lady Giles, young, fair, pretty, and spoiled, wavered between amusement and annoyance that a dressmaker dared interfere with her fun. She chose amusement. “The carriage can wait, Mrs. Fontaine. Bring me the materials you recommend for the dinner dress and the court dress.”

  “It is not the same carriage that brought you. That was why I thought—”

  “It can still wait.” Lady Giles looked less amused.

  Selina went behind a curtain to the alcove where they kept samples of fabrics and trims from the best shops. Many patrons preferred to visit the drapers and warehouses themselves, but some appreciated this convenience.

  She chose quickly. All the while she tried to calm herself. Just because the state coach had come for sweet Edeline did not mean anything. It had probably been out and about in town for other purposes, and simply stopped by to collect some pretty baggage before going home.

  Not for the first time she doubted the wisdom of accepting this commission, however. She had done so against all of her better judgment. She had only agreed to it because the shop needed both the work and the prestige. The owner, Sophie-Louise, had given her sanctuary and employment when she badly needed it. Loyalty dictated she take any work that would help Sophie-Louise’s daughter Felicity in her current quest to enhance the shop’s finances.

  Nor did she have a good reason for not accepting. None she could share with Felicity, at least.

  She dug through some samples of trims and plucked out several that could embellish the fabric. Muffled voices came to her, as if a hum of quiet chatter had erupted among the women looking to buy ribbons and lace in the street-front shop. Hopefully that meant another potential patron had sought them out, the sort of woman of the haute ton who would cause others to nudge and whisper.

  Steps sounded in the chamber behind her curtain, the one where Lady Giles waited.

  Not delicate steps. Boot steps. A man had entered.

  “Oh, I did not expect you to come here,” Lady Giles exclaimed.

  “I was on my way back from Whitehall and directed the coach here to bring you home.”

  Selina’s hand froze, deep in a box of colored silk cords.

  “I am not really done yet,” Lady Giles said.

  “I assume not, if you left me waiting.”

  Selina’s pulsed raced. Desperation wanted to give way to panic. She had only heard that voice once before, but she would never forget its terse, superior, arrogant tone. She definitely should have found a way to reject this commission.

  She peeked through the curtain, hoping she was wrong.

  She was not.

  The Most High, Noble and Potent Prince, His Grace Randall, Duke of Barrowmore, the man who had ruined her life and her dreams in one short day, the man she would not mind strangling with the length of silken cord that she held, stood ten feet away.

  “Are these the fashions you chose?” Rand reached for a stack of plates on the table where Edeline sat in her chair.

  “Thus far. I hope you like them. Mrs. Fontaine advised me on each one, and I accepted her judgment as you told me to, even though I find most of them far too plain.”

  He sat across from her, and flipped through the plates. It was a hell of thing that he was doing this, instead of his sister Charlotte, or better yet, his brother Giles. Only the former was in the country pampering her husband who had managed to slice himself while practicing with a sword, and the latter had taken himself to hell knew where to escape his debts. So, in addition to his considerably more important duties, he found himself acting as arbiter of the wardrobe of his brother’s young wife.

  Edeline was lovely, sweet, gentle, and usually demure. Who would have guessed that she had no taste? Certainly not he, until he chanced upon her displaying a new dress to a friend the day after she received it. The modiste who made that dress should be executed.

  The rest of the new wardrobe looked just as bad. Embellishments too distracting, necklines too low, colors too bright—It turned out sweet Edeline had never been let loose at a dressmaker’s before. Any refinement in her clothing up until now had been the result of her mother’s careful decisions. Unfortunately, this spring Edeline had demanded sartorial independence and her mother had given it, since her attention now centered on the next daughter to be married off.

  The entire enterprise had been a very expensive disaster. The bills would start arriving soon, not that Giles was in town to pay them. Not that Giles could afford to pay them, no matter where he was. Giles was another irritation and distraction that Rand did not appreciate.

  Regarding Edeline’s wardrobe, apparently a firm hand was needed. Fate had decreed it would have to be his.

  “That is the coronation dress,” Edeline said, pointing to a plate he uncovered.

  “Not in this color, I hope.”

  “I have not decided yet. Mrs. Fontaine has gone to get some material—Where is she? Mrs. Fontaine?”

  A movement stirred the air behind him. A human presence warmed his shoulder.

  Edeline looked over his head. “Ah, there you are, Mrs. Fontaine. Are those the fabrics you recommend? Put them here, so the duke can see them.”

  A hand reached around and set a stack of cloth on the table in front of him. He looked at it, then at the plate, then back again. “So this would be for the dress proper, and this for the overdress?”

  “Yes,” a woman’s voice said.

  A very small part of him stood at attention. It had been a nice voice, deep and smooth. Mature and sensual. Its timbre momentarily distracted him.

  The hand placed another stack in front of him. She had nice hands too. Elegant, with thin, long fingers. Young. “These are for the carriage ensemble, and these”—yet another stack appeared—“for the dinner dress.”

  “There are more plates here,” he said.

  “Materials of this quality can overwhelm the senses. I prefer to ask my patrons to choose a few at a time.”

  That made sense. Already the colors and textures created confusion. So did that voice. It kept sending rivulets of curiosity into the stream of his consciousness.

  Some men possessed an expertise in fashion. He did not. He could only claim to know when a woman’s garments did not reflect her status and enhance her beauty. Nothing shown to him thus far fell into that category. It appeared Mrs. Fontaine knew what she was about.

  Thank God he would not have to make time for this in the future.

  “Are you happy with Mrs. Fontaine’s choices?” His tone dared Edeline to object. He had warned her that if she purchased anything else at all inappropriate he would send her to the country for the duration of the Season and the summer.

  “They are perfect.”

  “Then let us go.” He stood and offered his hand.

  Edeline accompanied him to the door. “I will come tomorrow to be measured, Mrs. Fontaine.”

  “Very good. I will see you then.”

  That voice nudged at Rand again. Something about it…

  He turned to see the woman, in order to issue the command that would place the whole of this wardrobe into her capable hands.

  One glance at her dark hair and blue eyes and her distracting, well-endowed bodice had his mind racing, searching for a thought that kept slipping away.

  Suddenly an old memory flashed, and brought clarity with its light. He peered hard at the dressmaker. Hell yes, it was she. He was certain of it.

  Mrs. Fontaine was really Selina Duval, the seductress who had almost got Giles to the altar four years ago.

  She watched recognition slash through him like a bolt from on high. One moment he appeared aloof and barely attentive. The next moment his hot gaze scorched her from head to toe.

  Selina stood her ground. She raised her chin. She looked right back at him. She pretended to have no awareness of his transformation, or of what had caused it.

  The duke’s change in demeanor amused Lady Giles. “I hope you are not going to threaten Mrs. Fontaine with being drawn and quartered if I end up with some
thing you do not like.”

  His expression smoothed. “I never threaten women. Mrs. Fontaine knows what is expected.”

  Lady Giles slid her arm through his. “Then, until tomorrow, Mrs. Fontaine.”

  She guided her escort through the doorway. The duke looked back, over his shoulder. One raised eyebrow over one dark eye communicated that he was not finished with a certain dressmaker.

  Selina pulled out the chair the duke had used, and sank into it. She gazed around the little workroom where she had found sanctuary the last few years. She had built an independent life here by exploiting her one skill and talent. She did not relish the prospect of trying to start over in another town.

  “Did the consultation with Lady Giles go well?”

  Felicity had stuck her head through the doorway. Since Sophie-Louise moved to the country last year, Felicity really managed Madame Follette’s now. Of middling height, and with blond hair and blue eyes, Felicity was a lovely young woman. Selina also considered her a friend. Not only the long hours together in the shop had bound her to Felicity. Four years ago, when she sought employment, it had been Felicity who convinced Sophie-Louise to take her on.

  “It went well, but perhaps not well enough.”

  Felicity came over and flipped through Selina’s plates. “Did the duke approve of these?”

  “I think so, but—We may not have this commission after all. He did not say so outright, but I have the feeling he was not impressed.”

  Felicity’s face drew long with disappointment. “I so hope you are wrong. We could use this commission badly.”

  “I know. I am sorry. I hope I am wrong, too.”

  “We will know soon enough. I overheard Lady Giles speak of tomorrow. If she comes, then it is secured.”

  Selina doubted that, but she hoped the duke would allow bygones to be bygones. Between the current Season and the coronation in a few months, modistes all over London had more business than they could handle. A few had even tried to steal some of Felicity’s seamstresses.

  That meant this year represented a rare opportunity for the shop to resolve the financial precariousness that haunted it. Enough notable designs on ladies of high visibility, like Lady Giles, and Madame Follette’s shop would join the list of dress designers the best and wealthiest women patronized all the time. A truly dazzling dress might even get mentioned in the ladies’ journals and gossip sheets.

  Upon learning one of Selina’s patrons, Lady Clarice, had recommended them to Lady Giles for an extensive wardrobe, everyone employed at the shop had held their collective breath, praying. When Lady Giles wrote to request an appointment with Selina, the whole world took on brighter, happier hues. When Selina read in the gossip sheets that Lord Giles Woodville, younger brother of the Duke of Barrowmore, had departed from town, that had allayed her misgivings enough to believe she could do this without ever crossing his path.

  Now her path had crossed the duke’s instead. Rather than be the salvation of the business, she might damage it. The anonymity that she had found here would probably be destroyed, too. The shop might have its name in those gossip sheets, but in all the wrong ways.

  Felicity gave Selina’s hand a firm squeeze. “Don’t look so glum. If the duke did not like your designs, he has no taste. If Lady Giles does not continue with us, we will manage as we always have, and make good of the other opportunities that are coming our way.”

  How like Felicity to set aside her own worries in order to soothe Selina’s. She wished she could confide about why the duke would surely have second thoughts. To do so would be selfish, however. None of that was Felicity’s problem. It would be cruel to give her more to lose sleep over.

  If the worst happened, she would find a way to protect Felicity and the shop, even if it meant disappearing again.

  Chapter Two

  Rand finished his letter to Lord Liverpool. The prime minister had given him an unofficial mission to try and persuade Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales, to leave the realm before her husband’s coronation. A handsome settlement of fifty thousand pounds a year was the carrot. Humiliation at being denied a place at the coronation was the stick.

  Unfortunately, his meeting with the princess and her advisors today had failed to elicit even a thorough hearing of the rationale he had prepared. It had also ended any friendship he shared with Caroline. He was now just one more lord lined up against her, in her view.

  His letter completed, and, he hoped, his involvement in the whole sorry business finished too, he left his chambers in Manard House. Sounds drifted down the stairwell, of Edeline laughing with a friend who had called.

  That sound brought his thoughts soundly back to that damned wardrobe. And to his brother’s absence from town. And to Mrs. Fontaine.

  Another unfortunate business left to him to try and fix. Not one to shirk his duty, or to avoid the unpleasant aspects of it, he called for his horse.

  Selina left the shop at six o’clock. Felicity accompanied her and the other employees to the door, in order to lock it behind them. Felicity lived above the shop, as had her mother Sophie-Louise before retreating to the country.

  Bidding the others good-bye, Selina began her walk east to Panton Street, where she lived in a modest three-room apartment in a building full of similar homes for women of decent breeding but minimal income.

  After bending over tables and crouching next to skirts all day, she enjoyed a good walk in the evening. She liked observing the activity of the city, unless a demonstration unsettled its normal patterns. If rain did not threaten like it did today, she might even go far out of her way to stroll along Birdcage Walk so she could study the ensembles worn by ladies taking turns there.

  Today the overcast skies discouraged that. So did her state of mind. She had not forgotten the episode with Lady Giles during the last few hours, but at least work had put that at the back of her mind. Now, with each step, she paced out the details of the duke’s surprise arrival, and its ramifications.

  None of it helped her humor. Her emotions kept swinging between anger and indignation and fear and desperation.

  Suddenly another emotion joined those. Fear.

  Someone was following her.

  The clip-clop of horse hooves paced in time with her feet. The presence behind her diminished all others on the street.

  She quickened her steps until she almost ran. She turned onto her home’s lane. The horse behind her did not. Telling herself that the day’s events had made her too nervous to be rational, she walked up the steps to her building, then upstairs to her apartment. She let herself in with her key, and turned to close the door behind her.

  The duke stood there, right outside the doorway. She started with surprise at how his tall, stern, dark presence simply materialized, as if conjured up by her thoughts.

  “I would have a word with you, Mrs. Fontaine.”

  “Not today, thank you.” She closed the door on him.

  One strong hand pressed against it, forcing it to remain ajar. “I must insist. It is a great inconvenience for me to make time for this, and I am sure you do not want our conversation to take place in that shop. Or do you?”

  She wished she had the strength to push that door closed right in his arrogant, condescending nose. Since she did not, and since she definitely did not want this conversation to take place in the shop, she released the door and stepped back.

  He strode into her home and closed the door behind him. He angled his head this way and that, taking in the few chambers that gave off from the tiny reception hall in which they stood. She could imagine his thoughts as he noticed the well-used furniture bought secondhand, and the simple drapes. The one extravagance, an Indian carpet in the sitting room, had arrived from her mother unexpectedly after she wrote to Mama and told her where she was living, and how.

  He headed toward that carpet. “In here, I think.”

  So much for any pretense that he was a visitor she had received. She followed him.

  She sat in
the middle of her patterned sofa. Her position covered the place where one seam had begun to fray. She did not want him taking too much satisfaction in her reduced circumstances, or, worse, pitying her.

  He stood in all his majestic dukeness. He set down his hat and riding crop on the one table. Face chiseled and severe, he gazed out the long window, then at the fireplace, and finally right at her.

  “There is or was a Mr. Fontaine?” he asked.

  “If I am Mrs. Fontaine, there must have been.”

  “There is no must to it. Many women become Mrs. This or That out of convenience, or to ease the consciences of their protectors.”

  “Since I live like this, I think it is safe to say I have no protector.”

  He glanced down at the Indian carpet, drawing conclusions regarding the past, perhaps. “Are you currently married? Do not bother lying. I can find out.”

  He probably could. Dukes could do all kinds of things most men could not. Money allowed that. Their titles opened doors. He even possessed a power over his family members, like Edeline. Like Giles. Still, she was tempted to force him to go through the effort.

  “Mr. Fontaine passed away soon after I married him. That was soon after I had no choice except to leave Kent after your brother threw me over and broke our engagement.”

  “There was no engagement.”

  “There were assumptions. Expectations. His pursuit of me was public and involved my family and county friends. When that ended—”

  “If you permitted more familiarity than was wise, it was understandable that people made assumptions. With Giles’s reputation, you should have known better than to form a liaison with him. He has never been discreet regarding his mistresses.”

  Liaison? Mistresses? “How dare you intrude on my home to insult me. You do not even know me. Other than that one introduction, in which you made your scorn for me very clear, we have not even had a conversation before this one.”

  “We had no need for one before this. I did not need to know you to see what he was up to, because I understand my brother very well.”