Vixen in Velvet

by Loretta Chase

  “A precious waste of time,” he continued. “For charity, indeed. If I’d known, I’d have sent in twice the tickets’ cost and stayed at home, and judged it cheap at the price.”

  His wife tried to shush him, again in vain.

  “Give me Tom Moore any day,” he boomed. “Or Robbie Burns. Poetry, you call this! I call it gas-bagging.”

  Lord Lisburne made a choked sound.

  Other men in the vicinity didn’t trouble to hide their laughter.

  “It’s a joke, it surely is,” the critic went on. “I could have gone to Vauxhall, instead of wasting a Friday night listening to this lot maunder on about nothing. Bowel stoppage, I shouldn’t wonder. That’s their trouble. What they want is a good physicking.”

  Gasps now, from the ladies nearby.

  “I never heard anybody ask your opinion, sir,” came Lady Gladys’s musical voice. “None of us prevented your going to Vauxhall. Certainly none of us paid for a ticket to hear you. I don’t recollect seeing anything on the program about ill-educated and discourteous men supplying critiques.”

  “Glad to supply it gratis, madam,” came the quick answer. “As to uneducated—at least some of us have wit enough to notice that the emperor’s wearing no clothes.”

  Lord Valentine stood up. “Sir, I’ll thank you not to address the lady in that tone,” he said.

  “She addressed me first, sir!”

  “Blast,” Lord Lisburne said. He rose, too. “Leave it to Gladys. Valentine will be obliged to call out the fellow, thanks to her.”

  Men were starting up from their seats. Lord Swanton became aware of something amiss. He attempted to go on reading his poem, but the audience’s attention was turning away from him to the dispute, and the noise level was rising, drowning him out.

  Leonie became aware of movement in the galleries. She looked up. Men were leaving their seats and moving toward the doors. A duel would be bad enough, but this looked like a riot in the making.

  Images flashed in her mind of the Parisian mob storming through the streets, setting fire to houses where cholera victims lived . . . her little niece Lucie so sick . . . the tramp of hundreds of feet, growing louder as they neared . . .

  Panic swamped her.

  She closed her eyes, opened them again, and shook her head, shaking away the past. She counted the rows in the hall and estimated the audience size, and her mind quieted.

  This was London, an altogether different place. And this was a different time and circumstance. These people were dying of boredom, not a rampaging disease.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if I might have your attention,” Lord Swanton said.

  “You’ve had it these three hours and more!” someone called out. “Not enough?”

  Other hecklers contributed their observations.

  By this time Lord Lisburne had reached his cousins and the irate gentleman, who was growing more irate by the second, if the deepening red of his face was any clue.

  Meanwhile, the audience grew more boisterous.

  Leonie reminded herself she was a Noirot and a DeLucey. Not nearly as many of her French ancestors had got their heads cut off as deserved it. Hardly any relatives on either side had ever been stupid or incompetent enough to get themselves hanged. Or even jailed.

  Marcelline or Sophy could have handled this lot blindfolded, she told herself.

  She swallowed and rose. “Thank you, my lord, for your kind invitation,” she said, pitching her voice to carry. “I should like to recite a poem by Mrs. Abdy.”

  “More poetry!” someone cried. “Somebody hang me.”

  “Hold your tongue, you bacon brain! It’s a girl!”

  Lord Swanton cut through the commentary. “Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Noirot—that is to say, Madame, of Maison Noirot—has kindly agreed to contribute to our poetic mélange.”

  Leonie had dressed for the occasion. She knew she’d get the men’s attention because she was young and not unattractive, and the women’s because her dress was beautiful.

  She was aware of the argument continuing to her right, and more aware of how hard her heart pounded, and how she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. She told herself not to be ridiculous: She performed every day, for extremely difficult women, and she got them under control.

  She began, “ ‘I’m weary of a single life—’ ”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” someone called out. “Come sit by me, my poppet.”

  “Oh, stifle it!” somebody else said. “Let the lady say her piece.”

  Leonie started again:

  I’m weary of a single life,

  The clubs of town I hate;

  I smile at tales of wedded strife,

  I sigh to win a mate;

  Yet no kind fair will crown my bliss,

  But all my homage shun—

  Alas! my grief and shame is this,

  I’m but a Second Son!

  A burst of laughter.

  That first sign of glee was all the encouragement she needed. Anxiety and self-consciousness washed away, and the DeLucey in her took over.

  She went on, this time with dramatic gestures:

  My profile, all the world allows,

  With Byron’s e’en may vie,

  [—she turned her head this way and that]

  My chestnut curls half shade my brow,

  [—she toyed with the curls at her ears]

  I’m almost six feet high;

  [—she stretched her neck, to laughter]

  And by my attitudes of grace,

  Ducrow is quite undone,

  [—she mimicked one of the equestrian’s elegant poses]

  Yet what avail the form and face

  Of a poor Second Son?

  Amid the men’s laughter she heard women giggling.

  She had them.

  She continued.

  For an instant, while the angry gentleman grew more incensed, his complexion darkening from brick red to purple, Lisburne had felt sure the only outcome would be pistols at dawn. The only hope he had was for a riot. Once men started knocking one another about and women commenced screaming, Valentine and the other fellow might stop making asses of themselves.

  When he heard Miss Noirot call out to Swanton, Lisburne had wanted to shake her. Was she mad? To offer more of the poetry that was driving every rational man in the hall to distraction? And to taunt them now, when he hadn’t a prayer of getting to her fast enough?

  All hell should have broken loose.

  But he’d reckoned without . . .

  . . . whatever it was about her: the quality, so obvious, and so hard to put a satisfactory name to. The same power of personality that had attracted and held captive his attention at the British Institution seemed to work on a general audience.

  Add that compelling quality to her appearance, and the men could hardly help responding. She was exceedingly pretty and a redhead besides, and the green silk dress, insane as it was, was voluptuous.

  But the women, too?

  Ah, yes, of course. The green silk dress.

  Furthermore, Mrs. Abdy had written, along with the usual sentimental claptrap, a number of comic poems, which Swanton would give a vital organ to replicate.

  London’s favorite poet was smiling. He gently prompted Miss Noirot as she faltered for a stanza. It was a longish poem—not half so long as some of Swanton’s, but still a good bit to get by heart.

  And she’d said she wasn’t literary, the minx.

  Even the irate gentleman was smiling. “That’s more like it,” he said.

  “It isn’t,” Gladys said. “It’s an amusing bit of doggerel, no more.”

  “We must allow for differences of taste,” Lisburne said. “Is that a new dress, Cousin? Most elegant.”

  To his amazement, she colored, almost prettily
. “I could hardly wear last year’s dress on such an occasion.”

  “There, that explains,” Lisburne said to the irate gentleman. “She wore her new dress and you mentioned the emperor’s new clothes. A bit of confusion, that’s all.”

  Gladys huffed. “Lisburne, how can you be so thick? But why do I ask? You know perfectly well—”

  “I know you’re eager to leave before the crush,” Lisburne told the irate gentleman. “Bon voyage.”

  The man’s wife took hold of her spouse’s arm and said something under her breath. After a moment’s hesitation—and another moment of glaring at Valentine—the man let himself be led away.

  From the lectern came Swanton’s voice. “Thank you, Miss Noirot, for your delightful contribution. Perhaps somebody else would like to participate?”

  Crawford, one of Longmore’s longtime cronies, stood up. “I’ve got a limerick,” he said.

  “If it brings a blush to any lady’s cheek, I’ll gladly throttle you,” Swanton said with a smile.

  “Lord Swanton is so good,” Gladys said, her voice soft for once. “A perfect gentleman.”

  “Who likes a ribald limerick as well as the next fellow,” Lisburne said. “If Crawford contrives to keep it clean, he’ll be the last one to do so. Fairfax, I suggest you take the ladies home while everybody’s still on good behavior.”

  “You ever were high-handed,” Gladys said, in a magnificent example of pot calling kettle black. “The lecture isn’t over, and I’m sure we’re not ready to leave.”

  “I’m sure we are,” Clara said. “My head is aching, not to mention my bottom. Val, do let us go.”

  “Finally, after hours of misery and tragedy, we get a little good humor, and you want to leave,” Valentine said.

  “Yes, before you’re tempted to challenge anybody else over a poem,” his sister said.

  Meaning, before Gladys could cause more trouble, Lisburne thought. Leave it to her to turn a poetry lecture into a riot.

  A riot the redheaded dressmaker had simply stood up and stopped with a handful of verses.

  He left his cousins without ceremony. More of the families and groups of women were leaving now, delaying his progress to the place where he’d last seen Miss Noirot standing in all her swelling waves of green silk, reciting her amusing poem as cleverly as any comic actress.

  When he got there, she was gone.

  Lisburne pushed through the departing throng out into the street. Nary a glimpse of the green silk dress or cream-colored shawl did he get. By now, hackneys and private carriages had converged outside the entrance. Drivers swore, horses whinnied, harnesses jangled. The audience jabbered about the poetry and the near riot and the modiste in the dashing green dress.

  And she’d slipped away. By now she was well on her way to St. James’s Street, Lisburne calculated.

  He debated whether to go in that direction or let her be. It was late, and she would be working tomorrow. He would like to keep her up very late, but that wasn’t going to happen tonight. He’d made progress, but not enough. Pursuit this night would seem inconsiderate, and would undo what he’d achieved.

  He returned to the hall and eventually ran Swanton to ground in one of the study rooms.

  The poet was packing papers into a portfolio in a desperate fashion Lisburne recognized all too well.

  “I see you made good your escape,” Lisburne said. “No girls clinging to your lapels or coattails.”

  Swanton shoved a fistful of verse into the portfolio. “The damnable thing is, that fellow who was shouting? I couldn’t have agreed more. It’s rubbish!”

  “It isn’t genius, but—”

  “I should give it up tomorrow, but it’s like a cursed juggernaut,” Swanton went on. “And the devil of it is, we raised more money in this one evening than the Deaf and Dumb Asylum sponsors have raised in six months, according to Lady Gorrell.” He paused and looked up from crushing the poetry so many girls deemed so precious. “I saw you come in. With Miss Noirot.”

  “She tried to get in earlier, but there wasn’t room. And so I took her to the circus instead.”

  “The circus,” Swanton said.

  “Astley’s,” Lisburne said. “She liked it. And as a consequence of her brain not being awash in grief and sorrow when we returned, she had the presence of mind to save your bacon.”

  Swanton’s harassed expression smoothed into a smile. Then he laughed outright. “I remembered Miss Leonie, of course. From Paris. Who could forget those eyes? And the mysterious smile. But I’d forgotten how quick-witted she was. That was no small kindness she did, turning the audience’s mood.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Lisburne said. “Your poetical event wasn’t the only thing she saved. My cousin Gladys almost got Valentine in a duel.”

  “Was your cousin Gladys the girl who gave the noisy fellow what for?” Swanton said. “I couldn’t see her. Men were standing up, and she was behind a pillar. And I couldn’t hear exactly what she said. But her voice is splendid! So melodious. A beautiful tone.”

  Lisburne had never thought about Gladys’s voice. What she said was so provoking that one never noticed the vocal quality.

  “Gladys is best heard at a distance,” he said. Lancashire, he thought, would be an acceptable distance at present.

  Swanton closed the portfolio, his brow furrowed. “I’ll have to thank Miss Noirot. No, that’s insufficient. I need to find a way to return the favor. Without her, we should have had a debacle. That will teach me to let these things run on for so long. An hour, no more, in future.”

  “But the girls want you to wax poetic all day and all night,” Lisburne said. “Half of them had to be dragged out of the lecture hall. If you give them only an hour, they’ll feel cheated.”

  Swanton was still frowning. “Something to do with girls,” he said. “They take in charity cases or some such.”

  “Who does?”

  “Mesdames Noirot,” Swanton said. “Somebody told me. Did Miss Noirot mention it? Or was it Clevedon?”

  “I know they took in a boy they found on the street,” Lisburne said.

  Swanton nodded. “They do that sort of thing. I’d better look into it. I might be able to arrange an event to raise funds for them.” He grimaced. “But something less boring and . . . funereal.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Lisburne said. “You’ve got your hands full, fending off all those innocent maidens whose adulation you’re not allowed to take advantage of. I’m the one with nothing to do.”

  Chapter Four

  SYMMETRICAL PERFECTION.—Mrs. N. GEARY, Court Stay-maker, 61 St James’s street, has the honour to announce to the Nobility and Gentry, that she has returned from the Continent, and has now (in addition to her celebrated newly-invented boned “Corset de toilette”) a STAY of the most novel and elegant shape ever manufactured . . . totally exterminating all that deadly pressure which has prevailed in all other Stays for the last 300 years . . . two guineas, ready money.

  —Court Journal, 16 May 1835

  Monday 13 July

  A steady routine is of first importance,” Leonie heard Matron explain. “Four hours of lessons, four hours of work, two hours for exercise and chores, half an hour for meals. As your lordship will see, the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females is a modest enterprise. We can take in but a fraction of the girls who need us. But this is only the beginning. The Philanthropic Society, as you may be aware, began in a small house on Cambridge Heath and currently accommodates some two hundred children in Southwark. We, too, expect to grow, with the aid of charitable contributions as well as sales of our girls’ work, which I will be pleased to show you.”

  From where Leonie stood in the corridor, no one in the workroom could see her. However, even with only a view of his back, she had no trouble recognizing the gentleman Matron was falling all over hers
elf to accommodate.

  Ah, yes, undoubtedly Lord Lisburne would like nothing better than to look at needlework.

  Leonie debated for a moment. Not about what to do, because she was seldom at a loss in that regard. She did wonder, though, what had brought him here, of all places. She knew he was bored in London. He’d said he wanted to return to the Continent. In the meantime, he seemed interested merely in amusing himself, and she seemed to be one of the amusements.

  Very well. Easy enough to turn that to her advantage. Business was business, he was rich, and he was here.

  She swept through the open door.

  “Thank you, Matron, for undertaking tour duty,” she said. “I know Monday is a busy day for you. I’ll continue Lord Lisburne’s tour, and you may return to your regular tasks.”

  Matron relinquished Lord Lisburne with poorly concealed reluctance. And who could blame her? All that manly beauty. All that charm.

  Unfortunately, all that manly beauty and charm must have turned Matron’s brain. Otherwise she’d have known better than to bring him into the workroom. Many of the girls in the bright, airy room stood on the brink of adolescence if not well in. Putting a stunning male aristocrat in front of them was asking for trouble.

  Most sat in a stupor. Three had stuck themselves with their needles and were absently sucking the wounded fingers. Verity Sims had overturned her workbasket. Bridget Coppy was sewing to her dress sleeve the apron she was making.

  They’d be useless for days, the lot of them.

  Even Leonie was aware of a romantic haze enveloping her brain. Last night he’d sneaked into her dreams. And today he’d plagued her as well. Her mind made pictures of him as he’d been at Astley’s Royal Circus, the tantalizing glimpses she’d had of the openhearted boy he might have been once upon a time.

  Nonetheless, she briskly led his lordship out of the workroom and into the corridor.

  “We’re somewhat cramped, as you see,” she said.

  “Yet what efficient use you’ve made of the quarters you have,” he said. “Given your penchant for order, I oughtn’t to be surprised. Still, it’s one thing to write numbers and such neatly in a ledger and quite another to organize a poky old building into something rather pleasant and cozy.”