Vixen in Velvet

by Loretta Chase

  Though she had her guard up, she couldn’t squelch the flutter of gratification. She and her sisters had worked hard to make the most of what they had. They hadn’t much. Their financial success was only very recent, and she knew better than to take it for granted. In the dressmaking business, failure could happen overnight, from natural catastrophes or merely the whims of fashionable women. With the Milliners’ Society, they’d proceeded cautiously, incurring no expenses they couldn’t cover with ready money.

  They’d done it because of Cousin Emma, who’d given to three neglected children a real home and an education. She’d taught them how to make beautiful things and she’d saved them from the pointless, vagabond life of their parents.

  And she’d died too young, with only the first taste of her own success.

  Leonie thanked him calmly enough and said, “All the same, we’d prefer rather less coziness. We should like to expand into the house next door.”

  “I daresay. Always room for expansion.”

  By this point they’d moved out of the others’ hearing range.

  “Very well, I’m stumped,” she said. “Did you merely stumble upon the place and decide to look in, or is this all part of a master plan?”

  “Master plan,” he said. “Swanton charged me with finding out your charity. He wants to raise funds for you while everybody still loves him. You know how fickle the public can be, especially the female part of it.”

  “He charged you,” she said.

  “To be strictly accurate, I volunteered,” he said. “Eagerly. This is because I have two uses at present. One, I can watch and listen to him make poetry. Two, I can hang about him, ostensibly to shield him from poetry-maddened females, but actually to do very little and enjoy the edifying experience of being invisible to the females.”

  “Despair not,” she said. “You weren’t invisible to Matron or the girls in the workroom.”

  “Be that as it may, I had a good deal more fun looking into your activities,” he said.

  Inside her head, a lot of panicked Leonies ran about screaming, What? What did he find? What did he see? Why?

  Outwardly, not so much as a muscle twitched, and she said, “That sounds tedious.”

  “It proved far more difficult than I expected,” he said. “You and your sisters are strangely quiet about your philanthropy.”

  The inner Leonie settled down and said, Oh, that’s all right, then.

  She said, “It isn’t much to boast about.”

  “Is it not?” He glanced back toward the room they’d left. “I’ve lived a sheltered life. Don’t think I’ve ever seen, in one room, so many girls who’ve led . . .” He paused, then closed his eyes and appeared to think. “Let us say, unsheltered lives.” He opened his eyes, the green darkening as he studied her for one unnerving moment. “You keep getting more interesting. It’s rather a trial.”

  “It’s business,” she said. “Some of the girls turn out to be more talented than others. We get to pick the crème de la crème as apprentices for Maison Noirot. Too, we’ve trained and educated them ourselves, which means that we know what we’re getting. We’re not as disinterested as your duchesses and countesses and such. It isn’t pure philanthropy.”

  “The fact remains, you pluck them from the streets and orphanages and workhouses.”

  She smiled. “We get them cheaply that way. Often for free.”

  She led him into the small shop, where the girls’ productions were on display. “If your lordship would condescend to buy a few of their trinkets, they’ll be in raptures,” she said.

  She moved to a battered counter and opened a glass display case.

  He stood for a moment, gazing at the collection of watch guards and pincushions and handkerchiefs and sashes and coin purses and such.

  “Miss Noirot,” he said.

  She looked up. He was still staring at the display case’s contents, his expression stricken.

  “The girls made these things?” he said. “The girls in that classroom?”

  “Yes. Remember Matron telling you that we raise funds by selling their work?”

  “I remember,” he said. “But I didn’t . . .” He turned away and walked to the shop’s one small window. He folded his hands behind his back and looked out.

  She was baffled. She looked down into the display case then up again at his expertly tailored back.

  After what seemed a long time, he turned away from the window. He returned to the counter, wearing a small smile. “I’m moved,” he said. “Perilously near to tears. I’m very glad I came on this errand instead of Swanton. He’d be sobbing all over the place and writing fifty-stanza laments about innocence lost or abused or found or some such gobbledygook. Luckily, it’s only me, and the public is in no danger of suffering verse from this quarter.”

  For a moment, she was at a loss. But logic swiftly shoved astonishment aside. He might feel something on the girls’ account or he might be feigning greatheartedness and charitable inclinations, as so many aristocrats did. Philanthropy was a duty and they performed it ostentatiously but they didn’t really care. If even half of them had truly cared, London would be a different place.

  But it didn’t matter what he truly felt, she told herself. The girls mattered. And money was money, whether offered in genuine compassion or for show.

  “It would seem that your friend’s poetry has infected you with excessive tenderheartedness,” she said.

  “That may be so, madame, yet I wonder how any man could withstand this.” He waved his hand at the contents of the display case. “Look at them. Little hearts and flowers and curlicues and lilies of the valley and lace. Made by girls who’ve known mainly deprivation and squalor and violence.”

  She considered the pincushions and watch guards and mittens and handkerchiefs. “They don’t have Botticelli paintings to look at,” she said. “If they want beauty in their lives, they have to make it.”

  “Madame,” he said, “is it absolutely necessary to break my heart completely?”

  She looked up into his green-gold eyes and thought how easy it would be to lose herself there. His eyes, like his low voice, seemed to promise worlds. They seemed to invite one to discover fascinating depths of character and secrets nobody else in the world knew.

  She said, “Well, then, does that mean you’ll buy the lot?”

  Lisburne House

  Later

  Swanton gazed at the objects Lisburne had arranged on one of the library tables—after he’d cleared off the heaps of letters and the foolscap covered with poetic scribbling.

  After what seemed to be a very long time, Swanton finally looked up. “Did you leave anything in the shop?”

  “I found it hard to choose,” Lisburne said.

  “Yet you claim I’m the one who’s always letting himself be imposed on,” Swanton said.

  “Miss Noirot didn’t impose,” Lisburne said. “Like a good businesswoman, she took advantage of me during a moment of weakness.”

  He wasn’t sure why he’d been weak. It wasn’t as though he’d never visited a charitable establishment before. With his father, he’d attended countless philanthropic dinners and visited asylums and orphanages and charity schools. He’d watched the inmates in their distinctive uniforms and badges standing stiffly at attention or parading for their benefactors’ inspection or singing the praises of deity or monarch or benevolent rich people.

  He was used to that sort of thing. Yet he had wanted to sit down and put his face in his hands and weep for those girls and their dainty little hearts and handkerchiefs embroidered with pansies and violets and forget-me-nots.

  Confound Swanton for planting him in his poetic hotbed of feelings!

  “I suppose you didn’t realize quite how canny she is,” Swanton said.

  “I did not,” Lisburne said. “She’s the very devil of a businesswo
man.”

  After she’d torn his heart to pieces and cleaned out the display case as well as his purse, she’d very charmingly got rid of him.

  “I’m glad you weren’t there,” he told Swanton. “It might have killed you. It nearly killed me when she said, ‘They don’t have Botticelli paintings to look at. If they want beauty in their lives, they have to make it.’ ”

  Swanton blinked hard, but that trick rarely worked for him. Emotion won, nine times out of ten, and this wasn’t the tenth time. His Adam’s apple went up and down and his eyes filled.

  “Don’t you dare sob,” Lisburne said. “You’re turning into a complete watering pot, worse than any of those deranged girls who follow you about. Pull yourself together, man. You’re the one who proposed to raise funds for Maison Noirot’s favorite charity. I found out all about it for you. I’ve brought you abundant evidence of their work. Do you mean to compose a lugubrious sonnet on the occasion, or may we discuss practical plans?”

  “Easy enough for you to talk about pulling oneself together.” Swanton pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “You’re not the one who’s afraid to put a foot anywhere lest he step on a young female. I have to be careful not to hurt their tender feelings, and at the same time not say anything too kind, lest it be construed as wicked seduction.”

  “Yes, yes, it’s a hellish job,” Lisburne said. “If you want to go back to Florence or Venice tomorrow, I’ll go with you happily.”

  He might as well. What had he to do here but try to keep Swanton out of trouble with swooning girls? Though a grown man, supposedly capable of taking care of himself, the poet tended to be oblivious at times. This made him easy prey for any of a number of unpleasant women, like Lady Bartham’s younger daughter, Alda.

  As to Miss Leonie Noirot . . .

  If Lisburne did return to Italy tomorrow, would she notice he was gone, or would she simply find another fellow to intrigue while she set about picking his pockets?

  Swanton took up one of the pincushions that had stabbed Lisburne to the heart.

  “That’s Bridget Coppy’s work,” Lisburne said. “Miss Noirot says the heart shape is traditional for pincushions. But instead of the usual red, the girl exercised her imagination and made it in white with a coral trim, to set off the colorful flowers. The cord attaches to the waist.”

  “The flowers are charming,” Swanton said. “So delicate.”

  “Bridget is becoming a skilled embroiderer,” Lisburne said.

  “My mother would like this,” Swanton said.

  “Then by all means let us deliver it in person. I see gifts aplenty here for my mother as well. And her new husband. They would both be enchanted.”

  His mother had chosen her second husband as wisely as she’d done her first. Lord Rufford was a good, generous man, who made her happy. He’d made a friend of his stepson, too, no easy feat.

  “You’re in a devil of a hurry to return,” Swanton said.

  Lisburne laughed. “Perhaps I am. I’m supposed to be such a cosmopolitan fellow, yet I let a redheaded French milliner get the better of me. Perhaps I want to slink away in shame.”

  “That I beg leave to doubt,” Swanton said. “I believe you’re so far from wishing to leave that you’re even now puzzling over how she did it, so that you can plan how to prevail at your next encounter.”

  Lisburne looked at him.

  “She’s the only woman you’ve taken any particular notice of since we came to London,” Swanton said. “And I know you. As well, that is, as anybody can know you.”

  “As though there were anything of great moment to know,” Lisburne said. But Swanton was a poet. He imagined everybody had hidden depths. If Lisburne did have them, he wasn’t interested in exploring them, and he certainly wouldn’t encourage anybody else to do so. “What about you? Do you feel compelled to stay?”

  “I feel I must,” Swanton said.

  “Do you? I’d as soon be stalked by wolves as by a lot of gently bred maidens.”

  “They’ll grow sick of me soon enough,” Swanton said. “In the meantime, I should be a coward to run away when I can do so much good. It would be unworthy of your father’s memory, in any event.”

  “Yes, yes, stab me with my father, do,” Lisburne said.

  “I know it isn’t fair, but it’s the only way I know to win an argument with you,” Swanton said.

  “Very well,” Lisburne said. “We stay until they turn on you. Then we pray we can get away in time.”

  He glanced at the piles of correspondence he’d flung onto one of the library’s sofas a short time earlier. “Meanwhile, does your secretary need a secretary? The heaps of letters have only grown higher since yesterday.” Remembering what Swanton had said moments ago, he added, “Begging letters, you said. One of the perils of rank and wealth. Everybody puts his hand out, and somebody has to decide who’s deserving and who isn’t.”

  “That’s the least of it,” Swanton said. “Today alone I received two claims for child support and one extortionate note threatening a breach of promise suit.”

  To anybody who knew Swanton, the claims were absurd. Yet they oughtn’t to be taken lightly.

  Fame aroused envy and greed and, generally, the worst instincts of some people. Too many would be willing to believe ill of him.

  “Show me the letters,” Lisburne said.

  Evening of Tuesday 14 July

  Had Lisburne not been so deeply engrossed in his cousin’s unpleasant correspondence, he might have got wind of the other matter sooner. Or maybe not.

  Though he’d been to White’s often enough, he hadn’t looked into the betting book in days. Why bother? So many of the wagers were witless, arising from boredom. How long a fly would crawl about the window before it died or flew away, for instance.

  Lisburne, for the present at least, wasn’t bored. Watching women moon about Swanton had been tiresome, and even the possible dangers of the situation hadn’t made life exciting. But then Miss Leonie Noirot had entered the picture, and London had become far more interesting.

  Since she was everything but boring, Lisburne wasn’t shocked to find her at the heart of the latest gossip.

  He and Swanton had attended the Countess of Jersey’s assembly, where the ladies made the usual fuss about the poet. While the younger women were fluttering about Swanton, Lisburne drifted toward the card room. As he was about to enter, Lady Alda Morris detained him, in order to whisper something behind her fan.

  Maison Noirot

  Wednesday 15 July

  Lady Gladys stood before the dressing glass, her face pink.

  Four women—Leonie, Marcelline, Lady Clara, and Jeffreys—watched and waited.

  Today, for the first time, Lady Gladys wore the corset Leonie had designed especially for her.

  Unlike the one they’d hastily adapted last week to replace the monstrosity she’d brought from home, this one employed all of Leonie’s knowledge of mathematics, physiology, and physics. Until this moment, she hadn’t been allowed to enjoy her accomplishment, because Lady Gladys had refused to come out and show herself in the corset. She said she would not cavort about in her undergarments to be gawked at.

  That, however, was before she’d seen the gold evening dress.

  When they’d first shown it to her, she’d made a face and said the color would make her look as though she had a liver disease. But by Lady Gladys’s standards, the protest was feeble. A moment later she said she might as well try it on. Then she’d insisted on Jeffreys—the allegedly consumptive speaker of vile French—attending her in the dressing room.

  Ladies were nothing if not capricious, but this lady had apparently devoted her young life to making everybody about her want to throttle her.

  “Well,” she said at last.

  One word, but Leonie caught the little bubble of pleasure in it. Lady Gladys had a beaut
iful voice, as expressive as an opera singer’s.

  “I never thought I could wear this color,” she said.

  “So you made abundantly clear,” Lady Clara said. “I thought we should have to stupefy you with drink to get you to try on anything today.”

  “That isn’t true. I didn’t make a fuss about trying on the corset. I only didn’t want to prance about in my underwear while everybody stared at me.”

  She smoothed the front of the dress though Jeffreys, naturally, had made sure every seam lay precisely in place.

  “The corset is comfortable,” Lady Gladys said. “I’m not sure what you did, but . . .” She trailed off, studying herself. “You did something,” she said.

  Leonie had done a great deal. She’d designed the stays to support her ladyship’s generous embonpoint. The corset’s shape smoothed her waist in a way that made it seem smaller, though the compression was minimal.

  Her figure remained much fuller and less shapely than the fashionable ideal. But fashionable ideals were only that. What was important was making a lady look as beautiful as it was possible for her to look. And the gold satin was as much a surprise to Leonie as it was to Lady Gladys.

  As usual, Marcelline had imagined the dress entirely in her head. This time, though, she’d relied solely on Leonie’s detailed description of their new client.

  Yet from her sickbed, and in spite of near-constant nausea, Marcelline had designed a miracle of a dress. Gold satin trimmed in black blond lace. Simple yet dramatic. The pointed waist created the illusion of a narrower waistline, and the black languets that fastened it in front enhanced the effect.

  Pointed waists had supposedly fallen out of fashion, but Marcelline never concerned herself with what she considered petty fluctuations of taste.

  This dress would bring pointed waists straight back into style, Leonie calculated. The black lace mantilla, attached to the tops of the sleeves, not only added drama but drew the eye upward, toward Lady Gladys’s ample bosom. It was, perhaps, not quite the thing for an unwed young lady, but Lady Gladys would look ridiculous in the types of dresses that suited the average maiden.