Vixen in Velvet

by Loretta Chase

  Though Rowntree promptly sent a strongly worded note to the Spectacle’s publisher, he explained to his employers that very little could be done. The Spectacle not only named no names but did not, in fact, accuse Lord Swanton of any ill-doing.

  “They’re clever,” he said.

  “Yes, and they’ll hang me with denials,” Swanton said.

  “Mr. Foxe will trip over his own cunning in time,” Rowntree said. “And your lordship may be sure we shall deal with him then, and summarily—as half the ton have longed to do this age.”

  “In time, in time,” Swanton said. “Meanwhile my name is dragged through the mud with ‘It isn’t true!’ ” He turned to Lisburne. “You did well to tell me to make haste with our charity event. At this rate, my reputation will be in shreds before another week is out.”

  “Not if somebody else makes a bigger scandal,” Lisburne said. “Which I’ll do, if necessary.”

  “Why should you get into trouble, because some vile-minded creature is determined to make a fool of me?”

  “It isn’t trouble but a diversionary tactic,” Lisburne said. “And I should do it because, firstly, I should have to exercise my imagination, which is deplorably out of practice. And secondly, because I suspect it will be great fun. Stop fretting about these rumors that aren’t rumors. Some jealous scribbler’s behind it, I don’t doubt. Let’s let Rowntree go on about his lawyerly tasks while you and I settle a few last bits of business for Monday. Then I’ll carry the results to all necessary corners of London, leaving you at leisure to throw yourself back into your verse.”

  Later on Saturday

  One necessary corner of London was Maison Noirot.

  It was a good thing Lisburne had a scandal to think about, because he found he was obliged to cool his heels in Maison Noirot’s showroom. Madame, he was told, was busy with customers in the consulting rooms.

  He had kept away on Friday because, after all, he wasn’t a moony schoolboy. He was a gentleman with other things to do besides hang about a girl, waiting for her to take notice of him.

  He had, along with Swanton’s trials and tribulations, the poet’s personality to deal with. Getting him to concentrate on practical or logistical matters when he was in the throes of composing verse was, even at the best of times, like trying to hold the undivided attention of a dog when a squirrel chittered nearby. The whispering campaign or whatever it was made him more shatterbrained than he was normally.

  No one in his right mind would send Swanton to the shop in such a state, and not on a busy Saturday, when he’d cause more than the usual uproar.

  In other words, Lisburne had excellent reasons for being there.

  So, unfortunately, did Gladys, who turned up shortly after he arrived. She came with Clara, whose maid Davis trailed after them as she always did. But there was Bates as well, part of the entourage.

  Since Gladys’s voice made its entrance shortly before her person did, Lisburne wasn’t taken unawares. The showroom at this point was crowded. He ducked behind one of the mannequins elevated on pedestals. Given the wide skirts, ballooning sleeves, and enormous hats adorning the figures—not to mention the customers swarming about them—it was very good odds his relatives wouldn’t notice him.

  Because his cousin’s allegedly “melodious” voice carried as well as an opera singer’s, he had no trouble hearing her above the general chatter.

  “No, Parmenter, I do not object in the least to waiting,” she said. “My eyesight being in excellent order, I can see this is a busy day. Everyone and her great aunt Theodosia must be wishing to have a new dress for Vauxhall on Monday. You must be run off your feet. But it’s all in a worthy cause. And so I must be patient and you must be strong.”

  Bates said something.

  “Do try not to be excessively inane, sir,” said Gladys. “While I support Lord Swanton in his literary endeavors, I should not patronize every charity case strictly on his say-so. For one thing, you know I’m as softhearted as a curbstone. For another, sadly enough, I’m a good deal less naïve than I ought to be. That’s the trouble with always having military men lounging about the place.”

  Bates laughed, and Clara said something and he answered.

  “My cousin exaggerates not at all,” Gladys said. “I dragged Clara there because I wanted to see for myself. The Deaf and Dumb Asylum is one thing. Everyone has heard of that. But whoever heard of the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females? No, no, of course I must see the place with my own two beady eyes. And having seen, I have put my name down as a sponsor, and Clara very kindly did the same, to indulge me—or perhaps out of fear I’d sit on her.”

  Clara said something and laughed.

  Bates said something.

  Gladys said, “Oh, there you are, Lisburne.”

  He looked to his right, and found her looming there. For a large girl, she walked quietly—more quietly, certainly, than he recalled her doing. She wore a handsome rose-beige promenade dress and an excessively feminine bonnet that ought to have looked ridiculous on her, but in fact became her round, plain face shockingly well.

  She’d looked well in Hyde Park yesterday, he recalled, but he’d had only a passing awareness, Leonie occupying the front of his mind. Now he saw how grossly he’d underestimated Maison Noirot’s skills. Had he been a superstitious man, he’d have suspected witchcraft.

  “Playing with mannequins?” she said. “Or come to play with the seamstresses and shopgirls?”

  “Business with Madame,” he said.

  “I daresay,” she said, eyebrows aloft.

  “The charity event on Monday,” he said. “Were you not speaking of it a moment ago? You can’t be surprised that Swanton and I have details to settle with one of the Milliners’ Society’s founders.”

  Her expression softened. “Oh, yes, of course. Lord Swanton cannot be expected to attend personally to tiresome practical matters. The poetic imagination is not always coupled with a pragmatic nature. It is so with many artists. Someone must act as his representative. I quite understand.”

  She turned to Bates. “While it would be stretching a point to commend my cousin Lisburne for making a great personal sacrifice in attending to this particular matter, we’re obliged to admit he has a point. I’m afraid we’ll have to save teasing him for another time. What a pity. I had composed at least three silly puns the instant he said, ‘business with Madame.’ ”

  “But my dear Lady Gladys, I was looking forward so much to teasing him,” Bates said.

  “You’ll have to make do with teasing me, as unrewarding as that is,” she said. “Or Clara, if you dare. Or both of us, if you’re feeling especially reckless.”

  She wandered away to examine a mannequin. A number of women watched her every move.

  Clara went with her but Bates lingered behind.

  “In case you were wondering,” he said, “I’ve got fifty pounds riding on your cousin, and I’m keeping an eye on my dark horse.”

  “Not trying to influence the outcome, by any chance?” Lisburne said.

  “As though I had any influence,” Bates said. “No one cares what I do. Having neither funds nor title, I’m no marital prize, and no one’s ever mistaken me for a leader of fashion. The fact is, those two ladies, especially together, are more interesting than any ten other people I know. I began hanging about in curiosity. I continue because it’s so deuced entertaining.”

  Until a moment ago, Lisburne had found Gladys as entertaining as a toothache. Though Leonie’s analogy of the ugly dog was burned into his brain, that didn’t explain how Gladys had disarmed him today. The kindly reference to the Milliners’ Society? The understanding of Swanton’s nature and the job it was to look after him? The jokes at her own expense?

  Or it might simply have been the becoming bonnet.

  “She did tell me I was a damned fool, throwing my money away
on her,” Bates went on when Lisburne, momentarily preoccupied with working out the riddle, failed to answer. “At first I was amazed she’d heard about the betting.”

  “Then, when you thought about it, you weren’t so amazed,” Lisburne said.

  “Cats,” Bates said. “I can guess which one told her, too.”

  So could Lisburne. Lady Alda Morris, Lady Bartham’s fair-haired younger daughter, who had made it her business to enlighten Lisburne at Lady Jersey’s party the other night.

  At that moment, the back of his neck prickled.

  “No, no, I’m content to wait, madame,” came Gladys’s voice from somewhere behind him. “Here’s my cousin Lisburne on important literary business. You’d better see him first. He has nothing to do but hide behind mannequins, hoping he won’t be accosted by annoying women, while Clara and I have this shawl to argue about, and I was on the brink of demolishing her with my logic.”

  A heartbeat later, Madame appeared at Lisburne’s side.

  “My lord,” she said coolly. “Be so good as to come this way.”

  Lisburne found Leonie’s office this day not as painfully neat as previously. Papers strewed her desk and one of the ledgers had fallen half an inch out of alignment with its mates. He walked to the shelf and adjusted it.

  “I don’t know how you retain your sanity,” he said. “A hundred women must be swarming in the showroom, all of them talking at once. My head is still vibrating.”

  “Eighty-seven, not counting my employees,” she said. “It’s wonderful. And it’s all thanks to Lord Swanton and you.”

  “Not me,” he said. “I’m merely the pragmatic fellow who executes his brilliant ideas.”

  “Ideas are useless without execution,” she said. “Someone has to keep his feet on the ground. Someone has to see to everyday boring details.”

  “And someone gets not enough sleep, I can see,” he said, advancing on her. Of course she didn’t retreat. Her chin went up and her blue eyes grew brilliant, challenging. Yet they were shadowed, and her face was taut.

  “You’re working too hard,” he said. “What you need is a fortnight away from the shop. With me.”

  “The unlikelihood of that occurring increases by the day,” she said.

  “Don’t get too excited about Bates,” Lisburne said. “He hasn’t a feather to fly with, which disqualifies him from the marriage stakes.”

  “But he likes Lady Gladys,” she said. “He qualifies as a follower. Furthermore, he stands to inherit an earldom.”

  “Only if two healthy young male relatives of his, one recently wed, take it into their heads to die early and childless.”

  “I’ll admit he makes poor odds as a marital candidate,” she said. “Still, he’s a follower.”

  “You need only five more. Half a dozen, you said. I have it in writing.”

  “I’m not in the least anxious,” she said.

  “You needn’t be,” he said. “You’ll find me generous—to a fault—in victory.”

  “And in defeat?” she said.

  “Defeat is highly unlikely,” he said.

  “Yet not as unlikely as you originally believed,” she said. “Admit it.”

  “I’ll admit you’ve exceeded my expectations regarding Gladys,” he said. Since he’d expected a catastrophic failure, it hadn’t taken much.

  She smiled a deliciously self-satisfied smile.

  “I’ll admit to a concern, not previously existing, regarding our fortnight together,” he said. “But it’s merely the smallest quiver of uncertainty. Only enough to lend a degree of excitement to the intervening days. The faintest hint of suspense where before there was none.”

  Her smile only broadened, and he became aware that he was starting to lean in toward that wicked curve.

  He walked away from her and back to the shelf of ledgers.

  He didn’t trust his hands to stay where they ought, which was provoking. He disliked, immensely, the ease with which she eroded his self-control without losing her own.

  Those were merely his own difficulties. More troubling was how ill and tired she looked. He wanted to do something about that, but there was nothing he could do at present, only observe and fume.

  “I know I’m not to keep you,” he said more briskly. “Gladys had an appointment, and I doubt you have time to spare between clients. I only wanted to let you know what the arrangements are for Monday evening. For a number of reasons I won’t waste your time with, we’ll have to start at ten. But we’ll have the small theater for a full hour, and since we won’t be competing with any major social events elsewhere in London, we ought to fill the seats.”

  He went to the desk, removed a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket, and tossed it onto a pile of papers there.

  She hurried to the desk, snatched up his addition to the heap, and neatly rearranged the others. Then and only then did she unfold his document and read it.

  He swallowed a smile. “The program,” he said. “For Monday night. All that remains is to make Swanton stop changing his mind about the order in which he’ll present his new works. Too, he keeps adding stanzas. Since our time is limited, and we need to leave room for speeches and pledges and such, we’ll either have to cut them or eliminate at least one poem.”

  She looked up at him. “Speaking as one who has two artistic sisters, I recommend you not leave it to him. Steal one of the poems, and don’t let him find out until the event is about to begin, then push him out onto the stage.”

  He thought of all the swooning girls to whom each word was sacred, and he laughed. “Merely steal one of the poems,” he said. “How do I judge which one?”

  “Does it matter?” she said.

  “No, my dear, it doesn’t, but only you would say so.”

  He saw her face change, but it was only for an instant—the smallest flicker of emotion—before she was businesslike again.

  She folded up his note and set it on the desk. “Very efficient and orderly,” she said. “For a gentleman who claims to live in a sort of chaos moderated only by secretaries and men of business, you have a remarkable grasp of logistics.”

  “When there’s a real prize in sight, I can set my mind to anything,” he said.

  A hint of color came and went in her too-pale face. “Improving the lot of unfortunate young women is a worthy goal indeed,” she said. “I’m happy to know you’ve exerted yourself on their behalf.”

  “Right,” he said. “Them, too.”

  “Well, then, if that is all, my lord.” She came out from behind the desk, and folded her hands at her waist. The wicked smile he’d seen before had vanished without a trace and the curve of her mouth now was the professional one: amiable, patient, polite.

  “Nearly all,” he said. He crossed the room to her in a few quick strides. “One last thing I forgot to write down.” He made to reach for the program. She put out her hand, instinctively, to protect her neat heap of papers. He caught her hand and brought it to his mouth and kissed it. She inhaled sharply, but before she tried to pull her hand away he’d let it go, and wrapped his arms about her waist and lifted her onto the desk.

  “Don’t you—”

  He cupped her face in his hands and stopped whatever she was going to say with one long, fierce kiss.

  Then he backed away and turned away and strode to the door. “On second thought,” he said, “best not to write it down.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” came her voice from behind him.

  Leonie leapt down from the desk and ran across the room. Before Lord Lisburne could walk through the door, she slammed it shut.

  He turned to her, surprised, for once.

  She took hold of his lapels—never mind damaging their perfection—and pulled.

  “Come here,” she said, face upraised. “I’m not done with you.”

  She saw the wa
riness in his green eyes, and knew she ought to be wary, too, of what she was doing, but she was too angry. She pulled, and he bent his head. She reached up, caught his face in the way he’d caught hers, and brought his mouth to hers.

  My dear, he’d said, so casually, and her heart had tied itself in knots.

  She kissed him as fiercely as he’d kissed her, holding nothing back. He’d made her hot everywhere, inside and out, in an instant. She would not be casually set on fire and made to ache for more, then be cast aside, so that he could make a pretty exit.

  My dear, he’d said.

  She’d make him pay.

  This wasn’t the best reasoning Leonie had ever done, but it was all she had at the moment.

  Then he wrapped his arms about her, and reasoning no longer mattered. His arms were strong, holding her tight, and he was warm, and these were simple things that couldn’t explain the soaring happiness she felt, like being drunk, but better and more. He smelled like himself, like a man, but clean and crisp as so many men were not. Under her hands, his jaw was smoothly shaven, almost like marble, like a perfect sculpture. Yet it was warm and alive, carrying the masculine scent so unmistakably his own, tinged with hints of shaving soap and clean linen.

  It was nothing, merely the scent of a man, but it made her drunk in this not-drunk way, and so happy, even while she raged.

  He kissed her in the way she wanted him to do, the real thing, not a tease. His mouth pressed to hers, slanting, coaxing, demanding. And she yielded, of course, to get more, and to give more, and . . . to show him. She could tease, too, and play with him, and recklessly provoke him further. If she couldn’t keep herself under control, she’d make sure he couldn’t be in full control, either.

  He wanted her. It was no secret. And if he was determined to make her want him, then she would make him want her more.

  He’d thought he could walk away so coolly, but she wouldn’t let him. She goaded, urging him to kiss her more sinfully. She slid her hands to his neck, then wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and her body lifted with the motion and pressed closer to his.