Vixen in Velvet

by Loretta Chase

  A masculine voice answered. Not Bates. Flinton? That timid fellow, who lived in terror of his great aunt? Talking to Gladys?

  Swanton turned his head this way and that, trying to locate the speakers.

  The voices seemed to come from behind their supper box, but Lisburne couldn’t be sure. So many voices. And the orchestra was playing. Gladys’s voice wasn’t really louder than anybody else’s. It simply carried, or soared, like a songbird’s.

  Which was a strange image for Gladys, admittedly.

  “Yes, thank you, Lord Flinton,” Gladys said. “ ‘The Aerial.’ That was the name I wanted. Sometimes styled as ‘The Great Unknown,’ as you said. He believed his beauty was without equal in all the world. He would prance among the audience right there, in front of the orchestra, handing out cards, and challenging the spectators to produce anybody who could match him.”

  Bates’s voice responded this time. Then Lady Alda Morris said something.

  Gladys laughed. “That would have been more amusing, certainly,” she said. “And only think, my dear, if I had been there, to see the expression on his beautiful face when I took up his challenge!”

  Yet another masculine voice entered the conversation. The fellow uttered only a word or two, not enough to enable Lisburne to identify him.

  The voices began to drift away.

  Swanton jumped up from his seat, looking wildly about him. “Where is she?” he said. “That voice!”

  “It’s only Gladys,” Lisburne said. “A pity she couldn’t go on the stage. She projects so—”

  “Is it she? That voice!”

  “Yes, perfectly audible,” Lisburne said.

  “I must find her!”

  “I recommend you don’t.”

  “She defended me!”

  “Only to vex Lady Alda, I’ve no doubt. Confront Gladys, and you risk becoming the target of her wit. Be warned: She has a fine, skewering way with words.”

  “Then let her do her worst,” Swanton said. “I half wish somebody would.” And away he went.

  Leonie watched him go. “Is he insane?” she said.

  “He’s overwrought,” Lisburne said. He rose. “It’s unwise to let him go on his own. He’s completely distracted.”

  She waved a gloved hand. “Go,” she said. “I’m not keeping you.”

  She was overwrought, too, though she hid it well.

  He looked in the direction Swanton had gone, then back at her. “You’d better come with me. You can’t stay here alone.”

  Her smile was cool. “I strongly doubt I’ll be alone for very long.”

  Too true. At least a hundred men here tonight would happily take his place. Maybe two hundred.

  He sat down again. “To the devil with him, then.”

  “I doubt he’ll come to harm,” she said. “If he wants to talk to Lady Gladys, he’ll have to push his way through her throng of admirers. You might have been too preoccupied to notice how many gentlemen accompanied her.”

  “I counted only three masculine voices,” he said. “She had Lady Alda and Clara with her as well. The three men could be anybody’s followers.”

  “Tomorrow’s Spectacle will tell us,” Leonie said. “If, that is, there’s room, once they’re done demolishing Lord Swanton, Maison Noirot, and the Milliners’ Society.”

  Though she spoke coolly, he detected the undercurrent of anger and grief.

  “We’ll make it up to you,” he said. “I give you my word.”

  “That and the Botticelli, if you please.”

  He was trying to decide how to respond to this when she glanced about her, then leaned in, wafting toward him a tantalizing scent of lavender and Leonie. That didn’t help in the Intelligent Reply Department.

  Dropping her voice, she said, “He doesn’t remember?”

  Lisburne leaned toward her, careful to avoid the things sprouting from her coiffure. “He was distraught,” he said, keeping his voice low, too. “After my father died.” It was hard to get the words out. He hated speaking of that time. “When we first arrived in Paris, we sought distraction in the way young men often do. Swanton hasn’t the stamina for dissipation. He fell ill. When he recovered, he had only a confused memory of the previous weeks.”

  She sat back again. She lifted the tips of her fingers to her temple.

  “I know it sounds ridiculous,” he said. “At best. You’ll wonder at the depths of depravity to which we must have sunk.”

  “When it comes to men, I rarely wonder at anything,” she said.

  “We tried to be completely dissolute,” he said. “We began by attending certain exclusive parties, where gaming, drink, opium, and women—expensive women—were in plentiful supply. Two weeks of that nearly killed us. Maybe the opium destroyed his memory. Or maybe it’s just him. His mind’s like a roiling ocean, and some things sink to the bottom, like ships lost in storms.”

  “You’d think he’d have some recollection, however dim, of seducing an innocent young woman,” she said.

  “Especially since it’s so foreign to his nature,” he said. “It could only have happened during those two weeks, and I’m having trouble imagining where and when he would have encountered any innocents during that interval.”

  “But we don’t know,” she said. “I will not call the woman’s credibility into question unless I’m positive. Too many women end up with the Milliners’ Society or on the streets because it’s always the woman’s fault. And now we mayn’t have a Milliners’ Society for th-them.”

  He was appalled. He’d never seen her so near breaking, or even approaching breaking. He remembered how confident she’d been, the grace with which she’d taken the stage, the way she’d held the audience in the palm of her hand, her radiant expression when she returned backstage, confident she’d triumphed.

  In a moment she’d lost all she’d won.

  No, the damage extended farther than undoing this night’s achievement. He’d looked into the Milliners’ Society. He knew when it had been founded and how it was supported. He knew she and her sisters had put money into it when they hadn’t much to spare from the shop’s earnings. He remembered her expressing hopes of expanding into the building next door. If the support they’d so painstakingly built fell away, they could lose everything they’d achieved. And if the shop lost customers as well . . .

  No point now in reviewing the ifs. It was a nightmare, as Swanton had said, and he didn’t know the half of it.

  “I’ll get to the bottom of this,” Lisburne said. “I promise. And I’ll make it right.”

  She turned away, blinking, and gave a short laugh.

  The waiter appeared with their supper.

  The waiter’s arrival jolted Leonie back to her present surroundings.

  She looked up and saw, behind him and everywhere about him, a land of fantasy. Stars twinkled in the heavens and lights twinkled among the trees and on the buildings. Coming down the covered walk to the supper box, she’d seen the orchestra building with its multicolored lamps, a structure that might have been conjured from The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. From it came the sound of real music. An orchestra played and people danced. It wasn’t homemade music or organ grinders on the street.

  Her girls would hear real music this night, perhaps for the first time in their lives. They’d see Vauxhall’s wonders, too: the paintings and sculptures, the Gothic and Chinese temples, the Eagle fountain and the Submarine Cave, the hermit telling fortunes, the jugglers and dancers and acrobats. And the fireworks. Above all, these were gardens, a pretty place out of doors, instead of dingy streets and poky rooms.

  She thought of the cramped building she and her sisters had taken pains to make into a comfortable and attractive home for unwanted girls. She thought of Cousin Emma, who would have been so proud of what they’d done. A weight pressed on Leonie’s chest.

 
She watched Lisburne peel off his gloves. For some reason, the sight of his bare, aristocratic hands made her want to cry.

  She stared hard at the food on her plate and took off her gloves, though she didn’t see how she could swallow a morsel.

  “When did you last eat?” Lisburne said.

  “Midafternoon,” she said. “I meant to dine before I came here, but I was too—too—” She swallowed. “Excited.” She blinked hard. “The opportunity.”

  He gazed at her for a moment, his face taut. “I’ll make it right,” he said. “I promise. But you must eat something. A bite of ham. Look.” He cut a piece from the ham on his plate and held it up. “Vauxhall’s ham is famous. It’s so very thin, you’ll think you haven’t swallowed anything so gross as meat. No, you’ll think you’re inhaling a gossamer confection made by fairies.”

  He mimicked Swanton at his most earnestly and dramatically poetic, and she laughed because she couldn’t help it. Yet the weight pressed, and she was terrified she’d burst into tears.

  Don’t think about tomorrow, she told herself. Don’t think about failure. You’ve played worse hands than this. All the Noirots and DeLuceys have.

  But she was so tired of playing bad hands. So tired of losing everything and starting over again. And now she wasn’t sure she could count on Marcelline and Sophy to help her start over.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I should have realized: You’ve borne enough punishment for one night. I’m going to take you home.”

  Lisburne paid for their uneaten suppers and took her away. She was too demoralized to put up any real fight about abandoning the Milliners’ Society girls, so he had to assure her only three times that Simpson would send Matron and her charges home in a hired carriage, and it had all been arranged beforehand, and she couldn’t seriously be proposing to take them away before they saw the fireworks?

  Since it would be hours before Vauxhall closed, and since those of Swanton’s audience too indignant to remain had gone by now, Lisburne was able to get his curricle from the coach field quite quickly.

  If Vines was surprised at the early departure, he was too disciplined to show it or evidence any confusion at seeing Miss Noirot climb into the vehicle instead of Swanton.

  During the journey, she told him what she’d been doing when she disappeared. Though he could actually feel his hair standing on end, Lisburne called on all his willpower not to rage at her for endangering herself. He didn’t point out that dressed as she was, she’d invited trouble. Nothing terrible had happened, he told himself. And it was too late to take a fit now.

  All the same, he fretted and, when she’d finished, had to exert his self-control to the utmost in order to say only, “It must have been Meffat in the hack. He and Theaker have been a matched pair since their schooldays. I’m not surprised. When I saw Theaker take her away, I knew they were involved. They think it’s a fine joke, I daresay. They always did enjoy tormenting Swanton.”

  She looked up at this. “Are those some of the boys you thrashed at school?”

  He swallowed his surprise. “Somebody had to,” he said. “How did you learn of that?”

  “Clevedon,” she said. “But knowing they’re involved doesn’t tell us whether they put her up to playing Woman Wronged or simply encouraged and helped her embarrass Lord Swanton in public.”

  “Does it not strike you as an unlikely coincidence, their simply happening upon possibly the only woman in the world Swanton might have wronged during two weeks of his entire life? In Paris?”

  She turned away, seemingly watching the passing scene. But he knew she was thinking. It was in the way she held herself and in the tilt of her head and the arc of her neck.

  “Not entirely unlikely,” she said at last. “I was trying to recall where I’d seen Theaker before. It was at the British Institution. When you picked me up, and—”

  “I remember,” he said. “Vividly.”

  He remembered the way she’d stood rapt with the painting so many others had shunned.

  He remembered the silk and lace and ribbons and the warmth of her body in his arms. He remembered the low, delicious murmur of perfect Parisian French when she’d thanked him and the enticing hint of Paris in her otherwise flawless English speech. He remembered her scent, simple and fresh and utterly beguiling.

  “I noticed them, Theaker and his friend,” she went on. “They seemed to be with the others though somewhat apart. Obviously they were gentlemen. If the Mystery Woman was hovering in the background, looking for a way to get to Swanton, she might have noticed them and approached them. Or they might have noticed her.”

  Lisburne dragged himself back to reality and the infuriating truth. A beautiful summer night ruined because of Theaker and Meffat. When he got his hands on them, he’d kill them. Slowly.

  “Since she’s young and attractive, they wouldn’t hesitate to approach,” he said. “Though probably not if she’d had the child with her. It’s hard to say. It’s certainly possible that they encouraged her to include the child this night, as a heartrending scene prop.”

  They were cunning enough to think of such a thing. Theaker was, in any event. And if, instead of creating a complete hoax, they’d merely leapt at the chance to help the woman embarrass Swanton, was it unsporting to kill them on general principles?

  “I can imagine the crowd about Swanton intimidating her,” Leonie said. “She might have felt desperate, but unsure how to approach him. And if she seemed vulnerable, these sound like the sort of men who’d approach, thinking she was easy prey.”

  She nodded, satisfied with this possible scenario, and the flowers sprouting from her head bounced, an incongruously happy movement. “I knew I needed to follow them,” she said. “Then, when I saw her get into the hackney and not seem alarmed because another man was already inside, I was sure they were all in it together, whatever it was.” She smoothed her gloves. “Yes, that’s better.”

  “All sorted, then?” he said.

  She looked up at him.

  He smiled. “You’ve neatly narrowed the harrowing scene and its hundred possible interpretations into two lines of inquiry. I can picture the ledger in your mind—or perhaps, when you get home, you’ll make a ledger page. One column for Theory A. One column for Theory B.”

  “Somebody,” she said, “has to be the organized one. Somebody has to keep her feet on the ground.”

  “I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know.”

  Her house was dark when they arrived. Lisburne found this less than reassuring.

  “Where are the servants?” he said, as she unlocked the private door at the rear of the building.

  “In bed,” she said. “I try not to make them wait up for me.”

  He couldn’t imagine how she would undress herself without a maid’s help. Probably two maids. But then his mind started exploring the process of undressing her, and that led to his exploring the ways he could assist.

  He wiped that train of thought from his mind.

  There was no point in indulging the fantasy. It would only add to his frustration. The undressing wouldn’t happen tonight. Or ever, if he didn’t mend matters.

  Not all the charm in the world would win her over after this disastrous night.

  “One of them will have to be roused,” he said. “You need to eat something.”

  “I can find food belowstairs,” she said. “I’m used to looking after myself, you know. We moved to this grand building only a few months ago. In the past we made do with only a housemaid. There was a time, in fact, when we hadn’t any servants, and looked after ourselves.”

  “If you go downstairs in your present state, you’ve an excellent chance of stumbling and breaking your neck,” he said. “The odds of your survival improve if you go upstairs, holding the rail firmly. I’ll wake somebody and have them assemble a meal of some kind from the larder.” He waved at her. “Go
.”

  “Fenwick might be awake,” she said. “He’s not fond of early bedtimes. He didn’t grow up in an orderly world.”

  “I’ll find him,” Lisburne said.

  The building was a tall one, but like many others in London, it was narrow. Buildings of this type tended to adopt the same layout. He knew enough, in any event, to envision the servants’ quarters here as a good deal smaller than those in his town house in the Regent’s Park. True, he never ventured belowstairs, because the master of the house simply didn’t, and violating this rule would throw any self-respecting set of servants into a tizzy. A household was a delicate and complicated mechanism. Tizzies could be disastrous.

  All the same, he had a clear image in his mind of the floor plan. He understood each of his houses. He knew who worked where and what they did and what it cost. He’d lived abroad, but that didn’t mean he’d abandoned his property and those who worked for him. With rank, power, and wealth came responsibility. That was one of the first lessons his father had taught him.

  Somebody had to be organized. Somebody had to keep his feet on the ground. Somebody had to take charge, ready or not.

  A short time later

  The Marquess of Lisburne had made sandwiches. For her.

  Leonie stared at the tray in his hands, then at his face, wondering if she’d fallen asleep and entered a dreamland of marvels and miracles.

  “The boy was half asleep, and I could understand almost nothing of what he said,” Lisburne said. “I know several languages, but Cockney is not among them. I stumbled about the place on my own. I found half a loaf of bread and ham and cheese and mustard. I found a very good bottle of wine. I know how to open a bottle of wine. I even know how to make a sandwich.”

  He set the tray down on the table.

  She hadn’t yet made it to her dressing room to undertake the tedious process of undressing, beyond discarding her mantilla. She hadn’t advanced beyond the sitting room. Entering it, she’d seen one of Sophy’s notebooks on a table. Leonie had opened it and looked at the so-familiar handwriting. And she wept. But only for a moment. She was happy for her sister. For both sisters. Truly. They’d fallen in love and the men had married them, in spite of finding out they were Dreadful DeLuceys as well as Noirots, the DeLuceys’ French counterparts. That was miraculous and wonderful. They were happy. She wanted her sisters to be happy.