Vixen in Velvet

by Loretta Chase

  She hunted down Mrs. Downes’s maid, whom she found packing her bags.

  “Sent me out, she did, on about a hundred errands today,” the maid said. “That was to keep me away.” After jamming aprons, chemises, stockings, and so on into a valise, she started stripping as much of her little room’s contents as she could stuff into her bags. “Owed me since Midsummer Quarter Day, didn’t she? Don’t you look at me like that. You’ll be grabbing what you can, too. You don’t think she left wages for you, do you?”

  “There are men downstairs,” Madame Ecrivier said. She still couldn’t take it in. She’d worked so hard to build a new clientele, and retain the few older customers who still patronized the shop. She’d fought for higher wages, in order to attract more skilled help. She’d mounted an attack on inefficiency and shoddiness, and she was seeing—slowly, admittedly—signs of improvement. It only wanted patience. And time.

  “They’ve come with a writ of execution, I don’t doubt,” the maid said.

  Madame clutched her throat.

  The girl gave an exasperated snort. “It don’t mean the guillotine, you noddy. It means they’ll take an inventory, then more men will come and take whatever isn’t nailed down. The missus borrowed a lot of money from somebody, and never paid it back.”

  “But this is not possible!” Madame cried. “What of all my customers? What of all my orders?”

  “Well, she must’ve spent whatever you earned for her, don’t you think? On her fine carriage and dinner parties and a box at the opera and who knows what else. What I do know is, we haven’t none of us seen any money lately. I recommend you take what you can, and slip out the back way before them men realize she’s bolted.”

  Madame Ecrivier had come from Paris to London to make a fresh start. It hadn’t taken her long to realize she’d chosen her employer unwisely. At the time, however, she’d been desperate for work, and Mrs. Downes had offered a position of responsibility and higher wages than the seamstresses made.

  Madame Ecrivier felt desperate now. She’d saved what she could, but London was expensive, and her wages did not go far.

  This day she’d receive no wages.

  Still, she wasn’t a thief.

  She returned to the showroom and told the unpleasant men that Mrs. Downes had run away. Then Madame Ecrivier told the seamstresses they were unemployed. She did her best to comfort them and offer advice.

  Then she collected her hat and shawl and set out for Maison Noirot.

  Warford House

  Wednesday 26 August

  Italy, indeed!” Lord Boulsworth boomed. “Whoever heard such nonsense?”

  He strode back and forth across Lord Warford’s study carpet, in the manner of one inspecting unsatisfactory troops. These comprised his daughter and Lord Swanton.

  Though Lord Boulsworth had delegated his cousin Warford to act in loco parentis, the latter knew better than to allow the wedding to proceed without Boulsworth there to bless the proceedings. Lord Warford’s wife provided more than sufficient displays of temperament. He did not want to give Boulsworth reason to storm into Warford House and roar at everybody. Not that Boulsworth needed a reason.

  “I’ve a house standing empty outside Manchester and a lot of idle servants in dire need of discipline,” the general went on. “Since duty calls me elsewhere, I look upon you as the next ranking officer. Your father acted bravely at Waterloo. Long past time you lived up to him, instead of writing rhymes for silly girls and gadding about the Continent. You and Gladys will take up residence in Lancashire.”

  “Lancashire?” Swanton echoed. And fainted.

  “What the devil?” cried the general.

  Gladys knelt beside her lover and lifted his head and held it against her bountiful bosom. She looked up at her father, eyes blazing. “How could you, papa!”

  “I? What the devil did I do? What sort of milksop have you given your hand to?”

  “This milksop nearly killed a man with his bare hands!”

  Lord Boulsworth eyed the fallen hero dubiously. “I suppose he had bricks in them at the time. Otherwise—”

  “Gladys.” The poet’s eyes fluttered open. “My dear girl. Please forgive me. The shock overcame me. But only for a moment. Let me rise.” Gently he put her helping hands away and pushed himself up and onto his feet.

  He squared his shoulders and jutted out his chin. “Sir, you seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. In three days’ time Gladys will be my wife. We will travel to Italy, where I shall continue to write poetry—better poetry, I hope, with her as my muse—”

  “Muse! Ballocks! I won’t have her traipsing about the Continent on the whim of a fellow who faints at trifles.”

  “The shock of your presuming to command both myself and the lady who is to be my wife left me temporarily deprived of my senses,” Swanton said. “I could scarcely believe my ears. Your lordship seems to forget that Gladys will swear a sacred vow to love and obey her husband. Will you have her violate sacred vows? Will you have me violate mine? Am I not bound to love and honor her? Does not this love require my respecting her wishes for me to continue in my vocation?”

  The general stared at him, his face a shade of red inferior officers had learned to dread.

  Swanton only smiled with angelic patience and said, “Whether you will or not, makes no matter. I shall do whatever is necessary to make Gladys my wife.”

  Lord Boulsworth had fought and won too many battles to accept defeat easily. He sputtered and argued and threatened. Swanton bore it like a stoic, only reiterating his intention of being the head of his own family. He might have continued forbearing but Gladys, who knew how obstinately domineering her father could be, sank into a chair and began to cry.

  Swanton looked at her and at her father. He clenched his hands and set his jaw. “Very well,” he said. “I’ve tried to fight fair. But I won’t have Gladys distressed.”

  Then he began to recite:

  We fled a far but happier clime,

  From kindred’s pow’r and foeman’s hate;

  Our crime was love—if love be crime,

  She was my hope, my fate.

  The poem went on for an infinite number of stanzas.

  At the end, Lord Boulsworth, in tears—of rage or desperation or possibly even sentiment—surrendered.

  On 29 August, Lord Swanton and Lady Gladys Fairfax were married by special license in the room of Warford House containing the wedding scene.

  According to Foxe’s Morning Spectacle, “The bride wore a dress of white satin, with a close-fitting corsage en pointe, a richly embroidered pelerine over short sleeves, and embroidered crepe flounce. Her hair was ornamented with flowers, and an arrow from which descended on each side a blond lappet.”

  The following day, Lady Warford wrote to Lisburne’s mother, reporting that the wedding had gone off without a hitch the previous day. The general, she said, appeared strangely subdued.

  “Gladys looked very well, indeed,” Lady Warford wrote.

  She glowed with happiness, and I’m sure I’m happy for her. I know she will look after your nephew Swanton, and he has been surprisingly protective of her. In any event, you’ll see them soon enough, and can judge for yourself. But oh, my dear, what is to be done about Clara? I fear that if she keeps on as she does, the gentlemen will give up on her. Who would have thought that such a beautiful girl should remain unwed all this time? Sophy claims the only trouble is that no one is worthy of her, but you know Clara has always had a rebellious streak, like her father’s mother. She has had more than one narrow escape and I fear—I greatly fear—that she’ll err again, and this time no one will be able to get her out of the scrape, and she’ll be disgraced forever, or else married to a Monster like That Man with whose name I will not sully my pen. (We have confirmation, by the way, that his confederates, those scoundrels Theaker and Meffat, have followed his
lead and fled their creditors as well as disgrace, to wander penniless about the Continent, I sincerely hope.)

  But Clara is safe from them, in any event, and I desperately hope she has learned something from that Mrs. Williams’s horrible experience. I know it is useless to press my daughter about marrying. She gets her back up and then won’t listen to a word—but my dear Enid, I am at my wits’ end. I wish you would look about you for a gentleman of maturity and backbone, for she will need a strong hand. And truly, I no longer care whether he is of the highest rank, if only he can keep her comfortably.

  Oh, but what do I ask? Never mind, my dear. I begin to think my eldest daughter a lost cause. It would be wiser, you will tell me, to put my energies into the others.

  Thence followed domestic matters, of little interest to those but the correspondents.

  In February, the Duchess of Clevedon gave birth to a healthy little boy. His sister and her best friend, Bianca Williams, made his christening bonnet.

  Author’s Note

  Next, o’er his Books his eyes began to roll,

  In pleasing memory of all he stole,

  How here he sipp’d, how there he plunder’d snug,

  And suck’d all o’er, like an industrious Bug.

  —Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Book I

  For starters, I stole the art, making the Botticelli Venus and Mars (also known in some quarters as Mars and Venus) part of my fictional Lord Lisburne’s art collection as well as giving the work its modern title. The subject matter has been in dispute, and it may not even have had an English title until it came to England in the 1850s (anachronism ahoy!). London’s National Gallery purchased it in 1874, and there it remains on glorious view. Botticelli’s unpopularity at the time of the story, however, is not a figment of my fevered imagination. He fell out of favor after his death and didn’t recover until the second half of the nineteenth century.

  Veronese’s Virtue and Vice, on the other hand, really was on view during the British Institution’s 1835 Summer Exhibition.

  All the poetry is stolen, mainly from early nineteenth-century ladies’ magazines, in keeping with their own grand tradition of stealing from one another. Ask Charles Dickens about copyright infringement and watch him tear out his hair and gnash his teeth.

  “Never warn me, my dear, to take care of my heart,” is from Mrs. Abdy’s “A Marrying Man,” which appeared in The Comic Offering; or Ladies’ Melange of Literary Mirth, edited by Louisa Henrietta Sheridan.

  http://www.google.com/books?id=9G4FAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA145#v=onepage&q&f=false

  Mrs. Abdy’s poem “The Second Son” appeared in the same periodical.

  http://www.google.com/books?id=9G4FAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA259#v=onepage&q&f=false

  “The Dead Robin” appeared in the Lady’s Magazine and Museum, Vol. VI, 1835, ascribed to a frequent poetry contributor who called himself/herself “Tacet.”

  http://books.google.com/books?id=wUcFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false

  The poem with the gushing torrents came from No. IV of a series of poems entitled, “Lays of the Affections,” in the 1830 Lady’s Magazine.

  http://www.google.com/books?id=K3EEAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA1-PA136#v=onepage&q&f=false

  “Oh! late I view’d her move along, the idol of the crowd” is the ending of a poem titled “Ethelinda,” which appeared in La Belle Assemblée, 1826, and was attributed to “D.L.T.” http://books.google.com/books?id=8EExAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA71#v=onepage&q&f=false

  “A thousand faults in man we find” appears repeatedly in periodicals from the Regency era into the 1830s (and possibly later) under various titles, and with different authors, e.g., A.A., Tom P., or no author at all—a great example of the rampant piracy of the time. I gave it the earliest attribution I was able to find via Google Books.

  “My Very Particular Friend” is another of Mrs. Abdy’s poems, which I found quoted in a review of The Comic Offering; or, Ladies’ Melange of Literary Mirth for 1834. The review appeared in the London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, Etc., 1833.

  http://books.google.com/books?id=54dHAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA658#v=onepage&q&f=false

  Louisa Henrietta Sheridan, writer and editor of The Comic Offering, wrote her own version, also titled “My Very Particular Friend,” meant to be sung. This multitalented lady wrote the music herself. It appeared in the New Monthly Belle Assemblée, 1836.

  http://books.google.com/books?id=y90PAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false

  “We waltz and behold her” is from “Mynheer Werter’s First Interview with Charlotte, Versified,” which appeared in The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, 1826.

  http://books.google.com/books?id=I2cAAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA447#v=onepage&q&f=false

  The quotation from The Odyssey is from the William Cowper translation.

  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24269/24269-h/24269-h.htm#BOOK_I

  “We fled a far but happier clime” is from “The Wreck,” by W.L.R., which appeared in the Magazine of the Beau Monde in August 1835.

  http://google.com/books?id=Gh4GAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA186-IA190#v=onepage&q&f=false

  Another Pesky Anachronism

  Since the Hans Christian Andersen tales in which “The Emperor’s New Clothes” first appeared weren’t published until 1837, it’s not likely anybody in England would be using it as a reference in 1835. So that one’s a stretch, but nothing else I could come up with worked so well.

  And Speaking of Clothes . . .

  Once upon a time, all we had were natural fabrics, made of cotton, linen, wool, silk, and blends of these. Silk, for instance, came in varieties whose names are no longer familiar. The definitions below come from Louis Harmuth’s Dictionary of Textiles, 1920 edition. The information in brackets is courtesy the milliners and mantua makers of Colonial Williamsburg. My comments are in parentheses.

  Armoisin: light and thin silk taffeta for lining; made in Italy and France with stripes, geometrical designs or dots. Heavier a. with ribs was made for curtains and bed covers. Nowadays, East India produces two kinds of a., one called damaras, with flower patterns, and arains, with stripes or checks.

  Genoa velvet: 1. Very fine thick, all-silk velvet brocade on satin ground, having large patterns: made in Genoa, Italy, centuries ago; 2. A weft pile cotton velvet, having a one-and-two twill ground. [—from Italy, could be cotton velvet but most likely was silk. It was the best silk velvet on the market, and copied by the rest of Europe.]

  Green Persian: Very light silk lining, printed with large flowers, used in England in the XVIII century. (Author’s note: Here Harmuth is far from satisfactory. The term “green Persian” appears frequently in nineteenth-century novels, including works by Dickens.) [Persians are light-weight, China-like silks. There are six grades, and they’re used primarily for linings. They come from Turkey and Persia.

  Lutestring: fine, warp ribbed silk dress goods of high finish. [Fine silk with a bit of stiffness, like today’s taffeta.]

  Mode: (Author’s note: Harmuth is even more disappointing here, since he doesn’t list it, at least not by this name.) [Another lightweight silk that came primarily in either black or white, and was used mostly for outdoor cloaks, though also for linings.]

  Princetta: An English worsted fabric in the 19th century, made with silk warp and worsted filling; originally made of pure worsted.

  Sarcenet (sometimes spelled sarsenet or sarsnet): obsolete, light, soft and thin silk fabric, used as lining in England. [Thin, clingy silk.]

  The detailed fashion descriptions (not those written from a man’s point of view) are taken/adapted from ladies’ fashion magazines of the time. The women’s clothes are based on fashion plates.

  Who Are These People?

  As the third in a series, Vixen in Velvet brings in characters from the first two books. For Marcelline’s story, please see Silk Is for Seduction. Sophy is the star of Scan
dal Wears Satin. Lord Lovedon and Chloe Sharp’s story is told in “Lord Lovedon’s Duel,” a short story in the anthology Royal Bridesmaids.

  About the Author

  LORETTA CHASE has worked in academe, retail, and the visual arts, as well as on the streets—as a meter maid—and in video, as a scriptwriter. She might have developed an excitingly checkered career had her spouse not nagged her into writing fiction. Her bestselling historical romances, set in the Regency and Romantic eras of the early nineteenth century, have won a number of awards, including the Romance Writers of America’s RITA®. For more about her past, her books, and what she does and doesn’t do on social media, please visit her at

  www.LorettaChase.com.

  www.avonromance.com

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  By Loretta Chase

  Vixen in Velvet

  Scandal Wears Satin

  Silk Is for Seduction

  Last Night’s Scandal

  Don’t Tempt Me

  Your Scandalous Ways

  Not Quite a Lady

  The Last Hellion

  “The Mad Earl’s Bride”

  Lord of Scoundrels

  Captives of the Night

  The Lion’s Daughter

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Loretta Chekani. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.