The Dressmakers: Silk Is For Seduction Part 13

Longing welled up. To touch his beautiful face. To feel that arm curl about her shoulders. To tuck herself into that big, warm body.

She crushed it. "Or perhaps you took pity on us," she said.

"It was your maid or seamstress or whatever she is upon whom I took pity," he said. "You can take care of yourself, I've no doubt. But Saunders told me the girl was prodigious ill. For a time, he said, he wasn't sure she'd survive the voyage. She did not look well just now." He paused briefly. "She doesn't lodge with you?"

"She did, but that was only temporary. I can hardly lodge my seamstresses. For one thing, it isn't good for them to do nothing but eat, drink, and live nothing but shop. For another, there isn't room. Not that I should want half a dozen seamstresses about all day and all night. The working hours can be trying enough, what with their little jealousies and-"

"Half a dozen?" he said. He leaned forward. "Half a dozen?"

He was too astonished to pretend he wasn't.

Yes, of course she'd babbled that advertis.e.m.e.nt for the corner of Fleet Street at Chancery Lane, and it was the direction she'd given the coachman. That didn't mean her shop wasn't squeezed into a pa.s.sage or a cellar.

"Half a dozen girls at present," she said. "But I'll certainly be hiring more in the near future. As it is, we're shorthanded."

"Half a- Devil take you, what is wrong with you?"

"You've already pointed out any number of my character flaws," she said. "To which do you now refer?"

"I thought... Noirot, you're the d.a.m.ndest woman. Your dogged pursuit of me led me to believe you were in desperate straits."

"How on earth did you come by that idea?" she said. "I told you I was the greatest modiste in the world. You've seen my work."

"I imagined a dark little shop in a bas.e.m.e.nt, drat you," he said. "I did wonder how you contrived to make such extravagant-looking dresses in such a place."

"I'm sure you didn't wonder about it overlong," she said. "You were mainly occupied with bedding me."

"Yes, but I'm done with that now."

He was. He truly was. He'd had enough of her. He'd had enough of himself, chasing her. Like a puppy, like the veriest schoolboy.

"I'm very glad to hear it," she said.

"It's only Clara I'm thinking of," he said. "Much as it pains me to contribute to your vainglory, it was clear, even to me, that the women of Paris were besotted with your work. You're the most aggravating woman I've ever met, but you make yourself agreeable to women, I noticed, and that and beautiful, fashionable clothes are what matter, I daresay. I should not hold a grudge, merely because I long to shake you until your teeth rattle."

Her weary face lit up, her eyes most brilliantly of all. "I knew it," she said. "I knew you'd see."

"Still, I don't trust you."

Something flickered in her eyes, but she said nothing, only waited, her attention riveted.

She was riveted on him-for her business. He was merely the means to an end.

But he scorned to hold grudges, especially on such a petty account-his vanity, of all things!

"I wanted to see the place for myself," he said. "To make sure it truly existed, for one thing-and to see what sort of place it was. For all I knew, you were toiling alone in a dark room in a cellar."

"Good grief, what a mind a man has," she said. "How could you imagine I should produce such creations in- But never mind. Maison Noirot is an elegant shop. Everything is of the first stare, exceedingly neat and clean and airy. It's much more neat and elegant, I promise you, than the den of that dull-witted incompetent-but no, I will not foul the air with her name."

He was done with her. He needed to be done with her. But now, when she spoke of her shop, she was so animated. So pa.s.sionate.

"I smell a rival," he said.

She sat straighter. "Certainly not. I have no rivals, your grace. I am the greatest modiste in the world." She leaned forward to look out of the door window. "We're nearly there. You'll soon see for yourself."

It wasn't as soon as it might have been, the street being a tangle of carriages, riders, and pedestrians. But eventually they came to the place, and there it was, a handsome modern shop, with a bow window and the name in gold lettering over the door: Noirot.

The carriage stopped. The door opened. The steps were folded down.

Clevedon stepped out first, and put out his hand to steady her.

As she took his hand, he heard a cry behind him.

She looked up, looked past him, and the light he'd seen in her face before was nothing to this. Her countenance was the sun, shedding happiness and setting the world aglow.

"Mama!" the voice cried.

Noirot practically leapt from the last step, past him, forgetting him entirely.

She crouched down on the pavement and opened her arms, and a little girl, a little dark-haired girl, ran into them.

"Mama!" the child cried. "You're home!"

Chapter Seven.

The Dress-Maker must be an expert anatomist; and must, if judiciously chosen, have a name of French termination; she must know how to hide all defects in the proportions of the body, and must be able to mould the shape by the stays, that, while she corrects the body, she may not interfere with the pleasures of the palate.

The Book of English Trades, and Library of the Useful Arts, 1818 A child.

She had a child.

A little girl with dark, curling hair who ran at her, laughing. Noirot's arms went around her and tightened to hold her close. "My love, my love," she said, and the way she said it made a knot in his chest.

He was distantly aware of other feminine voices, but his attention was locked upon the scene: Noirot crouched on the pavement, crushing the little girl to her, and the child, whose face he could see so clearly over her mother's shoulder, eyes closed, her face alight and dawn-rosy, her happiness radiating in almost visible waves.

He didn't know how long he stood there, oblivious to all else about him: the busy street, the people detouring round the mother and child on the pavement. He scarcely noticed his own servants, carrying her things into the place, then returning to the carriage. He was only dimly aware of the two women who had come out of the shop behind the little girl.

He stood and watched the mother and child because he couldn't turn away, because he didn't understand and scarcely believed what his senses told him.

After some time, some very short time perhaps, Noirot rose and, taking her daughter's hand, started toward the shop. The child said, "Who is that, Mama?"

Noirot turned around and saw him standing, like a man at the window of a peepshow, entranced by a foreign world, unable to look away.

He collected his wits and took a step toward them. "Mrs. Noirot, perhaps you'd be so kind as to make me known to the young lady."

The child looked up at him, eyes wide. They were not her mother's eyes, but b1ue, vividly blue. They seemed vaguely familiar, and he tried to remember where he might have seen those eyes before. But where could that have been? Anywhere. Nowhere. It didn't signify.

Noirot looked from the girl to him and back to the girl, who said, "Who is it, Mama? Is it the king?"

"No, it isn't the king."

The child tipped her head to one side, looking past him at the carriage. "That is a very grand carriage," she said. "I should like to drive about in that carriage."

"I don't doubt that," said her mother. "Your grace, may I present my daughter, Miss Lucie Cordelia Noirot."

"I beg your pardon, Mama," the child said. "That isn't my name, you know."

Noirot looked at her. "Is it not?"

"My name is Erroll now. E-R-R-O-L-L."

"I see." Noirot began again. "Your grace, may I present my daughter-" She broke off and looked enquiringly at the child. "You're still my daughter, I take it?"

"Yes," said Erroll. "Of course, Mama."

"I'm relieved to hear it. I had quite grown used to you. Your grace, may I present my daughter Erroll. Erroll, His Grace, the Duke of Clevedon."

"Miss... erm... Erroll," he said. He bowed gravely.

"Your grace," the girl said. She curtseyed. It was nothing half so stunning as her mother's style of curtsey, but it was gracefully done nonetheless. He wondered at it and at her remarkable self-possession.

Then he recalled whose daughter she was, and wondered why he wondered.

Then he recalled who it was who had a child.

A child, Noirot had a child!

How had she failed to mention such a thing? But what was wrong with him that he was so shocked? She was Mrs. Noirot-and while the t.i.tle "Mrs." was used, cavalierly enough, by unwed shopkeepers, actresses, and wh.o.r.es alike, he needn't have a.s.sumed she wasn't a married woman, with a family and... a husband... who did not seem to be in evidence. Dead? Or perhaps there was no husband, merely a scoundrel who'd fathered and abandoned this child.

"Do you ever take children for a drive in that carriage?" Erroll said, calling him back to the moment. "Not little children, I mean, but proper grown-up girls who would sit quietly-not climbing about and spoiling the cushions or putting sticky fingers on the gla.s.s. Not them, but well-behaved girls who keep their hands folded in their laps and only look out of the window." The great blue eyes regarded him steadily.

"I-"

"No, he does not," her mother said. "His grace has many claims on his time. In fact, I am sure he has an appointment elsewhere any minute now."

"Do I?"

Noirot gave him a warning look.

"Yes, of course," he said. He took out his pocket watch and stared at it. He had no idea where the hands pointed. He was too conscious of the little girl with the great blue eyes watching him so intently. "I nearly forgot."

He put the watch away. "Well, Erroll, I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Yes, I'm glad to meet you, too," she said. "Please come again, when you're not so busy."

He made a polite, non-committal answer, and took his leave.

He climbed into his coach and sat. As the vehicle started to move, he looked out through the louvered panel. That was when he finally took notice of the other two women, a blonde and a redhead. Even through the wooden slats, at this distance, he discerned the family resemblance, most especially in the way they carried themselves.

He had mistaken her. He'd formed an idea that was entirely wrong.

Her shop was not a little hole-in-corner place but a proper, handsome establishment. She had a family. She had a child.

She was not to be trusted. Of that he was quite, quite sure.

As to everything else-he'd misjudged, misunderstood, and now he was at sea again, and it was a rough sea, indeed.

"Well done," Sophy said, when the shop door had closed behind them. "I know you, of course, and I should never underestimate you-"

"But my dear," said Leonie, "you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw the crest on the carriage door."

"And then to see him spring out of the carriage-"

"-the prints don't half do him justice-"

"-to see him hand you out-"

"-I thought for a minute I was dreaming-"

"-It was very like a vision-"

"I saw it first, Mama," Lucie/Erroll cut into her aunts' chatter. "I was sitting in the window, reading my lessons, when I heard a noise, and I looked out-and I thought the king was pa.s.sing by."

"The king, with a paltry two footmen?" Marcelline said. "I think not."

"Oh, yes. It might have been, Mama. Everyone knows King William doesn't like to make a show. I'm sorry, too, because they say the old king, the one before this one..." She frowned.

"King George the Fourth," Leonie prompted.

"Yes, that one," Lucie said. "Everyone says he was vastly more splendid, and you always knew who it was when he went by. But a duke is grand, too. I thought he was very handsome, like the prince in the fairy tale. We did not expect you so soon, but I'm glad you came early. Was it very agreeable to travel in that fine carriage? I collect the seat cushions were thick and soft."

"They were, indeed," Marcelline said. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted two women approaching the shop. It would not do for Lucie to be interrogating her about the Duke of Clevedon in front of customers, but it wasn't easy to distract her daughter from a fascinating object, especially a large, expensive fascinating object. "I shall tell you all about it down to the last detail, but I'm perishing for a cup of tea. Shall we go upstairs, and will you make Mama a cup of tea?"

"Yes, yes!" Lucie jumped up and down. "I'll send Millie to the pastry shop. We're so glad you're home, and we shall have a party, a wonderful party, with cakes!"

Hours later, when Lucie was safely abed, the sisters gathered in the workroom.

There they drank champagne, to celebrate Marcelline's return-with her quarry, no less-and while they drank, Marcelline described her experiences with the Duke of Clevedon in all their lurid detail. Though her sisters were virgins, so far as she knew-and she couldn't imagine why they wouldn't tell her if they were not-they were by no means innocent. In any case, one could hardly expect them to help her deal with the complications if they did not fully understand what had happened.

"I'm truly sorry," she said. "I had promised I wouldn't bollix it up-"

"So you did," said Leonie. "Yet none of us expected him to be quite so... quite so-"