Silk Is For Seduction

Good grief.

She walked quickly as they left the box, thinking quickly, too, as she went. She was aware of the clusters of opera-goers in the corridor making way for her. That amused her, even while she pondered the unexpected problem walking alongside.

She’d known the Duke of Clevedon was a handful.

She’d vastly underestimated.

Still, she was a Noirot, and the risks only excited her.

She came to rest at last in a quieter part of the corridor, near a window. For a time, she gazed out of the window. It showed her only her own reflection: a magnificently dressed, alluring woman, a walking advertisement for what would one day—soon, with a little help from him—be London’s foremost dressmaking establishment. Once they had the Duchess of Clevedon, royal patronage was sure to follow: the moon and the stars, almost within her grasp.

“I hope you’re not unwell, madame,” he said in his English-accented French.

“No, but it occurs to me that I’ve been absurd,” she said. “What a ridiculous wager it is!”

He smiled. “You’re not backing down? Is riding with me in the Bois de Boulogne so dreadful a fate?”

It was a boyish smile, and he spoke with a self-deprecating charm that must have slain the morals of hundreds of women.

She said, “As I see it, either way I win. No matter how I look at it, this wager is silly. Only think, when I tell you whether you’re right or wrong, how will you know I’m telling the truth?”

“Did you think I’d demand your passport?” he said.

“Were you planning to take my word for it?” she said.

“Of course.”

“That may be gallant or it may be naïve,” she said. “I can’t decide which.”

“You won’t lie to me,” he said.

Had her sisters been present, they would have fallen down laughing.

“That’s an exceptionally fine diamond,” she said. “If you think a woman wouldn’t lie to have it, you’re catastrophically innocent.”

The arresting green gaze searched her face. In English he said, “I was wrong, completely wrong. I see it now. You’re English.”

She smiled. “What gave me away? The plain speaking?”

“More or less,” he said. “If you were French, we should be debating what truth is. They can’t let anything alone. They must always put it under the microscope of philosophy. It’s rather endearing, but they’re so predictable in that regard. Everything must be anatomized and sorted. Rules. They need rules. They make so many.”

“That wouldn’t be a wise speech, were I a French-woman,” she said.

“But you’re not. We’ve settled it.”

“Have we?”

He nodded.

“You wagered in haste,” she said. “Are you always so rash?”

“Sometimes, yes,” he said. “But you had me at a disadvantage. You’re like no one I’ve ever met before.”

“Yet in some ways I am,” she said. “My parents were English.”

“And a little French?” he said. Humor danced in his green eyes, and her cold, calculating heart gave a little skip in response.

Damn, but he was good.

“A very little,” she said. “One purely French great-grandfather. But he and his sons fancied Englishwomen.”

“One great-grandfather is too little to count,” he said. “I’m stuck all over with French names, but I’m hopelessly English—and typically slow, except to jump to wrong conclusions. Ah, well. Farewell, my little pin.” He brought his hands up to remove it.

He wore gloves, but she knew they didn’t hide calluses or broken nails. His hands would be typical of his class: smooth and neatly manicured. They were larger than was fashionable, though, the fingers long and graceful.

Well, not so graceful at the moment. His valet had placed the pin firmly and precisely among the folds of his neckcloth, and he was struggling with it.

Or seeming to.

“You’d better let me,” she said. “You can’t see what you’re doing.”

She moved his hands away, hers lightly brushing his. Glove against glove, that was all. Yet she felt the shock of contact as though skin had touched skin, and the sensation traveled the length of her body.

She was acutely aware of the broad chest under the expensive layers of neckcloth and waistcoat and shirt. All the same, her hands neither faltered nor trembled. She’d had years of practice. Years of holding cards steady while her heart pounded. Years of bluffing, never letting so much as a flicker of an eye, a twitch of a facial muscle, betray her.

The pin came free, winking in the light. She regarded the snowy linen she’d wrinkled.

“How naked it looks,” she said. “Your neckcloth.”

“What is this?” he said. “Remorse?”

“Never,” she said, and that was pristine truth. “But the empty place offends my aesthetic sensibilities.”

“In that case, I shall hasten to my hotel and have my valet replace it.”

“You’re strangely eager to please,” she said.

“There’s nothing strange about it.”

“Be calm, your grace,” she said. “I have an exquisite solution.”

She took a pin from her bodice and set his in its place. She set her pin into the neckcloth. Hers was nothing so magnificent as his, merely a smallish pearl. But it was a pretty one, of a fine luster. Softly it glowed in its snug place among the folds of his linen.

She was aware of his gaze, so intent, and of the utter stillness with which he waited.

She lightly smoothed the surrounding fabric, then stepped back and eyed her work critically. “That will do very well,” she said.

“Will it?” He was looking at her, not the pearl.

“Let the window be your looking glass,” she said.

He was still watching her.

“The glass, your grace. You might at least admire my handiwork.”

“I do,” he said. “Very much.”

But he turned away, wearing the faintest smile, and studied himself in the glass.

“I see,” he said. “Your eye is as good as my valet’s—and that’s a compliment I don’t give lightly.”

“My eye ought to be good,” she said. “I’m the greatest modiste in all the world.”

His heart beat erratically.

With excitement, what else? And why not?

Truly, she was like no one he’d ever met before.

Paris was another world from London, and French women were another species from English. Even so, he’d grown accustomed to the sophistication of Parisian women, sufficiently accustomed to predict the turn of a wrist, the movement of a fan, the angle of the head in almost any situation. Rules, as he’d told her. The French lived by rules.

This woman made her own rules.

“And so modest a modiste she is,” he said.

She laughed, but hers was not the silvery laughter he was accustomed to. It was low and intimate, not meant for others to hear. She was not trying to make heads turn her way, as other women did. Only his head was required.

And he did turn away from the window to look at her.

“Perhaps, unlike everyone else in the opera house, you failed to notice,” she said. She swept her closed fan over her dress.

He let his gaze travel from the slightly disheveled coiffure down. Before, he’d taken only the most superficial notice of what she wore. His awareness was mainly of her physicality: the lushly curved body, the clarity of her skin, the brilliance of her eyes, the soft disorder of her hair.

Now he took in the way that enticing body was adorned: the black lace cloak or tunic or whatever it was meant to be, over rich pink silk—the dashing arrangement of color and trim and jewelry, the—the—

“Style,” she said.

Within him was a pause, a doubt, a moment’s uneasiness. His mind, it seemed, was a book to her, and she’d already gone beyond the table of contents and the introduction, straight to the first chapter.

But what did it matter? She, clearly no innocent, knew what he wanted.

“No, madame. I didn’t notice,” he said. “All I saw was you.”

“That is exactly the right thing to say to a woman,” she said. “And exactly the wrong thing to say to a dressmaker.”

“I beg you to be a woman for the present,” he said. “As a dressmaker, you waste your talents on me.”

“Not at all,” she said. “Had I been badly dressed, you would not have entered Mademoiselle Fontenay’s box. Even had you been so rash as to disregard the dictates of taste, the Comte d’Orefeur would have saved you from a suicidal error, and declined to make the introduction.”

“Suicidal? I detect a tendency to exaggerate.”

“Regarding taste? May I remind you, we’re in Paris.”

“At the moment, I don’t care where I am,” he said.

Again, the low laughter. He felt the sound, as though her breath touched the back of his neck.

“I’d better watch out,” she said. “You’re determined to sweep me off my feet.”

“You started it,” he said. “You swept me off mine.”

“If you’re trying to turn me up sweet, to get back your diamond, it won’t work,” she said.

“If you think I’ll give back your pearl, I recommend you think again,” he said.

“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “You may be too romantic to care that your diamond is worth fifty such pearls, but I’m not. You may keep the pearl, with my blessing. But I must return to Mademoiselle Fontenay—and here is your friend monsieur le comte, who has come to prevent your committing the faux pas of returning with me. I know you are enchanted, devastated, your grace, and yes, I am desolée to lose your company—it is so refreshing to meet a man with a brain—but it won’t do. I cannot be seen to favor a gentleman. It’s bad for business. I shall simply hope to see you at another time. Perhaps tomorrow at Longchamp where, naturally, I shall display my wares.”

Orefeur joined them as the signal came for the end of the interval. A young woman waved to her, and Madame Noirot took her leave, with a quick, graceful curtsey and—for Clevedon’s eyes only—a teasing look over her fan.

As soon as she was out of hearing range, Orefeur said, “Have a care. That one is dangerous.”

“Yes,” said Clevedon, watching her make her way through the throng. The crowd gave way to her, as though she were royalty, when she was nothing remotely approaching it. She was a shopkeeper, nothing more. She’d said so, unselfconsciously and unashamedly, yet he couldn’t quite believe it. He watched the way she moved, and the way her French friend moved, so unlike that they did not even seem to belong to the same species.

“Yes,” he said, “I know.”

Meanwhile, in London, Lady Clara Fairfax was longing to throw a china vase at her brother’s thick head. But the noise would attract attention, and the last thing she wanted was her mother bursting into the library.

She’d dragged him into the library because it was a room Mama rarely entered.

“Harry, how could you?” she cried. “They’re all talking about it. I’m mortified.”

The Earl of Longmore folded himself gingerly onto the sofa and shut his eyes. “There’s no need to shriek. My head—”

“I can guess how you came by the headache,” she said. “And I have no sympathy, none at all.”

Shadows ringed Harry’s eyes and pallor dulled his skin. Creases and wrinkles indicated he hadn’t changed his clothes since last night, and the wild state of his black hair made it clear that no comb had touched it during the same interval. He’d spent the night in the bed of one of his amours, no doubt, and hadn’t bothered to change when his sister sent for him.

“Your note said the matter was urgent,” he said. “I came because I thought you needed help. I did not come to hear you ring a peal over me.”

“Racing to Paris to give Clevedon an ultimatum,” she said. “‘Marry my sister or else.’ Was that your idea of helping, too?”

He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “Who told you that?”

“All the world has been talking of it,” she said. “For weeks, it seems. I was bound to hear eventually.”

“All the world is insane,” he said. “Ultimatum, indeed. There was nothing like it. I only asked him whether he wanted you or not.”

“Oh, no.” She sank into a nearby chair and put her hand over her mouth. Her face was on fire. How could he? But what a question. Of course he could. Harry had never been known for his tact and sensitivity.

“Better me than Father,” he said.

She closed her eyes. He was right. Papa would write a letter. It would be much more discreet and far more devastating to Clevedon than anything Harry could say. Father would have the duke tied up in knots of guilt and obligation—and that, she suspected, was probably what had driven his grace to the Continent in the first place.

She took her hand from her mouth and opened her eyes and met her brother’s gaze. “You truly think it’s come to that?”

“My dear girl, Mother is driving me mad, and I don’t have to live with her. I came to dread stopping at home because I knew she’d harp on it. It was only a matter of time before Father gave up trying to ignore her. You know he never wanted us to go away in the first place. Well, not Clevedon, at any rate. Me, he was only too happy to see the back of.”

It was true that Mama had grown increasingly strident in the last few months. Her friends’ daughters, who’d come out at the same time Clara had, were wed, most of them. Meanwhile Mama was terrified that Clara would forget Clevedon and become infatuated with someone unsuitable—meaning someone who wasn’t a duke.

Why do you encourage Lord Adderley, when you know he’s practically bankrupt? And there is that dreadful Mr. Bates, who hasn’t a prayer of inheriting, with two men standing between him and the title. You know that Lord Geddings’s country place is falling to pieces. And Sir Henry Jaspers—my daughter—encouraging the attentions of a baronet? Are you trying to kill me by inches, Clara? What is wrong with you, that you cannot attach a man who has loved you practically since birth and could buy and sell all the others a dozen times over?

How many times had Clara heard that rant, or one like it, since they’d returned to London for the Season? “I know you meant well,” she said. “But I wish you hadn’t.”

“He’s been abroad for three years,” Harry said. “The situation begins to look a little ridiculous, even to me. Either he means to marry you or he doesn’t. Either he wants to live abroad or he wants to live in England. I think he’s had time enough to make up his mind.”

She blinked. Three years? It hadn’t seemed so long. She’d spent the first of those years grieving for her grandmother, whom she’d adored. She hadn’t had the heart to make her debut then. And that year and those following had been filled with Clevedon’s wonderful letters.

“I didn’t realize it was so long,” she said. “He writes so faithfully, it seems as though he’s here.” She’d been writing to him since she first learned to scrawl such inanities as “I hope this finds you well. How do you like school? I am learning French. It is difficult. What are you learning?” Even as a boy, he’d been a delightful correspondent. He was a keen observer, and he had a natural gift for description as well as a wicked wit. She knew him very well, better than most knew him, but that was mainly through letters.

It dawned on her now that they hadn’t spent much time together. While she’d been in the schoolroom, he’d been away at school, then university. By the time she’d entered Society, he’d gone abroad.

“I daresay he didn’t realize it, either,” Harry said. “When I asked him straight out what he was about, he laughed, and said I did well to come. He said he supposed he might have returned sooner, but your letters told him you were enjoying being the most sought-after girl in London Society, and he didn’t like to spoil your fun.”

She hadn’t wanted to spoil his, either. His had not been a pleasant childhood. He’d lost father, mother, and sister in the course of a year. Papa meant to be a kind guardian, but he had very strict ideas about Duty and Responsibility, and Clevedon, unlike Clara’s brothers, had tried to live up to his standards.

When Clevedon and Harry had decided to go abroad, she’d been glad for them. Harry would acquire some culture, and Clevedon, away from Papa, would find himself.

“He ought not to come home before he’s quite ready,” she said.

Harry’s black eyebrows went up. “Are you not quite ready?”

“Don’t be absurd.” Of course she’d be happy to have Clevedon back. She loved him. She’d loved him since she was a little girl.

“You needn’t worry about being hurried to the altar,” Harry said. “I suggested he wait until the end of May. That will give your beaux plenty of time to kill themselves or go into exile in Italy or some such or quietly expire of despair. Then I recommended he give you another month to get used to having his hulking great carcass about. That will take you to the end of the Season, at which point I suggested a beautifully worded formal offer of marriage, with many protestations of undying affection, accompanied by a prodigious great diamond ring.”

“Harry, you’re ridiculous.”

“Am I? He thought it was an excellent idea—and we celebrated with three or four or five or six bottles of champagne, as I recollect.”

Paris

15 April

Seduction was a game Clevedon very much enjoyed. He relished the pursuit as much—and lately, more—than the conquest. Chasing Madame Noirot promised to be a more amusing game than usual.

That would make for a change and a pleasant finish to his sojourn abroad. He wasn’t looking forward to returning to England and his responsibilities, but it was time. Paris had begun to lose its luster, and without Longmore’s entertaining company, he foresaw no joy in wandering the Continent again.

He’d planned to go to Longchamp, in any event, to observe, in order to write Clara an entertaining account of it. He still owed her an account of the opera—but never mind. Longchamp would provide richer fodder for his wit.

The annual promenade in the Champs Élysées and the Bois de Boulogne occurred on the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of the week preceding Easter. The weather, which had promised so well earlier in the week, had turned, bringing a chill wind. Nonetheless, all of Paris’s haut ton appeared, all dressed in the latest fashions, and showing off their fine horses and carriages. These went up the road on one side and down on the other. The center belonged to royal carriages and others of the highest ranks. But a great many attending, of both high and lower degree, traversed the parade on foot, as Clevedon had chosen to do, the better to study and eavesdrop on the audience as well as the participants.

He’d forgotten how dense a crowd it was, far greater than Hyde Park at the fashionable hour. For a time he wondered how the devil he was supposed to find Madame Noirot. Everyone and her grandmother came to Longchamp.

Mere minutes later, he was wondering how it would have been possible to miss her.

She made a commotion, exactly as she’d done at the opera. Only more so. All he had to do was turn his gaze in the direction where the accidents happened, and there she was.

People craned their necks to see her. Men drove their carriages into other carriages. Those on foot walked into lamp posts and each other.

And she was enjoying herself thoroughly, of that he had no doubt.

This time, because he viewed her from a distance, undistracted by the brilliant dark eyes and beckoning voice, he could take in the complete picture: the dress, the hat…and the way she walked. From a distance, he could pay attention to the ensemble: the straw bonnet trimmed with pale green ribbons and white lace, and the lilac coat that opened below the waist to display a pale green fluttery concoction underneath.

He watched one fellow after another approach her. She would pause briefly, smile, say a few words, then walk on, leaving the men staring after her, all wearing the same dazed expression.

He supposed that was what he’d looked like last night, after she’d taken her leave of him.

He made his way through the crowd to her side. “Madame Noirot.”

“Ah, there you are,” she said. “Exactly the man I wished to see.”

“I should hope so,” he said, “considering you invited me.”

“Was it an invitation?” she said. “I thought it was a broad hint.”

“I wonder if you hinted the same to everyone at the Italian Opera. They all seem to be here.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I only wanted you. They’re here because it’s the place to be seen. Longchamp. Passion Week. Everyone comes on holy pilgrimage to see and be seen. And here am I, on display.”

“A pretty display it is,” he said. “And exceedingly modish it must be, judging by the envious expressions on the women’s faces. The men are dazzled, naturally—but they’re no use to you, I daresay.”

“It’s a delicate balance,” she said. “I must be agreeable to the men, who pay the bills. But it’s the ladies who wear my clothes. They won’t be eager to patronize my shop if they see me as a rival for the attentions of their beaux.”

“Yet you dropped me a broad hint to come today and seek you out in this mob,” he said.

“So I did,” she said. “I want you to pay some bills.”

It was, yet again, the last thing he expected. This time he was not amused. His body tensed, and his temperature climbed and it had nothing to do with desire. “Whose bills?”

“The ladies of your family,” she said.

He could hardly believe his ears. He said, his jaw taut, “My aunts owe you money, and you came to Paris to dun me?”

“Their ladyships your aunts have never set foot in my shop,” she said. “That’s the problem. Well, one of the problems. But they’re not the main issue. The main issue is your wife.”

“I don’t have a wife,” he said.

“But you will,” she said. “And I ought to be the one to dress her. I hope that’s obvious to you by now.”

He needed a moment to take this in. Then he needed another moment to tamp down his outrage. “Are you telling me you came all the way to Paris to persuade me to let you dress the future Duchess of Clevedon?”

“Certainly not. I come to Paris twice a year, for two reasons.” She held up one gloved index finger. “One, to attract the attention of the correspondents who supply the ladies’ magazines with the latest fashion news from Paris. It was an admiring description of a promenade dress I wore last spring that drew Mrs. Sharp to Maison Noirot. She in turn recommended us to her dear friend Lady Renfrew. By degrees, their friends will soon join our illustrious clientele.”

“And the second reason?” he said impatiently. “You needn’t put up your fingers. I am perfectly able to count.”

“The second reason is inspiration,” she said. “Fashion’s heart beats in Paris. I go where the fashionable people go, and they give me ideas.”

“I see,” he said, though he didn’t, really. But this was his payment, he told himself, for consorting with a shopkeeper, a vulgar, money-grubbing person. He could have bedded Madame St. Pierre last night—and he was running out of time for bedding anybody—but he’d spoiled his chance by chasing this—this creature. “I am merely incidental.”

“I’d hoped you’d be intelligent enough not to take it that way,” she said. “My great desire is to be of service to you.”

He narrowed his eyes. She thought she could play him for a fool. Because she’d lured him across an opera house and into the Longchamp mob, she imagined she’d enslaved him.

She wouldn’t be the first or the last woman to let her imagination run away with her in that way.

“I only ask you to consider,” she said. “Do you want your lady wife to be the best-dressed woman in London? Do you want her to be a leader of fashion? Do you want her to stop wearing those unfortunate dresses? Of course you do.”

“I don’t give a damn what Clara wears,” he said tautly. “I like her for herself.”

“That’s sweet,” she said, “but you fail to consider her position. People ought to look up to and admire the Duchess of Clevedon, and people, generally, judge the book by the cover. If that were not the case, we’d all go about in tunics and blankets and animal hides, as our ancestors did. And it’s silly for you of all men to make out that clothes are not important. Only look at you.”

He was all but dancing with rage. How dare she speak of Clara in that way? How dare she patronize him? He wanted to pick her up and—and—

Devil confound her. He couldn’t remember when last he’d let a woman—a shopkeeper, no less—ignite his temper.

He said, “Look about you. I’m in Paris. Where fashion’s heart beats, as you said.”

“And do you wear any old thing in London?” she said.

He was so busy trying not to strangle her that he couldn’t think of a proper retort. All he could do was glare at her.

“It’s no use scowling at me,” she said. “If I were easily intimidated, I should never have got into this business in the first place.”

“Madame Noirot,” he said, “you seem to have mistaken me for someone else. A fool, I believe. Good day.” He started to turn away.

“Yes, yes.” She gave a lazy wave of her hand. “You’re going to storm off. Go ahead. I’ll see you at Frascati’s, I daresay.”