Silk Is for Seduction

by Loretta Chase

  At first he saw nothing. Then he looked down.

  A pair of enormous blue eyes looked up at him. “Good afternoon, your grace,” said Erroll.

  A nursemaid, out of breath, hurried to the carriage. “Miss, you ought not to—oh, do come away.” She took the child’s hand, muttering apologies, and tried to lead her away.

  A hard, stubborn look came over Erroll’s face, and she wrenched her hand from the maid’s. “I only wished to say good day to his grace,” she said. “It would be rude to pass by without saying a word.”

  “Which you was not passing by, only broke away from me and ran halfway down the street, as you know—”

  “Good afternoon, Erroll,” said Clevedon.

  She had turned to regard the nursemaid with a baleful eye. At his greeting, though, the thunderclouds vanished, and she beamed upon him a sunshine so pure and clear that, for a moment, he couldn’t bear it.

  All those years ago . . . his little sister, Alice, shedding sunshine . . .

  “It is a fine day, is it not?” she said. “A fine day to drive in an open carriage. If I had a carriage like that, I should drive in Hyde Park on such a day.”

  He wrenched himself back to the present.

  She was beautifully dressed, as one might expect. A little straw bonnet, adorned with heaps of ribbons and lace, set off prettily a precise miniature of one of those coat-like dresses women wore. What did they call them? The same as a man’s type of frock coat, wasn’t it? Redingotes, that was the term. Erroll’s was pink. A long row of black frog fastenings down the front gave it a vaguely—and on her, comically—military look.

  “Yes, miss,” said the maid, “but the gentleman was getting ready to leave, in case you didn’t notice, which he has a lady with him as well.”

  “I noticed, Millie,” said Erroll. “I’m not blind. But I can’t speak to the lady, because we haven’t been introduced. Don’t you know anything?”

  Millie’s face went scarlet. “That’s quite enough, Miss Lu— Miss Er— Miss Noirot. I never heard such impertinence, and I’m sure the lady and the gentleman never did, neither. Come along now. Your mama will be vexed with you for pestering customers.” She tugged at the little gloved hand. Erroll’s countenance changed again: eyes narrowing, mouth tightening into a stubborn line. She refused to budge, and the maid seemed less than eager to try to make her budge.

  Clevedon couldn’t blame the servant. While he did not approve of children disobeying those in charge of them, he was not entirely sure what one ought to do in such cases. In any event, it was not his place to interfere.

  “Oh, Clevedon, don’t be obtuse,” Clara said. “It’s Miss Noirot—the dressmaker’s daughter, I take it?”

  The maid nodded, biting her lip.

  “Yes, it is,” he said, and marveled all over again that she was Noirot’s daughter, that Noirot was a mother. Where the devil was the father? How could he abandon . . . but men did that all the time. They carelessly brought children into the world and carelessly treated them. It was none of his concern . . . and perhaps, after all, the poor fellow was dead.

  “Well, then, Mrs. Noirot knows you,” Clara said. “She won’t mind your taking her daughter up for a moment, and letting her hold the reins.”

  She turned to Millie, who was sending panicked looks at the shop door. “You needn’t be anxious,” Clara said. “Miss Noirot will be perfectly safe. His grace used to let me hold the reins when I was a child. He will not let the carriage run away with her.”

  For an instant, the old nightmare returned: the lurid scene his imagination had painted in boyhood, of a carriage overturning into a ditch, his mother and sister screaming, then the dreadful silence.

  What was wrong with him? Old ghosts. So stupid.

  Clara had always been safe with him. His father’s recklessness had taught him to be careful.

  Even so, this child . . .

  Erroll’s murderous expression instantly melted into childish eagerness and her eyes widened another degree. “May I, truly, your grace?” she said. “May I hold the reins?”

  “Lady Clara says you may, and I dare not contradict her,” he said.

  He wasn’t sure what possessed Clara at present. Still, he knew she was fond of children in general and had some notion how to manage them. In her letters she’d described numerous amusing incidents with young cousins.

  He was not used to small children—not anymore, at any rate—and this was no ordinary child. But what choice had he now? His best groom, Ford, held the horses and he could be counted on to control the mettlesome pair.

  In any event, how was Clevedon to deny the child the treat, when she was trembling with excitement?

  He lifted her up—the small, quivering body weighed a shocking nothing—and set her next to Clara. Then he climbed up into his seat, took the child onto his lap, took up the reins, and showed her how to hold them to go straight. She watched and listened avidly. Soon her trembling abated, and before long she had the reins threaded between her little gloved fingers. She looked up, smiling proudly at him, and he smiled back. He couldn’t help it.

  “How quick and clever you are,” Clara said. “You got the hang of it in no time at all. I thought you would.”

  Erroll turned from him to send her beatific smile upward to Clara—and melt her ladyship’s heart, as was plain enough to see. Not that this was any difficult accomplishment. Clara was soft-hearted, and Erroll, it had become abundantly clear, was a calculating creature. Like her mother.

  “How does one make them go?” she said.

  He didn’t have time to decide what to answer.

  Noirot burst from the shop. “Oh, the wretched child,” she said. “Has she wheedled you into taking her up? She’ll persuade you to drive her to Brighton, if you don’t look out. Come down, Erroll. His grace and her ladyship have business elsewhere.” She put up her hands. Torn between reluctance and relief, Clevedon yielded the girl to her mother.

  He ought to feel relieved—he was no longer used to children and found them tedious, in fact. But she . . . ah, well, she was a cunning little minx.

  He noticed that Erroll did not fight with her mother as she’d done with the maid. Docile or not, though, Noirot didn’t trust her. She didn’t set her down but carried her back into the shop.

  He watched them go, Erroll waving goodbye to him over her mother’s shoulder.

  He waved back, smiling, yet he was watching the sway of Noirot’s hips as she moved along, apparently unhampered by her daughter’s weight. To him, the weight was nothing, but Noirot was not the great, hulking fellow he was, nor was she built in the Junoesque mold, like Clara . . . whose presence he belatedly recalled.

  He turned away hastily and gathered the reins. A moment later, they were on their way.

  Clara had watched those swaying hips, too, and she’d watched him watching them.

  She’d felt the atmosphere change when she and Clevedon entered the shop. She’d felt him tense, in the way of a hound scenting quarry. When the dressmaker had approached, the tension between them was palpable.

  “A fetching little girl,” she said. That was the only thing she could safely say. The child was adorable. Clevedon’s? But no, she’d discerned no resemblance at all, and the Angier looks were distinctive.

  “I dare not come again,” he said. “Next time Miss Noirot will wish to drive. And I’ll have you to thank. I shouldn’t have taken her up—I’m sure her mother wasn’t pleased. But she could hardly rebuke me. Shopkeepers must consider their livelihood before their own feelings.”

  “Mrs. Noirot didn’t seem angry. She seemed amused, rather.”

  “That’s her way. It’s her business to make herself pleasing. I told you how she had the ladies at the ball eating out of her hand. But never mind. It doesn’t signify. I have no reason to come again, in any event. You’ll persuade Longmore or one of your ot
her brothers to bring you. Or come on your own, with Davis.”

  Davis was Clara’s bulldog of a maid.

  “Or with Mama,” she said.

  “What a nonsensical thing to say!” he said. “Your mother would never approve of this shop. It’s too fashionable, and she seems determined that you should wear the most—” He broke off, his expression taut.

  “Determined I should wear the most what?” Clara said.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I slept ill last night, and I’ve spent too long in a dressmaker’s shop. Women’s chatter has addled my wits. What were you three conspiring about, by the way?”

  “Clevedon.”

  “You three were bent over the green dress you admired, talking in whispers,” he said.

  She glanced up at his face. He was looking straight ahead, his handsome face set in hard lines.

  What a state he was in!—a contained fury that made the air about him seem to thrum even while he appeared outwardly calm.

  Clevedon wasn’t like this—not the Clevedon she knew, the man she’d recognized when he’d entered the drawing room and smiled in his old, fond way. This was a stranger.

  She looked away, to gaze blankly at the passing scene while she tried to form an answer. She hardly knew what the other two women had been saying about the green dress. She’d been trying to hear what he was saying to Mrs. Noirot. She’d been trying to watch them without appearing to do so.

  “I didn’t quite understand,” she said. “It was a beautiful dress, I thought, but they seemed to be discussing how to remake it.” She tried desperately to remember what exactly they’d said, but she had only half-listened, and now her mind was whirling.

  She was not naïve. She knew Clevedon had affairs. Longmore did, too. But she’d never seen her brother in a state anything like Clevedon’s when Mrs. Noirot approached them. She’d been trying to make sense of that, when he snapped about Mama and . . . what Clara wore?

  “I think . . .” She thought frantically. “I received the impression that something was wrong with the dress, but not wrong with the dress.”

  “Clara, that makes no sense.”

  Really, he could be as irritating as any of her brothers. She said goodbye to her patience. “If it’s so important to you, you’d better ask Mrs. Noirot,” she said. “What did you mean about Mama and what I wear?”

  “Damnation,” he said.

  “You told me I ought to shop there, but you said I must not take Mama.”

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I should not have said that.”

  “Oh, come, Clevedon. When did you ever mince words with me? What makes you so missish all of a sudden?”

  “Missish?”

  “So delicate. One of the things I have always liked about you is your refusing to treat me like an imbecile female. In your letters, you speak your mind. Or so I thought. Well, perhaps you don’t tell me everything.”

  “Good God, certainly not. And I shall not tell you where to have your dresses made. It’s of no concern to me.”

  “You may be sure that I shall take care not to ask you to accompany me to a dressmaker ever again,” she said. “It puts you in the vilest temper.”

  Some hours later

  “The little wretch!” Marcelline said, when they were closing up the shop that evening. “I knew she wouldn’t forget his fine carriage or his fine self.”

  “My dear, she can’t help it,” said Sophy. “It’s in her blood. She can spot a mark at fifty paces.”

  “He didn’t seem to mind,” said Leonie. She’d come out into the showroom in time to see Clevedon and Lady Clara leave.

  All three sisters had had time to observe Lucie/Erroll’s antics through the shop windows. It was clear in an instant that Millie had lost control of her, but it had taken Marcelline precious minutes to extract herself from Lady Renfrew and go out to collect her wayward child.

  Sitting on his lap, the schemer, and holding the ribbons! She’d be expecting to drive her own carriage next.

  “Of course he didn’t mind,” Marcelline said. “She was at her winsome best, and even the Duke of Clevedon can’t help but succumb.” Meanwhile, she, more cynical and calculating than he could ever be, had not been able to steel her heart against the sweet, indulgent smile he bestowed upon her daughter.

  “She made sure to shed some winsomeness on Lady Clara, I noticed,” said Sophy.

  “Yes,” Marcelline said.

  “He did bring her,” Leonie said. “And not a moment too soon.”

  They hadn’t had time until now to talk of the day’s events, because the day had been exceedingly eventful.

  Marcelline had had her hands full, making the changes to Lady Renfrew’s dress. She’d had to do this in secret, of all things—upstairs, away from the seamstresses, as though she were forging passports. Meanwhile Sophy and Leonie, in between trying to calm two other irate customers, had to dance attendance on the steady trickle of curious ladies who’d come mainly to stare at the famous gown.

  The curious ladies gaped at the dress and peered into every corner of the shop, looking for Marcelline. They made the sisters show them lengths of fabric and take out of the drawers any number of buttons, ribbons, beads, feathers, fur, and other trim.

  They left without buying anything.

  At present, Sophy and Marcelline were restoring order to the drawers of trim and accessories. Leonie, as she did every evening, was taking an inventory of the showroom and trying to deduce which of their visitors had made off with a length of black satin ribbon, eleven jet buttons, and three cambric handkerchiefs.

  “His timing couldn’t have been better,” Marcelline said. “If he hadn’t turned up while Lady Renfrew was in the shop, I think we might have lost her forever.”

  She told herself to concentrate on that, and never mind the savage beating of her heart when she’d heard his voice. He’d come in the nick of time, and that was what mattered. It was all very well to offer to remake a dress to appease an irate customer, but customers had no idea of the amount of work involved. Meanwhile, into Lady Renfrew’s mind would enter poisonous doubts about Marcelline’s advertised ability to create “unique styles, designed for the individual, not the general.”

  “That doesn’t bear thinking of,” said Leonie. “Lady Clara is all very well, but we haven’t got her yet. At present Lady Renfrew is our best customer. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

  Lady Renfrew’s gown had been delivered precisely at seven o’clock—a few last, minor alterations had taken not half an hour—and Sophy had left a mollified customer behind her.

  “She’ll be back,” Sophy said. “The whole time I was there, she talked about the duke and Lady Clara. You know that’s all she’ll talk about tonight at Mrs. Sharp’s. She’ll be quoting him, you may be sure: ‘You won’t find a better dressmaker in London—or Paris, for that matter.’ ” She mimicked Clevedon’s bored voice and his accent—the unmistakable sound of the upper reaches of the privileged classes.

  “We can only hope she was too busy being impressed with his grandeur to notice the way he looked at Marcelline,” said Leonie.

  “Like a hungry wolf,” said Sophy.

  Marcelline went hot all over. She still hadn’t shaken off the feelings he’d stirred, And with what? A look. The sound of his voice. She still felt his melting green gaze upon her. She still heard the husky intimacy of his voice. Had she been free to do so, had she nothing and no one else to consider but herself, she would have led his provoking self away into one of the shop’s back rooms and had her way with him, and there would be an end of it.

  But she wasn’t free, on a dozen counts. His beautiful bride-to-be stood a few yards away, across the shop, and the easy way he and she conversed made their mutual affection clear. Marcelline had pointed this out to herself. She’d planted Lucie’s image firmly in her mind, too. And
her own parents, the living example of what happened to a family when the adults thought only of themselves, their whims and passions.

  She had no morals to speak of, but her survival instincts were acute. Succumbing to Clevedon was a mistake that would undermine the respect she’d worked day and night to earn. That would destroy her business and, with it, her family.

  Even so, when she’d looked up into his eyes, and felt as much as heard the sound of his voice, her brain clouded over and her willpower ebbed away.

  Such a fool she was! She need only recall how Charlie had looked at her, and the husky longing in his voice . . .

  And where had that led?

  “That’s the way Clevedon always looks at women,” she said. “That’s the look of an expert seducer. Engrave it upon your mind, if you don’t want to end up on your back, or against a wall, losing your maidenhead before you’d quite meant to.”

  “He didn’t look at Lady Clara that way,” Leonie said.

  “Why should he?” Marcelline said. “Everything between them is settled or as good as settled. He takes her for granted, the coxcomb. But that’s their problem. If she’s wise, she’ll find a way to get his full attention. It’s not that difficult. Meanwhile, we have a serious problem.” She glanced at the door leading to the workroom, now empty, the seamstresses having gone home at their usual time.

  “Well,” said Leonie, “I have my suspicions.”

  On Tuesday night, Mrs. Downes met with the seamstress at the usual time at the usual place.

  The seamstress gave her a pattern she’d copied.

  “That’s all?” Mrs. Downes said. “You promised me a book of patterns, with details.”

  “And you’ll get it,” the seamstress said. “But they were in an uproar over that green dress of Lady Renfrew’s, and then we were run ragged, fetching this and that for all the ladies coming to look at the dress Mrs. Noirot wore to that ball.”

  Mrs. Downes knew about the poussière dress, and the excitement it had stirred among the ladies. Her own customers had been talking about it, right in front of her!