Loretta Chse

by The Mad Earl's Bride

  “The aunts,” Longmore said. “Still here?”

  Clevedon House was large enough to accommodate several families comfortably. When the duke’s aunts came to Town on visits too short to warrant opening their own townhouses, they didn’t stay in hotels, but in the north wing.

  Most recently they’d come to stop the marriage.

  Originally, Marcelline and Clevedon had planned to wed the day after he’d talked—or seduced—her into marrying him. But Sophy and Leonie’s cooler heads had prevailed.

  The wedding, they’d pointed out, was going to cause a spectacular uproar, very possibly fatal to business. But if some of Clevedon’s relatives were to attend the ceremony, signaling acceptance of the bride, it would subdue, to some extent, the outrage.

  And so Clevedon had invited his aunts, who’d descended en masse to prevent the shocking misalliance. But no great lady, not even the Queen, was a match for three Noirot sisters and their secret weapon, Marcelline’s six-year-old daughter, Lucie Cordelia. The aunts had surrendered in a matter of hours.

  Now they were trying to find a way to make Marcelline respectable. They actually believed they could present her to the Queen.

  Sophy wasn’t at all sure that would do Maison Noirot any good. On the contrary, she suspected it would only fan the flames of Lady Warford’s hatred.

  “Still here,” Clevedon said. “They can’t seem to tear themselves away.”

  Marcelline rose, and the others did, too. “I’d better go before they come down,” she said. “They’re not at all reconciled to my continuing to work.”

  “Meaning there’s a good deal more jawing than you like,” Longmore said. “How well I understand.” He gave her a wry smile, and bowed.

  He was a man who could fill a doorway, and seemed to take over a room. He was disheveled, and disreputable besides, but he bowed with the easy grace of a dandy.

  It was annoying of him to be so completely and gracefully at ease in that big brawler’s body of his. It was really annoying of him to ooze virility.

  Sophy was a Noirot, a breed keenly tuned to animal excitement—and not possessing much in the way of moral principles.

  If he ever found out how weak she was in this regard, she was doomed.

  She sketched a curtsey and took her sister’s arm. “Yes, well, we’d better not dawdle, in any event. I promised Leonie I wouldn’t stay above half an hour.”

  She hurried her sister out of the room.

  LONGMORE WATCHED THEM go. Actually, he watched Sophy go, a fetching bundle of energy and guile.

  “The shop,” he said when they were out of earshot. “Meaning no disrespect to your duchess, but—are they insane?”

  “That depends on one’s point of view,” Clevedon said.

  “Apparently, I’m not unbalanced enough in the upper storey to understand it,” Longmore said. “They might close it and live here. It isn’t as though you’re short of room. Or money. Why should they want to go on bowing and scraping to women?”

  “Passion,” Clevedon said. “Their work is their passion.”

  Longmore wasn’t sure what, exactly, passion was. He was reasonably certain he’d never experienced it.

  He hadn’t even had an infatuation since he was eighteen.

  Since Clevedon, his nearest friend, would know this, Longmore said nothing. He only shook his head, and moved to the sideboard. He heaped his plate with eggs, great slabs of bacon and bread, and a thick glob of butter to make it all slide down smoothly. He carried it to the table and began to eat.

  He’d always regarded Clevedon’s home as his own, and had been told he was to continue regarding it in the same way. The duchess seemed to like him well enough. Her blonde sister, on the other hand would just as soon shoot him, he knew—which made her much more interesting and entertaining.

  That was why he’d waited and watched for her. That was why he’d followed her from Maison Noirot to Charing Cross. He’d spotted the newspaper in her hand, and deduced what it was.

  By some feat of printing legerdemain—a pact with the devil, most likely—Foxe’s Morning Spectacle usually slunk onto the streets of London and into the newspaper sellers’ grubby hands not only well in advance of its competitors, but containing fresher scandal. Though many of the beau monde’s entertainments didn’t start until eleven at night or end before dawn, Foxe contrived to stuff the pages of his titillating rag with details of what everyone had done mere hours earlier.

  This was no small achievement, even bearing in mind that “morning,” especially among the upper classes, was a flexible unit of time, extending well beyond noonday.

  Curious about what was taking her to Clevedon House at this early hour, he’d bought a copy from the urchin hawking it on the next corner, and had dawdled for a time to look it over. By now familiar with Sophy’s writing, Longmore knew it wasn’t the sort of thing to take on an empty stomach. He’d persevered nonetheless. Though he couldn’t see how she could have had a hand in the Sheridan scandal, that was nothing new. She did a great deal he found intriguing—starting with the way she walked: She carried herself like a lady, like the women of his class, yet the sway of her hips promised something tantalizingly unladylike.

  “I married Marcelline knowing she’d never give up her work,” Clevedon was saying. “If she did, she’d be like everyone else. She wouldn’t be the woman I fell in love with.”

  “Love,” Longmore said. “Bad idea.”

  Clevedon smiled. “One day Love will come along and knock you on your arse,” he said. “And I’ll laugh myself sick, watching.”

  “Love will have its work cut out for it,” Longmore said. “I’m not like you. I’m not sensitive. If Love wants to take hold of me, not only will it have to knock me on my arse, it’ll have to tie me down and beat to a pulp what some optimistically call my brains.”

  “Very possibly,” Clevedon said. “Which will make it all the more amusing.”

  “You’ll have a wait,” Longmore said. “For the moment, Clara’s love life is the problem.”

  “I daresay matters at home haven’t been pleasant for either of you, since the wedding,” Clevedon said.

  Clevedon would know better than most. Lord Warford had been his guardian. Clevedon and Longmore had grown up together. They were more like brothers than friends. And Clevedon had doted on Clara since she was a small child. It had always been assumed they’d marry. Then the duke had met his dressmaker—and Clara had reacted with “Good riddance”—much to the shock of her parents, brothers, and sisters—not to mention the entire beau monde.

  “My father has resigned himself,” Longmore said. “My mother hasn’t.”

  A profound understatement, that.

  His mother was beside herself. The slightest reference to the duke or his new wife set her screaming. She quarreled with Clara incessantly. She was driving Clara to distraction, and they constantly dragged Longmore into it. Every day or so a message arrived from his sister, begging him to come and Do Something.

  Longmore and Clara had both attended Clevedon’s wedding—in effect, giving their blessing to the union. This fact, which had been promptly reported in the Spectacle, had turned Warford House into a battlefield.

  “I could well understand Clara rejecting me,” Clevedon said.

  “Don’t see how you could fail to understand,” Longmore said. “She explained it in detail, in ringing tones, in front of half the ton.”

  “What I don’t understand is why she doesn’t send Adderley about his business,” Clevedon said.

  “Tall, fair, poetic-looking,” Longmore said. “He knows what to say to women. Men see him for what he is. Women don’t.”

  “I’ve no idea what’s in Clara’s mind,” Clevedon said. “My wife and her sisters will want to get to the bottom of it, though. It’s their business to understand their clients, and Clara’s special. She’s their best customer, and she shows Marcelline’s designs to stunning advantage. They won’t want her to marry a man with pockets to let.”
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  “Are they in the matchmaking line as well, then?” Longmore said. “If so, I wish they’d find her someone suitable, and spare me these dreary nights at Almack’s.”

  “Leave it to Sophy,” Clevedon said. “She’s the one who goes to the parties. She’ll see what’s going on, better than anybody.”

  “Including a great deal that people would rather she didn’t see,” Longmore said.

  “Hers is an exceptionally keen eye for detail,” Clevedon said.

  “And an exceptionally busy pen,” Longmore said. “It’s easy to recognize her work in the Spectacle. Streams of words about ribbons and bows and lace and pleats here and gathers there. No thread goes unmentioned.”

  “She notices gestures and looks as well,” Clevedon said. “She listens. No one’s stories are like hers.”

  “No question about that,” Longmore said. “She’s never met an adjective or adverb she didn’t like.”

  Clevedon smiled. “That’s what brings in the customers: the combination of gossip and the intricate detail about the dresses, all related as drama. It has the same effect on women, I’m told, as looking at naked women has on men.” He tapped a finger on the Spectacle. “I’ll ask her to keep an eye on Clara. With two of you on watch, you ought to be able to keep her out of trouble.”

  Longmore had no objections to any activity involving Sophy Noirot.

  On the contrary, he had a number of activities in mind, and joining her in keeping an eye on his sister would give him a fine excuse to be underfoot—and with any luck, under other parts as well.

  “Can’t think of a better woman for the job,” Longmore said. “Miss Noirot misses nothing.”

  In his mind she was Sophy. But she’d never invited him to call her by the name all her family used. And so, even with Clevedon, good manners dictated that Longmore use the correct form of address for the senior unmarried lady of a family.

  “With you and Sophy standing guard, the lechers and bankrupts won’t stand a chance,” Clevedon said. “Argus himself couldn’t do better.”

  Longmore racked his brain. “The dog, you mean?”

  “The giant with extra eyes,” Clevedon said. “ ‘And set a watcher upon her, great and strong Argus, who with four eyes looks every way,’ ” he quoted from somewhere. “ ‘And the goddess stirred in him unwearying strength: sleep never fell upon his eyes; but he kept sure watch always.’ ”

  “That strikes me as excessive,” Longmore said. “But then, you always were romantic.”

  A week later

  “WARFORD, HOW COULD you?”

  “My dear, you know I cannot command his majesty—”

  “It is not to be borne! That creature he married—presented at Court!—at the King’s Birthday Drawing Room!—as though she were visiting royalty!”

  Longmore was trapped in a carriage with his mother, father, and Clara, departing St. James’s Palace. Though court events bored him witless, he’d attended the Drawing Room, hoping to spot a certain uninvited attendee. But he’d seen only Sophy’s sister—the “creature” his mother was in a snit about. Then he’d debated whether to sneak out or to hunt for an equally bored wife or widow. The palace was well supplied with dark corners conducive to a quick bout of fun.

  No luck with the females. The sea of plumes and diamonds held an overabundance of sanctimonious matrons and virgins. Virgins were what one married. They weren’t candidates for fun under a staircase.

  “Odd, I agree,” Lord Warford said carefully. Though he’d given up being outraged about Clevedon’s marriage, he’d also long ago given up trying to reason with his wife.

  “Didn’t seem odd to me,” Longmore said.

  “Not odd!” his mother cried. “Not odd! No one is presented at the King’s Birthday Drawing Room.”

  “No one but foreign dignitaries,” Lord Warford said.

  “It was a shocking breach of etiquette even to request an exception,” Lady Warford said, conveniently forgetting that she’d told her husband to commit a shocking breach of etiquette by telling the King not to recognize the Duchess of Clevedon.

  But it was up to the husband, not the son, to point this out, and years of marriage had taught Lord Warford cowardice.

  “I could not believe Her Majesty would do such a thing, even for Lady Adelaide,” Mother went on. “But it seems I’m obliged to believe it,” she added bitterly. “The Queen dotes on Clevedon’s youngest aunt.” She glared at her daughter. “Lady Adelaide Ludley might have used her influence on your and your family’s behalf. But no, you must be the most ungrateful, undutiful daughter who ever lived. You must jilt the Duke of Clevedon!”

  “I didn’t jilt him, Mama,” Clara said. “One cannot jilt someone to whom one is not engaged.”

  Longmore had heard this argument too many times to want to be boxed in a closed carriage, hearing it again, his mother’s voice going higher and higher, and Clara’s climbing along with it. Normally, he would call the carriage to a halt and get out, and leave everybody fuming behind him.

  Clara could defend herself, he knew. The trouble was, that would only lead to more quarreling and screaming and messages for him to come to Warford House before she committed matricide.

  He thought very hard and very fast and said, “It was clear as clear to me that they did it behind the scenes, so to speak, to spare your feelings, ma’am.”

  There followed the kind of furiously intense silence that typically ensued when his parents were deciding whether he might, against all reason and evidence, have said something worth listening to.

  “What with the aunts and all, the Queen would be in a fix,” he went on. “She could hardly snub Clevedon’s whole family—which is what she’d be doing, since the aunts had accepted his bride.”

  “His bride,” his mother said bitterly. “His bride.” She threw Clara the sort of look Caesar must have given Brutus when the knife went in.

  “This way at least, the deed was done behind the scenes,” Longmore went on, “not in front of the whole blasted ton.”

  While his mother stirred this idea around in her seething mind, the carriage reached the front of Warford House. The footmen opened the carriage door, and the family emerged, the ladies shaking out their skirts as they stepped out onto the pavement.

  Longmore said nothing and Clara said nothing but she shot him a grateful look before she hurried inside after their mother.

  His father, however, lingered at the front step with Longmore. “Not coming in?”

  “I think not,” Longmore said. “Did my best. Tried to pour oil and all that.”

  “It won’t end,” his father said in a low voice. “Not for your mother. Shattered dreams and wounded pride and outraged sensibilities and whatnot. You see how it is. We can expect no peace in this family until Clara finds a suitable replacement for Clevedon. That’s not going to happen while she keeps encouraging that pack of loose screws.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Make them go away, will you, dammit?”

  Countess of Igby’s ball

  Saturday 30 May 1835

  One o’clock in the morning

  LONGMORE HAD BEEN looking for Lord Adderley for some time. The fellow having proven too thick to take a hint, Longmore had decided that the simplest approach was to hit him until he understood that he was to keep off Clara.

  The trouble was, Sophy Noirot was at Lady Igby’s party, too, and Longmore, unlike Argus, owned only the usual number of eyes.

  He’d become distracted, watching Sophy flit hither and yon, no one paying her the slightest heed—except for the usual assortment of dolts who thought maidservants existed for their sport. Since he’d marked her as his sport, Longmore had started to move in, more than once, only to find that she didn’t need any help with would-be swains.

  She’d “accidentally” spilled hot tea on the waistcoat of one gentleman who’d ventured too close. Another had followed her into an antechamber and tripped over something, landing on his face. A third had followed her down a passage and into a room.
He’d come out limping a moment later.

  Preoccupied with her adventures, Longmore not only failed to locate Adderley, but lost track of the sister he was supposed to be guarding from lechers and bankrupts. This would have been less of a problem had Sophy been watching her more closely. But Sophy had her own lechers to fend off.

  Longmore wasn’t thinking about this. Thinking wasn’t his favorite thing to do, and thinking about more than one thing at a time upset his equilibrium. At the moment, his mind was on the men trespassing on what he’d decided was his property. Unfortunately, this meant he wasn’t aware of his mother losing sight of Clara at the same time. This happened because Lady Warford was carrying on a politely poisonous conversation with her best friend and worst enemy Lady Bartham.

  In short, nobody who should have been paying attention was paying attention while Lord Adderley was steering Clara, as they waltzed, toward the other end of the ballroom, toward the doors leading to the terrace. None of those who should have been keeping a sharp eye out saw the wink Adderley sent his friends or the accompanying smirk.

  It was the crowd’s movement that brought Longmore back to his surroundings and his main reason for being here.

  The movement wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t meant to be. Men like Longmore were attuned to it, though. He had no trouble recognizing the sense of something in the air, the shift in the attention in some parts of the room, and the drifting toward a common destination. It was the change in the atmosphere one felt when a fight was about to happen.

  The current was sweeping toward the terrace.

  His gut told him something was amiss. It didn’t say what, but the warning was vehement, and he was a man who acted on instinct. He moved, and quickly.

  He didn’t have to push his way through the crowd. Those who knew him knew they’d better get out of the way or be thrust out of the way.

  He stormed out onto the terrace. A small audience had gathered. They got out of his way, too.

  Nothing and nobody obstructed his view.