by Erica Ridley
Which was what he should concentrate on, he reminded himself sternly as he added a few more chestnuts to the pan over the fire. There was a very good reason he had vowed not to complicate his life until after his company became a success. The next few weeks would be difficult enough without adding a beautiful distraction to the mix. Once the company was a success, he would be able to consider matters of the heart.
But first, he needed to finish his prototypes and prepare the materials for his presentation. Then, he would spend days with Jonathan to discuss their plans before they met with Nottingvale and attempted to woo him of every spare penny. Next came the worst part: he and Jonathan were then expected to remain at Nottingvale’s cottage as honored guests for all twelve days of Christmas.
There would be no time to think of Belle at all.
Chapter 10
The following afternoon, Calvin could not stop watching Belle paint from the corner of his eye. Although she was illustrating the sole copies of sketches that would determine the Duke of Nottingvale’s potential enthusiasm as an investor, Calvin was no longer certain if the strange flutters in his belly were from nerves... or for Belle.
Working together wasn’t just one of his favorite parts of the day. It felt right; it felt normal. It felt like doing anything else would be a grievous mistake. Belle’s presence made everything better. Not just passionate embraces or mundane tasks like work, but simple moments like spreading soft butter on fresh bread, or silly moments like laying on their backs beside the window to point out fantastical shapes in the clouds.
He no longer liked the idea that she knocked on his door due to any external obligation. Jonathan’s sketches, which had once seemed too numerous to count, were within a day or two of all being painted. And Calvin was within a day or two of finishing the gown he’d been secretly designing for Belle. One that she could fasten and unfasten on her own, so that her daily visits would not be because she needed his help, but because she wanted him.
Making the perfect gown had proved impossible, which for Calvin was an unfamiliar and unwelcome situation. Although he’d switched from ladies’ fashions to men’s apparel over a decade ago, his talent as a designer was not the problem. Lack of source material was. If he did not have the proper buttons to finish his final prototype for Fit for a Duke, he certainly did not have the silks and gauze and accoutrements fit for a woman like Belle.
Yet he was determined to create the most dazzling fashion he could from whatever he had. He didn’t want her to wear his design as a last resort, but because she looked resplendent.
Belle glanced over her shoulder toward the window. “That’s almost the last of the light. I’ll move my easel.”
His heart leapt. “I’ll get the sofa.”
He looked forward to sunset the way a sapling looked forward to spring. Twilight made the constant awareness between them blossom into something more.
With all traces of work gone, and the sofa arranged before the window just so, she nestled into his embrace as if his arms had been designed to hold her close. He felt as though every part of him had been made to bring her every pleasure he could.
Tonight’s kiss was as sweet and as dangerous as all the others. The beguiling nectar of forbidden promises that could not be made and the temptation to surrender anyway.
He could no longer fool himself into thinking his life would return to normal once he left Houville behind. He had not been lonely before because his solitude had been by choice. His heart would now make a far different choice, if living forever in the fantasy world of a snowbound posting house were possible.
But the snow would soon leave, and so would they, each riding off their separate ways. A rash, foolish part of him wanted to beg her to join him at the Yuletide party, but of course it was not in his power to issue invitations to someone else’s household, much less a peer of the realm Calvin desperately needed to impress.
Besides, he wouldn’t put Belle through that. Calvin had never met a lord in any capacity other than a paid provider of services, and doubted a fortnight in the duke’s company would bring much Christmas cheer. More importantly, the ducal residence would be nothing like the Hoot & Holly. There would be no adjoining rooms, no languorous snuggles to watch the sunset, no unbuttoning of gowns between heated kisses.
The best plan, the only reasonable plan, was to put his full concentration into securing the Duke of Nottingvale’s full cooperation and investment, so that Calvin might soon be in a position where he could offer Belle something better than a temporary stay beneath someone else’s roof.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Fit for a Duke,” he replied. It was not untrue, but nor was the successful launch of his company the only dream he wanted to come true now.
“How did you become such a skilled tailor?”
“Trial and error, I suppose, as well as indefatigable stubbornness,” he said wryly. “My mother was an in-demand modiste to peeresses and other influential ladies of the ton. She was very talented, and did not require the help of a lad in short pants. I was determined to contribute anyway.”
Belle smiled against his chest. “I don’t imagine fashionable ladies wished to have a little boy cut their gowns.”
“They did not,” he confirmed. “Because of the wealth of my mother’s clientele, we were not hurting for money. I was left to my own devices, and allowed to do as I pleased. What I pleased, it turned out, was to rescue every thread and remnant from my mother’s scrap bin in order to fashion creations of my own.”
“And you discovered you were brilliant?”
“I discovered I didn’t have the least idea what I was doing,” he said with a laugh. “Good design was not something I could replicate just by looking at it, at least not back then.”
“Did your mother teach you?”
“One of her assistants took pity on me, and answered my endless questions when she broke for her noon meal. How to do this kind of stitch or that, and how to know which one to choose. Which cuts were for which fabrics, how much they cost, and how much they might be sold for. The logic of prices meant nothing to me, as I could neither make purchases nor sales, but at last my continued interest reached my mother’s ears.”
“What did she do?”
“She took one look at the rags I’d cobbled together and burst out laughing. I was humiliated. But then she gave me all of her old fashion repositories. Mother subscribed to them all, and even commissioned unique designs straight from Paris. It was a university education in two cedar chests.”
“You were in heaven?”
“Or in a fever. I started at the beginning, recreating every design in every collection using the material I had at hand, until I knew each cut and seam by heart. Mother’s assistants would take turns as my model. I practiced sewing to their sizes without touching them or measuring, until I could fathom anyone’s dimensions with a cursory glance.”
Her eyes widened. “Can you still?”
“That’s how I fashioned Duke.” As well as the gown he was making for Belle.
“What did you do with all the clothes you were making?”
“Took them apart in order to reuse the material in something else. Until the day one of my mother’s assistants asked if she could keep the dress that I had made to match her figure. It was hopelessly unfashionable. Mother didn’t relinquish her fashion plates until they were out of season, and my reuse of material meant my gowns had extra seams from combining disparate pieces together.”
“But if the assistant wanted to keep it... she must have felt it looked well on her?”
“She could have passed for a client,” he admitted with pride. “The extra seams were well hidden, and I’d taken enough liberties with the original design that on first glance Mother thought Poppy was clothed in couture so new it hadn’t yet reached London.”
Belle laughed in delight. “What did she do when she found out?”
He grinned. “Poppy kept the gown, and I was allowed to
work with new fabric instead of old. By the time I was an adolescent, I was the one designing the gowns from my private workroom down the corridor. Everyone thought it was my mother’s doing—she could scarcely admit her fashions came from her child, rather than from Paris—and soon we were busier than ever.”
“Your mother’s shop.” Belle’s head jerked back. “Where was it located?”
“You wouldn’t know it,” he assured her.
His mother had become just as pretentious as her customers with age, and only worked with the crème de la crème of the bon ton. Besides, Belle would have been an adolescent herself around the time Calvin’s mother fell ill.
“She died twelve years ago last autumn,” he explained. He still carried the loss with him.
Belle’s expression indicated she was no stranger to loss herself. That was the danger of loving someone. There was no guarantee you would get to keep them.
He glanced away. “Technically, I inherited Mother’s business. But when she passed, her customers went elsewhere, too. Modistes are women. Tailors are men. Learning an entirely new sphere of fashion gave me something constructive to do besides grieve. Once I became competent, it didn’t take long to innovate.”
“Did you make just as big a splash as before?”
“No splash at all,” he said dryly. “I contacted the male halves of my mother’s prior customers, but of course lords already had their own preferred tailors. There was no hope of a twenty-year-old lad supplanting already famous tailors to the elite. Then I realized I didn’t want to replace them. The vast majority of our country’s men has no coronet, but still seeks to look their best and impress their future wives. Why not help them?”
“Money, I suppose,” she murmured.
He nodded. “Tutors and blacksmiths cannot pay the same prices as an earl, but there are far more tutors and blacksmiths than earls. Not to mention an entirely new class that seems to be forming. The changes in the textile industry, for example, has put money into the pockets of people who never had it before. High Society might consider these upwardly ambitious tadpoles their social inferiors, but they are often the wealthiest of their villages or parishes and hunger to look presentable as well.”
“Not to look presentable,” she corrected slowly. “To wear items fit for a duke.”
“Precisely. They don’t have the knowledge or the connections of the beau monde, but soon, they won’t need them. The perfect costume will be sent post-haste.” His cheeks heated. “I cannot imagine what my mother would think of such a venture.”
Belle’s eyes filled with warmth. “She would be so proud of her son.”
Would she? His heart knocked hollowly against his chest. Losing his mother so young was the tragedy that never ceased hurting. He wasn’t just her son. They’d been cohorts, two fashion-mad knights of the needle charging after the same shared dream. Beginning anew without her had been miserable.
It had taught him how dangerous it was to allow someone close, because they could leave at any time and take a part of you with them.
If he was already afraid of how empty his world would seem without Belle in it after a mere fortnight of her company, it would be infinitely worse to allow their connection to bloom into something deeper, only to be plucked apart by fate. As much as he longed to pursue her in the future, a successful company was no guarantee of winning a woman’s heart—and hand. He was used to being alone. There was no one to miss or to distract him from working hard and rising to the next level.
He’d built armor around himself for a reason. This was not the time to lower his shield.
Perhaps it never would be.
Chapter 11
Belle woke with the sun, as though all night long, her heart had been ticking out the minutes until she could see Calvin again. In no time, she was flying out of her chamber and next door to his, the back of her gown gaping open in anticipation of his nimble fingers along her spine.
He opened the door the moment her knuckles touched the wood, as if he had been on the other side awaiting her knock with the same restless eagerness pulsing in his veins.
He captured her in his arms, swinging her into his chamber and closing the door in a single fluid movement that never failed to take her breath away. Or perhaps what stole her breath was him—his intoxicating kisses, the warmth of his embrace, the hardness of his muscles, the exciting familiarity of his scent, the weakness in her knees as they kissed until the room emptied of air.
“I have missed you,” he murmured against her mouth.
She clutched him tighter. “I’ve missed you more.”
“Impossible,” he growled.
And then their mouths were too busy to speak. His kisses were the best part of every morning, of every twilight, and every moment between.
Their time in each other’s arms was also as temporary as the snowflakes that had ceased falling outside the window.
Everything was almost over now. She’d be lucky if the remaining unpainted sketches lasted until teatime. And then what? Why, without busywork to occupy their idle hands, anything could happen. She wished she could let it happen.
At last, they broke apart. Belle turned so that Calvin could fasten her gown and so she could catch her breath. Light from the window bathed the manikin, Duke, in the aurora of dawn, making him shimmer like a guardian angel.
“Tea?” Calvin asked when she was safely buttoned up.
She nodded. She always said yes to tea. She suspected she would say yes to anything Calvin asked if she were really who she pretended to be.
But when she departed from Houville, he would not be the only thing she left behind. Mrs. Lépine would be no more, and when she vanished, all the freedoms she’d given Belle would disappear with her.
All that would be left was Lady Isabelle, with her familial responsibilities and her societal expectations and her perpetually disappointed mother.
Now that Belle had had her holiday, her chance to playact at a life that was not hers to have, it was time to stop disappointing her mother and live up to her name. She would marry whichever lord her family selected for her and be the best mistress his household had ever seen, as was her duty.
When a kitchen maid brought her chocolate in bed every “morning” at half past noon, Belle would try not to be nostalgic for the days when she’d curled up in a battered wingback chair before a tiny fireplace, as Calvin set a kettle of water to boil above the flames.
She would miss sharing tea from a single cup far more than she’d ever missed the thoughtless luxury of her morning chocolate. She would miss the smile that played on his lips every time he looked at her, as if the mere fact of having her inside his chamber filled his heart with happiness, as it did her. She would miss him.
But keeping on was not a choice. No matter how unfair Belle found the strictures and prejudices of high society, no matter how much she chafed at the rules and expectations, she understood them. Society was what she knew and where she belonged.
She would not destroy her own reputation and damage that of her beloved family by willfully engaging in behavior that would bring harsh judgment, ridicule, and mockery upon them all. Nor could she bear to prove herself as unthinking and unworthy as her parents had always feared she would be. The look on her mother’s face, if Belle were to develop a tendre for the son of her old modiste… Disappointment was even worse than wrath.
Belle would make her family proud this time. There was no mystery in how to do so. Mother was happy to lecture her on the precise steps at length. All Belle had to do was obey, as a proper lady ought, and a good daughter would do without question.
That she felt more fake as Lady Isabelle when acting the role that she was born to play, than she did when painting playbills under her pseudonym Mr. Brough or drinking tea in the early morning light as Mrs. Lépine—well, none of that signified. She was not Mr. Brough, and she was not Mrs. Lépine, and she would have to give up all such nonsense in order to become the well-respected lady she was meant to be.<
br />
No matter what her foolish heart might wish.
“How is the light?” Calvin asked once the tea had been drunk and there was nothing else to do but get to work.
Nothing except more kisses, perhaps. Was it wrong that Belle would have preferred to do that?
“The light is glorious,” she answered. “I’ll have the last illustrations finished in no time.”
“I’ve finished all the prototypes,” he admitted. “Save for one greatcoat’s missing buttons. I’ll dress Duke in each design one last time, to ensure every stitch is perfect.”
Belle had no doubt every stitch was more than perfect, but she was glad to have Calvin’s attention diverted elsewhere for a time. It gave her the opportunity to slip the watercolors she had painted of him measuring and cutting and sewing into the pile of finished illustrations.
He would find them after she was gone. He admired each sketch as she finished it, and had mentioned he would not review them again until his meeting with his partner. She hoped the gift would bring a smile to his lips one more time.
When she was back before her easel, he glanced up from his manikin.
“You do realize how talented you are, don’t you?”
Her cheeks flushed with pleasure. “Thank you.”
“Incredibly skilled.” His gaze was earnest. “You would have no problem selling your work.”
An indelicate snort escaped her nose.
He frowned. “I understood you had not yet attempted to publish a collection of your art?”
“Not a book,” she agreed. “I tried to find work as an artist throughout London but all I earned for my efforts was laughter. Right in my face.”
He shook his head. “A single glance at your art—”
