Vixen in Velvet

by Loretta Chase

  She felt the shudder run through him, and she tasted as much as heard the groan against her mouth. He slid his hands down her back, down over her bottom, and pulled her hard against him. Even through all the layers of her dress she felt his arousal, and the sensation sent a stream of heat rushing upward and outward from the place. Yet along with the heat, she felt triumph, too—over him and his too-easy control of her. But stronger than any other feeling was the wanting.

  She hated it.

  She wanted it.

  She wanted to be free of wanting him and thinking about him and the craving to touch him, because these thoughts and wishes were too strong, and they made her feel helpless and lost.

  She wanted at the same time to let herself drown in the longing, to be drunk with it, to go freely, recklessly, where it took her.

  Yet somewhere on a far horizon of her consciousness, she was aware as well of business, of where they were, and of the shop, filled with ladies and the splendid opportunity to dress them for the Vauxhall event.

  She broke the kiss and pushed herself away from him, even though she wanted to scream at having to stop, and even though, for one appalling instant, she wished all the ladies and their accursed clothes to perdition.

  “There,” she said breathlessly. “Now I’m done.”

  He didn’t let go immediately, and he was breathing hard, too.

  Good.

  If he was going to make a wreck of her, she was going to make him at least slightly discomposed.

  “You wicked girl,” he said. His voice was very low, very deep.

  “I told you I learn quickly and well,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “This grows more interesting by the minute.”

  “And speaking of minutes,” she said as nonchalantly as her wit and will would let her, “I ought not to keep Lady Gladys waiting any longer. Good day, my lord.”

  His eyes, whose color had deepened to the dark green of a forest, seemed to bore into her soul. Not that, being half DeLucey and half Noirot, she was at all certain she owned a soul.

  Then he shrugged and laughed. “Very well, madame, have it your way. For now. Au revoir.”

  And out he went.

  Very gently and carefully she closed the door behind him.

  She sagged back against it. She took six slow, deep breaths before she opened it again and went out into the corridor and into the showroom to collect Lady Gladys.

  Chapter Eight

  Simpson, Vauxhall’s Corinthian column!

  To speak thy praise would take a volume,

  Or rather, were each dingy leaf

  On Vauxhall’s trees a real folio,

  I fear me all would prove too brief

  Of thy deserts to give an olio.

  —Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, 1833

  Royal Gardens, Vauxhall

  Evening of Monday 20 July

  Lisburne wanted to strangle her.

  He’d come within a gnat’s eyelash of tripping over his own feet as he left Leonie on Saturday. Then, even after a glass or three of wine at White’s, and extensive perusal of every single newspaper in the club, he’d found it difficult to settle down. To anything.

  He’d spent Sunday driving from one park to another, expecting to see her, and he’d seen everybody else instead.

  He’d remembered her telling him she liked to spend Sundays with her niece. He knew of only one niece, daughter of the sister who’d married Clevedon. Lisburne knew the duke well. They’d been at school together. They’d spent time together on the Continent. He might have called at Clevedon House with no excuse but to visit a friend.

  Lisburne almost did it. He was powerfully tempted. But at the last moment, his pride balked, and he told himself not to be a nitwit.

  He’d made a small error of judgment, not entirely his fault.

  He’d never thought he and Swanton would remain in London for more than a week or two. But no, it turned out the stay would drag on for who knew how long. Then Lisburne had met Leonie Noirot, and he’d imagined a brief affair with a sophisticated, interesting young woman would compensate for the boring bits.

  He’d got the “sophisticated” and “interesting” parts right.

  He was not bored, certainly.

  But she was turning out to be difficult, in ways he didn’t fully understand—though he suspected that her genius for making herself a walking distraction had something to do with it.

  Only look at her!

  Lisburne stood to one side of the theater’s stage, behind the curtains. She stood before him, dressed in what he’d initially taken for maidenly white. The dress was not so maidenly, it turned out. For one thing, it wasn’t pure white, for it boasted, among numerous other adornments, pink and green embroidered something-or-others. Neither was it so very virginal, given the depth of the bodice’s neckline.

  She’d thrown a pale blue flimsy nothing of a shawl—what the ladies called a mantilla—over her shoulders. This, too, only invited a man to examine her velvety skin more closely. Lace adorned her neckline and wrists and the flounces of her skirt, and pale yellow ribbons and bows fluttered over the frothy creation, the bows dancing on the skirt’s flounces and on her sleeves, which weren’t enormous single puffs but multiple smaller ones.

  A fine topaz brooch drew attention to the center of the low, lacy neckline, a topaz necklace circled her smooth neck, and matching topaz earrings dangled below the deep red curls clustered at her ears. Higher up, sprigs of flowers sprouted from the elaborately braided topknots springing from her head.

  He looked her up and down not once but three full times. It ought not to require so much willpower to not sweep her up into his arms and carry her away to someplace very private, where he could disorder her at his leisure.

  “You’ve outdone yourself,” he said.

  “The ladies will be breathlessly awaiting Lord Swanton,” she said. “Obtaining their full attention demands special exertions.”

  “You look delicious,” he said. “Like a delicate French cake.”

  Though numerous lamps lit the theater, they stood in shifting light and shadow, and he couldn’t tell if he’d made her blush in that way she had of barely blushing.

  She fanned herself. “Handsomely said, my lord. If only all the other gentlemen will feel the same, and if only the sensation will compel them to empty their purses, I’ll consider my ensemble a triumph.”

  “You’ve sold every last ticket,” he said. “The seats are all taken and we’ve still some minutes to starting time.”

  “We were lucky in the weather,” she said. “And in your organizing abilities—or those of your secretary, if you refuse to take credit. You made sure everybody knew we’d start exactly on time, and you know the young ladies won’t want to miss a word, even though they’ll have to listen to me before they get their poetry.”

  “You’re not nervous about having to face them first,” he said. “If you are, you make an excellent pretense of being fully at ease.”

  “I’m used to dealing with ladies,” she said. “And when it comes to money, I know precisely what I’m about. Most important, I believe in the Milliners’ Society with all my heart.”

  Swanton joined them then. Unlike Miss Noirot, he suffered his usual pre-performance nerves. Or maybe they were simply everyday poetic nerves.

  “Swanton hates taking the stage,” Lisburne told Madame. “He’ll be all right once he starts, but beforehand he tends to become agitated.”

  “I never meant to be performing,” Swanton said. “I’d supposed, if I happened to be fortunate, people might read my work to each other if not silently to themselves. Sometimes I feel like a curst Punch and Judy show.”

  “Poetry needs to be heard,” she said. “That’s what I was taught.”

  “It seems not all of mine will be heard tonight,�
� Swanton said. “One’s gone missing.”

  “I daresay you threw it on the fire in a fit of abstraction,” Lisburne said, careful not to look at Leonie. She’d told him to steal one, and he’d done so, and hidden it under a heap of invitations.

  “It’s July,” Swanton said. “I know this is London, but we haven’t lit a fire since we came.”

  “You’ll find it in a pocket later,” Leonie said. “I was always finding ladies’ bills and orders for ribbons or embroidery silks or such in Sophy’s apron pockets, and sometimes in her undergarments.”

  Swanton stared at her. Despite the fitful light, it was easy enough to see his romantically pale countenance redden.

  “Well done, madame,” Lisburne said. “Your sister’s undergarments will take my cousin’s mind off his poetic nerves.”

  Swanton’s expression eased, and he laughed.

  In the theater, the chattering began to subside.

  Lisburne took out his pocket watch and glanced at it. “I believe it’s time,” he said.

  “Don’t keep them waiting,” she said.

  He went out and made his brief speech introducing her. He’d felt certain she was completely at her ease. Yet as he started to leave the stage for the shadows again, he saw the change come over her as she prepared to face the audience: the slight lift of her head and the small motion of her shoulders.

  When she took his place at center stage, the ladies and gentlemen went completely still. Her presence alone did that, some force of personality, for she didn’t speak or gesture. Then she curtseyed, and it was like a moving work of art or a dance. She sank down, and the ribbons and bows and lace fluttered, and the theater’s lights danced over them. It was only a curtsey, a polite gesture to her listeners, yet he heard people catch their breath. And why not? It was the most beautiful curtsey in the world.

  And when she rose, she was smiling the dazzling smile, and Lisburne could have taken an oath that her blue eyes had grown more brilliant, as though lit from within by a thousand lamps.

  Then she began to speak.

  Later

  Madame had been right enough about the weather, Lisburne thought. The day had dawned overcast and oppressively warm but began to brighten by late afternoon. A moment ago, when he’d looked outside, the nighttime skies were about as clear as they ever got over England, and the day’s humid warmth had subsided to the sort of mild summer temperature more often encountered in poetry than in reality.

  As to the poetry, that had gone as well as usual. As had happened at the New Western Athenaeum, a majority of the men stood at the back, many of them with arms folded and chins upon their chests, in various attitudes of sleep.

  The young ladies, however, were desperately awake and listening with all their might. Lamplight glistened in a legion of tear-filled eyes raised to the lectern as Swanton recited in low, aching tones:

  Oh! late I view’d her move along, the idol of the crowd;

  A few short months elapsed, and then—I kiss’d her in her shroud;

  And o’er her splendid monument I saw the hatchment wave;—

  But there was one fond tear which did more honour to her grave.

  A warrior dropped his plumed head upon her place of rest,

  And with his feverish lips the name of Ethelinda prest—

  Then breathed a prayer, and check’d the groan, the groan of parting pain;

  And, as he left the tomb, he said—“Yet we shall meet again.”

  Lisburne had to stifle his own groan, because the poem’s end met with a prodigious silence, broken here and there by choked sobs. Then the ladies burst out, clapping and clapping, so that in spite of their gloves the walls of the theater shook, and Vauxhall’s fireworks would have to look sharp to outdo the row these girls made.

  Still, even he had to admit that “Ethelinda” was one of Swanton’s more intelligible efforts.

  Not that Swanton could hold a candle to Leonie Noirot’s performance, in Lisburne’s opinion—and no doubt the opinions of all the other gentlemen in the audience. Following the devastating curtsey and smile, she had launched into her short, shockingly effective appeal, telling the audience at the outset that she knew they hadn’t come to hear her but Lord Swanton. Yet her five-minute speech had her listeners laughing and weeping by turns. Lisburne had even seen that cynic Crawford brush a tear from his eye.

  That was only what she said. She’d presented as well a display of neatly dressed girls, a sampling of her organization’s beneficiaries. Between the speech and the three waiflike girls she’d chosen to represent the “indigent females,” Madame obtained results very like those she’d wrung from Lisburne when he’d entered the little shop at the Milliners’ Society.

  The girls distributed slips of paper for writing down pledges, and supplied pencils for those who hadn’t brought their own writing instruments. After collecting the papers in their prettily decorated baskets, the waifs turned the contents over to Lisburne’s secretary, Uttridge. Seated in the wings, he’d marked the pledges down in a notebook, as Lisburne had recommended. It was as well not to leave money matters to the faulty memories of the bon ton.

  It only remained for Swanton to step out into the audience and allow himself to be congratulated and petted.

  He hated that even more than he hated the moments before he was obliged to read his work aloud, but he knew his duty and did it. In the same dutiful spirit, Lisburne had resisted the impulse to escape the theater and the depressing verse and go watch acrobats and jugglers and ballet dancers instead. He’d sat through the whole dratted thing, and had the small comfort of knowing that Madame hadn’t been able to escape, either.

  But in a little while, the Duty part would be over, and then . . .

  He smiled.

  He had plans, delicious plans.

  Leonie and Matron had gathered their poetry-dazed charges and were leading them to the door while the rest of the audience surged toward Lord Swanton. As Leonie reached the door, Lord Lisburne stepped into her path.

  “Ah, there you are, madame,” he said. He nodded at Matron and the girls. “Ladies. Splendid work.”

  Matron beamed. The girls played with their baskets, too shy to look up at him.

  “They did beautifully,” Leonie said. “Although I suspect they found the poetry something less than comprehensible, not one of them yawned, even once.”

  The girls looked sheepishly at each other. “But it was so interesting to look at the fine ladies and gentlemen, madame,” one of them said softly.

  “I think we can do better than a lot of confusing poetry tonight,” Lord Lisburne said. “Madame, if you would be so kind as to give your permission, Mr. Simpson would like to take Matron and these hardworking girls on a tour of the gardens. Ah, here he is, right on cue.”

  At that moment an old-fashioned-looking gentleman of sixty or thereabouts entered, holding his hat high above his head and bowing in the way that had been made famous in countless caricatures. Thanks to his frequent appearances in print shop windows and handbills, even Leonie recognized Vauxhall’s famous Master of Ceremonies, Mr. C. H. Simpson, Esquire.

  It would have been cruel to deny them the treat—as Lisburne well knew, the manipulative wretch—and Leonie hadn’t the heart to protest, or even a good excuse, beyond being annoyed with Lisburne’s making arrangements for her girls without telling her. But even if she’d had an excuse, she hadn’t time to say a word before Mr. Simpson launched into one of his flowery speeches of welcome.

  A moment later, he was leading Matron and the girls away.

  Then what could Leonie say? Vauxhall’s famous Master of Ceremonies was taking them on a tour of one of London’s most magical places. He’d bowed to them. He’d made them feel like princesses. It would be the grandest time they’d ever had in all their short, wretched lives.

  She looked up at Lisburne. “Thank you,” she
said.

  “Don’t be absurd,” he said. “You know my motives were selfish and ulterior.”

  “That doesn’t matter to them,” she said. “Even Matron will be thrilled.”

  “Never mind them,” he said. “Now you’re not busy. We’ve endured an hour of flowers and birds and young men and women dying before their time in rhyme. And now it’s time—”

  “How could you?” a woman’s voice soared above the chatter behind them. “How could you be so unkind, nay, so cruel, my lord? After all we’ve been to each other, to abandon me . . . and our child?”

  Leonie threw Lisburne one startled look, which he returned. Then, as one, they turned back, toward the theater’s interior.

  “Why must I debase myself in this way?” the voice went on. “Was it not enough for me to give you that which is a woman’s most precious gift?”

  The audience, parts of which had been departing, paused. In the next moment, they were all moving, as inexorable as a tide, in the direction of the woman’s voice.

  Tell me you don’t remember the beautiful weeks we shared in Paris. Can you have forgotten all you said then and all we were to each other? Is our time together gone from your mind, swept away like rubbish after a fête?”

  The woman went on in this vein while Leonie and Lord Lisburne tried to make their way through the crush of spectators.

  Leonie had an easier time, because she entered the part of the crowd where the men had gathered, and they made way for her. No one needed to move nearer to hear the woman. Her voice carried across the theater—and probably out of the open doors into the gardens.

  As Leonie neared the scene, though, she found a pack of young ladies in her way, partially blocking her view. Fortunately, they didn’t keep still. When they elbowed one another and rose on tiptoes and otherwise strained for a better view, Leonie caught glimpses, between their elaborate evening headdresses and fluttering fans, of a disheveled blonde dressed in black. Her bonnet was sliding down the back of her head.

  “You promised,” the woman in black cried. “Forever, you said. Yet you left me, even when you knew I was—” She broke off, dodging somebody who was trying to pull her away.