Page 15 of Scandal Wears Satin (Dressmakers #2)

British Institution. As pilgrims approach a hallowed shrine in adoration mingled with fear and trembling so do we ever regard the summer exhibition of the works of the old masters at the British Institution ... Here are 176 pictures ... and there is hardly one amongst them the possession of which might not be coveted as a gem.

— The Court Journal , Saturday 13 June 1835

T hough one would have thought it impossible for Adderley to look more conceited, he managed it. He wore a provoking smirk while he took his time about drawing away from Madame, into whose ear he’d been whispering.

“Lord Lun-mour, Lady Clara,” said Madame with a too-innocent smile. “We are too slow for you, I think.”

“No hurry,” Longmore said. “The paintings will be here for some time. We merely grew curious as to what you find so fascinating about this one.”

“ Eh bien , it gives me a memory of another thing, and so I tell Lord Add’lee a little anecdote.” She blushed.

She actually blushed.

Longmore knew she possessed astounding acting skill. She’d demonstrated time and again. He knew she could weep on command. She could even let her eyes fill with tears that didn’t fall. He’d never heard of anybody who could blush on command.

“I should like to hear it,” he said.

Adderley glanced at Clara. “I’m afraid it isn’t suitable for an unwed lady’s ears,” he said.

“But it’s perfectly suitable for a bridegroom-to-be?” Clara said, eyebrows aloft, eyes chilly. It was a look their mother had perfected.

“I pray, ma chère —my dear lady—you will take no offense,” said Madame. “It is only a naughty little joke. Lord Add’lee will tell it to you after you marry.”

Clara turned her icy gaze to the painting. “It’s interesting, is it not, what a vile crime adultery is when a woman commits it. But with men, it’s practically a badge of honor. I daresay this is a fine painting, but it is not to my taste.”

She walked away, spine stiff, chin aloft.

After a moment’s hesitation, Adderley went after her.

“I should have a care, madame, if I were you,” Longmore said. “Some might misinterpret your—erm—friendliness.”

“A care must I have?” she said. “You English. So stiff in the neck. I flirt a little. What is the harm? It is a privilege of the married woman.”

“In the circumstances, it might be misunderstood as more than flirtation.”

She waved a hand. “English ways are so strange. Here, everyone attends to the unmarried girls. They flirt and dance, and all the men chase them. In France, these mademoiselles sit tranquil with their chaperons. They must be quiet and modest, like nuns. It is the married ladies who have the flirtation and the affaire , but very discreet.”

“You’re not in France anymore, madame.”

“You do not approve of me, milord? You find my manners not amiable?”

“On the contrary, I find your manners rather too amiable,” he said.

“But what does this mean? In what regard am I too amiable? To converse with your friend?”

“With my sister’s betrothed,” Longmore said.

“What then?” she said with a careless laugh. “You have fear I will take him from her? And if I do this thing, perhaps it is best for her. If I were the girl betrothed, I would not desire a man who goes so easily to another woman. And this to happen only a few days before the wedding! Ah, well. Perhaps it is a great favor I do for her.”

Clara’s voice—not loud enough to be understood but vehement enough to convey her displeasure—drew their attention thither.

Whatever she was saying was making Adderley stand very stiffly. A dull red darkened his fair skin and he didn’t look so angelic and poetic.

“But there, you see?” said Madame. “Already they quarrel.”

“So it would seem.”

Clara was gesticulating and her chin was up. She started away from Adderley, her walk radiating anger. Adderley went after her. They disappeared through a door.

“To make a jealous scene is not wise,” said Madame. “She makes him angry. So soon before the marriage, this is foolish. This is how to chase the man away.” She shook her head.

“Maybe he’s too dashed eager to be chased away,” Longmore said.

She gave that laugh again, that distinctively Gallic laugh, and followed it with a distinctively Gallic shrug. “ C’est la vie. What one loses, another gains, yes?”

If he didn’t know—if he didn’t remind himself he knew—he’d think she was an adventuress, experienced in the ways of men, in the ways of the world. He’d believe she’d had a raft of lovers.

But no, only me.

He knew that. He knew he’d been the first.

And maybe that was the trouble.

Had he created a monster? Had he opened the floodgates? Had he—

Gad, what was he thinking? He was thinking like Sophy .

The attendant who appeared at his elbow ejected Longmore from his lunatic reverie. “I beg your pardon, my lord,” the man said, “but Lord Adderley has asked me to express his regrets to the lady and to you. I am to tell you that her ladyship your sister is unwell, and has expressed a wish to go home.”

Longmore glanced about him. The quarrel with Madame, quiet though it was, was attracting attention.

The performance isn’t over , he told them silently.

Madame was shaking her head. “They are not suited,” she said. “At once I saw this.”

“Did you, indeed?” Longmore said. “And to whom did you think he might be better suited?”

She regarded him with narrowed eyes. “It is strange, Lord Lun-mour, but I myself discover that I am not so well. It is the air in this place, I believe. It oppresses me. Or perhaps it is the company. I think I would prefer to return to my hotel.”

Exclusive to Foxe’s Morning Spectacle

Saturday 13 June

The British Institution’s annual summer exhibition has drawn a number of distinguished visitors. Those attending yesterday, however, might have observed, as well as works of art, a drama unfolding under the paintings. A certain recently engaged couple, mentioned previously in our pages, made their appearance. With them were the lady’s brother and the French lady his lordship has escorted on so many occasions since her arrival in London. We are sorry to report that discord has arisen between the couples. While we will not say the green-eyed monster appeared on the scene, certain visitors might have noticed a frosty atmosphere between the two ladies prior to their early—and separate—departures. The chill in the air might have arisen as a result of one gentleman’s paying more marked attention to his future brother-in-law’s companion than to the lady he is to marry in a matter of days. We would be remiss if we failed to add that, when the future bridegroom departed the scene, it was not his intended who cast a languishing eye after him.

Maison Noirot

Sunday afternoon

“N o,” Longmore said. He crumpled the note and threw it into the empty grate.

“I was not asking your permission,” Sophy said.

They stood in the room on the second storey where, he’d discovered, the sisters worked according to their individual talents. Here Her Grace of Clevedon designed her exuberant creations. Here Miss Leonie labored over her ledgers. And here Miss Sophia composed her fashion dramas for the Spectacle and devised schemes for keeping Maison Noirot in the front of Fashionable Society’s mind.

Longmore had found her hard at work. She had ink on her fingers and a spot on her cheek. A curly golden tendril had escaped its pin to dangle against her left eyebrow.

“You have ink on your face,” he said.

“Don’t change the subject,” she said. “That invitation is perfect .”

“It’s a perfect opportunity for you to get into trouble,” he said.

According to the note Longmore had thrown away, Lord Adderley wished to seek Madame’s advice on a private matter. Would she do him the honor of dining with him this evening at the Brunswick Hotel?

“No, he’s saved us trouble,” she said. “Now you can break into his house.”

He stared at her. “Are the ink fumes rotting your brain?” he said. “You never said anything about housebreaking. Why on earth should I do such a thing?”

“To find Incriminating Evidence.”

In his mind’s eye he saw the words writ large and Capitalized.

“Haven’t you found enough?” he said. “All the reports you get from Fenwick and his numerous criminal associates? The gossip Clevedon’s passed on, from the clubs and his aunts? The private financial reports Miss Leonie obtains, I will not ask how. What more do you need?”

“Letters from the physicians attending his wife, who’s locked up in a madhouse against her will,” she said.

“ What? ”

“It would be useful to find that he already has a wife,” she said. “Preferably well and living in Ireland, but mad will do.”

“That would be useful,” he said. “But it’s highly unlikely. Those sorts of things happen in horrid novels—the mad wife in the attic—the long-lost true heir to the title he’s kept locked in a dungeon for twenty years. Not likely in his case, I’m sorry to say.”

“We need something powerful,” she said. “It’s nothing to Society when a gentleman is up to his ears in debt, or games, or chases women. It’s not enough to counteract Lady Clara’s heinous crime of letting him kiss her in a less than brotherly manner and disarrange her clothing.”

“What about that last bit in the Spectacle dealing with the creditors and the curious coincidence?” he said. “It made my blood boil. It’s sure to put him in bad odor with some of the high sticklers.” He hadn’t known of that interesting detail until it appeared in the scandal sheet.

“That was quite good, but I’d like something stronger,” she said. “Letters from the creditors or the moneylenders. Interesting promises—such as, ‘You’d better marry quickly, my lord, or expect severe bodily harm.’ That sort of thing.”

He had to take a moment to make his mind calm enough to consider what she was saying. She had a way of sweeping one into the raging current of drama that filled her teeming brain.

He quickly sorted matters and said, “Sophy, what kind of idiot would put something like that in writing? And what kind of imbecile would keep it?”

“You’d be amazed,” she said. “Most criminal types don’t have very large brains. They have little squirrel brains that think of nothing but nuts, nuts, nuts and how to get more nuts. The unsavory moneylender, for instance, doesn’t need to be a financial genius. He merely needs to be good at amassing large piles of nuts. Ask Leonie. Now, hers is a great financial mind. But most of them—”

“Sophy.”

“Adderley isn’t very clever, either,” she said.

“Neither am I,” he said. “But I’m perfectly capable of seducing a woman if I put my mind to it—and he—”

“You’re much cleverer than he is,” she said. “I can’t believe he’s so great a moron as to invite a woman to dine with him mere days before his wedding. And to invite her to a hotel he not only can’t afford but one where he’s sure to be recognized? It grows very clear to me how he got himself into such shocking debt. He’s one of those men who assumes everything will turn out in his favor: the next throw of the dice, the next deal of the cards. In short, he’s a dolt, and he hasn’t a prayer of seducing me. I’m seducing him , remember?”

“No. I never agreed to your seducing anybody.”

She smiled, advanced on him, and took hold of his lapels. “Listen to me,” she said, looking up into his eyes, hers all brilliant blue.

“No,” he said. “You talk mad talk.”

“I’m not Clara,” she said. “I can look after myself.”

“Not always.”

“Always,” she said. “And certainly in this case. Adderley is in far more danger from me than I am from him. I’m going to dine with him, as he asks, at the Brunswick. I’ll keep him there for two hours at the minimum. That ought to give you plenty of time to search his house. It isn’t a big one.”

It wasn’t. Adderley had had to sell off most of his property. What he couldn’t sell he’d mortgaged. The family estate was let to a military gentleman and his family. At present, Adderley leased a small townhouse near Leicester Square.

“It’s a private property,” he said. “A house. With servants—though everybody wonders how he pays them. My career hasn’t been the most reputable, as you know, but one thing I’ve never done is break into a gentleman’s private house.”

“It’s not very different from breaking into lodgings,” she said. “Or breaking out of school after curfew. You’ve done that, I’m sure.”

“How do you know?” he said. She was standing too close. Her scent drifted in the air about him. It drifted into his brain and acted on it the way honey would act on a clockwork mechanism.

“You went to public school,” she said, “and I know you didn’t win prizes for good behavior.”

“I mean, how do you know the two things aren’t different?” he said. “How do you know these things, Sophy?”

She released his lapels and stepped back a pace. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s obvious. They’re buildings . With doors and windows. Housebreakers either pick locks or pry open unlocked windows or smash locked ones.” She waved a hand. “I’m not sure which is the best method—but Fenwick will know.”

“Then let Fenwick do it,” he said. “He’s small and less noticeable. He can wriggle in and out of tight places—and being an experienced desperado, he’s much less likely to get caught and have to answer annoying questions. If he does get caught, we can easily arrange to get him out of trouble.”

“He can’t read,” she said.

She tipped her head to one side, studying him, thinking, thinking, thinking. That busy little brain.

“I thought you’d relish the prospect of breaking into Adderley’s house and discovering his evil secrets,” she said.

“I would relish it, if he were in his house at the time. While you were elsewhere.”

“Do try to be logical,” she said. “Nothing is going to happen to me. It can’t. If Adderley gets what he’s after from me, he’ll lose interest.”

“Or maybe not.” Longmore hadn’t lost interest. On the contrary, he was far too interested for his peace of mind. He couldn’t remember spending as much time thinking about a woman as he’d done thinking about her.

Not enough amorous activity, that was the trouble.

“If I succumb to him, he won’t be so eager to please,” she said. “He won’t be watching for an opportunity to get me alone. He won’t be on the prowl. He won’t be in a high state of excitement. He needs to be thwarted a little—not enough to discourage him, but enough to increase his zest for the chase. Why must I explain this? You’re a man. You know how men think.”

“Actually, we don’t really think all that much.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know these situations can get out of hand.” He remembered the drunken boys. His mind painted images of her at Adderley’s mercy.

“I should like to know how it could possibly get out of hand with a man one finds repellent,” she said. “Or do you imagine that all women are slaves to desire, and all men have to do is kiss and fondle them to make them lose their minds?”

“He is not going to kiss and fondle you,” he said.

“And I am not going to lose my mind,” she said.

“You weren’t completely rational with me, I recall.”

“That was you ,” she said. “That was completely different. I know the difference—and really, I find it disheartening that you don’t. Are all women interchangeable to you? But no—don’t answer that question. I find, on the whole, that I’d rather not know. I prefer to keep some girlish delusions.”

“Girlish delusions? Have you got any, by Jupiter? Because it seems to me ...” He trailed off. It dawned on him then that women had always been more or less interchangeable. Except for her. “Never mind. I don’t know what I think anymore.”

“Don’t think,” she said. “All you need to do is get into his house and find Incriminating Evidence. I’ll keep him occupied.”

She was going to go and he couldn’t stop her—short of tying her to a chair and locking her in a room—and she’d find a way to wriggle out of that, he had no doubt.

“Very well,” he said.

She came close again. She put her hand on his chest. “Thank you,” she said. “I know you’re worried about me, and I know you’d tell me to go to the devil, if it weren’t for your sister.”

That wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he cupped her face and kissed her once, firmly, possessively, on the mouth. He held her so and looked into her brilliant blue liar’s eyes and said, “I should like it if you would try not to be kissed or fondled,” he said. “By him.”

“Trust me,” she said softly.

He wanted her and thought about her too much and he worried about her to an extent that made him slightly ill. But he didn’t trust her.

And so he didn’t trust her not to do what she’d made up her mind to do, whether he cooperated or not. Seeing no alternative but to cooperate, he might as well look on the bright side: It would be great fun to break into Adderley’s house and find something that would wipe the smirk off his face permanently.

And if that didn’t work, one could always shoot him.

That night

G etting into Adderley’s house was easy enough.

After reconnoitering, Fenwick reported that the staff had gathered belowstairs, where they were smoking, drinking, and playing a noisy game of cards.

Fenwick’s mode of entry was perfectly straightforward. He climbed up a drainpipe, thence into the house through one of several unlatched windows. He made his way inside to the front of the house and opened the door to Longmore. Anyone watching would have supposed a servant had let in one of Lord Adderley’s friends.

After that, the main difficulty was making one’s way through an unfamiliar, poorly lit house without running into furniture or knocking over breakables. After a few heart-stopping creaks and bumps, Longmore relaxed.

He took his mind off Not Getting Caught and set it on Finding Something.

This turned out to be much less straightforward.

The rooms they searched bore all the signs of a discouraged if not outright hostile staff. That explained the party belowstairs and the unlatched windows.

He and Fenwick found a great deal of paper: heaps of newspapers and sporting magazines and racing sheets and Foxe’s Morning Spectacle . Piles of invitations. Mounds of unsorted correspondence. There were tradesmen’s bills aplenty, but none held any secrets that Leonie and Clevedon hadn’t already uncovered.

Longmore took special care in searching the study desk, looking for false bottoms and hidden compartments. It hadn’t any. Not without distaste, he proceeded to Adderley’s bedroom. He searched the writing table, the bed stand, the wardrobe, and under pillows and mattress. He found a great deal of rubbish and evidence of bad housekeeping. It was tedious work, and it seemed as though he and Fenwick had hardly begun when a clock somewhere in the house began to strike. In the same moment, Longmore heard church bells in the neighborhood tolling the same long count: ten strokes.

Ten o’clock.

Already.

Fenwick, who’d been charged with guard duty, said, “They’re stirring down below, yer majesty.” A pause. Then, “Somebody’s on the stairs.”

A moment later Longmore heard the voices approaching.

“You, into the wardrobe,” he said.

The boy instantly vanished into the wardrobe.

Lord Longmore dropped to the floor and crawled under the bed.

U nlike Clevedon’s aunts, many nobles who came to London for short stays put up at one of the West End’s many luxury hotels. The Clarendon in New Bond Street, like others of its ilk, was accustomed to accommodating its guests’ requirements, and doing so discreetly.

Madame de Veirrion had taken one of the largest suites. If she chose to regard her rooms as private apartments, the Clarendon’s staff were happy to support that vision. It was not for them to question, and certainly it would have been as much as their positions were worth to tattle about what she did there or whom she saw. This was why Clevedon had chosen it for the scheme.

Late as it was when Madame returned, her entrance brought guests and staff alike to rapt attention. She wore a spectacular dinner dress, for which she’d already provided the Spectacle a detailed description, to appear in Monday’s edition. It was one of Marcelline’s more glorious creations, and Maison Noirot would receive full credit in the paper.

In Paris, black taffeta mantelets were all the rage, worn usually with a contrasting softer textured dress, made of mouselline de laine or muslin. But Marcelline had paired a deep rose satin with the black taffeta mantelet, which created a rich, sensuous rustling as one moved.

Every woman who’d seen Madame de Veirrion this night had regarded the dress with the kind of lustful expression one observed more usually in a man’s face.

Lord Longmore never looked at her in that way.

But he was different, Sophy told herself. His card-playing face could be as good as hers. One had to study him closely to catch the way his dark eyes glittered when he was noticing her in a more intent way than usual ... and there was a certain slant of his mouth or tilt of his head...

She shivered, recalling when last he’d regarded her that way, only a few hours ago, an instant before he’d kissed her.

She was in a very bad way.

If she hadn’t had to rescue Lady Clara, with almost no time at all to do it, Sophy could have easily made a great fool of herself over him. She could have wept into her pillow at night. She could have written sickening poetry about Lovers Torn Apart by Fate. She could have quoted whole scenes from Romeo and Juliet , and sobbed because those young lovers hadn’t had it so bad, compared to her.

But she hadn’t time to act like a sentimental moron.

She was obliged to play Cleopatra to Adderley’s Mark Antony—and really, she’d never thought Mark Antony worthy of the Queen of Egypt. A bit dim, she’d always thought.

She was contemplating the role of wicked seductress and thinking it mainly took patience, when the footman standing outside the door of her suite informed her, as he opened the door, that Lord Longmore awaited her in the drawing room.

Her heart sped up.

She’d thought she’d have time to rest and compose herself before Longmore arrived. Being calm with him wasn’t as simple as it ought to be. Too often she felt he was looking straight into her brain and seeing what he ought not to see. It was like being undressed, with the difference being that she didn’t mind his seeing her body unclothed. She minded very much his seeing inside her head.

Keeping her guard up was not going to be easy, after a draining evening with Lord Adderley.

His mind was slow. She’d had to slog through their conversation while keeping him, not at arm’s length, but not too close, either. She’d had to work carefully, to bring his mind to the right position. It was like dancing with a man with two left feet. He’d tried to be subtle, and it had been difficult to pretend she didn’t understand what he was trying to ascertain.

It was hard work, and it sapped one’s energy—and the project had taken longer than she’d planned.

Still, she’d had success, and that was what she set at the front of her mind. And that was what animated her when she sailed into her drawing room, the picture of confidence.

A maid hurried out, but Sophy ignored her. Longmore stood by the window, a glass in his hand. His dark hair was rumpled and so was his neckcloth. She couldn’t tell whether he’d been in a fight or had slept in his clothes. He looked thoroughly disreputable, and his dark eyes held a dangerous gleam.

She waved the girl away. “Go to bed,” she said. “I’ll ring if I need you.”

When the door had closed behind the maid, Sophy stripped off her gloves. “I hope they’ve looked after you well,” she said. She noted a decanter, three-quarters empty, on one of the room’s elegant tables.

“They fed me and they kept my glass filled,” he said. “Where the devil have you been?”

She dropped the gloves on the nearest chair, unfastened her mantelet, and carelessly flung it on top of them. Dressmakers neatly folded garments and put everything in its proper place. Great ladies left that job to servants.

“How much have you had to drink?” she said. “Have you forgotten that I was dining with Lord Adderley?”

“For five hours?”

“Certainly not. It can’t be—what time is it?”

He slanted her a look, took out his pocket watch, and flicked it open with a sharp click. He said, in a too-quiet voice, “It’s half past midnight.”

“That’s not five hours,” she said.

“What the devil have you been doing for all this time?”

“Keeping him occupied.”

“Two hours, you said.”

“I said I could give you at least two,” she said.

“That isn’t what you said.”

“What difference does it make?” she said. “Or are you vexed because you had to cut short your search, thinking you had only two hours?”

“Never mind my search.”

“Never mind? That was the whole point of this exercise.”

“Apparently not,” he said. “Apparently, you found a good deal to occupy you.”

“Well, I did, rather,” she said.

“I’m eager to know what that was,” he said.

She was not about to describe to him the various maneuvers and counter-maneuvers she’d had to use. She had no intention of instructing any man—and most assuredly not this one—in the arts she used to manipulate males.

“You ought to know what it wasn’t ,” she said. “I can’t believe you stand there glowering at me as though I’m a wayward sister. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not Lady Clara, who doesn’t know better than to let herself be led out onto dark terraces by bankrupt lords. I’m not Lady Anybody. I’m not na?ve.”

“All the same—”

“Nothing was supposed to happen,” she said. “I know better than to let anything happen. Nothing happened. ” She wanted to shake him. How could he think she was so stupid? How could he believe she was so undiscriminating ? “Considering the foul mood you seem to be in, I can only conclude that nothing happened on your mission, either. Or did you find something worse than one could imagine? Grisly remains in the cellar or—”

“Dust clumps under the bed,” he said. “And what may or not have been a dead rodent. I didn’t touch it. I’m judging only by smell. It might have been your would-be beau’s stockings.”

“You searched under the bed?” she said. “Why didn’t you make Fenwick do that? He’s smaller and less likely to bump his head ...” She trailed off, as the image rose in her mind of Longmore squeezing his big body under a bed. “Oh, no! Did you bump your head?” She moved toward him. “Let me see. You should have told the servants to get ice. I’ll send for ice.”

He took a step back. “I did not bump my head,” he said. “I know to keep my head down. I’ve been under beds before, though not in recent memory. I remained there utterly still and quiet while a pair of servants made good use of the master’s absence by fornicating against his wardrobe. In which Fenwick had secreted himself.” He turned away, walked to the decanter, and refilled his glass.

She watched him while her imagination painted the scene he’d described. She knew about these things. She’d seen pictures. But she’d looked at them coolly, feeling mainly curiosity.

She tried to make her mind detached, but it made its own exhibition, of lurid pictures of him, naked, pushing into her and making her feel things she’d never felt before, such wild emotions, so pleasurable as to hurt, almost.

She went hot everywhere, remembering. She wanted to run across the room and open a window and lean out of it.

But no, that wasn’t quite true.

She wanted to run to him and make him do it again, make him touch her and kiss her and love her and possess her and wipe out the memory of Adderley’s insinuating voice and double entendres, and his face and body too close to hers.

She made herself look sympathetic but amused. “But you weren’t detected,” she said.

“I could have started singing God Save the King , and I doubt they’d have noticed,” he said. “Luckily the position isn’t easy to maintain. They weren’t long about it. They had a good laugh after, and went out—maybe to repeat the performance in the next room. I didn’t stay to find out. I unearthed Fenwick and we made ourselves scarce.” He drank.

She said nothing, only watched his hands, and the motion of his shoulders and the way the light played on the bones of his face.

“I had to climb down the drainpipe,” he said, into the silence. “After which Fenwick administered a critique of my mode of descent.”

She found her tongue. “I do think he—”

“It was a complete waste of time!” He slammed the glass down on the tray, making the decanter bounce. “Adderley has nothing in his house that we don’t already know about. It was exactly as I told you it would be. The sorts of things you hoped to find are the things imaginary people find in stories. In make-believe. This isn’t bloody make-believe!”