Page 6 of Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone (Dukes in Disguise #2)

Chapter Six

Nathaniel would have liked to beg off the outing to the dressmaker’s shop the next day, but he had committed to this course, and it was his clear duty to see it through. Accordingly, the following morning found him perched stoically on an overstuffed chair that felt entirely too small to support his frame, surrounded by bolts of costly silk and fine cotton muslin.

The fitting room of the shop was decorated like an odd cross between a formal drawing room and a courtesan’s boudoir, all uncomfortable furniture and sumptuous velvet draperies. Nathaniel observed as the modiste, a Mrs. Lister, and her gaggle of assistants fluttered and twittered around the motionless, slump-shouldered figure of his half-sister.

They were a constant whirl of activity, pinning hems and marking seams and tossing bits of lace and other fripperies across Lucy’s shoulders to see how they fared against her complexion. There was a lot of shrill, high-pitched chatter that Nathaniel did not attempt to follow.

He couldn’t. Not when more than half of his attention was absorbed by the woman seated silently beside him against the wall of the salon, looking no more at home than he upon her dainty, gilt-edged chair.

But he was determined not to notice Mrs. Pickford. No matter that every tendon and sinew seemed attuned to the slim, gray woolen shape of her at his side, just at the edge of his line of sight.

Instead, he concentrated on the fact that amidst the excited whispers and sidelong glances of the seamstresses, who had likely never seen an actual duke in person before, the sounds Lucy was making were more like sighs of impatience. Sighs that were steadily increasing in both volume and frequency.

“That looks charming,” Mrs. Pickford murmured encouragingly.

Lucy, the ill-mannered baggage, merely snorted in response. “If I must have new frocks, why may I not have some with the longer waist, like the ones I saw in La Belle Assemblée ?”

“Because you are neither a highflyer nor a daring young matron,” said Mrs. Lister in the brisk tones of a woman who was unused to having her recommendations questioned. “All debutantes still wear the empire waist. Showing purity, clean lines! Only ladies of the first stare experiment with the longer waists. And the French, of course.”

Another sigh, this one gusty with frustration. Without intending to, Nathaniel echoed it, which drew a cool sidelong glance from Mrs. Pickford.

“You needn’t stay, Your Grace, if you are restless.”

Nathaniel stiffened and did not look at her. “I’m not in the least restless.”

“As I told you last evening, you had no need to come with us in the first place.” A note of tension turned her melodic voice brittle. “I know I’m no arbiter of fashion, but Mrs. Lister seems perfectly capable of outfitting Lady Lucy without your help. I have a list of what she needs, furnished by the dowager duchess.”

It took more self-control than he liked to keep his sentiments off his face.

She huffed. “If you think me so incapable that I can’t be trusted to manage a single outing to the dressmaker’s, I wonder that you bothered blackmailing me into serving as Lucy’s chaperone at all.”

Nathaniel could avoid temptation no longer. He turned and looked at her.

There she was, the beautiful Bess Pickford, in the same dress she’d worn the day he first saw her, cleansed of the stains from that scuffle on the Thames riverbank. That same bonnet with its small, cheerful cluster of cherries.

Her smooth countenance was slightly downcast, the sweep of her honey-brown lashes hiding the deeper amber of her eyes. Her antique gold hair was in a loose braided configuration that allowed gleaming strands to brush cheeks that were rosy with embarrassment, or perhaps annoyance. Her mouth…

The mouth he’d come within a heartbeat of taking in a savage, claiming kiss in that carriage, a kiss that would have given the lie to any pretension to honor he’d ever had.

“You mistake me,” he said gruffly, turning his gaze forward once more with an effort he chose not to acknowledge. “I would far sooner trust in your taste than in my stepmother’s.”

“The dowager duchess dresses beautifully,” Mrs. Pickford argued in a fierce undertone.

“The dowager duchess.” He couldn’t help the disdain in his voice as he echoed the undeserved honoric. “She dresses expensively . Not at all the same thing.”

“Oh, and I suppose this place sells its gowns for cheap?”

“Good taste usually comes at a high price,” Nathaniel said drily, “but just because something is expensive, it does not follow that it is in good taste.”

“I suppose I can’t speak to the topic of taste. It doesn’t interest me much. I find your stepmother and her daughters to be very beautiful, indeed. For ‘beauty is truth, and truth beauty,’” she quoted. “And they are, very much, who they appear to be.”

Nathaniel paused, arrested. “You read Keats?”

The roses in her cheeks deepened, but that sweetly rounded chin tilted up in a challenging way that Nathaniel did not permit himself to admire. “I read a lot of things.”

She said it as though she expected him to disbelieve her, though he remembered suddenly that she’d referenced Goethe during that electrifying exchange in the carriage.

Perhaps it wasn’t often he met a woman who casually sprinkled poetry and philosophical treatises into her conversation, but well-read ladies weren’t that far out of the common way, either. Especially these days, with the influx of these romantic writers overrunning the sensible, rational authors of the past decade. More and more young ladies, and the young swains hoping to impress them, were reading Keats, Wordsworth, Byron, that awful Shelley.

Nathaniel wondered suddenly if her husband had given her the book of Keats’ work. If they’d sat by the fire of an evening, discussing Goethe.

And where was that husband now?

“What about this one?” Lucy demanded from across the salon, plucking at the pale lemon-yellow skirts of a walking dress. Mrs. Lister stood back from her with a strained smile and watchful eyes.

Nathaniel studied the lines of the gown. It fit her well, though perhaps the color was ill chosen. Lucy’s bold blue eyes, clear, ivory skin and masses of dark hair were not well suited to the pastels that innocent young ladies were meant to wear.

But she looked like every other debutante now; she would cause no comment.

He nodded briefly, to Mrs. Lister’s great satisfaction and Lucy’s utter despair, if her anguished moan was anything to go by.

Her attire would cause no comment, Nathaniel amended silently. There was little hope her conduct could be brought up to the same standards, though he intended to try.

“Are there any more?” he asked the modiste, who nodded eagerly.

“Your Grace also ordered an evening dress, I have it here, ready for fitting. Girls, quickly now!” She clapped sharply and her assistants ran to fetch an armful of frothy satin in the lightest possible shade of peach.

It was such a light shade of peach, in fact, that when Lucy emerged from behind the screen in the corner wearing the gown, Nathaniel had to blink to make sure she was actually wearing it. Uncanny.

“It’s the exact same color as her skin,” Mrs. Pickford blurted, one hand coming up to cover her lips. Was she laughing?

“Oh, Lord,” said Lucy, who definitely was laughing as she spun in front of the mirror and admired the odd effect of the gown. “I look like a naked baby with no legs!”

This proved too much for the assistant seamstresses, who all broke into giggles and hastily muffled laughter despite Mrs. Lister’s angry, red-faced, and increasingly Cockney shushing.

Nathaniel was aware of a strange sensation in his own chest, but he choked it back and pitched his calm voice to be heard over the hilarity. “The style is fine, but not that fabric, perhaps. Mrs. Pickford, what color would you suggest?”

“Oh!” She went pink once more, but this time the sight filled Nathaniel with a deep, unconquerable sense of satisfaction. “Blue, perhaps?”

“I’ve a nice silk net we could embroider with some blue flowers, and the whole thing to be worn over a silk underdress in the palest sky blue, to set off the handwork?” Mrs. Lister’s poise had suffered somewhat in the last few minutes, but she appeared to be recovering herself.

“Yes, I think that will do.” Nathaniel nodded briskly. “You may fit this one to her and make up the blue from those measurements. We’ll take delivery of the new gowns in a week’s time.”

Mrs. Lister blanched under her rouge at the fast turnaround, but she immediately bobbed her head and said, “Of course, Your Grace!”

Nathaniel leaned over and murmured to Mrs. Pickford, “And that is why I accompanied you today. The presence of a duke guarantees the most prompt and enthusiastic service, and Lady Lucy needs those new gowns as soon as may be. From now on, Mrs. Lister will know that my sister is to be treated with all due deference.”

With that, he stood and strode to the door of the salon. “Ladies, I will await you in the entryway. Mrs. Lister, if you would attend me for a moment.”

He didn’t stop to watch Mrs. Pickford hurry to help Lucy back into her old clothes. He stalked to the door and waited for Mrs. Lister to bustle over to him, smoothing down her sumptuous striped satin skirts and readying a saleswoman’s smile.

Before he could think better of it, Nathaniel settled his hat on his head and began to pull on his gloves. Not in any way so that he had something to be doing while making this request of the modiste, but because it was time to depart, and he needed to put his gloves back on.

“How may I help you, Your Grace?” the dressmaker asked.

He cleared his throat and flexed his fingers inside the skin-tight leather gloves. The knuckles of his right hand were still bruised and swollen from his last fight; the pressure of the soft kid leather was painful. It soothed him.

It might be time for another visit to The Nemesis. But first…

“Indeed, Mrs. Lister, there is one more thing I would ask of you.”