Vixen in Velvet

  Lisburne woke with a smooth, rounded backside pressed to his groin. From the silken shoulder where his face rested a delicious scent wafted to his nostrils: lavender and Leonie. His arm curved around her waist, his hand lay on her belly. Naked, entirely naked.

  He didn’t remember clearly the undressing, but when he opened his eyes, the bed curtains, not fully closed, revealed the aftermath of an orgy. The flickering light of a single candle illumined scattered pieces of clothing, some flung over chairs, some on the floor, some tangled about the bedposts.

  Then he remembered.

  A hurried undressing, and a long, slow time of lovemaking.

  He smiled.

  He kissed her shoulder and she turned in his arms, and her arms came up and went round his neck. He kissed her, and his heart began to race, he didn’t know why. He ought to be content. Satiated. But the feeling wasn’t recognizable. It was—

  She broke the kiss. “What’s that?” she said. She let go of him, and pulled herself up on the pillows. “Someone’s at the door.”

  He had to strain to hear it, and mightn’t have succeeded had the window not been open. From far below came several quick knocks in succession, echoing faintly in the court. Someone was at the shop’s back door. Or at one of the doors facing the cramped court behind No. 56.

  “It must be after midnight,” he said. “Who the devil calls on you at this hour?”

  Before he could collect his wits, she’d leapt from the bed. She hurried to the wardrobe, opened it, and pulled something out. A blue velvet dressing gown, very like a man’s, embroidered with exotic flowers. It was nothing like the obscene wrapper she’d donned the other night. This was no wisp of a thing, but cut in a style that seemed oriental, and lined with silk. When she wrapped it about her, it concealed everything but her shape. For some reason, this struck him as lewder than the bit of gossamer.

  He sat up. “You can’t be meaning to answer the door,” he said. “And not in that. Come back to bed. Let the servants deal with whomever it is. Unless you’ve another lover who calls in the dead of night.”

  “When do you imagine I have time for another lover?” she said. “I barely have time for you.”

  She hurried out.

  He dragged himself out of bed and began hunting for his shirt. It took a while because he became distracted. He found her stockings and his, then her corset, and a garter. Only one garter. Where was its mate?

  He couldn’t leave her garments where he found them. He gathered them up as he’d done the other night, and sorted them into his and hers at the foot of the bed. By the time he’d found his shirt and pulled it over his head and was wondering where his trousers had got to, she was back.

  “Make haste, make haste!” she said. “We’ve not a minute to lose.”

  He was still dazed. Her undergarments, draped at the foot of the bed, made his mind cloudy. He wasn’t ready to make haste. He didn’t want to. What he wanted to do was drag her back to bed. He wasn’t done with her yet. He wasn’t done with this night yet. He’d felt so comfortable. As though . . .

  His mind shied away from completing the thought.

  He said, “Who’s come? Must I climb out of the window? Is the house afire?”

  “Afire, indeed. Don’t say that.” She flung off the dressing gown and began rummaging in the wardrobe again.

  Her back, her beautiful back . . . the sweet curve of her bottom . . .

  He made himself think. “Leonie, who was at the door?”

  She turned her head to look at him. Her hair was a riot of garnet curls, touched by streaks of fire where the candlelight caught it. Tendrils dangled at her temples and trailed down her neck . . . down her back, her beautiful back. The fog swept into his mind again, and he was starting toward her, forgetting everything else but the warmth of her body and the feel of her skin against his and—

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she said.

  “What?” he said. “No.”

  “It’s Fenwick,” she said. “He’s found her.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Are you struck with her figure and face?

  How lucky you happened to meet

  With none of the gossipping race

  Who dwell in this horrible street!

  They of slanderous hints never tire;

  I love to approve and commend.

  And the lady you so much admire.

  Is my very particular friend!

  —Mrs. Abdy, “My Very Particular Friend,” 1833

  Environs of Tottenham Court Road

  Small hours of Friday morning

  Fenwick hadn’t gone as far as Jack’s disgusting coffee house, Leonie learned. He’d stopped at all the hackney stands on his way there—just in case, he said. This time he’d found his man. On discovering that Charlie Judd clearly remembered the fare in question, Fenwick decided he’d better not lose him again. He hired the driver to take him to Maison Noirot and wait, in case Leonie wanted to interrogate him directly.

  Since the coachman wasn’t going anywhere, she’d hurried back upstairs to dress and to persuade a skeptical and uncooperative Lisburne to dress, too.

  A few inquiries when they reached the vehicle were enough to change Lisburne’s attitude. Though Judd had taken up the passengers in question on Monday night, and he’d ferried hundreds of passengers about London and its environs since, he clearly remembered the woman, child, and “gentleman.”

  “To and from Lambeth, wasn’t it?” he said. “Only time I went to Vauxhall in this last week and more. And it weren’t much of a tip he give me, was it?”

  This told them they’d found the right trail. Before long, Leonie, Lisburne, and Fenwick were in the hackney coach and on their way.

  Judd easily remembered the lodging house as well, because he stopped here frequently. Theatrical folk frequented the place, coming and going at odd hours. More than once he’d taken the performers’ friends home after revelries.

  This explained why the untidy maid who answered the door didn’t blink at callers at such an hour, and why, after giving Leonie and Lisburne a quick assessment, she sent them up to the “widder on the second floor.”

  Clearly the “widder” was expecting somebody else. She flung open the door, her pale countenance expectant. Her eyes widened when she saw who it was, and she tried to shut them out. But Lisburne had already put his foot in the way, and Leonie said, “We came to help.”

  “I know you, Miss Noirot,” the woman said. “You were at Vauxhall that night. Asking for money. For fallen women. Don’t you know that helping them only encourages licentious behavior?” She gave a short laugh. But she backed away from the door and let them in. She closed it after them.

  Leonie swiftly assessed her surroundings. The lodgings seemed to comprise two rooms. The one they stood in, relatively large and airy, was being used as a parlor. A door stood partly open, leading to what Leonie guessed was a smaller back room. Given the neighborhood and condition of the building, she estimated the rent at between seven and ten shillings a week.

  The place was neat—neater than the maid, certainly—though it held little in the way of furnishings to keep clean, and these looked well used if not worn out. On a table near the door an open scrapbook lay, along with a handbill, a newspaper page, an open paste pot, and a pair of scissors.

  Leonie moved to the table and read the handbill. It advertised a benefit night, the honoree’s name printed large. “You’re an actress,” she said. “Dulcinea Williams, is it?”

  The woman got in her way, threw newspaper and handbill into the scrapbook, closed it, and clutched it to her chest.

  “I wondered whether you were a professional,” Leonie said. “The graceful attitude of supplication, not to mention your dexterity in holding on to the child while pleading so beautifully with Lord Swanton.”

  Mrs. Williams’s color heighte
ned. She raised her chin. “The audience believed it.”

  Had Leonie obtained a closer or clearer view, she wouldn’t have believed it. Now, even in a dimly lit room, the evidence was plain. All Noirots and DeLuceys were actors in some degree, and a few had even gone upon the stage. But family talent or no, Leonie had seen enough theatrical performances to recognize, in the way the woman carried herself and spoke, signs of one who’d trod the boards from an early age. Many actors couldn’t shed their stage mannerisms altogether.

  “Somebody paid you to perform,” she said. “And you needed the money.” She glanced at Lisburne, who stood guard by the door to the stairs, his pose deceptively casual, his face wearing the beautiful-but-stupid look.

  Which showed how not stupid he was. He understood she was trying to win the woman’s trust and he was doing what he could to appear harmless.

  “I’d always been able to look after myself and my daughter,” Mrs. Williams said. “I was with a good company. We toured the provinces. I had work, and nobody asked awkward questions about Bianca. Quite the contrary. She was a draw. The audiences love an infant prodigy.”

  Her gaze went to the back room. No doubt the child slept there.

  “I was Mrs. Williams, in any event,” she said, her voice lowered. “None of my fellow actors asked where Mr. Williams was. Bianca doesn’t know. She thinks Papa is touring in America. The other night, when we were going to Vauxhall, I told her we’d be playacting. But we weren’t, really.”

  Lisburne started to take a step away from the door, then subsided. His voice was mild when he said, “Not really playacting?”

  Again the woman looked toward the room where her child slept.

  “If you’ve been wronged,” Leonie said, “Lord Swanton wants to make it right.”

  “But his lordship hasn’t come, has he?” Mrs. Williams said.

  “Do you want him to?” Leonie said.

  Mrs. Williams looked from her to Lisburne. Then she moved away and gently closed the bedroom door.

  When she returned to them, she returned the scrapbook to its place on the table. “If I ever imagined Bianca’s father would carry me away on his white charger, I had my eyes opened when I told him I was expecting,” she said.

  “He offered no help at all?” Leonie said. This didn’t sound like Swanton.

  Mrs. Williams laughed. “I’d be helping him, more like. Maybe I’m not good enough for the great London theaters, but I’m good enough to find work easily elsewhere. Good enough not to be at any man’s beck and call.”

  She threw Lisburne a defiant look. He only blinked stupidly, like the harmless aristocratic idiot he wasn’t.

  Mrs. Williams went on more rapidly, in the way people do when they’ve bottled up feelings for too long, “As I said, I’d joined a good company. Bianca and I did well. Then in May I fell ill and couldn’t work. My colleagues helped as much as they could, but I seemed only to grow weaker and weaker, good for nothing. I had to let them go on without me. We were in Portsmouth then. I was running out of belongings to pawn. I used the little I had left to pay our way to London. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do but appeal to Bianca’s father.”

  “You wrote to him,” Leonie said. “And he ignored you.”

  “Oh, no,” the actress said. “I know about these gentlemen and their lawyers. I couldn’t let him put me off by proxy, with affidavits and threats, could I? I went into a bookshop and found out his direction in Boyle’s Court Guide. I went to his lodgings in the morning when I knew he’d be abed. I pretended to be a servant who’d brought a message to the wrong house. I was so prettily embarrassed. His servant flirted with me, and I flirted back, and found out where the master was going that day.”

  It was the same as Sophy would have done. Or Leonie. Or any Noirot or DeLucey. Pretend to be someone else. Play on others’ weaknesses.

  Her mind on her sisters, it took Leonie a moment to notice the change in Lisburne, the way the tension went out of him. Then she realized: Whomever Bianca belonged to, it definitely wasn’t Swanton. Among other clues, the poet didn’t live in hired lodgings, but in the Marquess of Lisburne’s villa in the Regent’s Park.

  “I lay in wait for him at the British Institution,” Mrs. Williams said. “But I hadn’t realized he’d be with a great crowd of people. I waited what seemed an eternity, trying to think of a way to get him alone, when he and his friend moved away from the others. By this time, you’d left, and Lord Swanton and the others had gone into the next room. You may be sure my two gentlemen whisked me out of sight of their fine friends. Then we had a long talk. He said he hadn’t any money. I said he’d better get some, or I’d make scenes from one end of London to the other, haunting him like Banquo’s ghost.”

  “But he might have had you arrested,” Leonie said. The law was always on the side of the privileged. They weren’t to be annoyed or harassed.

  “I was desperate enough to risk it, Miss Noirot. He knows the kind of scene I’m capable of making. And I knew he didn’t want anybody to know about me.” Mrs. Williams smiled crookedly. “Not that my strength is up to haunting him as I threatened to do. But he doesn’t know that. The trouble is, even the greatest Thespian can’t get blood from a stone. I should have realized he’d be sponging off others and borrowing on expectations—of what, I can’t say. His idea of a financial plan is waiting for the next tumble of dice.”

  By now it was clear who the culprits were: the same two men who’d spirited Mrs. Williams out of Vauxhall.

  Leonie glanced at Lisburne, who merely looked about the room, apparently indifferent, though his posture told her otherwise.

  “I saw how hopeless it was with him,” Mrs. Williams went on. “I saw how foolish I was to think he’d help me. When his friend suggested I try a scene with the poet, what choice had I? He said Lord Lisburne would pay handsomely to make me go away.”

  “For somebody else’s child?” he said. “If word got about, every unmarried mama in London would be at my door.”

  “For twenty pounds, I’ll go away,” she told him. She lifted her chin. “I would have left London by now if I could. I’ve had a stomach full of him and his friends and their brilliant ideas. He promised to arrange matters with you or the poet. But it’s been days and I’ve had no word from him. I need to pay my rent, and my daughter and I must eat.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred pounds,” Lisburne said. “But strings are attached.”

  Mrs. Williams was a good actress, as she’d said. If she was frightened of exposure or arrest, she hid it well, from Lisburne, in any event. But she couldn’t completely hide her shock when he offered a hundred pounds.

  She’d thought twenty pounds was an immense amount. He knew some men paid no more than twenty shillings a year to support their bastards.

  Lisburne said, “First, I want the father’s name. We know it’s one of two men.”

  He saw the struggle in her face, between need and fear. “If I tell you, I’ll have no hold over him,” she said. “They warned me—”

  “They’re bullies,” Lisburne said. “Leave them to me.”

  “I can’t risk exposing him,” she said. “By law, the child belongs to the father. He could take her away.” She bit her lip. “He cares nothing for her. He’d send Bianca to a charity school and forget about her.”

  “Let me deal with them,” Lisburne said.

  “Never mind,” Leonie said. “It doesn’t matter which man it is.”

  Lisburne looked at her. He wasn’t sure what she had in mind. He was sure she’d arrived at it through logic and calculation, though. “You’re right,” he said.

  Her eyebrows went up.

  “You could be right once,” he said. “Stranger things have happened.”

  Mrs. Williams was fixed on Leonie. “Miss Noirot, I’m sure you understand. I promise you, my conscience has plagu
ed me ever since that night at Vauxhall. Poor Lord Swanton looked so bewildered. But they told me he’d pay me off and the matter would be hushed up.” She wrung her hands. “And now I’ve got myself into a dreadful coil.”

  “We’re going to uncoil it,” Leonie said. “We don’t need to know which of the two is the father. It’s enough to know that they acted in concert to destroy Lord Swanton’s good name as well as wreck others’ reputations. All we need to do is prove this in a way the world will believe.”

  As she spoke, an image formed in Lisburne’s mind. “I have an idea,” he said.

  She was looking at Mrs. Williams. “So have I.”

  The actress looked panicked.

  “One hundred pounds, recollect,” he said. “But we need your help.”

  “I can’t risk losing Bianca,” she said. “Not for any amount of money.”

  “The Marquess of Lisburne outranks those two men,” Leonie said. “Obviously he has a great deal more money. As well as an army of lawyers.”

  “If one of those men tries to take the child—which I very much doubt—I’ll see him lawyered to death,” Lisburne said. “But this matter wants discussion and a plan, and this isn’t the time or place. Mrs. Williams, you seem to have been expecting company. The men in question, I suppose?”

  “They promised to settle matters with Lord Swanton and bring me funds,” the actress said. “All I got for my performance at Vauxhall was a few shillings to pay for this week’s rent and food. I’ve been waiting for them for days.”

  “They won’t help you now,” Leonie said. “You’ve no hold over them. You can hardly make a scene about the real father after naming Lord Swanton in front of hundreds of witnesses.”

  Mrs. Williams stared at her for a moment. Her gaze returned to the bedroom door.

  “We understand why you did it,” Lisburne said gently. “But you’ve put yourself in a dangerous position. Those men could betray you and claim they had nothing to do with the scene at Vauxhall. They’d blacken your name as easily as they did Swanton’s. While I know he won’t press charges against you, I should imagine the scandal would make it difficult for you to find work.”