Vixen in Velvet

  For a moment, listening to her companions, Leonie had forgotten, too.

  Not everything this night was playacting. The children’s fête was genuine enough, and many of its sponsors would have begun arriving soon after the doors opened. Before long, news of Theaker and Meffat’s disgrace would be making the rounds of the supper boxes and travel along the walks. Because of the charity fête, Vauxhall would hold a larger than usual proportion of the Upper Ten Thousand.

  Mrs. Williams looked about her. “Do you know, in the circumstances, I think it politic to make myself scarce,” she said, and quickly suited action to words.

  Meanwhile Lord Swanton summoned the waiter. As soon as he’d paid for their meal and offered a distracted farewell and thanks, the poet made himself scarce as well.

  When they’d both moved out of sight, Leonie made her leisurely way toward the festivities. Lisburne, she knew, would be with the other men. Since her shop had been implicated in the scandal, people would understand her taking part in Theaker and Meffat’s exposure.

  But beyond that, she’d be most unwise to let herself be seen in Lisburne’s company. After tonight’s events, she could expect her customers to start returning. Best not to jeopardize that by arousing suspicions that her participation in the unmasking wasn’t purely a business matter.

  She had to trust Tom Foxe to resist printing Theaker’s insinuations about Lisburne and her. But Foxe owed her a great favor. Rarely did he get to actually witness the beau monde’s inner workings.

  She supposed she ought to go home. But the last time she’d been to Vauxhall, she hadn’t been able to enjoy it.

  She could indulge herself for a little while. It was early yet, and since this was a charity event, at higher prices, the chances of encountering drunken riffraff . . .

  The sound of familiar laughter broke her train of thought.

  It came from nearby, but it was hard to pinpoint. She had paused near the orchestra, which was playing at the moment. Many people were dancing.

  She saw Lady Gladys waltzing with Lord Flinton.

  Leonie walked a little nearer to the dancing.

  Her ladyship looked very well, in a shade of copper not all women could wear successfully. As she’d done time and again, Marcelline had created the illusion of a smaller waist, this time with judicious use of a V-line above and an upside-down V below, where the robe opened over the dress. Pretty embellishments softened the severity of the lines.

  Equally important, though, was Lady Gladys’s mien. She carried herself with confidence and good nature. Her face would never be pretty but her smile was, as was the sparkle in her eyes.

  Lord Flinton seemed to be captivated.

  Leonie had dressed elegantly, of course, for tonight’s performance. Knowing she looked well always increased her confidence. More important, one must advertise the shop’s wares whenever possible. But she’d never had a chance to watch her protégée at a social event. And so she made herself inconspicuous, in the way she and her sisters had learned to do, and slipped in among the bystanders to observe her and her sister’s handiwork.

  When the dance was over, Lord Flinton escorted Lady Gladys back to her chaperons—two matrons who seemed not much older than their charges—and others of their party.

  Lady Alda was there, in an unbecoming puce gown that looked horribly like the work of Mrs. Downes’s shop—also known as Dowdy’s—which fancied itself a Maison Noirot rival. As Lady Gladys rejoined her group, Lady Alda made a remark, and Lady Gladys answered with uplifted eyebrow.

  Leonie drew nearer, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then Lady Gladys laughed, and whatever she was saying caused the others to gather about her.

  Leonie moved closer.

  Lady Gladys was reciting a comic poem. She was acting it out, much in the way Leonie had done at the New Western Athenaeum with “The Second Son.”

  I have sung to a thousand;

  And danced with no fewer;

  And sighed in the hearing

  Of hundreds, I’m sure.

  But my sighs and my songs

  Have all failed most outrageously;

  Nor have my poor toes

  Turned out more advantageously;

  And the season—the season—

  It’s nearly all over;

  And spite of my schemings,

  I can’t get a lover.

  To archery meetings

  In green have I—

  —have I—

  She faltered and broke off as a gentleman advanced upon the group. He was a tall, slender gentleman who wore his flaxen hair overlong and dressed theatrically. The hair, as he swept off his hat, was tousled. His coat was a bit rumpled, and Leonie knew his trousers had a rip at the knee, thanks to colliding with the floor when he tackled Sir Roger Theaker.

  The orchestra having paused, Leonie could make out some of the exchange, though Lord Swanton’s voice didn’t carry as clearly as Lady Gladys’s did.

  But Leonie had no trouble perceiving that he was speaking and everybody else was behaving as though he was a snake charmer and they a basket of cobras. She saw his color rise as he spoke. Something about “do me the honor.” Lady Gladys was blushing, too, the deep pink washing down over her well-displayed bosom.

  The orchestra began playing again.

  And Lord Swanton led her out into the dancing area.

  And everybody who knew them simply stood watching in disbelief as Lord Swanton danced with Lady Gladys Fairfax. For a time the pair was silent. But at last her ladyship said something. His lordship looked at her for a moment. Then he laughed. The bystanders, their friends and family and acquaintances, looked at one another.

  Then, by degrees, they made up pairs, and began to dance. All except Lady Alda, who walked away in a huff.

  From behind Leonie came a low, familiar voice. “Well, it seems he knows how to further his acquaintance with a girl, after all.”

  Lisburne had watched Leonie much in the way he’d watched her at the British Institution. Then, though, she’d seemed to belong. At present, she stood on the fringes of the crowd, and it seemed to him that she stood on the outside looking in, like a shopgirl standing outside a great house where a party was in process.

  No one seemed to notice her, which made no sense, even given the extraordinary sight of Swanton dancing with Gladys.

  How could anybody fail to notice Leonie? Tonight she wore a blue gown of some silk as light as a cloud. Enormous sleeves as usual, and one of those vast shawl sorts of things that covered the tops of the sleeves and made women’s shoulders seem enormous. It tucked into her belt, which, in contrast to the sleeves and skirt, seemed to circle a waist no bigger than a thimble. She’d tied a lacy thing about her neck, with a bow at her throat and tassels hanging from the corners of the lacy thing. Her coiffure rose in a fantastic arrangement of knots and braids adorned with ribbons and flowers.

  A dizzying vision, and the more so because he knew what was underneath. He knew what she felt like under his hands. He knew what her skin smelled and tasted like . . .

  But if he thought about that he wouldn’t be able to think at all.

  And it seemed he needed to.

  Why wasn’t she dancing with the others? She ought to be one of them. One sister was a duchess. The other was a countess.

  And she was . . . a lady.

  How obvious that had been when she’d stood in the theater with Dulcie Williams.

  Dulcie was a decent enough actress, and no doubt did a good job of playing ladies on the stage. She wasn’t vulgar. On the contrary.

  But she wasn’t a lady.

  Leonie was a lady.

  It seemed so obvious now.

  That pig Theaker.

  Any idea who your pretty vixen is, really? Who any of them are, her and her sisters?

  Lisburne had me
t only two of them but reason told him they must be three extraordinary women.

  And this one had astounding self-control.

  She didn’t turn at the sound of his voice, and if he hadn’t got into the habit of watching her so closely he wouldn’t have discerned the slight change in her posture, the alertness.

  “One can only hope her ladyship won’t toy with his affections,” she said.

  “This doesn’t mean you’ve won our wager,” he said. “Swanton’s been infatuated with Gladys’s voice this age.”

  “Has he been, indeed?” Finally she looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and innocent.

  “He falls in love with appalling frequency,” he said. “If he hadn’t been occupied with fending off admirers and writing new poetry to make them love him even more hopelessly—and possibly go into declines in droves—I daresay he’d have fallen in love a dozen times at least by now. But fame is distracting. I’m so relieved to see he’s returned to normal.”

  “Was he always violent before, do you mean?”

  “Violent emotions,” he said.

  “When was the last time he tried to kill a man?” she said.

  A pause, though Lisburne didn’t have to search his memory for the answer.

  “Never,” he said. “I didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “I see a Botticelli in my future,” she said.

  “He’s not going to offer for Gladys, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “One of them will,” she said.

  “Possibly,” he said. “Eventually. But the Season is nearly over.”

  “ ‘The season—the season—/It’s nearly all over;/and spite of my schemings,/I can’t get a lover.’ ”

  “You’ve got one,” he said, dropping his voice.

  “It’s a poem,” she said. “Lady Gladys was reciting it, to the enraged confusion of Lady Alda—exactly as I suggested. Call me Pygmalion.”

  “Dance with me, Pygmalion,” Lisburne said.

  Her gaze went to the couples whirling about in front of the orchestra, then came back to him. “I can’t,” she said. “It’s bad for business.”

  “It’s Vauxhall,” he said, “not Almack’s. Once they spot you, all the other fellows will ask you, too. But I should like to be . . . first.”

  Again.

  Always.

  And that was when he realized how much trouble he was in.

  Chapter Sixteen

  We waltz! and behold her,

  Her head on my shoulder,

  Cheeks meeting, eyes greeting, hearts beating, and thus

  I twist her and twirl her,

  And whisk her and whirl her—

  We whirl round the room till the room whirls round us!

  —The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, 1826

  Lisburne made a bow so extravagantly beautiful, Leonie couldn’t help laughing. In answer she gave him the extreme version of the famous Noirot curtsey. It was a theatrical performance of a curtsey, a flurry of silk and lace as she floated down, down, down like a ballerina, then rose up again “like Venus rising from the waves,” someone had once said.

  Then his arm went round her waist and he whirled her into the crowd of dancers, and all her sensible thoughts flew away, up into the boughs of the trees among the colored lamps and up among the stars, to look down on her from afar.

  She’d had more than one triumph tonight. She’d recovered her shop’s and the Milliners’ Society’s reputation. She’d helped a potential tragedy of a girl become the belle of the ball, dancing with—unless Leonie had entirely lost her ability to read people—her heart’s desire. She’d helped Dulcie Williams out of the trouble she’d got herself into.

  Leonie was entitled to celebrate a little. She was entitled to forget her anxieties, at least for one dance.

  “Such a trial you continue to be!” he said.

  Startled, she looked up at him. But he was smiling.

  “An enigma, or a puzzle at the very least,” he said. “Where did a dressmaker learn to dance so well? Among other unlikely accomplishments, like Greek and Roman mythology and Byron’s poetry. And when do you find time to practice?”

  “I doubt any woman needs much practice to dance well with you,” she said.

  “Do you accuse me of making my partners look good?” he said.

  “It’s a waltz,” she said. “A man takes hold of a girl and she must go where he takes her. You waltz in the same decisive way you do everything else. I’m certain you would never allow me to trip over your feet.”

  “And risk scuffing my boots’ brilliant shine?”

  “In spite of my profession, I’m overcome sometimes with the wild desire—”

  “This sounds promising—”

  “To scuff your boots and rumple your neckcloth and—”

  “Extremely promising.” His voice had deepened.

  “But then I think of Polcaire,” she said.

  “To the devil with Polcaire,” he said.

  “And I can’t do it in public, in any case,” she said.

  “An excellent point,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere private. Later. Soon, but after this. Because your dress was meant to be seen in motion. It was meant for waltzing, especially with me, because my attire complements it so well. For which we have Polcaire to thank.”

  “So I assumed,” she said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” he said. “When he put out the blue waistcoat, I said, ‘A certain lady remarked particularly on the touches of green, which complement her attire.’ And he said, ‘But my lord cannot wear green with that coat, and I have laid out the blue waistcoat.’ Which only proves he is an oracle, because here you are in blue—”

  “I think I rather love Polcaire,” she said.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said. “I worry constantly that a woman will lead him astray or throw him into a state of careless desolation.”

  “I doubt he has it in him to be careless,” she said. “I suspect he’s an artistic genius like Marcelline. Why didn’t he become a tailor? The hours are shorter, and with his artistic eye, he could make a great fortune.”

  “Because he never had the temperament to be a tailor’s apprentice, I suppose,” he said. “Or because so many tailors’ customers attach so little importance to paying their bills. I believe the late King bankrupted several vendors. I know Beau Brummell was thousands of pounds in debt to his tailors. And that was nothing to what he owed his friends.”

  “That was a long time ago,” she said. “A more innocent time. There are ways of making sure customers pay their bills. Or perhaps you need to have worked in Paris to learn the knack. Still, I’ll admit it requires a degree of ruthlessness some artists can’t stomach.” Marcelline, for instance. Sophy. As ruthless and single-minded as they could be in other ways, they avoided all the nasty money issues.

  “As I suspected, the waltz has aroused in you romantic feelings,” he said.

  She swallowed. “I’m not romantic.”

  “So you delude yourself,” he said. “But when you speak of your ruthless ways with customers in arrears, my heart pounds.”

  She remembered the way he’d made her read the mercer’s bill . . . and what had followed. Her skin took fire and the heat raced through her veins. It pooled in her belly and melted her brain.

  And because her brain was melted, she lost track of words and had no clever answer. She was too aware of his hands, one so warm at her waist and the other clasping hers. She stared at his neckcloth and tried to be sensible. She tried to think of the shop and her real life.

  But she was in his arms, and waltzing was so perilously like making love. She could see his chest rise and fall, and when he spoke she heard the quickened rate of his breathing. She was aware of the strength of his long legs as they brushed against her dress, a
s he led her, so surely and easily, round and round. She was aware of the place about them dissolving, as in a dream, to a blur of music and lights like colored stars, and in the midst of this, the shadowlike dark colors of the men’s dress and the rainbow of women’s summer dresses, a galaxy swirling about them.

  She gave up fighting and let the night’s sensual joys sweep her away. For this moment she would let herself be lost in the beauty of the fantasy world about her, set to music, real music.

  Here she danced among men and women of the upper ranks as well as many of lesser importance. She wasn’t dancing with one of her sisters or a seamstress but with a man who might be the prince in any girl’s romantic fantasies. She danced with the man of her dreams. The man she’d fallen in love with, un-sensible she.

  “In Paris,” she said, “we danced. At La Chaumière and Montagne Belleville and the Prado and elsewhere. Even seamstresses learn how to dance. Certainly they ought to, and I take care to have my Milliners’ Society girls learn. Dancing gives one grace and physical confidence. It’s one of life’s great pleasures, obtainable without great expense or difficulty. To dance, one doesn’t need a special place or an orchestra. A piano will do. Or a guitar. Or one can sing or hum. My sisters and I have danced to organ grinders in the street, playing Rossini.”

  He didn’t answer right away, and that silence between them sounded louder than the music. Then he said so gently, “I think you dance so well because you love it. And because music appeals to your mathematical mind. And because . . .” He shook his head. “No, no more. I believe I was on the brink of poetry.”

  And she was on the brink of telling him too much, explaining herself, her past, the world she’d come from. Who she was, really. As though this night wasn’t a dream, a momentary aberration in the real business of life. As though they had a future together.

  She knew better. It was better to leave than to be left, and the longer she put it off, the harder the parting. Better to start as soon as possible, teaching herself how to fall out of love.