Vixen in Velvet

  “I’ve had plenty of practice,” she said. “My sisters are geniuses, but they’re not concise.” Before he could comment she went on, “Monday night is rather short notice. Most of the ton will be engaged already.”

  “While Swanton’s star is in the ascendant, people will make time,” he said. “We start early, which allows his admirers to listen to him for an hour, then go on to their other amusements. But it will be all new poetry, always a draw. Well, then, will it do?”

  She put her pen back into its place. “Certainly. This is most generous of his lordship.”

  “You rescued his lecture the other night,” he said. “And then there were the things the girls made. Very touching.”

  “Yes, I daresay.” She straightened away from the desk, getting away from him so smoothly that he didn’t realize it until she’d done it, and the tantalizing scent was gone. “I expect you shall want one of the patronesses of the Milliners’ Society to put in an appearance.”

  He resisted the urge to draw near again. He oughtn’t to have been breathing down her neck in the first place. He knew better than to be so obvious.

  “And she ought to make a little speech,” he said. “To solicit additional donations. Men are more likely to empty their pockets if an attractive woman is onstage, asking them.”

  “It will have to be me,” she said. “Marcelline’s unwell and Sophy’s away. But I’m good at talking about money and getting it out of people, so that’s all right. Well, then, my lord.” She set down her pen and stepped back from the desk. “I do thank you, indeed. Will there be anything else?”

  The dismissal couldn’t have been clearer.

  He told himself he wasn’t provoked and certainly needn’t provoke in retaliation, like a child. Yet he took his time. First he reread her notes, then he looked over the items on her desk.

  “Did you forget a part of your plan?” she said. “Mistake the time? The entrance fee?”

  “No, it’s all in order.” He stepped away. “All in order.”

  But she wasn’t. She was still smoldering away.

  Because of Gladys.

  Then he remembered the whispery voice behind the fan.

  “There was only—” He broke off. “But no, I’m sure it’s of no possible interest to you. Idle gossip.”

  He sensed rather than saw her come to sharp attention. He knew little about dressmaking but he understood business far better than he let on. For business people, gossip was seldom truly idle. If Sir A was on the brink of bankruptcy or Lord B was growing tired of his mistress or Lady C was hiding gigantic gambling debts from her husband, their tradesmen wanted to be the first to know.

  “Well, then, I shan’t keep you,” she said cheerfully.

  He ought to go. Her business errors weren’t his problem—and she couldn’t wait to be rid of him. He started for the door.

  One, two, three paces. He was reaching for the handle when Lady Alda’s blue and pink fan fluttered in his mind’s eye and he heard her whisper, all feigned concern.

  Could someone not counsel dear Lady Gladys? It is a great shame she’s put herself into such hands. I shall not say those women are unscrupulous, precisely. And yet . . .

  He stopped and turned back to her. “No, I can’t do it. I can’t go without knowing. Miss Noirot, I’m perishing of curiosity. Tell me you didn’t tell Gladys you’d make her the belle of the ball.”

  She blinked once.

  “You’ve blinked,” he said. “In you that can only be a sign of tremendous shock. Perhaps I ought to have broken the news more gently.”

  “No, no. I was only taken aback at the change of subject.” She shook her head. “I’m not at all shocked. I’d heard they’re already placing bets.”

  “They were all tittering about it at Lady Jersey’s assembly last night,” he said. “Are you saying it’s true? The belle of the ball? Gladys?”

  She donned the politely amiable smile. “You seem to find it inconceivable that Lady Gladys has unfulfilled potential. To you it may seem impossible that anybody not born beautiful and charming could ever win anybody’s heart. Or do I misunderstand?”

  “We’re not talking about anybody,” he said. “We’re talking about Gladys. You can’t be serious.”

  “A young woman’s hopes and dreams are no joking matter to me,” she said. “My livelihood depends on helping her achieve them. In this case, I have every expectation of accomplishing our mutual aims, and all is well in hand. By the time Maison Noirot is done with her, Lady Gladys will need only to crook her finger to have any beau she wants.”

  Leonie wanted to choke him.

  How dare he? That poor girl!

  “This is deranged,” he said. “I thought you were a sensible woman of business.”

  “Pray don’t trouble yourself,” she said. “I know what I’m about, my lord.”

  “No, you don’t know what you’re about,” he said. “You don’t know Gladys.”

  “I know her better than you do,” she said.

  “She has a talent for making trouble wherever she goes,” he said. “The other night she nearly got Val into a duel. She has somehow provoked you to a challenge impossible to meet, and led you in far over your head.”

  “Led me?” she said with a smile. “Led me.” The notion of any Noirot being led was hilarious.

  “You’ll become a laughingstock,” he said. “Your business will suffer. And my cousin Gladys will never be grateful for any efforts you exert on her behalf. She won’t thank you for any sacrifices you make for her. What she’ll do is blame Maison Noirot for not doing what is completely impossible to do!”

  “You underestimate me,” she said. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

  There was a short, taut silence.

  He eyed her up and down.

  Sizing her up.

  She was used to arrogant men looking her over. But he might as well have put his hands where his glittering green gaze went. She grew hot and confused. And so she made a mistake.

  She returned the favor.

  A very stupid mistake, given the perfectly sculpted face and dangerous green eyes and the powerful torso . . . tapering to a taut waist and then the view downward . . . looooong, muscled legs. She felt a wave of dizziness, which she resolutely ignored.

  “By the time you’re done with her,” he said slowly, as slowly as he’d let his gaze run up and down over her like hands. “That’s conveniently vague. This strikes me as a life’s work.”

  She was going to make him pay. The pride of the Noirots and DeLuceys demanded it.

  “Let me see,” she said. She put two fingers to her temple the way he’d done before, pretending to be an idiot. “What is today? The fifteenth. She’ll have gentlemen at her feet by the month’s end.”

  She leaned over the desk to reach for a pencil that had shifted a degree out of alignment with its fellows. The position, she was aware, placed her backside prominently on view. A not so subtle taunt. But then, subtlety was usually wasted on men.

  “At her feet,” he said. His voice had dropped and grown rougher. “In a trifle over a fortnight’s time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Anybody she wants,” he said.

  “Yes.” She fiddled with the pencil, waiting.

  He said, “Would you care to make a wager?”

  She swallowed a smile.

  Madame took her own sweet time placing the pencil in the tray, aligning it with the others.

  He was aware of his hands clenching. She’d taken that pose on purpose, to disorder his wits.

  It worked, too.

  The back of her dress was almost as elaborate as the front: Delicate lace touched the nape of her neck. Thence descended rows of finely pleated muslin alternating with embroidered rows of the same material, in the shape of a V whose point rested on her waist. From under the lace c
ap, stray tendrils of garnet-colored hair drifted near her ears, as though her coiffure was coming undone.

  He knew it wasn’t. The arrangement was for effect, and most effective it was. He wanted to make a wild disorder, of her, of everything. He wanted to make her ledgers crooked and put her pencils where the pens ought to go. He wanted passionately to leave the stopper off the inkwell. He wanted to sweep everything from the desk and bend her over it . . .

  She straightened and came around to face him, making a pretty flurry of white muslin and lace.

  She was a dressmaker, he told himself. She knew how to wield clothes as a weapon. And it worked all too well, like a club to the head.

  She gave him the enigmatic smile, so like the one Botticelli’s Venus wore. “A wager,” she said.

  “Everybody else is doing it,” he said. “Why shouldn’t we?”

  “Because you’ll lose?” she said.

  “Oh, but I’m sure you’ll lose,” he said. “And my mind is wandering over an interesting range of forfeits.”

  “Mine, too,” she said. “Money means nothing to you, so I must use my powers of imagination.”

  “I had higher stakes in mind,” he said. “Nothing so ordinary as money. Something significant.”

  She set her hands on the edge of the desk and leaned back.

  He couldn’t exactly see her calculating. She was too good at not showing what she was about. Yet he knew she was weighing and measuring, and so he calculated, too.

  He sensed the moment when she’d worked out her answer. Yet she waited one moment. Another.

  Playing with him, the vixen.

  Drawing it out, pretending to deliberate.

  She was fascinating.

  He waited.

  Then, “I know,” she said. “The Botticelli.”

  He heard his own gasp, one quick, involuntary intake of breath. He smoothed his face, but he suspected he was too late.

  Whatever else he’d expected, it wasn’t this. Yet it should have been the first thing. The very first thing.

  “You said high stakes,” she said. “I don’t know what it’s worth, but I do know it’s irreplaceable.” She gazed at him with limpid innocence.

  For a moment, the air between them crackled.

  Then he laughed. “I’ve grievously underestimated you, madame. High stakes, indeed. Let’s see. What will you put up against my Botticelli? What’s irreplaceable to you? Time. Profit. Business. Your clients.” He paused for a heartbeat, two. “Well, then, will you stake a fortnight?”

  “A fortnight,” she repeated blankly.

  “With me,” he said. “I want a fortnight.”

  Her blue gaze sharpened then.

  “Of your exclusive attention,” he said. “At a place of my choosing.”

  He couldn’t be sure—she was so skilled at concealment, she seemed even able to control her blushes—but he thought a hint of pink washed her cheeks before it faded.

  “You do understand, don’t you?” he said.

  “I’m not naïve,” she said.

  What he’d seen must have been a blush, because it had washed away completely, leaving her pale. With fear? Good gad, what did she think he’d do to her? With her. But she was a milliner and beautiful. Countless men must have made themselves obnoxious.

  He wasn’t that sort of man, yet he felt as though he’d stepped wrong, and he was aware of heat stealing up his neck—the disagreeable, embarrassed kind of heat.

  “I don’t ravish women, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I had supposed that women stood in line waiting for you to relieve them of their virtue.”

  Then why had she paled?

  Or had he only imagined it? Her color seemed normal now.

  “I want two full weeks of your undivided attention, that’s all,” he said.

  “That’s all?”

  “I should like a fortnight of not taking second or third or eighteenth place to business.”

  “And?” she said.

  He smiled. “You cynic, you.”

  “And?” she said. “Not that it matters, because you’ll lose, but I’m interested to hear what, precisely, you have in mind.”

  “Precisely?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He gazed at her for a moment, his head tipped to one side, considering.

  Then he advanced.

  Lisburne clasped the edge of Leonie’s shoulders, just above the sleeve puffs.

  She stood very still, her heart racing, her gaze fixed on his blindingly white, perfectly tied, folded, and creased neckcloth.

  “Madame,” he said.

  She looked up. That was a mistake.

  She saw his beautiful mouth, turning upward at the corners, turning into a dangerous curve of a smile. She saw his eyes, as green as the sea must have been between Scylla and Charybdis, here and there catching the sun in glints of gold. Dangerous waters, and she—the responsible one—wanted to leap in.

  Then the smile vanished and he bent toward her and kissed her.

  A touch of his lips to hers. Only that, and the world changed, grew infinite and warm, offering a glimpse . . . of something. But it was over before she could tell what it was she glimpsed or felt.

  He started to draw back, then “Blast!” he said.

  It would have been wise to pull away, but she was lost and wondering, unable to be wise.

  He brought his hands to her waist and lifted her straight off the floor, until they were eye to eye. He kissed her again.

  It was more than a touch of his lips, this time. So much more. The sheer physical power of him, the way he lifted her up as easily as he might pluck a flower. He pressed his mouth against hers, firmly this time, like a dare, and she took the dare, though she didn’t know what to do. She’d thought she knew, but the feel and taste of his mouth was sweet and dangerous and entirely beyond the little naughtinesses she’d once called kisses. This was like an undertow.

  She lifted her hands to his shoulders and held on while the world tumbled away. Something pressed against her heart and set feelings into flight, like flocks of startled birds, wings beating as they darted away.

  Only a moment, and it was over. Only a moment like years passing, a lifetime between Before and After.

  He set her down on her feet. She let go of him, and she could still feel the texture of his coat against her palms. The room tilted, like a ship in heavy weather.

  He stared at her for a moment. She stared back while she tried to get her brain back in balance and the crowd of little Leonies in her head cried, Don’t you dare faint!

  “Er, that sort of thing,” he said.

  “I thought so,” she said.

  “Did you?”

  “I’m not naïve,” she said.

  “Really? I could have sworn—”

  “Not experienced,” she said, too hotly. She was not in control. She’d slipped out of control so swiftly that her head was still spinning. But he’d done things to her or she’d done something to herself.

  One thing was painfully clear: She’d made a mistake. No great surprise. She was a Noirot-DeLucey, and being the most sensible one of them all still didn’t count for much. “There’s a difference. Not that it matters either way, because you’ll lose.”

  “I think not,” he said. “And I’m looking forward to furthering your experience.”

  Whatever else Lisburne had expected, he hadn’t expected her to be . . . surely not virginal?

  No, no, that was too absurd. She was a French milliner. From Paris. She was one and twenty, hardly a child. Her sisters had swept two of London’s most sophisticated men off their feet.

  Inexperienced, she’d said. Not quite the same. And yet . . . the tentative way she’d held herself at first and the hint of uncertainty befor
e she’d let go and kissed him with something like assurance, and . . . feeling.

  Perhaps, after all, it was nothing more than uncertainty about a man she scarcely knew. He hadn’t had time to tell, really. So brief a kiss.

  He shook off his doubts and watched her stroll back to the desk in a flutter of ruffles and billowing muslin.

  “We ought to be specific about the terms,” she said, brisk and businesslike once more, while he was still trying to find his balance. “I’ve made general statements, open to interpretation. What would you take as proof?”

  “Proof?” he said.

  “Of Lady Gladys’s conquest of the beau monde.”

  “The entire beau monde?” he said. “I shouldn’t dream of disputing your genius, madame, but I believe that would be a great deal to accomplish in half a month’s time, for any young woman who isn’t Lady Clara Fairfax.”

  She stiffened. The temptation was almost unbearable, to cross the room and kiss the back of her neck until she melted.

  But he’d already rushed his fences.

  He never rushed his fences.

  His patience was prodigious. He enjoyed the game of pursuit as much as the conquest.

  Yet he’d been so hasty and clumsy.

  He made himself think, as he ought to have done earlier. He tried to remember what she’d said.

  Gladys. She’d become so emotional about Gladys.

  “What do you believe Gladys would wish to accomplish?” he said.

  “That is not a sensible question.” She walked round to the back of the desk, as though she knew what he’d been thinking about her neck and wanted a large piece of furniture between them. “You know perfectly well Lady Gladys would be happy if people stopped behaving as though she were one of those horrid little dogs some ladies take everywhere with them.”

  For a moment he couldn’t take it in. Surely Gladys took no notice of others’ reactions to her, any more than she gave a thought to what she said and did to offend and hurt them.

  “Anybody in need of the lady’s goodwill pretends it isn’t foul-tempered, ill-bred, and ugly, and regards it with a pained smile,” she said. “Lady Gladys believes a pained smile is the most kindly reaction she can expect. I aspire to a great deal more than that, my lord. I mean for gentlemen to want her company. I mean for her to receive offers of marriage. I mean for her to have dancing partners who ask her of their own free will, not because their relatives order them to. I mean for her to be invited to not one but several country house parties.”