Silk Is for Seduction

  The woman ran past him. She was carrying something, but he did not try to stop her. Noirot was struggling to get up, and the fire was racing from the window curtains to shelves of books and papers. One corner of the room was in flames already. His mind flashed over the materials he’d seen in the showroom. There would be more materials of their trade elsewhere, in storerooms and workrooms: heaps of highly combustible wrapping papers and boxes as well as cloth of all kinds.

  Already the flames were too high for him to smother easily.

  He made his decision in a fraction of a heartbeat. He couldn’t chance fighting the fire. In minutes they’d be trapped in an inferno.

  Clutching the precious portfolio, Pritchett pushed through the rear door into the yard, and ran without once looking back, all the way to Cary Street. Only then did she stop to catch her breath. She saw the smoke rising from the shop, and she felt a pang. She hoped the child wasn’t hurt. She’d planned so carefully, then madame had thrown everything into disarray with her abrupt decision to send the seamstresses home early. Pritchett had chased them out, saying she’d tidy the workroom. When the duke came, she’d breathed a prayer of thanks. She’d thought he’d keep madame occupied for a time.

  But it had all gone wrong, and now not only madame but his grace knew what she’d done.

  Never mind, never mind. She had the patterns, and Mrs. Downes’s money would allow her to start fresh elsewhere. Frances Pritchett would take a new name, and nobody would be the wiser.

  She glanced upward again. Above the rooftops, against the starry sky, the smoke hovered like a black thundercloud.

  Marcelline saw the flames, and stared for a moment in shocked disbelief. Then, “Lucie!” she screamed.

  Clevedon was dragging her up from the floor, dragging her to the door. She heard shouts from upstairs. They’d heard the noise or smelled the smoke

  “Out!” Clevedon shouted. “Everybody out! Now!”

  A thumping and clatter from above. More shouting.

  “Everybody!” he roared.

  Marcelline started toward the stairs. He pulled her back.

  “Lucie!” she cried. She heard more noise from above. “Why don’t they come?” Had the fire risen so fast? Were they trapped? “Lucie!”

  But he was dragging and pushing her down the passage toward the front door. “No!” she cried. “My daughter!”

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  Then she heard the footsteps on the stairs and the voices.

  Behind her came his voice: “Out, out, everybody. Quickly. Noirot, for God’s sake, take them all outside.”

  In the dark, smoke-filled passage, she couldn’t see them. But she heard Lucie’s voice, and her sisters’ and Millie’s.

  Clevedon shoved her. “Out!” he shouted, his voice savage.

  She went out, and it was only then, when they were all out of the smoke and confusion that she discovered Lucie wasn’t with them after all.

  “Where’s Lucie?” Marcelline shouted over the din of panicked neighbors and the clatter of carriages and neighing horses.

  “But she was with us.”

  “She was just here.”

  “I had her, ma’am,” Millie said. “But she broke away—and I thought she was running to you.”

  No. No. Marcelline’s gaze went to the burning building. Her mind shrank from the thought.

  “Lucie!” she shouted. Her sisters echoed her. The street was filling with gawkers. Her gaze raced over the crowd but no, there was no sign of her. There wouldn’t be. Lucie wasn’t brave at night. She wouldn’t run into a crowd of strangers.

  “The doll!” Sophy cried. “She wanted to take the doll. There wasn’t time.”

  “But she couldn’t have gone back,” Leonie said, her voice high, panicked.

  Marcelline started to run back into the shop. Her sisters grabbed her. She fought.

  “Marcelline, look,” Sophy said in a hard voice.

  Flames boiled in the windows. The showroom was a bonfire of garish colors made of silks and satins and laces and cottons.

  “Lucie!” Marcelline screamed. “Lucie!”

  Clevedon had counted heads as they passed through the door. He’d heard their voices outside the building. He was sure they were all safely out.

  But he’d scarcely stepped out onto the pavement when he heard Noirot scream for her child.

  No. Dear God, no. Don’t let her be in there.

  He ran back in.

  “Lucie!” he shouted. “Erroll!”

  The fire was spreading over the ground floor and flowing upward, hissing, crackling. Through the smoke, he could scarcely make out the stairs. He found them mainly by memory, and ran up.

  “Lucie! Erroll!”

  He kept calling, straining to hear, and at last, as he felt his way along the first-floor passage, he heard the terrified cry.

  “Lucie!” he shouted. “Where are you, child?”

  “Mama!”

  The smoke was thick and choking. He could barely hear her above the fire’s noise. He very nearly missed her. Had he passed that spot a moment sooner or later, he wouldn’t have caught the muffled cry. But where was it coming from? “Lucie!”

  “Mama!”

  He searched frantically, and it was partly by sight and partly by sound and partly by moving his hands over the place where the cry seemed to come from that led him to the low door. It was under the stairs leading to the second floor. She might have hidden or played there before, or it simply might have been the first door she found.

  He wrenched the door open.

  Darkness. Silence.

  No, please. Don’t let her be dead. Give me a chance, please.

  Then he made out the little form, huddled in a corner.

  He scooped her up. She had the doll clutched tightly against her chest, and she was shaking. “It’s all right,” he said, his voice rough—with the smoke, with fear, with relief. She turned her face into his coat and sobbed.

  He cradled her head in his hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “Everything will be all right.”

  Everything would be all right, he promised himself. It had to be. She would not die. He wouldn’t let her.

  Behind him the fire hissed and crackled, racing toward them.

  Marcelline fought bitterly, but they wouldn’t let her go back for Lucie. Now it was too late.

  The fire engine had come quickly, but not quickly enough. The hose poured water into the shop, but the flames had told her how fierce and fast the fire was. With luck, they could keep it from spreading to the adjoining shops.

  As to hers . . .

  Nothing could have survived that furious fire. She didn’t want to survive, either, but they wouldn’t let her go back.

  She was sick, so sick that her legs would not hold her. She sank to her knees on the pavement, her arms wrapped about her, shivering as though she were naked. She couldn’t weep. The pain burned too deep for that. She only rocked there, in a black misery beyond any she’d ever known. Mama, Papa, Charlie, Cousin Emma—what she’d felt, losing them, was mere sorrow.

  She was only dimly, distantly aware of her sisters on either side—their touch on her head, her shoulders . . . the sound of their sobs.

  Around her was pandemonium and she was in Hell, and Hell was a black eternity where the only sensation was pain, sharp as a knife.

  Lucie. Lucie. Lucie.

  Clevedon had to decide in an instant, and he decided against the stairs. The fire seemed to be moving from back to front on the western side of the building. That meant a conflagration might await them at the foot of the stairs. He went the other way, to the back, but keeping to the side of the passage where he’d found Lucie, in hopes that the floor would hold. Above the showroom and workrooms, packed with combustibles, the fire would burn more fiercely.

 
That was the gamble, at any rate.

  “Hold tight,” he told Lucie. “And don’t look.” Her arms tightened about his neck and she buried her face in his neckcloth. She didn’t release the doll, and he was aware of one of its limbs tapping his shoulder blade. A bizarre thing to notice, and he wanted to break the doll in pieces for the trouble it had caused, but she needed it, and the doll was the least of their problems.

  He hurried to the back, keeping close to the wall to find his way, because the way was utter darkness. But he remembered seeing a back door on the ground floor. That would give way to a yard. All he needed was a back stair or a window or even a light closet, which would contain a window.

  He came to the end of the passage, and his outstretched hand struck plaster. He’d found no door frame on the way. Now his hand met only flat wall.

  No. There had to be a way out.

  The smoke was thickening, the heat unbearable. Holding fast to Lucie, he slid one hand along the hot wall and struck wood—a window. He didn’t even try to wrench it open.

  “Hold very tight, sweet,” he told Lucie. “Don’t look and don’t let go, no matter what.”

  Then he kicked as hard as he could, and glass shattered, and wood, too. He kicked and kicked, knocking out the glass and the crosspieces. The night was dark, and he looked down, dreading what he’d find: a long leap down, for these buildings rarely offered any purchase for climbing. But his luck held, and below, he made out the outline of the yard’s back wall. Circling Lucie with his arms, to shield her from sharp ends of glass and wood, he climbed over the sill and dropped to the wall, then down, onto the roof of a privy on the other side of the wall. Though the air was smoky, it was cooler, and he could make out the faint glow of a street lamp through the smoke.

  Yes, he said silently. Thank you.

  His throat closed up and, cradling the child he’d feared he couldn’t save, he wept.

  Marcelline was sunk so deep in grief that she scarcely noticed anything else.

  At some point, though, she became aware of the atmosphere about her lightening, and the clamor abating. The street grew so hushed that she could hear clearly the hiss and gurgle of water streaming into the shop and the voices of the fire company men giving orders.

  Even while she listened, their voices subsided, too, and someone cried, “Look! Look there!”

  Noise again, but different. Glad noise. Cheering.

  She felt hands on her shoulders, pulling. She lifted her head and thought at first it was a dream, a cruel dream.

  That could not be Clevedon . . . that great, hulking, blackened and ragged mess . . . carrying . . . carrying a blackened bundle. Little legs dangling out from the edge of a dress . . . rumpled stockings . . . one foot missing a shoe.

  Hands were pulling Marcelline to her feet and she shook her head and closed her eyes and opened them again. But it wasn’t a dream.

  It was Clevedon, and that was Lucie in his arms.

  Alive?

  Marcelline couldn’t make her feet move. She only stood, swaying and confused, like one come back from the dead.

  He walked out of the nightmare—the black monster behind him, flames still flickering in the windows.

  He walked toward her, his big hand cradling Lucie’s head. She had her arms wrapped about his neck, her face buried in his chest. But as he neared, Marcelline saw the doll dangling from Lucie’s hands. She was holding tightly, to him, to the doll.

  She was alive.

  “Oh,” Marcelline said. And that was all she could say.

  He came to her and then he looked down at the child he held. Taking his hand away from her head, he said, “It’s all right, Erroll. You’re the bravest girl there ever was. You can look now.”

  As he gave her back to her mother he said gruffly, “I made her promise not to look. I thought it best she not see.”

  He’d seen, though. He’d stared in the face of a fiery death. He’d faced it to save her daughter.

  “Thank you,” Marcelline said. Two words. Inadequate, beyond inadequate. But there were no words. These were all the language gave her. All else was in her heart, and that could not be said and could never be eradicated.

  The shop stood in blackened ruins. The stench drifted over Chancery Lane and Fleet Street.

  It might have been far worse, Clevedon heard people say. The wind had not carried the fire east to the shop on the other side of Chancery Lane, and the fire engine had arrived in time to stop it from destroying the shop next door.

  He knew it might have been infinitely worse. They might have lost a child.

  Lucie rode her mother’s hip, and Noirot walked with her, back and forth, back and forth, in the street. Now and again her gaze turned upward, to her shop, in ruins.

  Her sisters stood nearby, under a lamp post, standing guard over a paltry pile of belongings they must have grabbed before escaping the house. He watched their gazes swing from the shop to Noirot and back to the shop. The redhead held the doll. Even through the smoky atmosphere choking the gaslight he could read the despair in their faces.

  They’d lost all their materials—the most expensive element of their business—along with all their tools and records. They’d lost everything.

  But the child was alive.

  He was aware of the ink-stained fellows from the various London journals converging on the scene. He ought to make himself scarce. The night was dark, the smoke made it darker, and with any luck, nobody had recognized him.

  But he couldn’t turn his back on the three women and the little girl, all of them on the street, literally. No shop, no home, no money. He doubted anything could be salvaged from the blackened building.

  Still, they had fire insurance, else the engine wouldn’t have come. And he knew that Noirot was practical and mercenary to an aggravating degree. She would have money in a bank, or safely invested.

  But money in the bank wouldn’t put a roof over her this night, and he doubted she could have saved enough to rebuild her business in short order.

  He stood for a moment, telling himself he couldn’t linger. He’d already dishonored his friendship with Clara and betrayed her love. But only he and Noirot knew that. What Clara didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, and he wouldn’t hurt her for worlds.

  Find another way to help them, he counseled himself. There were discreet ways. One could aid those in need without courting notoriety. It was notoriety, furthermore, that would do Noirot no good.

  He remembered what the other woman had screeched at her: Everyone knows you’re the duke’s whore. Everyone knows you lift your skirts for him, practically under his bride’s nose.

  He remembered what Noirot had told him, early on: What self-respecting lady would patronize a dressmaker who specializes in seducing the lady’s menfolk?

  It was time to leave, long past time. The sooner he left, the sooner he could send help.

  Marcelline was weary, so weary. What now? Where would they go?

  She ought to know what to do, but her brain was numb. She could only hold her daughter and stare at the black ruin of her business, her home, the life she’d built for her family.

  “Let me hold her for a bit,” Sophy said. “You’re tired.”

  “No, not yet.” Lucie still trembled, and she hadn’t said a word since Clevedon carried her out.

  “Come.” Sophy put her hands out. “Erroll, will you come to Aunt Sophy, and let Mama rest for a moment?”

  Lucie lifted her head.

  “Come,” said Sophy.

  Lucie reached for her, and Sophy unhitched her from Marcelline’s hip and planted the child on her own. “There,” she said. “It’s all right, love. We’re all safe.” She started to walk with her, murmuring comfort.

  Leonie said, “We’ve insurance. We’ve money in the bank. But above all, we’re all alive.”

  Completely true, M
arcelline thought. They were all alive. Lucie was alive, unhurt. Everything else . . .

  Oh, but it would be hard. They hadn’t enough insurance. They hadn’t enough money in the bank. They would have to start over. Again.

  Leonie put her arms about her. Marcelline couldn’t cry, though she wanted to. It would be a relief to cry. But tears wouldn’t come. She could only rest her head on her sister’s shoulder. She had her daughter, she told herself. She had her sisters. Right now, that was all that mattered.

  All the same, they couldn’t stay like this, in the street. She needed to think. She raised her head and moved away and straightened her posture. “We’d better go to an inn,” she said. “We can send to Belcher.” He was their solicitor.

  “Yes, of course,” Leonie said. “He’ll advance us some money—enough to pay for lodgings, I daresay.”

  This area of London, where the Inns of Court lay, was the lawyers’ domain. Their solicitor’s office was only a short distance away. The question was whether they’d find him at his office at this hour.

  “We’ll find a ticket porter, and send to Belcher,” Marcelline said. “Sophy, give Lucie back to me. We need you to talk sweet to one of the reporters, and get a pencil and paper to write a note to Belcher. I think I saw your friend Tom Foxe in the crowd.”

  While Marcelline took Lucie back, she searched the area for the publisher of Foxe’s Morning Spectacle.

  She became aware of a flurry of motion.

  The Duke of Clevedon emerged from the shadows, Tom Foxe hot on his heels. “Your grace, I know our readers will be eager to hear of your heroic rescue—”

  “Foxe!” Sophy cried. “Precisely the man I was looking for.”

  “But his grace—”

  “My dear, you know he won’t talk to the likes of you.” Sophy led him away.