Don't Tempt Me

  The leaders had broken loose, but some men farther along the street caught them. The wheelers, meanwhile, were wild, one bleeding and clearly maddened by pain and fear, the other in a panic.

  Marchmont shouted orders. A boy ran up and nearly had his head kicked off, but he caught hold of the injured animal. The duke caught the other one and was calming the frantic beast when he heard a familiar voice cry, “Someone fetch a doctor!”

  He looked back and saw Zoe, half under the coach and pulling at the door of the insecurely balanced vehicle.

  “Get away from there!” he shouted. “It’s going to collapse!”

  She ignored him and tugged at someone inside. The trunk bulged and the coach sagged downward.

  “Zoe, damn you, get away from there!”

  To his horror, she crawled under the coach.

  “Someone hold this curst animal!” he shouted.

  All that held up the old coach was the trunk. One wrong move and it would fall…and crush her.

  Someone came and took over the animal. At the same instant, before he could get the wretched girl away from the coach, she gave another pull.

  The trunk gave way.

  The coach seemed to fall so slowly, while he was still lunging for her, before it landed with a great crash and a choking cloud of dust.

  “Zoe!” he roared, and plunged into the wreckage.

  She’d seen the boy hanging out of the door. Zoe feared he was badly injured, but she hadn’t time to check. She pulled him out and dragged him out of the way. An instant later, the coach hit the ground and flew apart.

  “You idiot.” Marchmont’s voice easily penetrated the clamor about her.

  He took the boy from her and carried him into the nearest shop. He demanded a doctor, and one soon arrived. Then he went out and supervised those tending to the horses and damaged coach.

  When a constable arrived, Marchmont ordered the coachman taken into custody and charged with drunkenness, disturbing the King’s peace, and endangering public safety. The coachman was taken away.

  All this happened in a remarkably short time. Zoe watched the street’s concluding events through the shop window while behind her the physician attended to the boy.

  Marchmont, she saw, could be remarkably efficient when he chose—or when he had to be. Or perhaps he was not so much efficient as impatient and intimidating.

  He came back inside the shop at last. He didn’t look at her but folded his arms and leaned against the door, stone-faced, until the boy came to his senses and proved able to remember his name, the date, and the present sovereign. Zoe caught only the last part of this, because the boy said it loudly: “King George the Third. Everybody knows that.”

  He had a lump forming on the back of his head and a number of bruises and scrapes, but the doctor pronounced him fit to return home.

  “My groom will take him home in my carriage,” Marchmont said. These were the first words he’d uttered since reentering the shop.

  He watched them drive away until they were out of sight. Then he turned his attention to Zoe, who’d followed him out of the shop. He eyed her up and down.

  She was dirty and bedraggled, she knew, but she didn’t care. She was still exhilarated, because she’d saved the boy from serious injury, perhaps death. The big, cumbersome coach could have crushed him when it fell. He could have been impaled on a jagged piece of wood or metal.

  She’d saved him. She’d been free to act, free to help, and she’d done something worthwhile.

  Marchmont did not look either exhilarated or bedraggled. He still had his hat on. His neckcloth seemed crisply in order. The coat that so closely followed the contours of his big shoulders and upper body showed spots of dirt here and there but no tears. The green waistcoat hugging his lean torso hadn’t ripped anywhere or lost buttons. The pantaloons clinging to his long, muscular legs were very dirty, though. Her gaze trailed slowly down, to his boots. They were scuffed and coated with dust.

  She became aware of a soft, slapping sound. He had taken off his gloves. He slapped them against his left hand.

  Slowly she brought her gaze up.

  His face was as hard as the marble in his house’s entrance hall. His eyes were angry green slits.

  “That way,” he said, jerking his head toward a shop.

  She looked in the direction he indicated. The shop bore a black sign with the word VÉRELET in gold letters. That was all. On either side of the door, bay windows held a splendid array of colorful fabrics and delicious bonnets.

  “Clothes?” she said. “Now?”

  “My curricle is on its way to Portland Place with that wretched boy. What do you suggest instead? Perhaps a leap off Westminster Bridge?”

  She had trained herself ages ago to keep her temper in check, because survival in the harem often depended upon keeping a cool head. She told herself she could do it at present.

  She reminded herself of her conversation with Jarvis. Zoe needed this man’s help in order to live the life she’d risked everything for. She needed his help to banish the shame she’d brought on her family. She needed this help if she wanted a chance to find a good husband. Once she was wed and settled, her father could stop worrying about her.

  She told herself all this, several times. Then she lifted her chin and entered the shop.

  Marchmont’s heart still pounded.

  It was as though his brain had overturned, like the coach, and boxes had fallen out and broken, spilling their contents.

  He heard himself shout, “No! Don’t!” and heard Gerard laugh in the instant before he went over the fence. Again and again the scene played in his mind: Gerard, galloping ahead of the rest of the boys, heedless as always.

  Marchmont would never know why he’d shouted the warning, whether he’d seen or sensed something amiss with the fence ahead or the ground or his brother’s horse. He’d never know what it was that had made him slow his own mount and cry, “Look out!”

  But Gerard wouldn’t listen. He never did.

  “No! Don’t!”

  Gerard only laughed, and on he galloped, toward the fence, and over it.

  And then he was dead. Like that. In the blink of an eye.

  Again and again the scene played in Marchmont’s mind.

  He followed Zoe into the shop, staring hard at her back, at the stains and dirt and ripped ruffles of the carriage dress. He concentrated on these and thrust the unwanted images back into the dark place they’d escaped from.

  Madame Vérelet’s was a large shop. As he finally took note of his surroundings, he felt as though he’d entered an enormous birdcage. What seemed like hundreds of females fluttered about the place, bobbing and clucking, picking up buttons and ribbons, pretending to be busy sewing or putting trimmings into drawers and taking them out again. They opened books and flipped through pages, then shut them. They bent their heads together and whispered. They darted furtive looks from him to Zoe and back again, again and again.

  Madame Vérelet bustled out from a back room quite as though she’d been deeply engaged in important business there for this last hour. A man less cynical than Marchmont might be taken in. Another man might believe that Madame was too elegant and dignified to take any notice of public disturbances on her doorstep. Madame, after all, was a great artist, not one of the rabble who gathered at accident scenes.

  Marchmont, though, hadn’t any doubt that she’d been gawking out of the shop window along with all her employees, and had hurried into the back room only when she saw him coming.

  She made him an elegant curtsey. “Your Grace,” she said.

  He gave the little wave of his hand. “Everyone out.”

  “Out?” said Zoe.

  “Everyone but you,” he said. The women darted for the door leading into the back of the shop, where the workrooms were. They all tried to squeeze through at the same time, with a good deal of pushing and elbow thrusts. Madame did not fly, but she did not linger, either. She shoved aside one girl who didn’t get out of her w
ay quickly enough.

  “Miss?” said Jarvis.

  “You, too,” said Marchmont.

  “She is required to stay with me,” said Zoe.

  “Out,” he told Jarvis. She hurried after the seamstresses and shopgirls.

  Zoe folded her arms. Her face took on a mulish expression.

  He knew this expression. He’d seen it scores of times. She’d worn it a moment before she’d picked up the cricket bat. He was aware of this, in the churning stew that was his mind; but since it was a stew, he wasn’t capable of calm and logical thinking. The pose and the expression only made him angrier.

  He didn’t wait to hear what she’d say.

  “Are you utterly mad?” he said, his voice low and taut. “Are you deaf? Are you completely without brains? Did I not tell you to get away from that coach?”

  “You had the horses to deal with,” she said with a calm he found maddening. “I could not leave the boy there. He was hanging out of the door. I knew he was hurt. He might have been bleeding. What if he bled to death while you dealt with the horses? What if the coach fell on him?”

  What if it fell on you?

  “He wasn’t bleeding,” he said.

  “You didn’t know that.”

  “I didn’t need to know!” he snapped. “It was a thoroughly decrepit coach and four, and if it had fallen on you, it would have smashed you to pieces! And that’s if you were lucky. If you’d got a piece of it stuck in your gut, you’d die by inches.” Such accidents happened all too frequently, the victims lingering in agony for days, sometimes weeks.

  “The same could have happened to him,” she said. “What would you have me do?” Her voice rose. “Nothing?”

  “Yes!”

  “That is completely unreasonable!”

  “I don’t care. When I give an order—”

  “An order?” Her eyes were a stormy sky flashing lightning. Hot pink color flooded her cheeks. “You do not order me!”

  “Yes, I do. You’re my responsibility. I’m in charge of you.”

  “In charge?” she said. “Of me?” Her voice went up another notch. “I did not agree to this. I did not agree to be stifled!”

  “Oh, very good. Give the shopgirls an earful.”

  “You were the one who chose this place. You are the one who chose to make a scene. You did not care who was listening. I do not care, either. You cannot shout at me.”

  “I most certainly can.”

  “Then shout, but I will not listen to you. I will not be ordered. I will not be stifled. For twelve years I was stifled. If this is how you mean for us to go on, then our agreement is cancelled.”

  “Agreement?” Whatever else he’d expected, it wasn’t this. He blinked and told himself he couldn’t have heard correctly. “Cancelled?”

  “That is what I said.”

  “You can’t be—You think you can do this without me?”

  “I shall not do it with you, that much is certain.” She folded her arms and stuck her nose in the air. “I release you from your promise to help me.”

  His heart was beating far too fast.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s a relief.”

  “A greater relief to me,” she said. “Go away. I hate you. You are impossible.”

  “Good-bye,” he said. “And good riddance.”

  He turned his back and started for the door.

  Something struck his hat and knocked it off. He did not turn around.

  He left the hat and stomped out.

  Though Marchmont had made Zoe so furious that she could hardly see straight, she’d been aware of Jarvis slinking out of the back room and into the shop when the shouting commenced.

  Remaining conscious of her surroundings had become second nature. She had learned early in her time in the pasha’s palace to watch from the corner of her eye the comings and goings of wives, concubines, servants, slaves, and eunuchs.

  After glancing at the design book she’d thrown at Marchmont, then at his hat lying by the door, Zoe turned to the maid, who had a death grip on the handle of her umbrella.

  Jarvis crept closer. “I’m sorry, miss. I know he said I was to go away, but they told me when they made me your lady’s maid that I was in charge of you and was not to let you out of my sight and if anything happened to you it would be my fault.”

  An image arose in Zoe’s mind of the terrified maid beating a murderous Marchmont off with an umbrella.

  Though her heart still pounded and outrage lingered—along with a painful awareness of having thoroughly destroyed her future—the image helped her recover her composure, if not her equilibrium.

  “Summon the dressmaker,” she said. “As long as I am here, I shall buy clothes.”

  Jarvis hurried to the door through which the shopgirls and seamstresses had escaped. Evidently the maid moved too quickly, because when she opened the door, the dressmaker stumbled into the room, and her helpers after her.

  They had been piled up against the door, eavesdropping, obviously. Not that they needed to. People three streets away must have heard the row.

  Now the women tumbled out, tripping on their hems and one another’s feet. Caps got knocked askew and smocks came undone. One girl fell backward over a footstool, and another cracked her head against one of the overhead drawers that had been left open when they’d fled. An occasional “Ow!” and “Get off my foot!” punctuated their arrival, along with some expressions in French that Zoe didn’t understand.

  Madame quickly straightened her magnificent lace cap, gathered her dignity, and approached.

  “I need clothes,” Zoe said.

  Madame examined Zoe’s dirty, torn carriage dress with a pained expression and nodded. Zoe wasn’t sure whether the woman was pained because her dress was torn and dirty or because it was a year out of date. She suspected the latter.

  “I need everything,” Zoe said.

  “Oui, mademoiselle.” The dressmaker glanced at Marchmont’s hat on the floor near the shop door.

  Jarvis edged closer to Zoe and whispered, “Miss, I think she’s wondering who’s going to pay.”

  “I am well able to pay my own way,” said Zoe. “I don’t belong to him. He does not pay for me.”

  She told herself she didn’t belong to him or need him. She would go to Paris or Venice. It would be more agreeable than London. There would not be so many rules, for one thing. Gertrude had told her that the Parisians and the Venetians were quite wicked and immoral and tolerated all sorts of impropriety.

  In one of those wicked places she would easily find a man who could awaken in her the feelings that Marchmont did. She’d find other men who could make her feel like a serpent slithering out of the cold darkness into the hot sun.

  Other men who weren’t unreasonable and despotic.

  A prince, perhaps. That would show him.

  She beat down the memory of his mouth touching hers and the longing that still had not subsided.

  “Everything,” she repeated. “And everything in the latest mode.”

  “Oui, ma—”

  The bell over the shop door tinkled.

  Marchmont strode in.

  He picked up his hat but did not put it on. He did not look at her or anybody else. He crossed the room, set his hat down upon a table, dropped in the most provokingly calm manner into the chair beside it, picked up a book of fashion plates from the table, and began turning the pages.

  He was impossible, infuriating. Yet the world brightened at that moment. She hadn’t realized how heavy lay the weight upon her heart until now, when it lifted, and the regret and guilt trapped there evaporated.

  She regarded the pale gold head, the one unruly lock falling over his forehead, the large but graceful hands holding the book, the long legs….

  She remembered the warmth of his gloved hand against her back and the touch of his fingers on her jaw and the jittery shock that had raced through her at these mere nothings of caresses. She remembered the light touch of his lips and the ache it h
ad made in her belly.

  She turned her back on him and began explaining to Madame what she meant by “everything.”

  “Everything,” Zoe said, “down to my undergarments. My sisters’ stays are so tight against my breasts that I can hardly breathe—and this includes the ones they wear when they are pregnant. But you see, they are smaller in the back even when their breasts are enormous from breeding. My mother’s corsets are very handsome and comfortable, but they are too big. She is older and more plump. All the women of my family are shorter than I, and we are not shaped the same. My bottom—”

  A strangled sound came from the chair by the table.

  Zoe ignored it. “My bot—”

  “This,” came the deep masculine voice from behind her.

  Madame looked that way. “Ah!” she said.

  Zoe turned.

  He was holding up the fashion plate book. It was open to a picture of a magnificent gown. “This will be perfect for the Prince Regent’s Birthday Drawing Room.”

  Zoe crossed the room and stared hard at the design, not him.

  It was splendid, daring and dashing. It was red.

  “It’s very French,” she said. The difference from English style was unmistakable. Had she not memorized La Belle Assemblée, which included not only illustrations but detailed descriptions of the latest fashions in Paris?

  “You’re an exotic,” he said. “Your apparel ought to be something out of the ordinary. All the world will be studying you. Give them something they can see and easily put a name to, and their tiny brains won’t be forced to imagine.”

  Though she knew it was in her best interests to do so, Zoe was not ready to forgive him. He had been unreasonable and tyrannical. He had hurt her feelings.

  The coming weeks were going to be extremely trying.

  Still, the gown was magnificent. It was so very, very French.

  She looked at him.

  He lifted his gaze from the book he was holding and met hers. “Why don’t we buy the clothes now and argue later?” he said. “I have an engagement at eight o’clock. Hoare must have at least two hours to dress me for it or he’ll cry. That leaves us time either to quarrel or to order your wardrobe, but not both.”