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He watched it drop. “Damn you,” he said.
“It’s all right,” she said. “This is goodbye.”
“Noir—”
She set her index finger over his lips. “I thank you for all you’ve done,” she said. “I thank you from the very bottom of my cold, black heart. There are some things I can repay but more that I can never repay. I want my gratitude—its depth and breadth—to be clear, perfectly clear…because after tonight, you must never come back here. You must never come to my shop. When your lady wife or your mistress comes to Maison Noirot, you’ll stay far away. You will not speak to me in the street or anywhere else. After this night, you become the man I always meant you to be, the man whose purse I plunder—and no more than that man. Do you understand?”
His eyes darkened, and she saw heat there: anger and disappointment and who knew what else? He started to rise.
“But for this night,” she said, “I love you.”
Something flashed in his eyes, and he flushed, and a brief spasm contorted his beautiful face. It was so quick, come and gone in the blink of an eye. But it was hard to mistake sorrow, however brief the glimpse. Then she knew she hadn’t made the wrong decision.
She began to undress. It was the same dress she’d been wearing on the night of the fire. Though his maids had cleaned and ironed it, it was no longer up to her usual standards. However, she and her sisters had agreed that completing their most crucial orders was more important than replenishing their own wardrobes.
This dress fastened up the back, naturally, but that presented no difficulty. She’d been dressing and undressing herself since she was a little girl. She unbuttoned the sleeves. Then she unhooked the hooks at the back of the bodice, from top to bottom. With the hooks undone, the narrow slit below the waist—invisible when the top was fastened—sagged open and the bodice did, too. Under it she wore an embroidered muslin chemisette that tied at the waist. She untied it and took it off, and let it drop from her hand, in the same way she’d dropped the bonnet.
She heard his breathing quicken.
The top undone, she eased her arms from the sleeves. She pulled the dress over her head, and dropped it.
She unfastened the sleeve puffs and dropped them onto the growing heap of clothing at her feet. She stood before him in her chemise, petticoats, corset, stockings, and shoes.
She stood for a moment, letting him drink her in. She couldn’t be sure what he felt, apart from what men always felt in such cases, but perhaps, just perhaps, he was trying, as she was, to imprint this moment in his memory.
Then she knelt.
“Marcelline,” he said. It was the first time he’d ever uttered her Christian name, and the sound was a caress.
Oh, she’d remember that: his voice, like a caress.
“You made my home,” she said. “Let me make our last time together. Leave it to me. Do I not make everything exactly as it ought to be?”
She tugged off one boot, then the other. She stood them neatly next to her heap of clothing.
She rose. She drew nearer now, and she looked down at him, at his black hair, gleaming like silk in the lamplight. He was looking up at her, his eyes dark, his mouth slightly parted, his breathing faster.
She bent over him, and unbuttoned his coat. She eased it off, as smoothly as his valet might have done. She folded it and laid it gently on a chair. She took off his waistcoat in the same way, only pausing for a moment to let her hand slide over the fine silk embroidery. She untied his neckcloth.
His head was at a level with her bosom. She could feel his breath on her skin above the lace of her chemise. She heard him inhale.
“The scent of you,” he said so softly. “Heaven help me, the scent of you.”
For a moment She paused, her hand trembling on the fine muslin. She remembered the first night, when she’d taken his diamond stickpin and set her pearl pin in its place. She smoothed the muslin lightly before she began to unwrap it from his neck. She slid it away and tossed it onto his coat.
She unfastened the button of his shirt, and it fell open. She laid her palm against his neck and slid it down over the skin bared, over the hard contours of his chest. While her hand rested on his chest, she bent her head, and laid her cheek against his. She remained there for a moment and let herself feel her face touching his while she breathed in the scent of him, the scent of a man, this man, warm and as heady as hot cognac.
Then she stepped back and untied her shoes and stepped out of them. She reached behind and untied the corset string. She quickly drew it through the eyelets, until it was loosened enough to slide down over her hips. Her chemise, released from the corset, slid down from her shoulders, baring one breast. She heard him suck in air. She shed the corset and tossed it aside. She untied her petticoats and let them slide down her legs. She reached under the chemise and untied her drawers and let them fall. She stepped out of them.
She stood now in chemise and stockings. She let him look, let herself enjoy his looking, the heat in his eyes, the pleasure at the sight of her, the excitement.
“You’re killing me,” he said, his voice rough. “You’re killing me.”
“You’ll die beautifully,” she said.
She set her foot on the edge of the bed, near his thigh. She threw back the hem of the chemise, baring her knee. He made a choked sound.
She untied her garter and dropped it on the rug. Then she rolled her stocking down, slowly, over her knee, down her calf to her ankle and down over her instep, and tugged it off. She heard his breath hitch. She dropped the stocking, but she left her leg as it was for a moment. She let him look and let herself watch him look while she planted in her memory the expression on his beautiful face.
Then she drew her leg down and removed the other stocking in the same way. By this time, the chemise had slid nearly to her waist. Only the sleeves, caught in the crook of her elbows, kept it on.
She let her arms relax at her sides and gave a little shake. The chemise slithered down and off her and made a little puddle of muslin on the floor.
That left her with nothing at all, not a stitch.
His breathing was harsh now, his face taut.
“Come here, you wicked girl,” he said.
She moved close again, and he groaned and reached for her. Then his mouth was on her, moving over her breasts. When he took her nipple in his mouth, she gave a little cry, and caught her fingers in his hair, grasping his head, and holding him to her. She bent her head and kissed the top of his, and she ached, the flesh-ache of desire, the heart-ache of loving.
She let herself suffer, and she let herself enjoy while he suckled her. But when he started to pull her to him, she pulled back. “I’m not done,” she said.
“I hope not,” he said.
She pushed his hands out of the way, and unbuttoned his trousers, and tugged his shirt free. “Lift your arms,” she said.
He closed his eyes and did as she said.
She pulled his shirt over his head. She grasped the waist of his trousers and pulled, and he leaned back and lifted his hips so that she could pull them down and off. Then, more quickly, came his drawers.
Freed, his cock sprang up from its dark nest, and she couldn’t keep herself from clasping it, so warm in her hand, so thick and long and well shaped—like the rest of him.
“Christ, Marcelline,” he said.
She smiled and kissed the velvety tip, and he swore.
She would have done more. She could have done more. She wanted to, but she wanted to make this last as long as she could. She released him, and slid her hands down his legs and tugged off his stockings.
She wasn’t so steady as before and her pace was not as leisurely. His hands and mouth had set her on fire. He roused her so easily, the way he’d done in Paris, and in her shop—she, who was always in control, who knew all there was to know about men, and felt as though she’d been born knowing it. She went up like tissue paper touched by a flame.
She climbed onto the bed and straddled him. She looked down, and he was reaching up. He set his palms along the sides of her face. For a long moment that was all he did. He held her and looked up at her. She thought he’d say something, but he didn’t. Then he brought her mouth to his, and kissed her.
Tender, so tender.
And hungry, deepening in an instant.
She was hungry, too. She kissed him back with all the yearning she’d locked away for weeks and all the dreams and fantasies that had made a turmoil of her nights and all the passion she’d always kept for her work, her great love.
But now there was this man, who’d beat all the odds and made her love him.
He kissed her, and it was deep. His tongue hunted every secret of her mouth and caressed it, and drew her deeper with each caress. His taste and scent were everywhere, a warm sea in which she was floating, sinking, drowning.
She moved her hands over him, over his big shoulders and down over his back. She let herself wallow in skin touch, and in the heady power of feeling his muscles tense under her hands. She stroked over his arms, her palms curving to find the shape of him and imprint it upon her senses, to be conjured again when she wanted him and he wouldn’t be there. She moved restlessly, learning every inch of his big, hard chest.
He was hard everywhere, and so powerfully muscled. This wasn’t the body of a gentleman. But she’d seen that from the first: the sheer physicality, the size and power, the carnality barely camouflaged by the elegant outer display…the beautiful animal lurking under the civilized trappings.
She felt his mouth leave hers, and she could have wept for the loss, but then his lips traced the line of her jaw and trailed over her neck. Then he was kissing her neck, her shoulders. Then his tongue slid over her collarbone, and she moaned, and her head fell back. And he licked her, like a great cat, the panther she’d envisioned, his tongue moving over her skin. Every fiber of her being seemed stretched taut. Her body became a mass of electric sensation, like the air before a great storm. Hot pleasure rippled through her, and settled in the pit of her belly, and sent heat coursing outward again. Then she was trembling for release. His great cock throbbed against her aching belly and her body pulsed with wanting.
She’d wanted to make it last and last and last but her control was slipping. She lifted herself up, and clasped him and guided him in. She made it slow, achingly slow. He made a sound like a laugh and a groan combined. She lifted herself and came down, taking in his full length this time.
“By God,” he growled. “By God.”
Slow, again, up and down, torturing them both, pleasuring them both. His fingers dug into her hips. “Marcelline, for God’s sake.”
But she kept on. She’d never get enough but she’d get as much as she could. But as she rose, a mad joy rose, too. It was as strong as a physical blow, knocking her control away, and she cried out, “Mon dieu!”
She heard his voice, so low. No words. Growls and gasps and a sound like choked laughter. He grasped her bottom, but he let her set the pace. She tried to slow it again, to make it last and last. But need overrode everything. Her blood drummed in her veins and it was a summons, primitive, primal, and it drove her. She was an animal, too, running hard toward the ending, the something she was meant to find.
She couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow, couldn’t hold back. She rode him, her body rising and falling, his hips against her knees, his body lifting to meet hers. He held her, his fingers digging into her hips, as she rose and fell, and he was laughing—a raw, hoarse laughter, and she laughed, too, hoarse and breathless. And whether it was the laughter or the madness that pushed her to the brink, she didn’t know. She knew only fiery exhilaration as her body clenched and shuddered. A wave of happiness carried her up, and up, and up, until there was nowhere left to go. Then it flung her down, like a flimsy craft in a stormy sea, into a great, drowning darkness.
She lay, spent, on top of him. He lay, shaken, holding her.
It’s all right. This is goodbye.
He knew it had to be goodbye. He’d pushed his world’s tolerance to its limit and beyond. He’d pushed Clara’s indulgence and understanding far beyond what he ought. He’d been thoughtless and selfish and unkind to the one who’d always loved and understood him.
He’d been in the devil’s own hurry to get rid of Noirot and her family because it had to be done. Even he, who disregarded rules, knew that.
He’d known in his heart that this day had to be goodbye. Giving her a shop and a home were the sop he offered his conscience and his anxieties. They’d be safe. They’d survive. They’d thrive. Without him.
And he knew that in time he’d forget her.
But for this night, I love you.
He couldn’t think about that. He wouldn’t think about it.
Love wasn’t part of the game.
It wasn’t in the cards.
And this game was played out. It was time, long past time, they were gone from here.
Yet his hand slid down her back, and he thought nothing in the world was as velvety soft as her skin. Her hair tickled his chin, and he bent his head a little, to feel the soft curls against his face, and to breathe her in.
But for this night, I love you.
She’d said it and he’d heard in blank shock. His mind had stopped and his tongue, too. He’d sat, like an idiot, dumbstruck. At the same moment, he’d believed and refused to believe. He’d felt an instant’s shattering grief before he smothered it. He’d told himself he was a fool. He’d argued with himself. He knew what was right and what was wrong. He mustn’t stay, no matter what she said. He knew what was going to happen, and he couldn’t let it happen again. That would be selfish and thoughtless and unkind and dishonorable.
He’d argued with himself, but there she was, and he wanted her.
And he was weak.
Perhaps not as weak and dissolute as his father, but bad enough.
And so, of course, he lost the battle, that feeble battle with Honor and Kindness and Respect and all the other noble qualities Warford had tried to drum into him.
He could have simply got up from the bed—where he ought not to have sat in the first place…
Oh, never mind could and should and ought to.
He’d faced a test of character and he’d failed.
He’d stayed.
He wanted to stay, still.
“We have to leave,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
It was late. They had to leave. No time to make love again. No time to simply linger, touching her, being touched. No time to bask in lovemaking’s afterglow.
This time he helped her dress and she helped him. It didn’t take long, not nearly long enough.
The drive back to Clevedon House was far too short.
He hadn’t time enough to study her profile as she looked out of the window into the gaslit street. He hadn’t time enough to burn the fine contours of her face into his mind. He’d see her again, he supposed. She wanted him to keep away and he knew he must, but he’d see her again, perhaps, by accident. He might see her stepping out of a linen draper’s or a wineshop.
But He’d never see her in exactly this way: the play of light and shadow on her face as she looked out onto Pall Mall. He would not, he supposed, ever be close enough again to catch her scent, so tantalizingly light but impossible to overlook. He’d never be close enough to hear the rustle of her clothes when she moved.
He told himself not to be a fool. He’d forget her. He’d forget all the details that at this moment seemed to mean so much.
He’d forget the way he’d stood on the pavement this day, pretending not to look at her ankles while he watched her step down from or up into the carriage. He’d forget the elegant turn of her ankle, the arc of her instep. He’d forget the first time he’d looked at her ankles. He’d forget the first time they’d made love, and the way she’d wrapped her legs about his waist and the choked sounds of pleasure he’d heard when he thrust into her, again and again. He’d forget his own pleasure, so violent that pleasure seemed too feeble a word, a word meant for ordinary things.
He’d forget all that, just as he would forget this night.
The memories would linger for a time, but they’d grow dull. The ache he felt now, the frustration and anger and sorrow—all those would fade, too.
She’d given him a night to remember, but of course he’d forget.
Marcelline and her sisters rose early the following day. By half-past eight they were at the shop. The seamstresses arrived shortly thereafter, in a flutter of excitement. But they settled down before the morning had much advanced. At one o’clock in the afternoon, the shop opened for business, as promised in the individual messages Sophy had dispatched and the advertisements she’d published in all the London newspapers.
At a quarter past one, Lady Renfrew and Mrs. Sharp appeared for their fittings. A steady stream of ladies followed them. Some came to shop. Some came to stare. But they kept Marcelline and her sisters busy until closing time.
She was happy, very happy, she told herself.
She’d be a fool to want anything more.
Chapter Fourteen
The rank which English Ladies hold, requires they should neglect no honourable means of distinction, no becoming Ornament in the Costume.
La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Advertisements for June 1807
Sunday 3 May
Clevedon House seemed oppressively quiet, even for a Sunday. The corridors were silent, the servants having reverted to their usual invisibility, blending in with the furnishings or disappearing through a backstairs door. No one hurried from one room to the next. No Noirot women appeared abruptly in the doorway of the library.
Clevedon stood at the library table, which was heaped with ladies’ magazines and the latest scandal sheets. Of the latter, Foxe’s Morning Spectacle was the most prominent, its front page bearing a large advertisement for “Madame Noirot’s newly-invented VENETIAN CORSETS.”
He felt a spasm of sorrow and another of anger, and wondered when it would stop.
He told himself he ought to throw the magazines in the fire, and Foxe’s rag along with them. Instead, he went on studying them, making notes, forming ideas.
It staved off boredom, he supposed.
It was more entertaining than attending to the stacks of invitations.
It was a waste of time.
He rang for a footman and told him to send Halliday in.
Three minutes later, Halliday entered the library.
Clevedon pushed to one side the provoking Spectacle. “Ah, there you are. I want you to send the dollhouse to Miss Noirot.”
There was an infinitesimal pause before Halliday said, “Yes, your grace.”
Clevedon looked up. “Is there a problem? The thing can sustain a twenty-minute journey to St. James’s Street, can it not? It’s old, certainly, but I thought it was in good repair.”
“I do beg your pardon, your grace,” Halliday said. “Naturally there is no problem whatsoever. I shall see to it immediately.”
“But?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“I hear a but,” Clevedon said. “I distinctly hear an unsaid but.”
“Not precisely a but, your grace,” Halliday said. “It is more of an impertinence, for which I do beg your pardon.”
When Clevedon only looked at him expectantly, Halliday said, “We had been under the impression that Miss Erroll—that is, Miss Noirot—would be visiting us again.”
Clevedon straightened away from the table. “What the devil gave you that impression?”
“Perhaps it was not so much an impression as a hope, sir,” Halliday said. “We find her charming.”
We meant the staff. Clevedon was surprised. “I should like to know what it is about them. They seem to charm everybody.” The housemaid Sarah had gone happily enough to live above a shop and act as interim nursemaid until the Noirots had time to hire a suitable person. Miss Sophia had even disarmed Longmore.
“Indeed, they possess considerable charm,” Halliday said. “But Mrs. Michaels and I both remarked their manner. We agreed that it was nothing like what one expected of milliners. Mrs. Michaels believes the women are ladies.”
“Ladies!”
“She is persuaded that they are gentlewomen in reduced circumstances.”
Clevedon remembered his first impression of Marcelline—his confusion. She’d sounded and behaved like the ladies of his acquaintance. But she wasn’t a lady. She’d told him so.
Hadn’t she?
“That’s romantic,” Clevedon said. “Mrs. Michaels is fond of novels, I know.”
“I daresay that is the case,” Halliday said. “In any event, they were not what one would be led to expect. Mrs. Michaels was greatly shocked when I informed her we had milliners to wait upon. But she told me that she was entirely taken aback when she met them. They did not strike her as milliners at all.”
Servants were more sensitive to rank than their employers. They could smell trade at fifty paces. They could detect an imposter a minute after he opened his mouth.
Yet his servants, keenly aware of their position in the employment of a duke, had believed the Noirots were gentlewomen.
Well, it only showed how clever those women were. Charming. Enticing. Three versions of Eve, luring men to…
Gad, what the devil was wrong with him? It was reading all the damned magazines, with their serialized sentimental tales.
“You saw them at work,” Clevedon said. “They know their trade.”
“That is undoubtedly why Mrs. Michaels imagined they were women of rank who’d fallen on hard times,” Halliday said. “I must confess that at first I thought it was one of your jokes. I beg you will forgive me, sir, but it did cross my mind that these were some cousins from abroad, and you were testing us. Only for an instant, sir. Naturally, it was obvious there had been a fire, and it was no joke.”
The footman Thomas appeared in the doorway. “I beg your pardon, your grace, but Lord Longmore is here to see you, and—”
Longmore pushed past Thomas, strode past Halliday, and marched up to Clevedon.
“You cur!” Longmore said. He drew back his arm, and his fist shot straight at Clevedon’s jaw.
Meanwhile, at Maison Noirot
Lucie sat in the window, gazing down into St. James’s Street.
She’d been sitting there for hours.
Marcelline knew what she was watching for, and she was dreading what was to come. “It’s time for your tea,” she said. “Sarah has laid out the tea things on your handsome tea table, and your dolls are in their places, waiting.”
Lucie didn’t answer.
“Afterward, Sarah will take you to the Green Park. You can see the fine ladies and gentlemen.”
“I can’t go out,” Lucie said. “What if he comes, and I’m not here? He’ll be very disappointed.”
Marcelline’s heart sank.
She moved to sit next to Lucie on the window seat. “My love, his grace is not coming here. He looked after us for a time, but he’s very busy—”
“He’s not too busy for me.”
“We’re not his family, sweet.”
Lucie’s eyes narrowed and her mouth set.
“He made a beautiful home for us,” Marcelline said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. “Only look at all the fine things he bought for you. Your own tea set and tea table. Your own little chair and the prettiest bed in the world. But there are others in his life—”
“No!” Lucie jumped down from the window seat. “No!” she screamed. “No! No! No!”