Regency Rogues and Rakes

Chapter Four

Now, thanks to steam-presses, steam-vessels, and steam-coaches, the prolific brain of a French dress-maker or milliner has hardly given a new cap of trimming to the Parisian élégantes, before it is also in possession of the London belles.

—La Belle Assemblée, March 1830

Friday 5 June

Longmore transferred the reins to one hand and with his other took out his pocket watch. He flicked it open.

Eleven o’clock, she’d said. In the morning—because the fashionable aristocrats shopped in the afternoon, and she had to get there before they did.

“It’s important to arrive before Dowdy’s favorite customers do,” Sophy had told him. “Shopkeepers like that will fawn over the great ladies with the heavy purses and pass off dull rustic misses to lowly assistants. It would be truly useful to see the pattern for your mother’s dress, since she’s one of their most important customers. That means I can’t be passed off to an assistant. It has to be Horrible Hortense herself or her forewoman.”

It was exactly eleven o’clock. Longmore looked up at the sky. Cloudy, but not threatening rain as his tiger, Reade, had insisted. Reade had not been happy about having to remain behind. If it rained—as he assured his lordship it would surely do—his lordship would need help raising the curricle’s hood.

Well, then, they’d simply have to get wet, Longmore decided. While convenient for minding horses and helping one wrestle temperamental hoods, on the present occasion a groom would be very much in the way.

Longmore put the watch away and reverted to staring at the shop door. She’d told him to collect her, not at Maison Noirot, but at the ribbon shop farther down St. James’s Street, near St. James’s Palace. To Allay Suspicion.

She was hilarious.

“Cousin?” said a familiar female voice.

He blinked. It was Sophy’s voice and it wasn’t. He knew this had to be her but his eyes denied it. The woman standing on the pavement next to his carriage was so nondescript that he’d probably been looking straight at her without actually seeing her.

The murky brown cloak concealed her shape. The muddy green bonnet and lace cap underneath concealed most of her hair. What was visible was limp, dull, and stringy. She’d sprouted a mole to one side of her perfect nose. And on that nose she’d planted a pair of tinted spectacles, which dulled her brilliant blue eyes to cloudy grey.

He was aware of his jaw dropping. He quickly collected himself. “There you are,” he said.

“You’d have seen me sooner if you hadn’t been woolgathering,” she said, as shrewish as Gladys—and in the same graceless accents. She climbed up into the vehicle as clumsily as his cousin would have done.

If he didn’t know better, he’d have been sure this was his cousin, playing a trick on him.

But Cousin Gladys didn’t play tricks. She had no imagination.

“How did you do it?” he said. “You can’t have met her. She hasn’t left Lancashire in ages.”

“Lady Clara is a fair mimic,” she said, “and it was easy enough to classify the type. We do that, you know: We size up a woman when she walks into the shop. Broadly speaking, they tend to fall into certain categories.”

“Gladys is a type? I’m sorry to hear it. I’d always thought her one of a kind, and that one more than sufficient.”

He gave his horses leave to walk on, then he had to keep his attention on them. Though he’d driven them through Hyde Park to work off their morning high spirits, they were still excitable. Apparently they were as little used as he was to traveling the shopping streets in the early hours with ordinary folk. Whatever the reason, they were looking for trouble: They tried to lunge at other vehicles, run onto the pavement, take aim at passing pedestrians, and bite any other horses who looked at them the wrong way.

Normally, he’d find this entertaining.

Today it was inconvenient. He had a campaign to conduct with the woman beside him, and she was tricky and he needed his wits about him. At present, however, he had to concentrate his wits on getting them to Piccadilly alive. Then he had to wrestle his way through the great knot of traffic approaching the quadrant into Regent Street.

“What the devil are all these people doing out in the streets at the crack of dawn?” he said.

“They heard the Earl of Longmore would be up and about before noon,” she said. “I believe they mean to mark the event with illuminations and fireworks.”

He’d been driving since childhood, and he couldn’t remember when last he’d had to work so hard at it.

“I think you’re frightening the horses,” he said.

“I think they’re not used to busy streets in daylight,” she said.

“Maybe it’s the mole that’s bothering them,” he said. Or maybe it was her scent. It wasn’t Gladys’s. This was so faint as to be more of an awareness than a fragrance: Woman and jasmine and something else. Some kind of herb or greenery.

No, the scent wasn’t bothering the horses. It was getting him into a lather he couldn’t do anything about at the moment. That wasn’t the only disturbance. He was extremely aware of her swollen skirts brushing against his trouser leg, and he could hear the petticoats rustle under the skirts. It was as clear as clear to him, above the street’s cacophony of animals, vehicles, people.

He was primed for tackling her and he couldn’t, and the horses sensed the agitation.

It was so ridiculous he laughed.

“What is it?” she said.

He glanced at her. “You,” he said. “And me, up at this hour to drive to a dressmaker’s shop.”

“I know you rise before noon on occasion,” she said.

“Not to shop,” he said.

“No. For a race. A boxing match. A wrestling match. A horse auction. I’m not sure I can offer equal excitement.”

“I expect it’ll be exciting enough when they find you out,” he said. “Which they’re bound to do. You’ll need to get undressed to get measured. What if the mole falls off while you’re taking off your clothes? What if your spectacles get tangled in your wig?”

“I’ve put on several extra layers of clothing,” she said. “I don’t plan to allow them to get beyond the first one or two. And it isn’t a wig, by the way. I put an egg mixture in my hair. People say it leaves a shine after you wash it out, but it does the opposite.”

It would be quite a job, washing her hair. It was thick and curly, and unless she added false pieces to it, as some women did, it must be long. To her waist? He saw long, golden hair streaming down a bare, silken back.

There was something to look forward to.

“You promised me bullies,” he said. “I was looking forward to the fight. It’s the only thing that got me out of bed. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since anybody did me the courtesy of hitting back?”

“If I were a gentleman, and I saw you coming at me with fists up, I’d run in the other direction,” she said.

“Bullies aren’t gentlemen,” he said. “They won’t run.”

“If you get desperately bored, you can always pick a fight,” she said.

“If they exist,” he said. “I’ve never heard of hired ruffians in a dressmaking shop.”

“You’ve never noticed because you never think about how a shop is run,” she said. “You only notice whether the service is good or bad. But they can be useful in an all-woman shop. One has to deal with drunken men knocking over things or pawing the seamstresses. But the worst for us is a pack of thieves. They’ll come in small groups of twos and threes, all dressed respectably and seeming not to be together. One or two will keep the shopkeepers busy while the others fill their pockets. They’ve special pockets sewn into their clothes. They’re very quick. You’d be amazed at how much they can make off with if you look away, even for a second.”

“Where do you hide the muscled fellows who work for you, then?” he said.

“We don’t need ruffians,” she said. “We started in Paris, you know, and it was a family business, so we started young. Let me see. I think Marcelline was nine, so I was about seven or eight, and Leonie was six. When you’re absorbed in a trade from childhood, every aspect of it becomes instinctive. Drunks, thieves, men who think milliners’ shops are brothels—we’re perfectly capable of dealing with such matters ourselves.”

He remembered the hard look that had flashed across her face so briefly, when she’d told him she’d dealt with messy situations. He hadn’t time to pursue that train of thought, though. As they were turning into Oxford Street, two boys ran out in front of the curricle. Swearing violently, Longmore turned his pair aside an instant before they could trample the children.

His heart pounded. A moment’s delay or distraction, and the brats could have been killed. “Look where you’re going, you confounded idiots!” he roared above the neighing horses and the other drivers’ shouted comments.

“Ow, you ugly bitch!” a voice shrieked close to his ear. “Let go of me, you sodding sow!”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” Sophy said.

Longmore glanced that way.

A ragged boy half hung over the back of the seat. Sophy had him by the arm, and she was regarding him with amusement.

Longmore could spare them only a glance. His team and the traffic wanted all his attention. “What the devil?” he said. “Where did he come from?”

“Nowhere!” the boy snarled. He wriggled furiously, to no avail. “I wasn’t doing nothing, only getting a free ride in back here, and the goggle-eyed mort tried to take my arm off.”

This, at least, was what Longmore presumed he said. The Cockney accent was almost impenetrable. Nothing was “nuffin,” and aitches were dropped from and attached to the wrong words, and some of the vowels seemed to have arrived from another planet.

“And you were trying to keep your hand warm in the gentleman’s pocket?” she said.

Longmore choked back laughter.

“I never went near his pocket! Do I look like I’m dicked in the nob?”

“Far from it,” Sophy said. “You’re a clever one, and quick, too.”

“Not quick enough,” the boy muttered.

“I wish you could have seen it, Cousin,” she said. “The two who ran in front were meant to distract you while this one jumped on and did his job. The little devil almost got by me. It took him two seconds to leap onto the groom’s place. Probably he would have wanted only another two to get your pocket watch—perhaps your seals and handkerchief as well—while you had both hands busy with the horses. I daresay he thought I was a gently bred female who’d only stare or scream helplessly while he collected his booty and got away.”

She reverted to the boy. “Next time, my lad, I advise you to make sure there’s only one person in the vehicle.”

Next time?

Longmore nearly ran down a pie seller.

“What next time?” he said. “We’re making a detour to the nearest police office, and leaving him to them.”

The boy let loose a stream of stunning oaths and struggled wildly. But Sophy must have tightened her hold or done something painful, because he stopped abruptly, and started whimpering that his arm was broken.

“As soon as I get out of this infernal tangle, I’ll give you a cuff you won’t soon forget,” Longmore said. “Cousin, will you give him a firm thump or something to stifle him in the meantime?”

“I don’t think we should take him to the police,” she said. “I think we should take him with us.”

Longmore and the boy reacted simultaneously.

The boy: “Nooooo!”

Longmore: “Are you drunk?”

“No, you don’t,” the boy said. “I ain’t going nowhere with you. I got friends, and they’ll come any minute now. Then you’ll be sorry. And I think my chest’s got a rib broke from being bent like this.”

“Stifle it,” Longmore told the boy. He needed a clear head to find his way through Sophy’s rabbit warren of a mind. He couldn’t do that and translate the boy’s deranged version of English at the same time.

To Sophy he said, “What exactly do you propose to do with him?”

“He’s wonderfully quick,” she said. “He could be useful. For our mission.”

Occupied with horses and traffic, Longmore could give the urchin no more than a swift survey. He looked to be about ten or eleven years old, though it was hard to tell with children of the lowest classes. Some of them looked eons older than they were, while others, small from malnourishment, seemed younger. This boy was fair-haired under his shabby cap, and while his neck was none too clean, he wasn’t an inch thick with filth as so many of them were. His clothes were worn and ill-fitting but mended and only moderately grimy.

“I don’t see what use he’d be to anybody, unless someone was wanted to pick pockets,” he said.

“He could hold the horses,” she said.

“Could he, indeed?” he said. “You suggest I put my cattle in charge of a sneaking little thief?”

The boy went very still.

“Who better to keep a sharp eye out, to watch who comes and goes, to give the alarm if trouble comes?” she said.

The mad thing was, she had a point.

“You don’t know the brat from Adam,” he said. “For all we know, he’s a desperado wanted by the police, and due to be transported on Monday. He tried to steal my watch. And climbed up behind the carriage to do it! That wants brass, that does—or something gravely amiss in the attic—and if you think I’m leaving a prime pair of horseflesh in the grubby hands of Mad Dick Turpin here, I suggest you think again. And take something for that brain injury while you’re about it.”

“Oy!” the boy said indignantly. “I ain’t no horse thief.”

“Merely a pickpocket,” Longmore said, egging him on.

“What’s your name?” Sophy said.

“Ain’t got one,” the boy said. “Saves trouble, don’t it?”

“Then I shall call you Fenwick,” she said.

“What?”

“Fenwick,” she said. “If you don’t have a name, I’ll give you one, gratis.”

“Not that,” the boy said. “That’s a ‘orrible name.”

“Better than nothing,” she said.

“I say, mister,” the boy appealed to Longmore. “Make her stop.”

Longmore couldn’t answer. He was working too hard on not laughing.

“That is not a mister,” she said. “That’s an actual lord whose pocket you tried to pick.”

“Yer lordship, make her stop. Make her stop breaking my arm, too. Which this is a monstrous female like nothing I ever seen before.”

Longmore glanced at Sophy. She was regarding the ghastly little foul-mouthed urchin, her expression speculative—or so it seemed. He couldn’t be sure. For one thing, he could spare only a glance. For another, the spectacles dimmed the brilliance of her eyes.

But he saw enough: the smile playing at the corner of her mouth, and the angle at which she held her head as she regarded the boy, like a bird eyeing a worm.

“Now you’re really in trouble, Fenwick,” he said. “She’s thinking.”

Sophy’s father had been a Noirot and her mother a DeLucey. Neither family could be bothered with charity, being too busy keeping one step ahead of the authorities.

Although Cousin Emma had taken in Sophy and her sisters and taught them a trade, they’d bounced back and forth for a time between parents and cousin. Their early life had not been sheltered. They’d learned how to survive on the streets. Among other skills, they’d learned to size up others quickly.

Sophy had seen and heard enough in a few minutes to understand that the lad was a rare find. With a very little training, this boy could be extremely useful. She was not going to let him be thrown into prison with ordinary criminals.

“We’re quite close to the Great Marlborough Street police office,” she said. “It would be no trouble to drop you there, Fenwick. Or, if you prefer, you could continue with us to our destination, and watch his lordship’s horses, and keep a sharp lookout.”

“And what would I be looking out for, I want to know,” the boy said.

“Trouble,” she said. “Do you think you can recognize it?”

“I haven’t the smallest doubt of his abilities in that regard,” Longmore said.

“If you do the job properly,” she went on, “I’ll see that you have a good dinner and a safe place to sleep.”

“Where, exactly, did you have in mind?” Longmore said.

“Don’t fret,” she said. “I wasn’t intending to foist him on you.”

“You certainly won’t foist him on yourself,” he said. “You don’t know a damned thing about him. He’s probably crawling with lice—”

“That’s slander, that is!” the boy cried.

“Sue me,” said Longmore.

“Don’t think I won’t,” the boy said. “There’s no more vermin on me than on you, yer majesty. I had a bath!”

“At your christening?” Longmore said. “But no, I forgot: You don’t have a name.”

“Fenwick’ll do,” the boy said. “She can call me Georgy Pudding Pie if she wants, if she gives me dinner and a bed like she says. But she won’t, will she?”

“Have you heard of the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females?” Sophy said.

The boy narrowed his eyes at her. “Yeah,” he said in wary tones.

“You know someone there, it seems,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’m closely acquainted with the women in charge,” she said. She could hardly be more closely acquainted: She and her sisters had founded the organization last year. “If you know of that place, you know we don’t make empty promises.”

They’d reached Bedford Square. “Look here, Fenwick,” she said. “There’s the shop his lordship and I mean to visit.” She nodded toward Dowdy’s. “Do you know the place?”

“They makes clothes for the nobs,” he said. “A girl I know used to work there, but they was all let go for no reason.”

Sophy hoped the girl had gone to the Milliners’ Society. She and her sisters had better look into what had happened to Dowdy’s discharged seamstresses.

But one thing at a time.

“While his lordship and I visit the shop, you’ll mind the horses as well as the business of everybody about you,” she said briskly. “Give a long, sharp whistle to let us know if we’re about to be interrupted. Do the job satisfactorily, and I’ll do as I promised. Have we a bargain, Fenwick?”

“No tricks?” the boy said.

“No tricks?” Longmore echoed. “The brass of the brat!”

“Do I look like the tricky sort to you?” Sophy said.

The boy gave her a long, searching look. He spent some time peering into the tinted lenses. “Yes,” he said. “Not to mention you got a grip like a manacle.”

She smiled. “There, I knew you were a sharp one. But no tricks.”

She released his arm. He made a great show of massaging it, and checking for broken bones. He muttered about “mad gentry morts” and “bruiser lordships.”

“Never mind the grumbling,” Longmore said.

“I don’t mean to spend all day shopping with a female. Either you’ll do it or you won’t. Make up your mind. I don’t have time to dawdle here, palavering about it, all day.”

“Be yourself,” Sophy told Longmore when he joined her on the pavement after a lengthy conversation with Fenwick—about the horses, she supposed, and what would happen to the boy if he failed his assignment.

“Myself?” he said. “Are you sure?”

“I need you to be you,” she said. “Lord Longmore, Lady Warford’s eldest son. The son of Dowdy’s favorite customer.” That was why she’d had to pursue and enlist him. She had to save her shop, and that meant going into enemy territory, to find out what Maison Noirot was up against. The easiest and most effective way was to use him as part of her disguise. “No pretending required. Simply be you.”

“I need to pretend you’re Gladys.”

“I’ll seem so like her, you won’t have to pretend. Leave everything to me.”

“And if they chuck you out?”

“Be yourself,” she said. “Laugh.”

“If you were you, yes,” he said. “But Gladys is another story.” He frowned. “This is going to be confusing.”

“Not at all,” she said. “All you have to do is be you. Don’t think about it. It doesn’t need thinking.”

She marched toward the door in the determined way certain gauche misses did.

He moved smoothly ahead and opened it for her.

In her mind she became Cousin Gladys—plain and awkward and sensitive to slights. She marched inside. Mouth set, she looked about her, making it plain that she wouldn’t be easy to please. At the same time, though, she was still Sophy Noirot, evaluating her surroundings with an expert eye, and more than a little surprised … and troubled … at what she discovered.

Though no one could match Maison Noirot’s flair, someone had tried. The walls had been freshly painted pale peach, the trim a creamy yellow, and someone had given thought to a variety of colorful accents. That someone had taken the trouble to arrange the fabrics artistically. Some hung on large rings near the display windows. Others lay on counters, looking as though they’d only a moment ago been unfolded for a customer. A book of fashion plates lay open on a table, inviting perusal. Comfortable chairs stood in small clusters about the room, giving it the snug air of a private parlor. Tables next to them held men’s as well as ladies’ magazines.