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The showroom, while not as obsessively clean as Maison Noirot’s, was much neater and less dingy than it used to be.
The explanation, Sophy saw, stood behind the counter.
Dowdy had hired a Frenchwoman. She was pretty and elegant and graceful. Her fair hair was arranged becomingly under a splendid lace cap.
Her poise didn’t falter although her welcoming smile did, a little, as she took in Sophy/Gladys. The woman’s light brown gaze turned with obvious relief to Longmore.
Subtle as the rebuff was, it wouldn’t be too subtle for a sensitive soul, as Sophy imagined Gladys to be. The Frenchwoman shouldn’t have given any sign of dismay. She should have looked as delighted to see her as she would be to see Queen Adelaide.
Many specimens as unpromising as the faux Gladys came into dressmakers’ shops. How one served them made all the difference in the world. The Frenchwoman seemed to see Lady Gladys Fairfax as an ordeal to endure, rather than as an exciting challenge, as Sophy and her sisters would view her. Their faces would have lit up when she stepped through the door.
“Mrs. Downes?” Sophy said.
“I am Madame Ecrivier, mademoiselle,” the Frenchwoman said. “Madame Downes is occupied at the moment, but I—”
“Occupied!” Longmore said, startling Sophy as well as Ecrivier. “Where in blazes would she be occupied if not in her own shop? This is her shop, I presume? It had better be. I had the devil’s own time getting here. Accident on Oxford Street and everybody stopping to gawk and slowing travel in three directions.”
Sophy was too experienced in deceit to show her feelings. She didn’t gawk at him, except in her thoughts. He’d said he was confused, and she’d had a moment’s alarm, that subterfuge was beyond his intellectual abilities.
But whether by accident or not, he’d created a beautiful opening, and she knew how to play along.
“Did Lady Warford not tell Mrs. Downes to expect family members this week?” she said. “Her daughter, Lady Clara—my cousin, you know—is getting married. Surely my aunt must have informed you. I don’t see how she could have failed to do so. She told me she’d ordered a dress to wear to the wedding. She ordered it from this shop. On Monday, I believe.”
And she’d thrown a spectacular fit, according to Lady Clara, when she learned that the latter hadn’t gone to Dowdy’s.
“Oui, mademoiselle—milady. And most certainly—”
“Here’s my cousin, come to be fitted out for my sister’s wedding,” Longmore said. “The first wedding in the family, I might add. And where’s the proprietress? I say, this is a fine way to treat clients. Well, Gladys, we’d better be off. Who was that other milliner Clara mentioned? French name, wasn’t it? On St. James’s Street. If I’d known we’d get the cold shoulder here, I could have saved myself a bothersome journey.”
Madame Ecrivier was all but dancing with panic. “Oh, no, oh, no, milord. There is no coldness of the shoulder. Only a moment, if you please. I will send someone to inform Madame. A thousand apologies. Certainly Madame will attend the young lady. If you will pardon me for a moment, I will arrange this.”
The Frenchwoman glided away and vanished through the door behind the counter. Though she closed the door behind her, Sophy could hear her voice, high, communicating via the speaking pipe to somebody somewhere.
Longmore strode to the window and looked out. “The carriage is still there,” he said in a low voice. “Fenwick hasn’t sold the horses yet.”
When he lowered his voice, it became husky, and the sound made Sophy go still, like an animal catching the scent of danger. It took her a moment to shake off the feeling.
“Your cattle couldn’t be safer,” she said. “He’s thrilled.”
“It doesn’t show.”
“He’s learned to hide important feelings,” she said.
He gave a short laugh and left the window. He wandered the showroom. He fingered a length of muslin. He turned pages in the pattern book. He moved with careless grace, but his wasn’t the usual lazy ease of an idle aristocrat.
Her skin prickled with awareness. He was a man, merely a man, she told herself. Yet an aura of danger surrounded him, and it seemed as though a wolf prowled the room.
She detected footsteps and voices approaching the door to the shop’s back rooms.
“If I’d known this was the way London shopkeepers treat their best patrons, I should have had my dress made in Manchester,” she said more audibly. “To be kept waiting endlessly—when there isn’t another customer in the shop! I’m sure I should have something quite as elegant made at home as anything on offer here. And at a fraction of the price.”
Dowdy burst through the door. She was a painfully thin woman of medium height. An elaborate pelerine of embroidered cambric, extending over the wide à la Folle sleeves of her printed muslin dress, helped create the illusion of a fuller figure. Large, round dark curls framed her face under the lacy tulle cap.
The ensemble was handsome, one must give her that. It was a shame she didn’t dress her ladies as carefully as she dressed herself.
“My lady, my lord, my apologies,” she said breathlessly. “I never expected you so early in the day.”
“The shop opens at ten o’clock,” Longmore said. “Or so I was told.”
“The sign in the window says so,” Sophy said.
“You are quite right, miss—my lady.” Dowdy bustled out from behind the counter. “I was called away. A—erm—a little difficulty in the workroom. But we are all in order now. A dress for the nuptials of Lady Clara Fairfax, is it not? Would her ladyship care to peruse the pattern book? We have all the latest styles from Paris, and a splendid selection of silks.”
Judging by the crumbs on the pelerine, she must have been enjoying a leisurely breakfast.
“My aunt says I’m to place myself in your hands,” Sophy said.
“And mind you do her up well,” Longmore said. “None of your fobbing off that putrid green you bought too much of on account of seeing it in the wrong light.”
Sophy strangled a laugh.
“My cousin may be a rustic,” he said, “but—”
“I! A rustic!”
“My dear girl, your idea of sophistication is attending a lecture on stuffed birds at the Manchester Museum.”
“England’s finest mills are in Manchester!” she cried.
“Certainly, your ladyship,” Dowdy said. “But I must say a word for our Spitalfields silks, you know. And as to that, I do believe we have exactly the thing for you. Madame Ecrivier, kindly show her ladyship the silk I mean.”
Ecrivier gave Sophy a swift survey, then glided away to a drawer. She withdrew a length of blue silk.
“Blue!” Sophy said. “But I never wear blue.”
“With the greatest respect, milady, perhaps it is time, yes?”
“What color is my aunt wearing?” Sophy said. “I can’t wear the same color, and I know she likes blue.”
Dowdy smiled. “I regret that we cannot divulge that information. Her ladyship—”
“Not divulge it!” Longmore said. “See here. I won’t have my cousin trifled with. And I don’t mean to hang about having my time wasted. You can deuced well show us what my mother is wearing to the wedding. By gad, do you think we’ll report it to the newspapers?”
He slanted one incinerating black glance at Sophy.
“Do you know, Cousin, I’m finding this shop exceedingly tiresome,” Sophy said. “Aunt assured me we’d receive every attention. But first we’re made to wait, and then they’re suddenly coy about my aunt’s dress, when it’s of the utmost importance that my own complement hers.”
“I do beg your ladyship’s pardon, but Lady Warford expressly forbade us to share the details,” Dowdy said. “She was concerned that copies might be made, in advance of the matrimonial occasion, which I am sorry to say has happened in the past. Other dressmakers, you see, send their girls into the shop to spy, and—”
“Do we look like dressmakers’ spies to you?”
Longmore demanded. “I vow, this is the most aggravating experience. Come away, Cousin. I’ve had a bellyful of this dithering and delaying.”
He started for the door.
Ye gods, he was perfect.
Sophy followed. “I cannot think what I’ll say to Aunt,” she said. “You know she’ll ask me why I went to that other place—the French dressmakers on St. James’s Street. What is it?”
“Maison Noirot,” he said. He opened the door.
Sophy heard a muttered oath behind her.
Then, “You heard his lordship, Madame Ecrivier. Show the lady the silk Lady Warford selected.”
Longmore closed the door. He turned toward the two shop women. “And the pattern,” he said.
“The pattern?” Dowdy’s beady eyes widened.
“You heard me,” he said. “Here’s my cousin, fresh from the country. She’s not at all comfortable with London ways, and the treatment she’s received here this day has done nothing to reassure her. Show her the pattern. If she likes it, we’ll stay. If she doesn’t, this will be the last you see of us.”
She was Gladys, through and through. Never slipped out of character, even for an instant.
Longmore didn’t slip, either. Well, how could he, when he was only required to be himself, a role he could perform admirably.
She, on the other hand … but guile came to her so naturally.
She reacted to whatever he said in the same way Gladys would have done. She had the same mingled arrogance and uneasiness that made Gladys so tiresome. And the same vulnerability.
Cousin Gladys was disagreeable company, yet he always felt a little sorry for her.
There were moments when he almost forgot she wasn’t Gladys. But the scent reminded him who she was.
It was all great fun while he and she played off each other. When she went into another room with the two dressmakers, though, he grew uneasy. She hadn’t told him what he was to do if she was unmasked. She’d dismissed the possibility.
But when they undressed her how could they help but find out she wasn’t shaped like a potato?
She’d said she was wearing numerous layers. How many?
How long would it take him to get them all off?
That would depend, wouldn’t it?
His mind painted images that made him smile. He indulged himself for only a moment, though. He was expecting trouble—looking forward to it, in fact.
Best to keep his mind on what went on about him.
He leaned his stick against a chair, picked up a ladies’ magazine on the table nearby, and put it down again. He went to the shop window, folded his hands behind his back, and looked out.
With all the colorful bits of cloth and ribbons and things hanging on display, it wasn’t easy to see what was going on outside, but he found a position that allowed him to keep an eye on Fenwick.
The carriage still stood on the opposite side of the street, next to the fenced-in oval of greenery at the center of the square. Longmore had left it there because the place was shady and the vehicle would be out of the way of anybody collecting or dropping off passengers.
He heard the interior door open.
He turned quickly away from the window.
But it was only a tired-looking girl. She carried a tray bearing a glass of wine and a plate of biscuits. After a moment’s hesitation, she set it on the table nearest the chair where he’d left his walking stick. She hunted up some sporting magazines and arranged them next to the refreshment tray. She took away the ladies’ magazine and placed it on a table farther away.
She asked if she might get him anything else.
“Nothing,” he said. “How long is this going to take?”
“Not long at all, your lordship,” she said. “It’s only the one dress. But since her ladyship is a new customer, they’ll want a few minutes to measure.”
She said something else, but a shout from outside yanked his attention back to the window. He saw two big men hurrying round his curricle toward the greenery. He couldn’t see Fenwick.
Longmore slammed out of the shop.
Chapter Five
The baths of London are numerous and commodious, and are fitted up with every attention to the convenience of visiters. The usual price for a cold bath is 1s., or a warm bath, 3s. 6d.; but if the visiter subscribe for a quarter of a year or a longer time, the expense is proportionably diminished. The sea-water baths are 3s. 6d. each time, or if warm, about 7s. 6d.
—Leigh’s New Picture of London, 1834
The street, unlike the commercial thorough-fares leading here, was nearly empty. Longmore crossed quickly—in time to see the two men come out from behind the curricle, a squirming Fenwick between them. The taller fellow was nearly as tall as Longmore, but wider. The smaller one was not much smaller, but thin and wiry. Both had scarred faces. Both needed shaving. Both were expensively but flashily dressed.
Brute One, the burlier one, had caught a fistful of the back of Fenwick’s ragged coat collar.
“I warned you not to make me chase you,” Brute One said. “Now you’ve gone and made me mad. You ain’t gettin’ off this time, you dirty, thievin’ brat.”
“I ain’t dirty!” Fenwick snapped. “You take your filthy mitts off of me!” He struggled, but Brute One must have caught hold of more than the collar alone. The boy could have wriggled out of his clothes otherwise. “I got friends, I have, and they’ll make you sorry!” He looked up and spotted Longmore. “There!” he said. “There’s one of ‘em!”
“What the devil is this?” Longmore said. “The boy was minding my horses.”
“With respect, sir, you been took advantage of. This little bastard here ain’t to be trusted no farther ‘n you can throw a house.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Longmore said. “Let him go.”
“Beggin’ pardon, sir, but I better not,” said Brute One. “There’ll be the devil to pay, then, won’t there?”
“We warned him again and again he wasn’t to hang about the premises,” said Brute Two. “Missus don’t want him. Brings down the tone of the neighborhood. How many times we warned him off?”
“Well, I couldn’t go, could I?” the boy said. “His worship’d have me hanged, he would, for deserting my post. He said so, didn’t you, yer majesty?”
“You’ll be hanged anyway, one of these days,” said Brute One.
“Let him go,” Longmore said.
“With respect, sir, don’t you be feelin’ sorry for this one,” said Brute Two. “He’s overdue for a trip to the workhouse, he is, and that’s if he’s lucky, ‘cuz this here’s penitentiary material, you ask me. Loiterin’ and malingerin’ when he’s been told—”
“I told him to stay,” Longmore said. “I’m growing tired of this conversation. Let the boy go and take yourselves off.”
Brute One looked at Brute Two. They both looked down at the boy, then across the street at the shop.
“I’ll tell you what, sir,” said Brute One. “Missus don’t like bein’ contradicted.”
“Funny,” Longmore said. “Neither do I.”
“Why don’t I escort the boy out of the square, where she can’t see the little bugger,” said Brute One. “Farley here’ll look after your horses, sir. And you can go on about your business—”
“You ain’t taking me nowhere! I won’t go!” Fenwick kicked his captor.
Brute One cuffed Fenwick’s head, knocking his grimy cap off.
Longmore launched himself at the bully.
A muffled shriek came from the showroom.
Sophy, whose ears had been straining to detect signs of trouble outside, pulled on her cloak and ran out of the dressing room.
Dowdy and Ecrivier ran after her. “But your ladyship, your bodice,” Dowdy said.
Sophy ran to the window, where the seamstress stood, her hand over her mouth.
Sophy was in time to see a burly fellow take a swing at Longmore, who dodged the blow, and hit back hard enough to make the brute stagger.
“I do apologize for Farley and Payton, your ladyship,” Dowdy said. “But it’s that horrid little boy again, making trouble. I’ll send the girl out to—”
Sophy waved her away and looked about for a weapon.
Longmore’s walking stick leaned against a chair nearby. She grabbed it and ran out.
She heard Dowdy call after her.
She raced across the street.
Having knocked down the bigger one, Longmore was starting for the other one. Then Fenwick decided to help, and flung himself at the smaller one, a mad little dervish, all flailing fists and kicking feet.
Ignoring his protests, Sophy dragged the boy out of the fray.
Longmore immediately picked up the thinner fellow and threw him into the fence. He bounded back, and started for Longmore. At the same time, the bigger one pulled himself up off the ground, gave a roar, and started running at Longmore.
Sophy thrust the walking stick in the ruffian’s way. He tripped and went down hard on the pavement.
Longmore grabbed the thin one and threw him into the fence again. This time the ruffian folded into a heap at the bottom of the fence.
“Time to go,” Longmore said.
Sophy climbed into the carriage. Fenwick hesitated.
The brutes were stumbling to their feet.
“You, too, Mad Dick,” Longmore said.
The boy leapt up onto the groom’s place.
Longmore quickly settled the agitated horses, and gave them office to start.
As they drove away, Sophy called out, “Tell your mistress to cancel my order. I don’t care for the people she employs.”
Bedford Square and its adjacent byways, well away from the hubbub of the major shopping streets, were practically deserted. It took Longmore only a moment to get out of the square and into Tottenham Court Road.
The area was quiet enough for him to hear his passengers breathing hard.
Even he was more winded than he ought to be.
But then, the fight had turned out less straightforward than usual.
“Good grief,” Sophy said. “I can’t leave you two alone for a minute.”
“I was bored,” Longmore said. “Didn’t you advise me to pick a fight if I got bored? I was beginning to enjoy myself, too, when you and Mad Dick had to get into it. How the devil am I to have a proper set-to, when I’ve got to look out for a pair of interferers, and make sure I don’t trip over them—or they don’t get killed accidentally?”
That had certainly added interest and excitement to what could have been a mundane mill.
“You can’t think I’d hang about the shop when you’d given me a perfect excuse to make a hasty exit,” she said. “And then another fine excuse to cancel the order for that ugly dress. Really, it couldn’t have worked out better if I’d planned it.”
“What’re you saying, Miss?” Fenwick piped up from the back. “We went to all this bother, and I nearly got drug to the workhouse—and you didn’t even want a bleedin’ dress?”
“She’s the tricky sort,” Longmore said. “You said so yourself, as I recall.”
The street being less chaotic than those they’d traveled previously, he was able to give her more than a cursory glance. She was completely disheveled, her ugly cap hanging crookedly from one side of her head, her stringy hair falling down in back and clinging stickily to her forehead and cheeks. And her bodice was hanging loose.
“Your clothes are falling off,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. She reached under the cloak to refasten her dress. After a moment’s struggle, she muttered under her breath. It sounded like street French.
More audibly she said, “That fool woman missed a hook. I don’t know what she’s done, but I can’t get the wretched thing undone. Fenwick, you’d better unhook it for me.”
“Not on your life,” the boy said. “There’s things I’ll do and things I won’t and getting tangled in females’ personal hooks and buttons and such is where I draw the line.”
“Don’t be so missish,” said Sophy. “You can’t expect Lord Longmore to stop the horses and do me up.”
“Better him than me,” Fenwick said. “I won’t touch them things with a pitchfork.”
“Coward,” Longmore said. The day simply kept getting better and better.
He turned into the nearest side street, and halted the carriage. He sent Fenwick down to hold the horses’ heads. Then he faced Sophy.
“Turn sideways,” he said. “I’m not an acrobat.”
She unfastened the cloak and shrugged it from her shoulders. It slid down to her waist. Then she turned and lifted her hair out of the way. She bent her head.
And he became aware of the air changing, humming with tension.
Her neck lay bare before him. Smooth, perfectly creamy skin, and a trace of golden down where the hairline tapered off.
He could almost taste her skin. His head bent, and all he could think of was licking the back of her neck the way a cat licked cream.
“You were brilliant in the shop, by the way,” she said.
“You told me to be myself,” he said, his voice thick. He could smell her skin, tinged with lavender and … pine?
He could barely focus on the hooks. He stared at her soft neck.
“I think it’s somewhere in the middle,” she said.
“What is?”
“The hook she fastened to the wrong bar. It’s a stitched bar, you see? Not a metal eye.”
He hauled his attention to the dress. The fabric was bunched up near the middle of her back. Above the place where the dress was crookedly fastened, a small gap had opened. He could see a bit of undergarment. Fine muslin. Embroidered. With tiny flowers.
He swallowed a groan.
“You got right into the spirit of the thing,” she said. “You were brilliant.”
He cleared his throat. “I was being myself.”
He told himself not to rush his fences.
He wasn’t easy to persuade. Resisting temptation had never made any sense to him. But there was nothing to be gained by giving in now, in a public byway. Even a dolt like the Earl of Longmore could understand that.
Do the job and be done with it, he told himself.
Certainly it was no onerous task. He was used to doing and undoing women’s clothing. He’d done it wearing gloves, more than once. He’d done it in the dark. He’d done it at speeds that might be records for the Northern Hemisphere, while the female hissed, “Hurry, for heaven’s sake—he’s coming!”
He set to work.
It should have taken seconds. But there was some sort of tangle, and he was fumbling, and getting nowhere. His fingers felt like sausages. No matter how he tried to get at the hook, he failed, and with each failure his temperature climbed another degree.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“These hooks,” he said. “They’re the very devil.”
“That fool must have bent them,” she said. “They ought to be easy to manage. We haven’t a retinue of servants, and one can’t always count on having a sister on hand. One needs to be able to dress without help, if necessary.”
“You must be deuced flexible,” he said.
Wrong thing to say.
She went quiet and his mind started painting pictures. Just in case he wasn’t heated enough already.
He wasn’t used to behaving himself for long stretches. And she was … flexible … and his mind wouldn’t let go of the idea. And she smelled like a woman and lavender and greenery. And he could see a bit of her underthings.
His head was going to explode.
“Lord Longmore?” she said.
He gathered what was left of his wits. “The hook is either mangled or tangled,” he said. “I can’t see what the problem is.” Because he was going crosseyed, from the scent and the warmth of her body and the consciousness of his hands and how he needed to keep them at their job.
His pulse was racing, sending heat flooding downward.
Christ.
“She caught it in the seam stitching, probably,” she said. “She was in a fearful hurry. Couldn’t wait to be done with me. I’m surprised she didn’t leave it to the Frenchwoman. Ecrivier. You saw what that was all about, I don’t doubt.”
“I should have made the boy do this,” he said. “His hands are smaller.”