Scandal Wears Satin (24 page)

“They won’t?” He frowned at the paper. Though he’d never thought Lady Clara Fairfax particularly clever, he’d supposed she could put two and two together.

“Certainly not,” she said. “Harry said that even a man of the meanest intelligence would know better than to game there. The place is as crooked as Putney Bridge, he said.”

His face heated. “Longmore was here—about this?” He nodded in the direction of the scandal sheet.

“Oh, he often collects a copy of the
Spectacle
on his way home from wherever he goes after the theater or a party,” she said. “He came by a little while ago. He was on his way to call on Madame de Veirrion. He was going to try to persuade her to drive out with him. Is she respectable, do you think?”

Not if she’s driving out with your brother
, he thought.

He said, “I’ve heard nothing to the contrary.”

“I think she must be,” Lady Clara said. “She’s a friend of the Duchess of Clevedon, and the duke apparently made her acquaintance as well, when he was in Paris. I can’t imagine their taking her to the theater if she wasn’t.”

“Clevedon seems to care nothing about what others think of him,” he said.

He didn’t say, and she was too tactful to point out that, with an annual income numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the Duke of Clevedon could afford not to care.

“He cares what’s said of his duchess and her daughter,” Lady Clara said. “The King and Queen have accepted her. I don’t think she’d wish to jeopardize her position by associating with improper persons.”

“It would be foolish, I agree.”

“If she
is
respectable, Mama will be in alt,” Lady Clara said. “Madame’s husband left her everything. Mama won’t mind her being a widow. She’s always been terrified that Harry would end up marrying a ballet dancer or a barmaid.”

Adderley’s face burned. His mother was a sore spot. Still, she hadn’t been a barmaid but an innkeeper’s daughter. She’d been a royal mistress, as had scores of “respectable” women. Unfortunately, she’d become one after he was born. No one cared if one was a bastard, if one was a
royal
bastard. It’s no small thing to be descended from kings. He, alas, was descended from an innkeeper and obscure country gentlemen. Not a drop of royal blood trickled through his veins.

“Marry?” he said, bewildered. “Longmore?” That was inconceivable. “Has it gone so far as that already?”

Clara shrugged. “Who can say? But he seemed quite taken with her. And you know Harry, always plunging headlong into—” She broke off, coughing. She put her hand to her forehead.

It was a small, involuntary gesture, but it was enough to remind him that she’d recently been ill—ill enough for the house to be closed to all but a very few visitors, for three days. He hurried to her, and knelt by her chair. “My dear, are you unwell?”

She let her hand fall. “No, a little . . . oh, it’s nothing, only I’ve been indoors forever, it seems. What I need is a dose of fresh air. I think I’ll order the cabriolet, and take a turn about the park.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “If you wish to take the air, I’m happy to drive you. You’ve only to send a maid for your bonnet and shawl.”

T
he fashionable hour of promenade hadn’t yet arrived when Lord Longmore turned his curricle into Hyde Park’s Cumberland Gate. He was listening to his fair companion. She was prattling in a fractured English so ridiculous that he couldn’t help but smile, though he wasn’t in the most cheerful frame of mind.

“You have too much in your head,” said Madame. “One part of milord attends me. The other part of him rests in another place. I am compelled to demand to myself, Do I cause to him the ennui?”

“I begin to wish, oddly enough, that you were some degrees more boring,” he said. “It’s almost more excitement than I can bear. Last night . . .” He shook his head.

“But how calm you seemed! Not in the least fearful.”

He looked at her. “You’ve deceived the ton with breathtaking ease. I vow, women who must have looked straight into your face countless times while you adjusted their bows and such ought to have recognized you, even from across the theater. Several men who came into the box last night were at White’s on the day you stood in the rain on St. James’s Street, generously offering them a view of your petticoats and ankles.”

“People see what they expect to see,” she said. “In the shop, one is the modiste. When one isn’t in the shop but in a place where she isn’t expected to be, she merely seems vaguely familiar.”

Her false voice, the false accent, the mangled English slipped away, and he marveled at that, too: the ease with which Sophy shed one personality and assumed another.

“Shopkeepers are like servants, invisible,” she went on. “Outside their proper sphere, their customers don’t recognize them. If one pretends, boldly and confidently, to be someone else, the observer simply accepts.”

Servants were another matter. No one was invisible to them. If that hadn’t been the case, Madame would be residing at Clevedon House, and Longmore would have one less worry. But that was out of the question. One couldn’t expect a large household to keep such a secret—or any secret, for that matter. She’d gone out in one of her guises and hired French servants from one of the agencies she knew and trusted. These made up the retinue attending her at her hotel. In time, the
Spectacle
would explain the circumstances under which she’d fled France. That, he had no doubt, would be a bloodcurdling story of treachery and betrayal and flight under cover of darkness and harrowing escapes from Enemies.

He shook his head. “It’s still hard to swallow: the same men who gawked at you through White’s bow window, all competing now to be witty and charming in French.”

“Because the scene was so beautifully set,” she said. “All we needed was for you and Lady Clara to pretend not to recognize me.”

“Clara contrived to do it without telling an outright lie, I noticed.”

But Clara had had only a small part to play. It was Sophy who’d had to take center stage. It was she who’d had to adopt another identity—with every single eye in the theater on her.

She’d done it with a flair and assurance that took his breath away. She’d seemed thoroughly at ease, and he’d thought,
She’s in her element
.

“You played your part splendidly,” she said. “So well, in fact, that you almost threw me off-stride. I’m still not over the shock of your perfect French.”

He shrugged. “That won me some flattery from Adderley. He even had the temerity to compliment my uppercut—and to say he deserved it.”

“He’ll say anything,” she said. “He’s in very bad trouble.”

And that was one of the many matters worrying Longmore’s brain. “He’ll do anything, too,” he said. “Kindly remember that. And remember as well that he’s not stupid. You’d better have a care.”

She stiffened. “I can’t believe you’re giving
me
acting advice. Have you forgotten our day at Dowdy’s?”

“This is different.”

“It’s the same thing,” she said. “I’m pretending to be somebody I’m not. I do it all the time. I pretend I don’t want to slap a customer. I pretend she isn’t an idiot. I pretend I like changing the ribbon fourteen times because she doesn’t know what she likes or wants until thirty of her friends have all given their opinions.”

“This isn’t women in a shop,” he said.

“I’m well aware of that,” she said. “Have you forgotten whose idea this was? Have you forgotten that you said it was a
perfect
plan?”

“You were stark naked when you told me,” he said. “At the time,
any
plan would have struck me as perfect.”

“Well, then. It ought to be imbedded in your brain.”

“Well, nothing. That was before Clevedon gave us the nasty details about Adderley.”

While they’d been hunting for Clara, Clevedon had been doing his own sleuthing. He’d learned that Lord Adderley’s debts were considerably greater than rumored—and rumor had named a very high figure. He was in so deep that some of his creditors were keeping a close watch on him. He wouldn’t be the first gentleman to decide to flee his obligations via a packet to Calais or other continental parts.

“He’s dealt with some unsavory moneylenders,” she said with a dismissive wave. “I know about them.”

“Their methods aren’t always sporting,” he said.

“I know what they’re like,” she said.

“They’re not harmless oafs like Dowdy’s hired ruffians,” he said.

She let out a huff. “I told you: I
know
. You’ve no idea what we dealt with in Paris.”

“I don’t,” he said. “It grows clearer and clearer how little I know about you.”

. . .
except that her breasts were perfect, and her bottom was beyond perfect, and when she made love she was completely honest.

. . .
and that he was spending far too much time working on the problem of how to get her back into his bed.

“We’ll have to indulge in reminiscences another time,” she said. “There they are.”

He looked up. Adderley’s carriage was approaching.

“I only want you not to be overconfident,” he said. “I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” she said. “I’m not your sister. I never had a sheltered life. You don’t know what it takes to establish a successful shop. You have to stop fretting about Adderley’s creditors and unsavory moneylenders, and leave him to me. You need to trust in me to know what I’m doing, so that you can concentrate on doing your own part. You have to be Longmore, who’s taken a fancy to Madame de Veirrion. Look at me. I’m
Madame
now.”

And she changed.

It was a marvel to him, to watch her. As the other carriage approached, her demeanor changed completely: her posture and the way she moved—even her face wasn’t quite the same face. This all happened in a way too subtle for one to put into words.

Unlike her stint as his cousin Gladys, she wore no disguise this time: no tinted spectacles to dull the brilliant blue of her eyes, no artificial blemishes to spoil her perfect skin, no noxious mixtures to dull the gold of her hair. She was dressed more expensively and extravagantly than usual—and that was no small accomplishment—but her face was in plain view.

Yet she became someone else, as though she had a hundred souls at her disposal, and could become another person as entirely and as easily as another woman changed hats.

In some way, through the sheer force of personality, she made the world believe the illusion she created.

But she was right, or at least partly right: He had to stop thinking about the delicious and troubling puzzle that was Sophia Noirot and concentrate on the allure of Madame de Veirrion.

He’d driven into the park through the Cumberland Gate, at the park’s northeast corner, in order to “accidentally” meet up with the other couple. Most of London’s fashionable set typically entered at Hyde Park Corner, making a great crush at the southeastern edge of the park. The aim was for Longmore and his companion to seem to be on their way out of the park when the encounter occurred.

Once abreast of each other, the two vehicles halted, and Longmore made the introductions.

Clara showed exactly the right degree of feminine curiosity about Madame.

Adderley was doing the masculine version: trying to size up Madame’s assets under the capes and gigantic sleeves of her carriage dress without being obvious about it. But of course it was as plain as plain to Longmore, as it would be to any man, that Adderley had discerned her splendidly rounded figure, and dwelt on it rather longer than he needed to. He made a valiant effort not to appear interested—one must give him a little credit, as little as possible—but Madame kept his attention. He was the hapless fish, swimming into her nets without realizing the nets were there.

Longmore had watched her captivate his friends last night. This afternoon he watched her casually throw the bait: a sidelong glance at Adderley, a tilt of her head, a gesture here, a fleeting smile there. In five minutes, she had him. A speculative gleam came into Adderley’s eyes, and a silent dialogue went on between them—and Longmore was developing a headache from the effort it took to pretend not to notice.

All the while, Madame was talking mainly to Clara. She made it seem that she was eager to win Clara’s approval. And all the while Clara listened to Madame’s mangled English with a perfectly sober expression, seeming completely oblivious to the silent byplay between Madame and Adderley.

“I am too much—oh, what is the word I want?” Madame frowned prettily. “To go ahead too much. Ah,
forward
. I am too much forward, yes? Too bold.”

“Not at all,” Adderley said, gallant fellow. Conceited, sneaking swine.

Madame feigned not to notice, her attention apparently given to Clara. “But my Lady Clara, this I demand: Who knows what arrives? Today we are content, so ’appy. The day after this, the one we love so much—
poof!
—he is gone. This is what arrives in my life. One day all is content and peace. The day that succeed, all is agitation.
Mon époux
, he die. Then Paris go mad. Who can say what will pass?”