Anna Campbell – Regency Rogues and Rakes: Silk is for Seduction / Scandal Wears Satin / Vixen in Velvet / Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed / A Rake's Midnight Kiss / What a Duke Dares (страница 66)
“Let’s make them beg for your creations.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes.”
“Is tomorrow too soon?” he said.
“No,” she said. “We’ve a great deal to do, you and I, conquering the world. We must start at once. We’ve not a minute to lose.”
“I love hearing you say that,” he said.
He kissed her. It lasted a long time.
And they would last, she was sure, a lifetime. On that she’d wager anything.
The dresses were brilliant in the extreme; and it afforded us much gratification to notice that those worn by her Majesty and the Royal Family, as well as many others, were chiefly composed of British manufacture.
The two latter appeared in defiance of their parents—but Longford had never been noted for filial obedience, and Lady Clara had lately developed an invigorating habit of defying her mother. She’d worn a Noirot creation to the Queen’s Drawing Room the previous Thursday, which caused a most gratifying stir.
When her brother had taxed her with aiding and abetting Clevedon’s lunacy, she said, “He’s still my friend, and I scorn to hold a grudge. I certainly shan’t cut off my nose to spite my face. You know that no one has ever or will ever make me look as well as Mrs. Noirot does. Do stop acting like Mama.”
That last remark brought Longmore around.
The duke’s aunts presented a more formidable challenge. As soon as they received his message regarding his impending nuptials, they hurried to Town and took possession of Clevedon House, determined to bring him to his senses. On Wednesday afternoon, they’d settled down for a bout of tea drinking and bullying their nephew when Halliday ushered in his grace’s prospective wife and in-laws and, as heavy artillery, Lucie. the aunts might have withstood the Noirot charm alone, but charm combined with mouth-watering dresses weakened their defenses, and Lucie, at her winsome best, routed them utterly.
On the Monday following the wedding, the youngest aunt, Lady Adelaide Ludley, visited the queen, with whom she shared a given name and was on warm terms. Her ladyship extolled the new duchess’s deportment and taste. On learning that the queen had admired Lady Clara Fairfax’s dress, Lady Adelaide pointed out that Maison Noirot patronized British tradesmen almost exclusively—a cause dear to Their Majesties’ hearts. She mentioned that the Noirot sisters were founders of the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females—another point in their favor.
Lady Adelaide agreed with the queen that the Duchess of Clevedon, in intending to keep up her shop, presented the Court with a social dilemma. On the other hand, said her ladyship, the duchess acted on good moral principle in being unwilling to abandon either her customers or the young women she was training as seamstresses. In any event, as the duke had pointed out to his aunts, one could not expect an artist to give up her art.
In the end, Lady Adelaide received permission to present the new duchess to the queen. She did so at the Drawing Room held in honor of the King’s Birthday, commemorated on the 28th of May. At one point during the festivities, the king summoned Clevedon, and spoke to him privately. His Majesty was heard to laugh.
When Clevedon returned to his wife’s side, she said, “What was that about?”
“The Princess Erroll of Albania,” Clevedon said. “He asked after her.” His smile was conspiratorial. “I think we’ve done it. They’ve decided I’m eccentric and you’re irresistible.”
“Or the other way about,” she said.
“Does it matter?” he said.
“No,” she said. She bent her head, and the sound was soft, but he recognized it. “Duchess,” he said, “are you giggling?”
She looked up, laughter dancing in her dark eyes. “I was only thinking: This has to be the greatest trick any Noirot or DeLucey has ever brought off.”
“And to think,” he said, “this is only the beginning.”
Not many days thereafter, in the course of a promenade in St. James’s Park, Miss Lucie Cordelia Noirot allowed the Princess Victoria to admire Susannah. The doll, as would be expected, was dressed for the occasion, in a lilac pelisse and a bonnet of
‘I married Marcelline knowing she’d never give up her work,’ Clevedon was saying. ‘If she did, she’d be like everyone else. She wouldn’t be the woman I fell in love with.’
‘Love,’ Longmore said. ‘Bad idea.’
Clevedon smiled. ‘One day Love will come along and knock you on your arse,’ he said. ‘And I’ll laugh myself sick, watching.’
‘Love will have its work cut out for it,’ Longmore said. ‘I’m not like you. I’m not
‘Very possibly,’ Clevedon said. ‘Which will make it all the more amusing.’
LORETTA CHASE has worked in academe, retail and the visual arts, as well as on the streets—as a meter maid (aka traffic warden)—and in video, as a scriptwriter. She might have developed an excitingly chequered career had her spouse not nagged her into writing fiction. Her bestselling historical romances, set in the Regency and Romantic eras of the early nineteenth century, have won a number of awards, including the Romance Writers of America’s RITA®.
Website: www.LorettaChase.com.
This book was made possible by the support of: my insightful and inspiring editor, May Chen; my indefatigable agent, Nancy Yost; my witty and fashion-wise friend and blogging partner, Isabella Bradford, aka Susan Holloway Scott; my patient French adviser, Valerie Kerxhalli; my loyal, funny and crazy sisters, Cynthia, Vivian and Kathy; and, most especially, my brainy and brave husband, Walter, a hero every single day.
Observe his fierce, fighting-cock air; his coal-black gipsy curls; his aristocratic (not to call it arrogant) expression of countenance—never laid aside, whether he is smiling on a fair dame or frowning on a fawning dun.
“Sketches from Real Life,” 1835
The trollops knew how to throw a party.
On Wednesday nights, after dancing or playing cards with Society’s crème de la crème at Almack’s, London’s wilder set continued more eagerly to a very different assembly at the house of Carlotta O’Neill. On offer was a roulette table, along with other games of chance, as well as spicier games with the demireps who played ladies-in-waiting to London’s current queen of courtesans.
Harry Fairfax, Earl of Longmore, was on the scene, naturally.
Carlotta’s wasn’t the sort of place his father, the Marquess of Warford, would wish his twenty-seven-year-old son and heir to frequent, but heeding his parents’ wishes, Longmore had decided a long time ago, was the fast and easy route to murderous boredom.
He was nothing like his parents, on any count. He’d inherited not only his great-uncle Lord Nicholas Fairfax’s piratical looks—black hair, black eyes, and a tall, muscular physique usually associated with buccaneers—but Great-Uncle Nicholas’s talent for Doing What He Was Not Supposed To.
And so Lord Longmore was at Carlotta’s.
And she was draped over him, wafting waves of scent. And talking, unfortunately.
“But you’re intimately acquainted with them,” she was saying. “You must tell us what the new Duchess of Clevedon is really like.”
“Brunette,” he said, watching the roulette wheel spin. “Pretty. Says she’s English but acts French.”
“My dear, we could have found that out from the
Longmore wondered where she was this night. He hadn’t spotted her at Almack’s. Milliners—especially slightly French ones—had as much chance of receiving vouchers to Almack’s as he had of turning invisible at will. But Sophia Noirot had her own mode of invisibility, and she was perfectly capable of inserting her elegantly curved body anywhere she pleased, in the guise of a temporary servant. That was how she dug up so much dirt for Foxe’s scandal sheet.
The roulette wheel stopped spinning, one of the fellows at the table swore, and the wench acting as croupier raked a pile of counters in Longmore’s direction.