A Lover's Kiss. Margaret Moore

in the corner.

      The overly excited haberdasher waved a pair of stockings like a call to arms and the milliner came boldly forward with the most ridiculous hat Drury had ever seen, quite unlike the charming chapeau Juliette had worn when she’d left him in her room.

      “Sir Douglas, the corsetier has arrived,” Millstone intoned from the doorway.

      That was too much.

      “I believe that is my cue to depart,” Drury said, hurrying to the door. “I leave it all to you, Juliette. Adieu!”

      In spite of his desire to be gone, he paused on the threshold and glanced back at the young woman standing in the center of the colorful disarray. She looked like a worried general besieged by fabric and furbelows, and he felt a most uncharacteristic urge to grin as he beat a hasty retreat.

      Only later, when Drury was in his chambers listening to James St. Claire ask for his help to defend a washerwoman unjustly accused of theft, did he realize that he had left a Frenchwoman to spend his money as she liked. Even more surprising, he was more anxious to see her in some pretty new clothes than worried about the expense.

      At the same time, as the modiste and others pressed Juliette to select this or that or the other, she began to wonder if there wasn’t another motive for Sir Douglas Drury’s generosity.