“Then by all means let us deliver it in person. I see gifts aplenty here for my mother as well. And her new husband. They would both be enchanted.”
His mother had chosen her second husband as wisely as she’d done her first. Lord Rufford was a good, generous man, who made her happy. He’d made a friend of his stepson, too, no easy feat.
“You’re in a devil of a hurry to return,” Swanton said.
Lisburne laughed. “Perhaps I am. I’m supposed to be such a cosmopolitan fellow, yet I let a redheaded French milliner get the better of me. Perhaps I want to slink away in shame.”
“That I beg leave to doubt,” Swanton said. “I believe you’re so far from wishing to leave that you’re even now puzzling over how she did it, so that you can plan how to prevail at your next encounter.”
Lisburne looked at him.
“She’s the only woman you’ve taken any particular notice of since we came to London,” Swanton said. “And I know you. As well, that is, as anybody can know you.”
“As though there were anything of great moment to know,” Lisburne said. But Swanton was a poet. He imagined everybody had hidden depths. If Lisburne did have them, he wasn’t interested in exploring them, and he certainly wouldn’t encourage anybody else to do so. “What about you? Do you feel compelled to stay?”
“I feel I must,” Swanton said.
“Do you? I’d as soon be stalked by wolves as by a lot of gently bred maidens.”
“They’ll grow sick of me soon enough,” Swanton said. “In the meantime, I should be a coward to run away when I can do so much good. It would be unworthy of your father’s memory, in any event.”
“Yes, yes, stab me with my father, do,” Lisburne said.
“I know it isn’t fair, but it’s the only way I know to win an argument with you,” Swanton said.
“Very well,” Lisburne said. “We stay until they turn on you. Then we pray we can get away in time.”
He glanced at the piles of correspondence he’d flung onto one of the library’s sofas a short time earlier. “Meanwhile, does your secretary need a secretary? The heaps of letters have only grown higher since yesterday.” Remembering what Swanton had said moments ago, he added, “Begging letters, you said. One of the perils of rank and wealth. Everybody puts his hand out, and somebody has to decide who’s deserving and who isn’t.”
“That’s the least of it,” Swanton said. “Today alone I received two claims for child support and one extortionate note threatening a breach of promise suit.”
To anybody who knew Swanton, the claims were absurd. Yet they oughtn’t to be taken lightly.
Fame aroused envy and greed and, generally, the worst instincts of some people. Too many would be willing to believe ill of him.
“Show me the letters,” Lisburne said.
Evening of Tuesday 14 July
Had Lisburne not been so deeply engrossed in his cousin’s unpleasant correspondence, he might have got wind of the other matter sooner. Or maybe not.
Though he’d been to White’s often enough, he hadn’t looked into the betting book in days. Why bother? So many of the wagers were witless, arising from boredom. How long a fly would crawl about the window before it died or flew away, for instance.
Lisburne, for the present at least, wasn’t bored. Watching women moon about Swanton had been tiresome, and even the possible dangers of the situation hadn’t made life exciting. But then Miss Leonie Noirot had entered the picture, and London had become far more interesting.
Since she was everything but boring, Lisburne wasn’t shocked to find her at the heart of the latest gossip.
He and Swanton had attended the Countess of Jersey’s assembly, where the ladies made the usual fuss about the poet. While the younger women were fluttering about Swanton, Lisburne drifted toward the card room. As he was about to enter, Lady Alda Morris detained him, in order to whisper something behind her fan.
Maison Noirot
Wednesday 15 July
Lady Gladys stood before the dressing glass, her face pink.
Four women—Leonie, Marcelline, Lady Clara, and Jeffreys—watched and waited.
Today, for the first time, Lady Gladys wore the corset Leonie had designed especially for her.
Unlike the one they’d hastily adapted last week to replace the monstrosity she’d brought from home, this one employed all of Leonie’s knowledge of mathematics, physiology, and physics. Until this moment, she hadn’t been allowed to enjoy her accomplishment, because Lady Gladys had refused to come out and show herself in the corset. She said she would not cavort about in her undergarments to be gawked at.
That, however, was before she’d seen the gold evening dress.
When they’d first shown it to her, she’d made a face and said the color would make her look as though she had a liver disease. But by Lady Gladys’s standards, the protest was feeble. A moment later she said she might as well try it on. Then she’d insisted on Jeffreys—the allegedly consumptive speaker of vile French—attending her in the dressing room.
Ladies were nothing if not capricious, but this lady had apparently devoted her young life to making everybody about her want to throttle her.
“Well,” she said at last.
One word, but Leonie caught the little bubble of pleasure in it. Lady Gladys had a beautiful voice, as expressive as an opera singer’s.
“I never thought I could wear this color,” she said.
“So you made abundantly clear,” Lady Clara said. “I thought we should have to stupefy you with drink to get you to try on anything today.”
“That isn’t true. I didn’t make a fuss about trying on the corset. I only didn’t want to prance about in my underwear while everybody stared at me.”
She smoothed the front of the dress though Jeffreys, naturally, had made sure every seam lay precisely in place.
“The corset is comfortable,” Lady Gladys said. “I’m not sure what you did, but …” She trailed off, studying herself. “You did something,” she said.
Leonie had done a great deal. She’d designed the stays to support her ladyship’s generous embonpoint. The corset’s shape smoothed her waist in a way that made it seem smaller, though the compression was minimal.
Her figure remained much fuller and less shapely than the fashionable ideal. But fashionable ideals were only that. What was important was making a lady look as beautiful as it was possible for her to look. And the gold satin was as much a surprise to Leonie as it was to Lady Gladys.
As usual, Marcelline had imagined the dress entirely in her head. This time, though, she’d relied solely on Leonie’s detailed description of their new client.
Yet from her sickbed, and in spite of near-constant nausea, Marcelline had designed a miracle of a dress. Gold satin trimmed in black blond lace. Simple yet dramatic. The pointed waist created the illusion of a narrower waistline, and the black languets that fastened it in front enhanced the effect.
Pointed waists had supposedly fallen out of fashion, but Marcelline never concerned herself with what she considered petty fluctuations of taste.
This dress would bring pointed waists straight back into style, Leonie calculated. The black lace mantilla, attached to the tops of the sleeves, not only added drama but drew the eye upward, toward Lady Gladys’s ample bosom. It was, perhaps, not quite the thing for an unwed young lady, but Lady Gladys would