By the time the packet docked at the Tower Stairs, Marcelline wanted to scream. The storm had blown the ship off course, and a trip that in good weather took about twelve hours had taken more than twenty. The advertised “refreshments” had run out, the ship’s servants were limp with fatigue, and the mood of the hungry passengers was vile, as was their smell. Even above deck, in the brisk sea air, it was impossible to escape the evidence of too many people confined with one another in too small an area for too long. Couples quarreled with each other and scolded their whiny children, who picked fights with their siblings.
Naturally, nobody could wait to get off the boat, and they all tried to disembark simultaneously, shoving and shouting and even kicking.
Though she longed desperately get off the vessel as well, Marcelline decided to wait. She fended off the packet’s servants, eager to help her with her belongings, telling them to come back later. While she felt a good deal better, she didn’t feel quite herself. Too, Jeffreys was still weak from her own far worse bout with sickness. It made no sense to endure the pushing and hurrying and ill temper—and above all, the whiny children.
Marcelline wanted her own child. Lucie was no angel, but she did not whine. and when her mama surprised her by returning home a week early, that mama would be smiling and happy.
She would be smiling and happy, Marcelline assured herself, once the crowd dissipated, and she could have a moment’s peace, to sort herself out.
Clevedon must be long gone by now. He wouldn’t have to shove people out of his way. His servants could do that for him—not that it would be necessary. Clevedon appeared, and people simply made way for him.
“Make way, make way!”
She looked up. A tall, burly footman was bearing down on her, another footman behind him. The livery was all too familiar.
The first one elbowed an indignant packet servant aside, strode to her, and bowed. “His grace’s compliments, Mrs. Noirot, and would you be so good as to let him see you and Miss Jeffreys home. He understands Miss Jeffreys was dire ill, and he dislikes to leave her to the public conveyances, let alone being jostled by this infern—this crowd. If you ladies would come with us, me and Joseph will take you along to the Customs officers and then in a trice we’ll have you in the carriage, which is only around the corner.”
Even as he spoke, he was collecting their things, hoisting one portmanteau under one arm and another under the other. His counterpart made easy work of the remaining bags, ignoring the protests of the packet servants they’d displaced and deprived of their tips.
It all happened so quickly that Marcelline had no time even to decide whether to object. She’d hardly taken in what they were about when Thomas and Joseph marched away with her luggage.
The drive to the shop on Fleet Street, silent for the most part, seemed interminable.
The first thing Jeffreys did when she settled into her seat, next to Marcelline and opposite the duke, was thank him for sending Saunders to look after her when she was ill.
He shrugged. “Saunders dotes on playing physician,” he said. “He likes nothing better than to make disgusting potions to cure the effects of overindulgence. It’s his subtle way of punishing us, no doubt, for getting wine stains on our linen.”
“He was very kind,” Jeffreys said.
“That would make for a change,” said Clevedon. “He isn’t, usually.”
And that was all he said, all the way from the Tower to Jeffreys’s lodgings.
From there it was an easy walk to the shop. The drive was not so easy.
Marcelline’s mind was working as always, looking for a way to turn matters to her account. He’d said…what had he said before he slammed out of his cabin?
He’d said something about paying the dressmaking bills. That it suited him very well.
But he’d been so angry, and he hadn’t come back.
His valet had appeared, though, with a bottle of wine and assorted cold meats and cheese that must have cost a king’s ransom in bribes.
A woman could, too easily, get used to such luxury.
She couldn’t afford to get used to it.
“I can’t decide,” she said, “whether you’re exercising forbearance or merely indulging your curiosity to see my lair.”
“Why should I do either?” he said. Seeming to make himself perfectly at ease, he stretched out his long legs, as he hadn’t been able to do when Jeffreys shared the seat with her. He rested one arm along the back of the richly appointed seat and looked out of the louvered panel, open at present to let him see out while shielding him from others trying to look in. Not that it was any secret who he was, when the crest emblazoned on the door shouted his identity to all the world.
The late afternoon light traced the smoothly sculpted lines of his profile.
Longing welled up. To touch his beautiful face. To feel that arm curl about her shoulders. To tuck herself into that big, warm body.
She crushed it. “Or perhaps you took pity on us,” she said.
“It was your maid or seamstress or whatever she is upon whom I took pity,” he said. “You can take care of yourself, I’ve no doubt. But Saunders told me the girl was prodigious ill. For a time, he said, he wasn’t sure she’d survive the voyage. She did not look well just now.” He paused briefly. “She doesn’t lodge with you?”
“She did, but that was only temporary. I can hardly lodge my seamstresses. For one thing, it isn’t good for them to do nothing but eat, drink, and live nothing but shop. For another, there isn’t room. Not that I should want half a dozen seamstresses about all day and all night. The working hours can be trying enough, what with their little jealousies and—”
“Half a dozen?” he said. He leaned forward. “Half a dozen?”
He was too astonished to pretend he wasn’t.
Yes, of course she’d babbled that advertisement for the corner of Fleet Street at Chancery Lane, and it was the direction she’d given the coachman. That didn’t mean her shop wasn’t squeezed into a passage or a cellar.
“Half a dozen girls at present,” she said. “But I’ll certainly be hiring more in the near future. As it is, we’re shorthanded.”
“Half a—Devil take you, what is wrong with you?”
“You’ve already pointed out any number of my character flaws,” she said. “To which do you now refer?”
“I thought…Noirot, you’re the damndest woman. Your dogged pursuit of me led me to believe you were in desperate straits.”
“How on earth did you come by that idea?” she said. “I told you I was the greatest modiste in the world. You’ve seen my work.”
“I imagined a dark little shop in a basement, drat you,” he said. “I did wonder how you contrived to make such extravagant-looking dresses in such a place.”
“I’m sure you didn’t wonder about it overlong,” she said. “You were mainly occupied with bedding me.”
“Yes, but I’m done with that now.”
He was. He truly was. He’d had enough of her. He’d had enough of himself, chasing her. Like a puppy, like the veriest schoolboy.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” she said.
“It’s only Clara I’m thinking of,” he said. “Much as it pains me to contribute to your vainglory, it was clear, even to me, that the women of Paris were besotted with your work. You’re the most aggravating woman I’ve ever met, but you make yourself agreeable to women, I noticed, and that and beautiful, fashionable clothes are what matter, I daresay. I should not hold a grudge, merely because