Something flickered in her eyes, but she said nothing, only waited, her attention riveted.
She was riveted on him—for her business. He was merely the means to an end.
But he scorned to hold grudges, especially on such a petty account—his vanity, of all things!
“I wanted to see the place for myself,” he said. “To make sure it truly existed, for one thing—and to see what sort of place it was. For all I knew, you were toiling alone in a dark room in a cellar.”
“Good grief, what a mind a man has,” she said. “How could you imagine I should produce such creations in—But never mind. Maison Noirot is an elegant shop. Everything is of the first stare, exceedingly neat and clean and airy. It’s much more neat and elegant, I promise you, than the den of that dull-witted incompetent—but no, I will not foul the air with her name.”
He was done with her. He needed to be done with her. But now, when she spoke of her shop, she was so animated. So passionate.
“I smell a rival,” he said.
She sat straighter. “Certainly not. I have no rivals, your grace. I am the greatest modiste in the world.” She leaned forward to look out of the door window. “We’re nearly there. You’ll soon see for yourself.”
It wasn’t as soon as it might have been, the street being a tangle of carriages, riders, and pedestrians. But eventually they came to the place, and there it was, a handsome modern shop, with a bow window and the name in gold lettering over the door: Noirot.
The carriage stopped. The door opened. The steps were folded down.
Clevedon stepped out first, and put out his hand to steady her.
As she took his hand, he heard a cry behind him.
She looked up, looked past him, and the light he’d seen in her face before was nothing to this. Her countenance was the sun, shedding happiness and setting the world aglow.
“Mama!” the voice cried.
Noirot practically leapt from the last step, past him, forgetting him entirely.
She crouched down on the pavement and opened her arms, and a little girl, a little dark-haired girl, ran into them.
“Mama!” the child cried. “You’re home!”
The Dress-Maker must be an expert anatomist; and must, if judiciously chosen, have a name of French termination; she must know how to hide all defects in the proportions of the body, and must be able to mould the shape by the stays, that, while she corrects the body, she may not interfere with the pleasures of the palate.
The Book of English Trades, and Library of the Useful Arts, 1818
A child.
She had a child.
A little girl with dark, curling hair who ran at her, laughing. Noirot’s arms went around her and tightened to hold her close. “My love, my love,” she said, and the way she said it made a knot in his chest.
He was distantly aware of other feminine voices, but his attention was locked upon the scene: Noirot crouched on the pavement, crushing the little girl to her, and the child, whose face he could see so clearly over her mother’s shoulder, eyes closed, her face alight and dawn-rosy, her happiness radiating in almost visible waves.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, oblivious to all else about him: the busy street, the people detouring round the mother and child on the pavement. He scarcely noticed his own servants, carrying her things into the place, then returning to the carriage. He was only dimly aware of the two women who had come out of the shop behind the little girl.
He stood and watched the mother and child because he couldn’t turn away, because he didn’t understand and scarcely believed what his senses told him.
After some time, some very short time perhaps, Noirot rose and, taking her daughter’s hand, started toward the shop. The child said, “Who is that, Mama?”
Noirot turned around and saw him standing, like a man at the window of a peepshow, entranced by a foreign world, unable to look away.
He collected his wits and took a step toward them. “Mrs. Noirot, perhaps you’d be so kind as to make me known to the young lady.”
The child looked up at him, eyes wide. They were not her mother’s eyes, but b1ue, vividly blue. They seemed vaguely familiar, and he tried to remember where he might have seen those eyes before. But where could that have been? Anywhere. Nowhere. It didn’t signify.
Noirot looked from the girl to him and back to the girl, who said, “Who is it, Mama? Is it the king?”
“No, it isn’t the king.”
The child tipped her head to one side, looking past him at the carriage. “That is a very grand carriage,” she said. “I should like to drive about in that carriage.”
“I don’t doubt that,” said her mother. “Your grace, may I present my daughter, Miss Lucie Cordelia Noirot.”
“I beg your pardon, Mama,” the child said. “That isn’t my name, you know.”
Noirot looked at her. “Is it not?”
“My name is Erroll now. E-R-R-O-L-L.”
“I see.” Noirot began again. “Your grace, may I present my daughter—” She broke off and looked enquiringly at the child. “You’re still my daughter, I take it?”
“Yes,” said Erroll. “Of course, Mama.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. I had quite grown used to you. Your grace, may I present my daughter Erroll. Erroll, His Grace, the Duke of Clevedon.”
“Miss…erm…Erroll,” he said. He bowed gravely.
“Your grace,” the girl said. She curtseyed. It was nothing half so stunning as her mother’s style of curtsey, but it was gracefully done nonetheless. He wondered at it and at her remarkable self-possession.
Then he recalled whose daughter she was, and wondered why he wondered.
Then he recalled who it was who had a child.
A child, Noirot had a child!
How had she failed to mention such a thing? But what was wrong with him that he was so shocked? She was Mrs. Noirot—and while the title “Mrs.” was used, cavalierly enough, by unwed shopkeepers, actresses, and whores alike, he needn’t have assumed she wasn’t a married woman, with a family and…a husband…who did not seem to be in evidence. Dead? Or perhaps there was no husband, merely a scoundrel who’d fathered and abandoned this child.
“Do you ever take children for a drive in that carriage?” Erroll said, calling him back to the moment. “Not little children, I mean, but proper grown-up girls who would sit quietly—not climbing about and spoiling the cushions or putting sticky fingers on the glass. Not them, but well-behaved girls who keep their hands folded in their laps and only look out of the window.” The great blue eyes regarded him steadily.
“I—”
“No, he does not,” her mother said. “His grace has many claims on his time. In fact, I am sure he has an appointment elsewhere any minute now.”
“Do I?”
Noirot gave him a warning look.
“Yes, of course,” he said. He took out his pocket watch and stared at it. He had no idea