She’d been right, too, drat her: Clara needed her. He had only to look at Noirot and the blonde relative and even the troublesome customer to realize that Clara was ill dressed. He’d be hard put to explain the difference in words—women’s clothes were merely decoration to him—yet he could see that, compared to these women, she looked like a provincial.
He wished he had not been able to see it. The difference made him angry, as though someone had deliberately tried to make a fool of Clara. But it was natural to be angry, he told himself. He’d been protective of her from the moment he’d met her, when she was a little girl, probably younger than Noirot’s daughter.
Her daughter!
“I leave the rest to you,” he said. “I don’t doubt you’ll manage matters with your usual aplomb.”
More audibly he said, “Clara, my dear girl, I did not bring you to shop. You know I loathe shopping with women above all things. At any rate, it’s long past time I took you home. Come away from the fascinating dress. Make Longmore bring you again another day, if you want Mrs. Noirot to dress you.” Then, for the troublesome customer’s benefit as well as to ease his conscience, he added, “I see no reason you should not, as you won’t find a better dressmaker in London—or Paris, for that matter—but do shop without me, pray.”
Mrs. Thomas takes this opportunity of observing, that she hopes the inconvenience she has always sustained by the imposition of Milliners coming to her Rooms, under assumed characters, to take her Patterns, will not be repeated.
La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Advertisements for November 1807
Clevedon had already handed Clara into the carriage. Resisting the impulse to look back at the shop—as though he’d gain anything by that—he was about to join her, when he felt a tug at the hem of his coat. He whipped round, ready to collar a pickpocket.
At first he saw nothing. Then he looked down.
A pair of enormous blue eyes looked up at him. “Good afternoon, your grace,” said Erroll.
A nursemaid, out of breath, hurried to the carriage. “Miss, you ought not to—oh, do come away.” She took the child’s hand, muttering apologies, and tried to lead her away.
A hard, stubborn look came over Erroll’s face, and she wrenched her hand from the maid’s. “I only wished to say good day to his grace,” she said. “It would be rude to pass by without saying a word.”
“Which you was not passing by, only broke away from me and ran halfway down the street, as you know—”
“Good afternoon, Erroll,” said Clevedon.
She had turned to regard the nursemaid with a baleful eye. At his greeting, though, the thunderclouds vanished, and she beamed upon him a sunshine so pure and clear that, for a moment, he couldn’t bear it.
All those years ago…his little sister, Alice, shedding sunshine…
“It is a fine day, is it not?” she said. “A fine day to drive in an open carriage. If I had a carriage like that, I should drive in Hyde Park on such a day.”
He wrenched himself back to the present.
She was beautifully dressed, as one might expect. A little straw bonnet, adorned with heaps of ribbons and lace, set off prettily a precise miniature of one of those coat-like dresses women wore. What did they call them? The same as a man’s type of frock coat, wasn’t it? Redingotes, that was the term. Erroll’s was pink. A long row of black frog fastenings down the front gave it a vaguely—and on her, comically—military look.
“Yes, miss,” said the maid, “but the gentleman was getting ready to leave, in case you didn’t notice, which he has a lady with him as well.”
“I noticed, Millie,” said Erroll. “I’m not blind. But I can’t speak to the lady, because we haven’t been introduced. Don’t you know anything?”
Millie’s face went scarlet. “That’s quite enough, Miss Lu—Miss Er—Miss Noirot. I never heard such impertinence, and I’m sure the lady and the gentleman never did, neither. Come along now. Your mama will be vexed with you for pestering customers.” She tugged at the little gloved hand. Erroll’s countenance changed again: eyes narrowing, mouth tightening into a stubborn line. She refused to budge, and the maid seemed less than eager to try to make her budge.
Clevedon couldn’t blame the servant. While he did not approve of children disobeying those in charge of them, he was not entirely sure what one ought to do in such cases. In any event, it was not his place to interfere.
“Oh, Clevedon, don’t be obtuse,” Clara said. “It’s Miss Noirot—the dressmaker’s daughter, I take it?”
The maid nodded, biting her lip.
“Yes, it is,” he said, and marveled all over again that she was Noirot’s daughter, that Noirot was a mother. Where the devil was the father? How could he abandon…but men did that all the time. They carelessly brought children into the world and carelessly treated them. It was none of his concern…and perhaps, after all, the poor fellow was dead.
“Well, then, Mrs. Noirot knows you,” Clara said. “She won’t mind your taking her daughter up for a moment, and letting her hold the reins.”
She turned to Millie, who was sending panicked looks at the shop door. “You needn’t be anxious,” Clara said. “Miss Noirot will be perfectly safe. His grace used to let me hold the reins when I was a child. He will not let the carriage run away with her.”
For an instant, the old nightmare returned: the lurid scene his imagination had painted in boyhood, of a carriage overturning into a ditch, his mother and sister screaming, then the dreadful silence.
What was wrong with him? Old ghosts. So stupid.
Clara had always been safe with him. His father’s recklessness had taught him to be careful.
Even so, this child…
Erroll’s murderous expression instantly melted into childish eagerness and her eyes widened another degree. “May I, truly, your grace?” she said. “May I hold the reins?”
“Lady Clara says you may, and I dare not contradict her,” he said.
He wasn’t sure what possessed Clara at present. Still, he knew she was fond of children in general and had some notion how to manage them. In her letters she’d described numerous amusing incidents with young cousins.
He was not used to small children—not anymore, at any rate—and this was no ordinary child. But what choice had he now? His best groom, Ford, held the horses and he could be counted on to control the mettlesome pair.
In any event, how was Clevedon to deny the child the treat, when she was trembling with excitement?
He lifted her up—the small, quivering body weighed a shocking nothing—and set her next to Clara. Then he climbed up into his seat, took the child onto his lap, took up the reins, and showed her how to hold them to go straight. She watched and listened avidly. Soon her trembling abated, and before long she had the reins threaded between her little gloved fingers. She looked up, smiling proudly at him, and he smiled back. He couldn’t help it.
“How quick and clever you are,” Clara said. “You got the hang of it in no time at all. I thought you would.”
Erroll turned from him to send her beatific smile upward to Clara—and melt