He didn’t have time to decide what to answer.
Noirot burst from the shop. “Oh, the wretched child,” she said. “Has she wheedled you into taking her up? She’ll persuade you to drive her to Brighton, if you don’t look out. Come down, Erroll. His grace and her ladyship have business elsewhere.” She put up her hands. Torn between reluctance and relief, Clevedon yielded the girl to her mother.
He ought to feel relieved—he was no longer used to children and found them tedious, in fact. But she…ah, well, she was a cunning little minx.
He noticed that Erroll did not fight with her mother as she’d done with the maid. Docile or not, though, Noirot didn’t trust her. She didn’t set her down but carried her back into the shop.
He watched them go, Erroll waving goodbye to him over her mother’s shoulder.
He waved back, smiling, yet he was watching the sway of Noirot’s hips as she moved along, apparently unhampered by her daughter’s weight. To him, the weight was nothing, but Noirot was not the great, hulking fellow he was, nor was she built in the Junoesque mold, like Clara…whose presence he belatedly recalled.
He turned away hastily and gathered the reins. A moment later, they were on their way.
Clara had watched those swaying hips, too, and she’d watched him watching them.
She’d felt the atmosphere change when she and Clevedon entered the shop. She’d felt him tense, in the way of a hound scenting quarry. When the dressmaker had approached, the tension between them was palpable.
“A fetching little girl,” she said. That was the only thing she could safely say. The child was adorable. Clevedon’s? But no, she’d discerned no resemblance at all, and the Angier looks were distinctive.
“I dare not come again,” he said. “Next time Miss Noirot will wish to drive. And I’ll have you to thank. I shouldn’t have taken her up—I’m sure her mother wasn’t pleased. But she could hardly rebuke me. Shopkeepers must consider their livelihood before their own feelings.”
“Mrs. Noirot didn’t seem angry. She seemed amused, rather.”
“That’s her way. It’s her business to make herself pleasing. I told you how she had the ladies at the ball eating out of her hand. But never mind. It doesn’t signify. I have no reason to come again, in any event. You’ll persuade Longmore or one of your other brothers to bring you. Or come on your own, with Davis.”
Davis was Clara’s bulldog of a maid.
“Or with Mama,” she said.
“What a nonsensical thing to say!” he said. “Your mother would never approve of this shop. It’s too fashionable, and she seems determined that you should wear the most—” He broke off, his expression taut.
“Determined I should wear the most what?” Clara said.
“Nothing,” he said. “I slept ill last night, and I’ve spent too long in a dressmaker’s shop. Women’s chatter has addled my wits. What were you three conspiring about, by the way?”
“Clevedon.”
“You three were bent over the green dress you admired, talking in whispers,” he said.
She glanced up at his face. He was looking straight ahead, his handsome face set in hard lines.
What a state he was in!—a contained fury that made the air about him seem to thrum even while he appeared outwardly calm.
Clevedon wasn’t like this—not the Clevedon she knew, the man she’d recognized when he’d entered the drawing room and smiled in his old, fond way. This was a stranger.
She looked away, to gaze blankly at the passing scene while she tried to form an answer. She hardly knew what the other two women had been saying about the green dress. She’d been trying to hear what he was saying to Mrs. Noirot. She’d been trying to watch them without appearing to do so.
“I didn’t quite understand,” she said. “It was a beautiful dress, I thought, but they seemed to be discussing how to remake it.” She tried desperately to remember what exactly they’d said, but she had only half-listened, and now her mind was whirling.
She was not naïve. She knew Clevedon had affairs. Longmore did, too. But she’d never seen her brother in a state anything like Clevedon’s when Mrs. Noirot approached them. She’d been trying to make sense of that, when he snapped about Mama and…what Clara wore?
“I think…” She thought frantically. “I received the impression that something was wrong with the dress, but not wrong with the dress.”
“Clara, that makes no sense.”
Really, he could be as irritating as any of her brothers. She said goodbye to her patience. “If it’s so important to you, you’d better ask Mrs. Noirot,” she said. “What did you mean about Mama and what I wear?”
“Damnation,” he said.
“You told me I ought to shop there, but you said I must not take Mama.”
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I should not have said that.”
“Oh, come, Clevedon. When did you ever mince words with me? What makes you so missish all of a sudden?”
“Missish?”
“So delicate. One of the things I have always liked about you is your refusing to treat me like an imbecile female. In your letters, you speak your mind. Or so I thought. Well, perhaps you don’t tell me everything.”
“Good God, certainly not. And I shall not tell you where to have your dresses made. It’s of no concern to me.”
“You may be sure that I shall take care not to ask you to accompany me to a dressmaker ever again,” she said. “It puts you in the vilest temper.”
Some hours later
“The little wretch!” Marcelline said, when they were closing up the shop that evening. “I knew she wouldn’t forget his fine carriage or his fine self.”
“My dear, she can’t help it,” said Sophy. “It’s in her blood. She can spot a mark at fifty paces.”
“He didn’t seem to mind,” said Leonie. She’d come out into the showroom in time to see Clevedon and Lady Clara leave.
All three sisters had had time to observe Lucie/Erroll’s antics through the shop windows. It was clear in an instant that Millie had lost control of her, but it had taken Marcelline precious minutes to extract herself from Lady Renfrew and go out to collect her wayward child.
Sitting on his lap, the schemer, and holding the ribbons! She’d be expecting to drive her own carriage next.
“Of course he didn’t mind,” Marcelline said. “She was at her winsome best, and even the Duke of Clevedon can’t help but succumb.” Meanwhile, she, more cynical and calculating than he could ever be, had not been able to steel her heart against the sweet, indulgent smile he bestowed upon her daughter.
“She made sure to shed some winsomeness on Lady Clara, I noticed,” said Sophy.
“Yes,” Marcelline said.
“He did bring her,” Leonie said. “And not a moment too soon.”
They hadn’t had time until now to talk of the day’s events, because the day had been exceedingly eventful.
Marcelline had had her hands full, making the changes to Lady Renfrew’s dress. She’d had to do this in secret, of all things—upstairs, away from the seamstresses, as though she were forging passports. Meanwhile Sophy and Leonie, in between trying to calm two other irate customers, had to dance attendance on the steady trickle of curious ladies who’d come mainly to stare at the famous gown.
The curious