“That will do admirably,” he said. “She can say I stood over her and made her order sixty or seventy dresses, and a gross of chemises and …”
His mind went hazy then, and images of muslin and lace underwear strewed themselves about his brain, and somewhere in that dishevelment was a blue-eyed angelic devil, mostly unclothed. He waved a hand, waving the images away. Now wasn’t the time. He was only beginning his siege, and he knew—he could always tell—he faced a very tricky fortress. All sorts of hidden passages and diversions and booby traps.
But then, if it were easy, it would be boring.
He continued, “ … and all those other sorts of trousseau things. And when our mother regains consciousness, and demands that Clara cancel the order, Clara will appeal to our overly conscientious sire, who’ll say one can’t simply cancel immense orders on a whim.”
Sophy folded her arms. Something flickered in her blue eyes. Otherwise, her expression was unreadable. “Good,” she said. “Keep with that. Don’t embellish.”
“No danger of that,” he said. “At any rate, it’s easy enough to make it partly true. I’ve only to toddle into my club and drink steadily until you’ve finished bankrupting my father. Then, when I return Clara to Warford House, no one will have any trouble believing in my inebriated obstinacy.”
He sauntered out of the sitting room.
He walked to the stairs and started down.
He heard hurried footsteps and rustling petticoats behind him.
“Lord Longmore.”
She said his name as everybody else did, not precisely as spelled but in the way of so many ancient names, with vowels shifted and consonants elided. Yet it wasn’t quite the same, either, because it carried the faintest whisper of French.
He looked up.
She stood at the top of the stairs, leaning over the handrail.
The view was excellent: He could see her silk shoes and the crisscrossing ribbons that called attention to the fine arch of her instep and her neat ankles. He saw the delicate silk stockings outlining the bit of foot and leg on view. His mind easily conjured what wasn’t on view: the place above her knees where her garters were tied—garters that, in his imagination, were red, embroidered with lascivious French phrases.
For a moment he said nothing, simply drank it in.
“That was a beautiful exit,” she said.
“I thought so,” he said.
“I hated to spoil it,” she said. “But I had an idea.”
“You’re a prodigy,” he said. “First an alibi, then an idea. All in the same day.”
“I thought you could help me,” she said.
“I daresay I could,” he said, contemplating her ankles.
“With your mother.”
He lifted his gaze to her face. “What do you want to do to her?”
“Ideally, I should like to dress her.”
“That would be difficult, considering that she hates you,” he said. “That is, not you, particularly. But you as a near connection to the Duchess of Clevedon, and your shop as harboring same.”
“I know, but I’m sure we can bring her round. That is, I can bring her round. With a little help.”
“What do you propose, Miss Noirot? Shall I drug her ladyship and carry her, senseless, to your lair, where you’ll force her into dashing gowns?”
“Only as a last resort,” she said. “What I have in mind for you at present is quite simple—and no one will ever know you aided and abetted the Enemy.”
“This is London,” he said. “There’s no such thing as ‘no one will ever know.’ “
“No, really, I promise you—”
“Not that I care what anybody knows,” he said.
“Right,” she said. “I forgot. But I must not be recognized.”
“Does that mean a disguise?” he said.
“Only for me,” she said. “I need to visit Dowdy’s, you see, and—”
“And Dowdy’s is …?”
“The lair of the reptile, Horrible Hortense Downes, the monster who puts your mother into those dreary clothes. I need to get into her shop.”
In her world, he knew, clothes were the beginning and the end of everything, and worlds were lost on the wrong placement of a bow.
“You’re proposing a spying expedition behind enemy lines,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s it exactly.”
“Are you going to blow up the place?”
“Only as a last resort,” she said.
He was quite happy to take her, even if she didn’t blow the place up. He’d be happy to take her anywhere. But his promptly agreeing meant her prompt departure and he wasn’t yet tired of looking at her ankles.
He pretended to ponder.
“It’s only for an hour or so,” she said. “That shouldn’t disrupt your busy schedule.”
“Ordinarily, no,” he said. “But I’ve got this Adderley problem to work on, and that wants deep and lengthy cogitation.”
“You do not have the Adderley problem to work on,” she said. “Did I not tell you my sisters and I would deal with it?”
“It’s not the sort of thing I want to leave to women,” he said. “It could get messy, and I’d hate to see your pretty frocks spoiled.”
“Believe me, Lord Longmore, my sisters and I have dealt with extremely messy situations before.”
He met her gaze. In those blue eyes he caught a glimpse of something, unexpected and hard. It was gone in an instant, but it set off a sharp recollection of the men who’d pursued her and emerged from the experience damaged.
There was more to her than met the eye: that much he’d recognized early on.
“Let me think it over,” he said. “Let me think it over in the cool depths of my club.”
He continued down the stairs.
Two hours later
From the environs of White’s famous bow window, where Beau Brummell had presided some decades earlier, a sudden buzz of excitement broke in upon a dull, drizzly afternoon. The noise gradually increased in volume sufficiently to obtain Lord Longmore’s attention.
He’d settled in the morning room with Foxe’s Morning Spectacle to review Sophy’s story about last night’s debacle. As regarded breathlessly dramatic style and fanatical attention to every boring inch of Clara’s dress, Sophy had outdone herself. Clara had been “innocence cruelly misled,” Longmore had appeared as a paragon among avenging brothers, and the dress description—dripping with an arcane French known only to women—took up nearly two of the front page’s three columns. Her account had routed from said page virtually all the other gossip Foxe called news.
Longmore had read it this morning after breakfast. He saw no more in it now than he had then. It was unclear what good the piece would do Clara—unless it was simply the first step in a campaign. If so, he looked forward to seeing where it would lead.
After chuckling over Sophy’s world’s-greatest-collection of adjectives and adverbs, he moved on to the other gossip and sporting news. Thence he proceeded to the advertising pages at the back.
There Maison Noirot had taken over