is hovering about my cousin. He’s spouting about Virtue and Vice, and they all believe he’s saying something.” While he spoke, he took possession of her left arm and arranged it around his neck. He brought his arm round her waist.
She caught her breath.
“It must hurt like the devil,” he said. “On second thought, I’d better check your ankle before we proceed. It might be more damaged than we think.”
If he touched her ankle she would faint, and not necessarily for medical reasons.
“I only turned it,” she said. “If I’d done worse, I’d be sitting on the step, sobbing with as much mortification as pain.”
“I can carry you,” he said.
“No,” she said, and added belatedly, “thank you.”
They proceeded down the stairs slowly. She did sums in her head to distract her from the warmth of the big body supporting hers. It wasn’t easy. She had stared too long at the Botticelli, and her mind was making pictures of the muscular arms and torso with no elegant covering whatsoever.
By the time they reached the first landing, her usually well-ordered brain was wandering into strange byways and taking excessive notice of physical sensations.
She made herself speak. “I can only hope that people assume I was dazzled by my brief encounter with Lord Swanton,” she said.
“That’s what I’ll tell them, if you like,” he said. “But I received the impression you knew each other.”
“Paris,” she said. “Ages ago.”
“It can’t be a very long age,” he said. “You’re somewhat damaged but not quite decrepit.”
“It was his first visit to Paris,” she said.
“More than five years ago, then,” he said.
When Leonie was nearly sixteen, happy in her work and her family and especially her beautiful infant niece, and reveling in the success of Emmeline, Cousin Emma’s splendid dressmaking shop.
Before the world fell apart.
“Lord Swanton came to my cousin’s shop to buy a gift for his mother,” she said. “He was sweet-tempered and courteous. In Paris, gentlemen often mistook a dressmaker’s shop for a brothel.”
Those who persisted in the mistake tended to have unfortunate accidents.
One of the first rules Leonie had ever learned was, Men only want one thing. Cousin Emma had taught her young charges as much about defending themselves against encroaching men as she had about dressmaking. She had not, however, taught her girls anything about dealing with Roman gods. It was trickier than one would think to maintain a businesslike attitude, even though Leonie was the most businesslike of the three sisters. That wasn’t saying much, when you came down to it. Marcelline and Sophy had always had their heads in the clouds: dreamers and schemers and typical Noirots, typical DeLuceys.
He smelled so clean, like the air after rain. How did he do that? Was it scent? A miraculous new soap?
By the time they reached the ground floor, the throbbing in her ankle seemed to have lessened somewhat.
“I think I can make do with your arm,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“My ankle is better,” she said. “I needn’t lean on you quite so much.”
The fact was, she didn’t have to lean at all, because he held her so firmly against him. She was aware of every inch of his muscled arm and—through all the layers of chemise, corset, dress, and pelerine—exactly where his fingers rested at the bottom of her rib cage.
She let go of his neck. He let go of her waist and offered his arm. She placed her gloved hand on his, and he grasped it as firmly as he’d grasped her waist.
She told herself this was hardly intimacy, compared to his holding her along the length of his body, but the fact was, no man had got this close to her in years. Still, that didn’t explain why she wanted to run away. She knew how to defend herself, did she not? She knew better than to let herself fall under the spell of a handsome face and form and low, seductive voice.
She couldn’t allow panic to rule. Her ankle was only marginally better. Without help, she’d have to limp back to the shop on a hot day. Though she had only a short distance to travel, the last bit was uphill. By the time she got there, she’d have worsened the injury and wouldn’t be fit for anything.
Business first, last, and always. As they passed through the door and out into Pall Mall, she set her mind to calculating his net worth, reminded herself of imminent wives and/or mistresses, and beat down unwanted emotions with numbers, as she so often did. Her clumsiness might well have put off Lady Clara’s companion. This might be the only new business Leonie would attract today.
“You said something about business,” he said.
“I did?” Her heart raced. Was she speaking her thoughts aloud without realizing? Had she suffered a concussion without noticing?
“Before, when you hurried away to my cousin.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “Yes. Where Lord Swanton goes, one usually finds a large supply of young ladies. He’d mentioned to one of our customers his intention of visiting the British Institution this afternoon. It seemed a good opportunity to make the shop’s work known to those unfamiliar with it.”
“Nothing to do with his poetry, then.”
She shrugged, and paid for it with a twinge in her ankle. “I run a shop, my lord,” she said. “I lack the romantic sensibility.” She’d worked since childhood. The young women who worshipped Lord Swanton hadn’t lived in Paris during the chaos, misery, and destruction of the cholera. Grief, suffering, and death weren’t romantic to her.
“It stumps me, I’ll admit,” he said. “I don’t see what’s romantic about it. But then, neither do most men. The ailment seems to strike young women, with a few exceptions. Though she’s at the vulnerable age, Cousin Clara looked bored, I thought. My cousin Gladys looked sour-tempered, but that’s the way she usually looks, so it’s hard to tell whether she’s an idolater or not.”
“Cousin Gladys,” she said. “The young lady with Lady Clara?”
“Lady Gladys Fairfax,” he said. “Lord Boulsworth’s daughter. Clara’s great uncle, you know. The military hero. I’m not sure what’s lured Gladys back to London, though I do have an unnerving suspicion. I say, you’re not well, Miss Noirot.”
They’d reached the bottom of St. James’s Street, and the day’s extreme warmth, already prodigious in Pall Mall, now blasted at them on a hot wind, which carried as well the dust of vehicles, riders, and pedestrians. Leonie’s head ached at least as much as her ankle did. She was trying to remember when last she’d heard Lady Gladys Fairfax mentioned, but pain, heat, and confusion overwhelmed her brain.
“That does it,” he said. “I’m carrying you.”
He simply swooped down and did it, before she got the
