don’t have to say anything. You have to go away.”
“I cannot get involved with customers,” she said. “It’s bad for business.”
“Business!”
“And do not tell me you’re not a customer.”
“I’m not, you nitwit. When was the last time I bought a dress?”
“Any man who has the means to pay our bills is likely to acquire, sooner or later, a woman we want in our dress shop,” she said. “She won’t patronize us if we have a reputation for poaching the men.”
“Business,” he said. “This is about the shop.”
“Yes,” she said. “Which means I couldn’t be more serious. If you kiss me again, I’ll stab you.”
She turned and marched out, slamming the door behind her.
She poured herself another glass of wine, but this one she drank more slowly. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt. She couldn’t remember when last she’d done something so difficult and terrifying and so completely the opposite of what she wanted to do.
No wonder Marcelline had lost her head over Clevedon.
No wonder she’d insisted on explaining to Sophy, for the hundredth time, how babies were made.
Lust was a dangerous force.
Like any Noirot, Sophy liked danger, risk, a gamble.
But she could not, would not, gamble with Maison Noirot. If she let the dangerous force sweep her away, it would sweep away everything they’d worked and suffered for.
She rose, walked to the bathtub, and took out the dressing gown he’d drowned there. She wrung it out and draped it over the chair—near the fire but not too near. It wasn’t completely unsalvageable. The girls at the Milliners’ Society could take it apart and make something of it.
The dressing gown wasn’t important. It was the shop Sophy needed to save—and that meant saving Lady Clara. That was all she had to do, and it wasn’t going to be easy.
She smiled. But she was a Noirot, after all, and if it were easy, it wouldn’t be much fun.
Richmond-park is eight miles in circumference, and contains 2253 acres, of which scarcely one hundred are in this parish; there are 650 acres in Mortlake, 265 in Petersham, 230 in Putney, and the remainder in Kingston. The ground of this park is pleasingly diversified with hill and vale; it is ornamented also with a great number of very fine oaks and other plantations.
—Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London, 1810
Warford House
Saturday 6 June
Ill?” Adderley said. “It’s nothing … serious, I trust?”
Clara was as healthy as a horse. A cow. She was anything but weak or sickly.
“We hope it isn’t,” Lord Valentine said. “She might have caught a chill last night, at Great-Aunt Dora’s. Drafty old house. Wet night.”
“A chill,” Adderley said. He felt chilled, too. Gloom hung in the air of Warford House today.
More than the usual gloom, that was to say. He’d found the atmosphere frigid at best. Toward him Lady Warford had been strictly polite while contriving to look as though she smelled something good manners did not permit her to mention. Clara had started out warm enough—or as warm as she knew how—but had grown a little more distant every day.
Not that their feelings mattered. Clara had to marry him, and everybody knew it. They might kick all they wanted, and Lady Warford might lose no opportunity to remind him—with scrupulous politeness—of his low origins, but he was not going to go away, and they couldn’t let him go away.
The one thing he hadn’t reckoned on was Clara’s falling ill.
Gravely ill, judging by the signs.
Lord Valentine’s face was positively funereal.
Alarm stirred in Adderley’s gut.
She couldn’t die. Not before the wedding.
“Is there anything I can do?” he said.
Lord Valentine shook his head sadly. “Sorry. Nothing to be done. Our mother is with her. Hasn’t left her bedside.”
“You’ve sent for a physician, of course?”
“I assure you, my sister is being well looked after. I daresay she’ll be right as a trivet in a day or two.”
Lord Valentine did not say this with much conviction.
Anxious and angry, Adderley left.
He’d devoted months to cultivating her. Months he could have devoted to someone else.
She’d better not die.
It would be deuced inconvenient. He knew of no other well-dowered female who’d be nearly so easy to win over. And he’d have to win the alternate over in a hurry. His creditors wouldn’t even wait until the funeral.
By the time they were seated in the carriage again, Longmore was wondering what had possessed him last night, not to take advantage of a perfect opportunity.
It was the surprise, he decided. He’d been completely taken aback to discover Sophy was so inexperienced.
Normally, he rebounded quickly from shocks. But it had been a trying day. His sister had bolted, and it was the first time in years he’d needed to worry about her. Then Sophy had set herself on fire.
No wonder his wits had scattered.
After some tossing and turning—no doubt on account of his parts getting all primed for a woman for nothing—he’d slept well enough. The day had dawned fair. And his wits were back in working order. He could see the thing clearly now.
Perhaps she wasn’t greatly experienced. That didn’t mean she’d had none. She was French. She had taste. She was simply a discriminating girl who hadn’t had much practice in the amorous arts.
Someone was going to advance her education, one of these days. Why shouldn’t it be him?
True, he’d never had to teach anybody before, but there was a first time for everything, and he was always open to new experiences.
True, too, she’d told him to keep off.
But that was after.
Until
