to do nothing but eat, drink, and live nothing but shop. For another, there isn’t room. Not that I should want half a dozen seamstresses about all day and all night. The working hours can be trying enough, what with their little jealousies and—”
“Half a dozen?” he said. He leaned forward. “Half a dozen?”
He was too astonished to pretend he wasn’t.
Yes, of course she’d babbled that advertisement for the corner of Fleet Street at Chancery Lane, and it was the direction she’d given the coachman. That didn’t mean her shop wasn’t squeezed into a passage or a cellar.
“Half a dozen girls at present,” she said. “But I’ll certainly be hiring more in the near future. As it is, we’re shorthanded.”
“Half a—Devil take you, what is wrong with you?”
“You’ve already pointed out any number of my character flaws,” she said. “To which do you now refer?”
“I thought…Noirot, you’re the damndest woman. Your dogged pursuit of me led me to believe you were in desperate straits.”
“How on earth did you come by that idea?” she said. “I told you I was the greatest modiste in the world. You’ve seen my work.”
“I imagined a dark little shop in a basement, drat you,” he said. “I did wonder how you contrived to make such extravagant-looking dresses in such a place.”
“I’m sure you didn’t wonder about it overlong,” she said. “You were mainly occupied with bedding me.”
“Yes, but I’m done with that now.”
He was. He truly was. He’d had enough of her. He’d had enough of himself, chasing her. Like a puppy, like the veriest schoolboy.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” she said.
“It’s only Clara I’m thinking of,” he said. “Much as it pains me to contribute to your vainglory, it was clear, even to me, that the women of Paris were besotted with your work. You’re the most aggravating woman I’ve ever met, but you make yourself agreeable to women, I noticed, and that and beautiful, fashionable clothes are what matter, I daresay. I should not hold a grudge, merely because I long to shake you until your teeth rattle.”
Her weary face lit up, her eyes most brilliantly of all. “I knew it,” she said. “I knew you’d see.”
“Still, I don’t trust you.”
Something flickered in her eyes, but she said nothing, only waited, her attention riveted.
She was riveted on him—for her business. He was merely the means to an end.
But he scorned to hold grudges, especially on such a petty account—his vanity, of all things!
“I wanted to see the place for myself,” he said. “To make sure it truly existed, for one thing—and to see what sort of place it was. For all I knew, you were toiling alone in a dark room in a cellar.”
“Good grief, what a mind a man has,” she said. “How could you imagine I should produce such creations in—But never mind. Maison Noirot is an elegant shop. Everything is of the first stare, exceedingly neat and clean and airy. It’s much more neat and elegant, I promise you, than the den of that dull-witted incompetent—but no, I will not foul the air with her name.”
He was done with her. He needed to be done with her. But now, when she spoke of her shop, she was so animated. So passionate.
“I smell a rival,” he said.
She sat straighter. “Certainly not. I have no rivals, your grace. I am the greatest modiste in the world.” She leaned forward to look out of the door window. “We’re nearly there. You’ll soon see for yourself.”
It wasn’t as soon as it might have been, the street being a tangle of carriages, riders, and pedestrians. But eventually they came to the place, and there it was, a handsome modern shop, with a bow window and the name in gold lettering over the door: Noirot.
The carriage stopped. The door opened. The steps were folded down.
Clevedon stepped out first, and put out his hand to steady her.
As she took his hand, he heard a cry behind him.
She looked up, looked past him, and the light he’d seen in her face before was nothing to this. Her countenance was the sun, shedding happiness and setting the world aglow.
“Mama!” the voice cried.
Noirot practically leapt from the last step, past him, forgetting him entirely.
She crouched down on the pavement and opened her arms, and a little girl, a little dark-haired girl, ran into them.
“Mama!” the child cried. “You’re home!”
The Dress-Maker must be an expert anatomist; and must, if judiciously chosen, have a name of French termination; she must know how to hide all defects in the proportions of the body, and must be able to mould the shape by the stays, that, while she corrects the body, she may not interfere with the pleasures of the palate.
The Book of English Trades, and Library of the Useful Arts, 1818
A child.
She had a child.
A little girl with dark, curling hair who ran at her, laughing. Noirot’s arms went around her and tightened to hold her close. “My love, my love,” she said, and the way she said it made a knot in his chest.
He was distantly aware of other feminine voices, but his attention was locked upon the scene: Noirot crouched on the pavement, crushing the little girl to her, and the child, whose face he could see so clearly over her mother’s shoulder, eyes closed, her face alight and dawn-rosy, her happiness radiating in almost visible waves.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, oblivious to all else about him: the busy street, the people detouring round the mother and child on the pavement. He scarcely noticed his own servants, carrying her things into the place, then returning to the carriage. He was only dimly aware of the two women who had come out of the shop behind the little girl.
He stood and watched the mother and child because he couldn’t turn away, because he didn’t understand and scarcely believed what his senses told him.
After some time, some very short time perhaps, Noirot rose and, taking her daughter’s hand, started toward the shop. The child said, “Who is that, Mama?”
Noirot turned around and saw him standing, like a man at the window of a peepshow, entranced by a foreign world, unable to look away.
He collected his wits
