he told himself. Stick to business. Order. Logic.
“Mrs. Michaels can help you organize a proper work space,” he said. “You and your sisters may take my vehicles and servants, and purchase what you need to fill the most pressing orders. Your seamstresses may come here, as soon as you like, to start working. If you need additional help, Mrs. Michaels will select the better needlewomen from among the maids.”
Her face had gone very white, indeed. Her sisters were watching her. He couldn’t tell whether they were alarmed or not. They showed as little of their feelings as she did. But they must have sensed she needed help because the blonde jumped in.
“I like it better than our plan,” she said. “Marcelline was going to play cards, to win the money to buy what we needed.”
Marcelline.
He was aware of his pulse racing and of the mad excitement that made it race. So ridiculous. Through shipwreck, physical intimacy, catastrophic fire, they’d maintained the polite forms of address. She’d been “Noirot” to him and he was “your grace” or “Clevedon” to her. But now he sat among family members, and they’d revealed who she was to them.
He couldn’t say it aloud, but he could feel it on his tongue.
Marcelline. It was a name like a secret, a whisper in the dark.
She was all secrets and guile—and of course she would play cards to get money, he thought.
“We can send for Belcher,” the redhead said. “He and your grace’s solicitor—Varley, is it?—can draw up papers for a loan.”
“Nonsense,” Clevedon said. “Whatever your supplies cost can be only a fraction of what we give away to sundry charities every month.”
Noirot’s—Marcelline’s—color came and went. “We’re not a charity,” she said. She leaned toward him, and in a low, choked voice, she added, “I owe you my daughter’s life. Don’t make me owe you any more.”
His heart tightened into a fist, and it beat against his chest. There was a moment of pain so fierce he had to look away and catch his breath.
His gaze went to Lucie, the child he had saved.
Noirot thought it was a debt she owed him, one impossible to repay. She had no way of knowing the value of the gift he’d been given.
He couldn’t save Alice. He’d been far away when the accident happened. He knew he could never bring her back. He knew that saving this child could not bring her back.
But he knew, too, that when he’d carried Lucie, alive and unhurt, out of the burning building, he’d felt not only profound relief but a joy greater than anything he could have imagined.
Lucie, with Joseph’s help, was settling back upon her throne.
“It isn’t the same,” he said, scorning to whisper. Let the servants hear, and make what they would of it. “For once, put your pride aside and your need to dominate everybody, and do the sensible thing.”
“You’re the one who’s not being sensible,” she said. “Think of the talk.”
“My sister is being sensible in that regard, certainly,” the redhead said. “We can’t accept gifts from you, your grace. We’ve lost our shop, but we can’t lose our reputation.”
“We can’t give the tittle-tattles ammunition,” the blonde said. “Our rivals—”
“We have no rivals,” Noirot said, chin up, dark eyes flashing.
He bit back a smile.
“I mean, those who fancy themselves our rivals will be sure to tell lurid tales,” the blonde said.
He looked at Lucie. “What do you say, Erroll?”
“May I play with the dollhouse?”
“Of course you may, sweetling.”
To Noirot he said, “You three drive a hard bargain. A loan it is.”
“Thank you,” Noirot said. Her sisters echoed her. At her glance, they all rose. “May I leave Lucie in your servants’ care, your grace?” she said. “You’re all determined to spoil her, and she’s not going to discourage you, and I haven’t time for a battle of wills. We haven’t a minute to lose. We absolutely must have Lady Clara’s dress ready by seven o’clock this evening.”
He stared at her. “You must be joking,” he said. “Your shop burnt down. Surely your customers won’t expect you to complete orders today.”
“You don’t understand,” Marcelline said. “Lady Clara has nothing to wear to Almack’s tonight. I threw out all of her clothes. She must have that dress. I promised.”
Five o’clock that afternoon
Clevedon House was in a state of what its owner hoped was controlled chaos.
Servants hurried to and fro, some carrying in the goods the women had shopped for in the morning—what seemed to Clevedon like bales of fabric, along with boxes containing who knew what—while others raced from one part of the house to another, carrying messages or sustenance, fetching this or that from cupboards and closets and even the attics.
A bevy of seamstresses had arrived in the late morning, gaping at their surroundings before they disappeared into the rooms on the first floor set aside for the temporary workplace.
The redhead—Miss Leonie Noirot she turned out to be—at some point assured him that all would settle by tomorrow, once everyone was properly installed and their materials in place. She thanked him more than once for his rescue of the account books and only smiled when he told her that was none of his doing; he wouldn’t know a ledger from a book of sermons, never having looked into either item.
The blonde, meanwhile—she was Miss Sophia Noirot—had borrowed paper and pens and ink to write advertising for the newspapers. He’d offered his private study for her use, because Miss Leonie had told him that Sophy needed quiet in which to compose—really, it was like writing a chapter of a novel, she explained—and their work area was too busy, with people coming and going and Marcelline giving orders right and left.
Clevedon had retreated to the library. He could have fled the house altogether, but that seemed irresponsible. He’d started this; he ought to see it through. As it turned out, he was needed more than he’d supposed. Every now and again someone came by with a question only he could answer or a problem only he could solve. Usually, this was one of Noirot’s sisters, for madame herself kept scrupulously away, but sometimes it was Mrs. Michaels and occasionally Halliday, regarding one issue or other that puzzled even his omniscience.
The truth was, Clevedon didn’t want to flee. He found the enterprise vastly interesting. Every so often, he would stand in the library doorway to watch the hurrying to and fro. He would have liked to watch the women make Clara’s dress, but Miss Sophia had tactfully warned him away: The seamstresses would never be able to concentrate with a gentleman about, she said. As it was, the big footmen in their finery threw the women into a flutter.
Clevedon still had
