shock. His mind had stopped and his tongue, too. He’d sat, like an idiot, dumbstruck. At the same moment, he’d believed and refused to believe. He’d felt an instant’s shattering grief before he smothered it. He’d told himself he was a fool. He’d argued with himself. He knew what was right and what was wrong. He mustn’t stay, no matter what she said. He knew what was going to happen, and he couldn’t let it happen again. That would be selfish and thoughtless and unkind and dishonorable.
He’d argued with himself, but there she was, and he wanted her.
And he was weak.
Perhaps not as weak and dissolute as his father, but bad enough.
And so, of course, he lost the battle, that feeble battle with Honor and Kindness and Respect and all the other noble qualities Warford had tried to drum into him.
He could have simply got up from the bed—where he ought not to have sat in the first place…
Oh, never mind could and should and ought to.
He’d faced a test of character and he’d failed.
He’d stayed.
He wanted to stay, still.
“We have to leave,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
It was late. They had to leave. No time to make love again. No time to simply linger, touching her, being touched. No time to bask in lovemaking’s afterglow.
This time he helped her dress and she helped him. It didn’t take long, not nearly long enough.
The drive back to Clevedon House was far too short.
He hadn’t time enough to study her profile as she looked out of the window into the gaslit street. He hadn’t time enough to burn the fine contours of her face into his mind. He’d see her again, he supposed. She wanted him to keep away and he knew he must, but he’d see her again, perhaps, by accident. He might see her stepping out of a linen draper’s or a wineshop.
But He’d never see her in exactly this way: the play of light and shadow on her face as she looked out onto Pall Mall. He would not, he supposed, ever be close enough again to catch her scent, so tantalizingly light but impossible to overlook. He’d never be close enough to hear the rustle of her clothes when she moved.
He told himself not to be a fool. He’d forget her. He’d forget all the details that at this moment seemed to mean so much.
He’d forget the way he’d stood on the pavement this day, pretending not to look at her ankles while he watched her step down from or up into the carriage. He’d forget the elegant turn of her ankle, the arc of her instep. He’d forget the first time he’d looked at her ankles. He’d forget the first time they’d made love, and the way she’d wrapped her legs about his waist and the choked sounds of pleasure he’d heard when he thrust into her, again and again. He’d forget his own pleasure, so violent that pleasure seemed too feeble a word, a word meant for ordinary things.
He’d forget all that, just as he would forget this night.
The memories would linger for a time, but they’d grow dull. The ache he felt now, the frustration and anger and sorrow—all those would fade, too.
She’d given him a night to remember, but of course he’d forget.
Marcelline and her sisters rose early the following day. By half-past eight they were at the shop. The seamstresses arrived shortly thereafter, in a flutter of excitement. But they settled down before the morning had much advanced. At one o’clock in the afternoon, the shop opened for business, as promised in the individual messages Sophy had dispatched and the advertisements she’d published in all the London newspapers.
At a quarter past one, Lady Renfrew and Mrs. Sharp appeared for their fittings. A steady stream of ladies followed them. Some came to shop. Some came to stare. But they kept Marcelline and her sisters busy until closing time.
She was happy, very happy, she told herself.
She’d be a fool to want anything more.
The rank which English Ladies hold, requires they should neglect no honourable means of distinction, no becoming Ornament in the Costume.
La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Advertisements for June 1807
Sunday 3 May
Clevedon House seemed oppressively quiet, even for a Sunday. The corridors were silent, the servants having reverted to their usual invisibility, blending in with the furnishings or disappearing through a backstairs door. No one hurried from one room to the next. No Noirot women appeared abruptly in the doorway of the library.
Clevedon stood at the library table, which was heaped with ladies’ magazines and the latest scandal sheets. Of the latter, Foxe’s Morning Spectacle was the most prominent, its front page bearing a large advertisement for “Madame Noirot’s newly-invented VENETIAN CORSETS.”
He felt a spasm of sorrow and another of anger, and wondered when it would stop.
He told himself he ought to throw the magazines in the fire, and Foxe’s rag along with them. Instead, he went on studying them, making notes, forming ideas.
It staved off boredom, he supposed.
It was more entertaining than attending to the stacks of invitations.
It was a waste of time.
He rang for a footman and told him to send Halliday in.
Three minutes later, Halliday entered the library.
Clevedon pushed to one side the provoking Spectacle. “Ah, there you are. I want you to send the dollhouse to Miss Noirot.”
There was an infinitesimal pause before Halliday said, “Yes, your grace.”
Clevedon looked up. “Is there a problem? The thing can sustain a twenty-minute journey to St. James’s Street, can it not? It’s old, certainly, but I thought it was in good repair.”
“I do beg your pardon, your grace,” Halliday said. “Naturally there is no problem whatsoever. I shall see to it immediately.”
“But?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“I hear a but,” Clevedon said. “I distinctly hear an unsaid but.”
“Not precisely a but, your grace,” Halliday said. “It is more of an impertinence, for which I do beg your pardon.”
When Clevedon only looked at him expectantly, Halliday
