Clara.
The trouble was, Sophy Noirot was at Lady Igby’s party, too, and Longmore, unlike Argus, owned only the usual number of eyes.
He’d become distracted, watching Sophy flit hither and yon, no one paying her the slightest heed—except for the usual assortment of dolts who thought maidservants existed for their sport. Since he’d marked her as his sport, Longmore had started to move in, more than once, only to find that she didn’t need any help with would-be swains.
She’d “accidentally” spilled hot tea on the waistcoat of one gentleman who’d ventured too close. Another had followed her into an antechamber and tripped over something, landing on his face. A third had followed her down a passage and into a room. He’d come out limping a moment later.
Preoccupied with her adventures, Longmore not only failed to locate Adderley, but lost track of the sister he was supposed to be guarding from lechers and bankrupts. This would have been less of a problem had Sophy been watching her more closely. But Sophy had her own lechers to fend off.
Longmore wasn’t thinking about this. Thinking wasn’t his favorite thing to do, and thinking about more than one thing at a time upset his equilibrium. At the moment, his mind was on the men trespassing on what he’d decided was his property. Unfortunately, this meant he wasn’t aware of his mother losing sight of Clara at the same time. This happened because Lady Warford was carrying on a politely poisonous conversation with her best friend and worst enemy Lady Bartham.
In short, nobody who should have been paying attention was paying attention while Lord Adderley was steering Clara, as they waltzed, toward the other end of the ballroom, toward the doors leading to the terrace. None of those who should have been keeping a sharp eye out saw the wink Adderley sent his friends or the accompanying smirk.
It was the crowd’s movement that brought Longmore back to his surroundings and his main reason for being here.
The movement wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t meant to be. Men like Longmore were attuned to it, though. He had no trouble recognizing the sense of something in the air, the shift in the attention in some parts of the room, and the drifting toward a common destination. It was the change in the atmosphere one felt when a fight was about to happen.
The current was sweeping toward the terrace.
His gut told him something was amiss. It didn’t say what, but the warning was vehement, and he was a man who acted on instinct. He moved, and quickly.
He didn’t have to push his way through the crowd. Those who knew him knew they’d better get out of the way or be thrust out of the way.
He stormed out onto the terrace. A small audience had gathered. They got out of his way, too.
Nothing and nobody obstructed his view.
NEW STYLE.— DRESS-MAKING.—Madame and Mrs Follett beg to solicit the favours of those Ladies who have not (and to return thanks to those Ladies who have) given them a trial; the decided superiority of their style and fit blended with most moderate charges never fails to give satisfaction even to the most particular. —53 New Bond street London and Rue Richelieu à Paris.
—The Court Journal, Advertisements,
Saturday 28 March 1835
Adderley.
And Clara.
In a dark corner of the terrace.
Not so dark that Longmore couldn’t see Adderley clumsily trying to help his sister get her bodice back in place.
Her dressmakers had cut the neckline of her white gown indecently low, which had already allowed every gaping hound at the ball to see a bit of the lacy thing she wore underneath. In the process of groping her, however, Lord Adderley had pushed her dress sleeves and corset straps well down over her shoulders, practically to her elbows. By the looks of things, he’d contrived to loosen her corset as well.
When she slapped his fumbling hands away, Adderley moved in front of her to shield her, but he wasn’t big enough. A fair-haired, blue-eyed beauty Lady Clara Fairfax might be. Petite she was not. As a result, her expensive underwear—not to mention a good deal of skin not usually on public view—was on display for any gawker who happened to be in the vicinity.
That included the dozen or so who’d drifted out to the terrace and were now circling like vultures over the carcass of Lady Clara Fairfax’s reputation.
“Her maid will never get the creases out of those pleats,” muttered the maidservant standing beside Longmore.
In a distant corner of his mind he marveled at anybody’s noticing at such a moment something as trivial as wrinkles in Clara’s attire. In the same distant corner he knew there was nothing to marvel at, given the speaker: Sophy Noirot.
That was only a distant awareness, though. The main part of his mind heeded only the scene in front of him, one he saw through a curtain of red flames. “I’ll take the wrinkles out of him, the cur,” he growled.
“Don’t be an id—”
But he was already storming across the terrace, knocking aside any guests who got in his way—though most of them, seeing him coming, moved out of the way, and quickly.
He marched up to Adderley and punched him in the face.
* * *
“—iot,” Sophy finished.
She swallowed a sigh.
She should have held her tongue. She was supposed to be a maidservant, and menials did not call their betters idiots. Not audibly, at any rate.
But that was the trouble with Longmore. He got in the way of everything, especially clear thinking.
She pushed away the first, emotional reaction and summoned her practical side, the one Cousin Emma had cultivated. A cousin by marriage, Emma was nothing like Sophy’s vagabond parents. Emma was not a charming wastrel like her in-laws. She was a hardheaded, practical Parisian.
Practically speaking, this was a disaster.
Lady Clara was Maison Noirot’s most important customer. She bought their most expensive creations and she bought lavishly, in spite of her mother’s hostility. It was Lord Warford’s man of business who paid the bills, and his orders were to pay promptly and in full, not to make fine distinctions among milliners.
Lord Adderley was bankrupt, or very nearly so, thanks to the gaming tables.
If Lady Clara had to misbehave with somebody, Adderley wasn’t Sophy’s first choice. Of the Upper Ten Thousand, he came in at nine thousand nine hundred fifty six.
Had Longmore been more intelligent, less impetuous, and several degrees less arrogant, she would
