she said. “I forgot. But I must not be recognized.”
“Does that mean a disguise?” he said.
“Only for me,” she said. “I need to visit Dowdy’s, you see, and—”
“And Dowdy’s is …?”
“The lair of the reptile, Horrible Hortense Downes, the monster who puts your mother into those dreary clothes. I need to get into her shop.”
In her world, he knew, clothes were the beginning and the end of everything, and worlds were lost on the wrong placement of a bow.
“You’re proposing a spying expedition behind enemy lines,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s it exactly.”
“Are you going to blow up the place?”
“Only as a last resort,” she said.
He was quite happy to take her, even if she didn’t blow the place up. He’d be happy to take her anywhere. But his promptly agreeing meant her prompt departure and he wasn’t yet tired of looking at her ankles.
He pretended to ponder.
“It’s only for an hour or so,” she said. “That shouldn’t disrupt your busy schedule.”
“Ordinarily, no,” he said. “But I’ve got this Adderley problem to work on, and that wants deep and lengthy cogitation.”
“You do not have the Adderley problem to work on,” she said. “Did I not tell you my sisters and I would deal with it?”
“It’s not the sort of thing I want to leave to women,” he said. “It could get messy, and I’d hate to see your pretty frocks spoiled.”
“Believe me, Lord Longmore, my sisters and I have dealt with extremely messy situations before.”
He met her gaze. In those blue eyes he caught a glimpse of something, unexpected and hard. It was gone in an instant, but it set off a sharp recollection of the men who’d pursued her and emerged from the experience damaged.
There was more to her than met the eye: that much he’d recognized early on.
“Let me think it over,” he said. “Let me think it over in the cool depths of my club.”
He continued down the stairs.
Two hours later
From the environs of White’s famous bow window, where Beau Brummell had presided some decades earlier, a sudden buzz of excitement broke in upon a dull, drizzly afternoon. The noise gradually increased in volume sufficiently to obtain Lord Longmore’s attention.
He’d settled in the morning room with Foxe’s Morning Spectacle to review Sophy’s story about last night’s debacle. As regarded breathlessly dramatic style and fanatical attention to every boring inch of Clara’s dress, Sophy had outdone herself. Clara had been “innocence cruelly misled,” Longmore had appeared as a paragon among avenging brothers, and the dress description—dripping with an arcane French known only to women—took up nearly two of the front page’s three columns. Her account had routed from said page virtually all the other gossip Foxe called news.
Longmore had read it this morning after breakfast. He saw no more in it now than he had then. It was unclear what good the piece would do Clara—unless it was simply the first step in a campaign. If so, he looked forward to seeing where it would lead.
After chuckling over Sophy’s world’s-greatest-collection of adjectives and adverbs, he moved on to the other gossip and sporting news. Thence he proceeded to the advertising pages at the back.
There Maison Noirot had taken over prime real estate, squeezing into obscure corners the notices for pocket toilets, artificial teeth, and salad cream.
That was when he discovered Mrs. Downes’s announcement.
He was wondering about the connection between Sophy’s need to be taken to her rival’s shop and the advertisement when someone at the bow window said, “Who is she?”
“You’re joking,” someone else said. “You don’t know?”
“Would I ask if I knew?”
Other voices joined in.
“Hempton, you innocent. Have you been in a coma during the last month?”
“How could you not have heard about the Misalliance of the Century? They talk of it in Siberia and Tierra del Fuego.”
“But that can’t be Sheridan’s new bride.”
“Not the elopement, you slow-top.”
“You mean Clevedon?” said Hempton. “But he married a brunette. This one’s a blonde.”
Longmore flung down the Spectacle, left his chair, and stalked to the bow window.
“What now?” he said, though he could guess.
The men crowding the window hastily made room for him.
Sophy Noirot stood on the other side of St. James’s Street. A gust of wind blew the back of her pale yellow dress against her legs and made a billowing froth of skirt and petticoats in front. The wind made a complete joke of the lacy nothing of an umbrella she held against the rain. The previous downpour had diminished to a light drizzle, and the misty figure glimpsed between the clumps of vehicles, riders, and pedestrians seemed like something in a dream.
The commentary at the bow window, however, made it clear she was not a dream, except in the sense that she was, at the moment, the starring player in every man’s lewd fantasy.
Ah, she was real enough, wearing a scarf sort of thing that dangled to her knees—or where one assumed her knees must be, under all those yards of lace and muslin. Atop the golden hair perched a silly hat, dripping lace and ribbons and feathers. Longmore could see a sort of Dutch windmill arrangement of lace and feathers at the back of the hat when she bent to talk to a scruffy little boy. She gave him something, and he dashed across the street, dodging riders and vehicles.
Then she looked up, straight at the bow window and straight at Longmore.
And smiled.
Then all the men at the bow window looked at him.
And smiled.
And he smiled right back.
Longmore took his time. He finished his glass of wine, reread the advertisement, then called for his things.
He donned his hat and gloves, grasped his walking stick, and went out. The drizzle had dwindled to a fine mist and the wind had died down somewhat.
She had walked a little way up the street. She was watching the passing scene on Piccadilly. Every passing male was watching her.
He coolly descended the
