Vixen in Velvet (32 page)

“Which terms exactly?” she said, in a small, tight voice.

“No one’s going to offer for her,” he said, lowering his own voice. “Not soon, at any rate. Not because of her—you’ve performed miracles with her. Even I like her.”

“I’ve dressed her,” she said. “The rest she’s done herself.”

“With your guidance, I don’t doubt. And whatever love potions you brew in the cellar. But anybody who offers for her must face her father, and I believe it will take considerable time and a wild, unthinking passion, to bring any of her current set of beaux to the point. I’ve no doubt that some of them have conceived an attachment—but unbridled passion, the kind that drives a man to enter a lion’s den or undergo the labors of Hercules? That’s another matter entirely.”

“You don’t think love is enough?” she said.

“It must be a potent love, indeed,” he said.

She folded her hands at her waist. “Are you afraid I’ll lose our wager?” she said.

“Yes, actually,” he said. “True, you might win. Stranger things have happened. The transformation of Gladys, for instance. But in all likelihood, yes, you’ll lose, and . . .” He paused.

“I shouldn’t worry, if I were you,” she said. “And I know exactly where I mean to hang the Botticelli.”

It was a fine exit line and she started away, and he almost let her go, but, “Leonie.”

She stopped and turned back to him, her expression inscrutable.

“Are you going to the ball?” he said.

She shook her head. “Lady Warford has resigned herself to Sophy and will put up with Marcelline mainly to aggravate her friends. But I haven’t got a title and I’m still working in the shop and most of the ladies at the party will be ladies I’ve waited on this week. It’s a ridiculous state of affairs.”

He moved to her. “I’ll tell you what’s ridiculous,” he said. “You’ve gone to incredible lengths to transform Gladys—and I know it can’t have been easy, because I know Gladys. Or the Gladys she was, at any rate. This is a chance to see your handiwork.”

“I saw it at Vauxhall,” she said.

“Vauxhall is nothing,” he said.

“Nothing,” she said with a small smile.

“I was there, after you left. Gladys was the belle of a small party. But it was like a picnic. You’ve seen the dancing area. A small space, with trees in the middle. Mixed company, and a lot of gawking onlookers in the supper boxes. It’s pretty and romantic, especially under the stars, when one dances with a beautiful girl. But it isn’t a great ball at Warford House, with the crème de la crème of Society dressed in their finest, drinking champagne and dancing to London’s most expensive musicians. You need to see your protégée in her proper milieu. And you ought to have, at least once, a proper milieu in which to show off one of your beautiful gowns.”

He caught the look of longing in her eyes before she masked it. “I hear the voice of the serpent in the garden,” she said. “You know I wasn’t tempted, truly, until you mentioned showing off a gown.”

“Advertising,” he said. “When have you ever had such an opportunity?”

“Never,” she said. “As you well know.”

“And to make it even more irresistible, I promise to do you the great honor of dancing with you,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and let out a theatrical sigh.

“Leonie.”

“Oh, very well, if only to stop you plaguing me.”

Then she turned away and flung up her hand in a gesture of dismissal, and went out.

He wanted to lunge at her and drag her back.

He let her go.

Chapter Seventeen

A partner, ’tis true, I would gladly command,

But that partner must boast of wealth, houses, and land;

I have looked round the ball-room, and, try what I can,

I fail to discover one Marrying Man!

—Mrs. Abdy, “A Marrying Man,” 1835

Friday 31 July

T
his had not been Lisburne’s favorite day of his life.

It had started with this morning’s
Spectacle
, and Lisburne’s spilling his coffee onto his eggs as he read:

Was that a poet of late pugilistic renown observed yesterday slipping into Rundell and Bridge jewelers? And what was it the clerk put into the little box, and the gentleman tucked into his waistcoat pocket?

But the world cannot be surprised, and will not require more than one guess as to the identity of the lady for whom the little box’s contents are intended.

We wish the gentleman well, in the
general
sense, as well as the specific acquisition of the hand of his fair one.

In case one was in any doubt, the pun on
general
was a sledgehammer reminder.

Swanton, meanwhile, had breakfasted early and gone out.

Then, at White’s in the early afternoon, Lisburne encountered Longmore, who confessed that the news about Swanton and Gladys had floored him.

“When I first described Gladys to her, Sophy told me, only let Maison Noirot get their hands on her,” Longmore said. “Well, what do I know about frocks, except that they’re the very devil to get off these days? Not to mention I knew it’d take more than a frock to make Gladys tolerable. I vow, when I saw her, I couldn’t believe it was the same girl. Thought they must have killed the original and put another in her place. But I hadn’t seen her in ages, you know.”

“I hadn’t seen her in an age, either, until a few weeks ago,” Lisburne said. “She didn’t seem greatly improved then. Except for her complexion.”

“What do you reckon?” Longmore said.

Lisburne shrugged. “It’s a mystery to me.”

This was not entirely true, but he hesitated to share his thoughts with Longmore, who was not a man of delicate feeling.

Perhaps all Gladys had wanted was pretty clothes to give her confidence, as well as some hints about, say, graceful deportment. Wasn’t it possible she’d been ill-natured because she was self-conscious about her looks—and because her father made her life a misery? Lisburne recalled the girl he’d seen at his father’s funeral. Maybe she’d known her father was trying to force her on a brokenhearted young man. A girl in her teens—already self-conscious—she must have been in agonies.

“But a
ring
,” Longmore said. “Swanton must be made of sterner stuff than ever I guessed, if he means to face Boulsworth. Have you seen the betting book?

Thanks to today’s
Spectacle
, Lisburne had finally looked into White’s betting book. Swanton and Gladys featured in entry after entry.

Lisburne had read the
Spectacle
every morning. Until today he might as well have been reading gibberish. He’d passed the last few days in a haze, both literal and figurative. Since Wednesday, the skies had dripped and poured almost constantly, and when the rain stopped for a breather, the clouds loomed so black and heavy they seemed like mammoth stones crushing London.

Today’s clearing skies must have cleared his brain, because he realized that Swanton must have confided in him at some point—perhaps several times—and Lisburne hadn’t paid attention. Everything Swanton said had sounded like poetry, and Lisburne was sick to death of poetry.

And so he passed a wretched day.

Still, he had the Warfords’ party to look forward to.

Where Leonie would be. He’d have his dance at the very least.

Warford House

That night

G
iven the occasion, the Noirot sisters were unlikely to slip in unobserved, though most of the ball’s attendees would agree that, in their case, invisibility didn’t fall within the realms of the probable.

For one thing, here they were making what constituted, in effect, their social debut—and under Lady Warford’s auspices!

All the world knew that Lady Warford loathed the Duchess of Clevedon. Even though Her Grace had received royal recognition, Lady Warford had remained aloof. When her eldest son, Longmore, married the duchess’s sister, her ladyship had taken a step closer to Sophy, but that was all.

Whatever mental revolution the marchioness had undergone had occurred promptly after the latest Vauxhall incident, and news of the scorned sisters being invited raced through London. No invitee still breathing would miss this for worlds. And since nobody wanted to miss a minute, the company arrived punctually.

The dressmakers timed it to a nicety, of course. The last to arrive, they paused at the ballroom entrance at the exact moment the musicians ended the overture from Rossini’s
La
Cenerentola
.

Brunette Lady Clevedon was dramatic in rose satin and black lace.

Blonde Lady Longmore, with her English rose coloring, wore a softer and warmer pink, with green and black embellishments.

And Leonie had chosen creamy white, a dress that seemed to be simplicity itself, if one overlooked the daring lines, the gold embroidery’s exotic design, and the black lace scarf draped over her shoulders, a theatrical flourish.

For a moment a sound passed through the ballroom like the wind driving autumn leaves: whispering that swelled and subsided and swelled again.

Then the three sisters curtseyed—
the
curtsey—the theatrical, ballerina performance that set their ruffles and bows aflutter and made the gaslight dance over their silk lace and embroidery and jewels.

The sight elicited a universal intake of breath. Then the room fell silent.

The sisters rose, in the same beautiful flurry of motion, and the ballroom began to hum—with speculation, admiration, envy, what-have-you.

Lisburne wasn’t part of the hum. He stood mute and motionless. What happened to him happened inside, where his being seemed to thrum like the strings of a violoncello.

She was so beautiful he could have wept.

She was like a living poem.

She made love like poetry.

And they fit together like the lines of a perfect poem.

Not one of Swanton’s.

But . . . well, Byron.

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies . . .

Images flashed in Lisburne’s mind, of Leonie standing before the Botticelli, of her briskly abandoning him in order to attend to Gladys, of her quarreling with him in Hyde Park and kissing him, kissing him, kissing him . . . the way she reached up for him and wrapped her arms about his neck . . . the way she laughed when they made love . . . the way she laughed . . . and teased . . . and the way she was . . .
too busy
.

“Drat you, Simon, what does a fellow have to do to get your attention?”

Lisburne looked away from the living poem, who seemed to be floating down the reception line while all the men in the room ogled her.

They all wanted her.

They all wanted to do to her—with her—what he had done.

A red haze enveloped his mind for a moment. He shook it off. “I think I’m—” He caught himself in the nick of time. He could not have been about to say what he thought he’d been about to say.

He met Swanton’s amused gaze. “Kindly pay attention this time,” Swanton said. “I won’t have you complaining of being the last to know.”

“I
am
the last to know,” Lisburne said. “Living under the same roof, and kept in darkness while you creep furtively about London.”

“I’ve told you every morning what I was about,” Swanton said. “And every morning you’ve said, ‘Will you, indeed? Well, I’m sure it’ll do admirably.’ ”

“I had things on my mind,” Lisburne said.

“That much was obvious,” Swanton said.

“The
Spectacle
claims you bought a ring yesterday,” Lisburne said. “Doesn’t that strike you as excessively sanguine?”

“If you’d been paying attention, you’d know all about it,” Swanton said. “You’d know I’ve received encouragement. And I want you to pay close attention now, because a very short time ago, your cousin Lady Gladys Fairfax consented to make me the happiest of men.” He blinked hard. “I’m sure you don’t understand, and you think it’s my sentiment, and I’m blinded by an excess of that article. You’ll say we scarcely know each other. In terms of days and hours, that’s true. Yet I feel as though I’ve known her all my life. From the first time I heard her voice, I knew we were kindred spirits.”

Lisburne remembered what she’d said about the poetic temperament. He recalled the kindliness in her face. He suspected she’d had an extremely difficult girlhood, difficult enough to make her bitter and venomous. But somehow she’d found the strength to rise above it. Certainly Leonie had had a good deal to do with Gladys’s blossoming. But Leonie couldn’t fight Gladys’s battles for her. Gladys had found a way to fight—heroically, he thought, given the odds—and the battle had brought out the best in her.

“Pray don’t sob,” Lisburne said. “I wish you happy. I don’t doubt you will be. She’ll manage your affairs admirably and protect you from yourself. Or do you weep at the prospect of facing her father?”

Swanton swallowed. “Tears of happiness, that’s all. As to her father—beyond a doubt he’ll come thundering back to London the instant he gets my and Lord Warford’s letters. But he authorized Lord Warford to act in loco parentis, and I have his consent.”

“You know Boulsworth will do his best to destroy your will to live,” Lisburne said. “Remember what you said about the enemy running away screaming at the sound of his voice?”

“Yes, but I’ll have Gladys, no matter what he says,” Swanton said. “And we’ve worked out strategies for confounding the enemy.” He smiled. “She and I have tried out a dozen scenarios. She makes me laugh so and she teases me so—oh, never mind. I can see you grow ill listening to me.”

Whatever Lisburne was at that moment, he wasn’t ill. A little blinded, perhaps, by the light dawning.

“She makes you laugh,” he said. “She teases. A kindred spirit, you said.”

“Yes, all that and more,” Swanton said. “But I’ve said enough. Now you know, and we may tell the rest of the world. Dash it, Simon, I never guessed it was possible to be so happy!”

After he’d bounced away, a thoughtful Lisburne went in search of Leonie, who’d disappeared into the crowd by that mysterious process she had of hiding in plain sight. His efforts were hampered by this one and that one who had to quiz him about Swanton or bother him about something or other.

Meanwhile, the Warfords wasted not a minute in making the news public. As the dancing was about to begin, a bemused Lord Warford announced the betrothal. Lady Warford was beaming.

A dead silence fell.

Then Lisburne clapped. He saw Gladys’s gaze snap toward him. She smiled and in that moment was—no, not beautiful. But she was radiant, and in that moment it was easy enough to see what Swanton saw in her.

The other guests began clapping, too.

And the newly betrothed couple were asked to lead the first dance.

M
ama is in alt,” Lady Clara told Leonie. “You have no idea what a coup this is for her. Lady Bartham has been perfectly vile with her
sympathy
because we’ve had to house Gladys and try to entertain her. Yet Lady Bartham can’t marry off even one of her two pretty daughters, and here—in no time at all—is Gladys carrying off the man every girl wants.”

“Not
every
girl,” Leonie said.

“No, my dear, and I don’t want him, either, though he is good-looking, rich, propertied, and rather sweet. But his poetry!” Lady Clara glanced about her and lowered her voice. “The sadder it is, the more I want to go off into whoops. But Gladys says he has a beautiful soul, and he—well, you’ve seen the way he looks at her.”

“I shouldn’t mind being looked at in that way,” Leonie said. “One of these days it could happen, I daresay.”

Clara drew her head back a bit, surprised. “Are you entirely blind? That’s the way my cousin Lisburne looks at you.”

But Lisburne had practiced that way of looking at a girl, or else he knew how to do it instinctively. Leonie could do it, too. She could gaze up into a man’s eyes and make him believe he was the sun and the moon and the stars.

She didn’t say this to Lady Clara. Her ladyship had suffered sufficient disillusionments lately as it was.

One day, though, a gentleman would gaze at this beautiful girl in the same love-struck way, and he’d mean it, all the way down to the secret places of his heart. And one day, it would be the right gentleman, and Lady Clara would reciprocate. And she’d be able to give her heart freely, because—

“I should have known I’d find you two lurking in a corner, conspiring,” came a low male voice that made the back of Leonie’s neck prickle.

“Simon,” said Lady Clara. “We were talking about you. Were your ears burning?”

“If they were, it’s no surprise I failed to notice, since everybody else was working them so hard,” he said. “Every step I take, somebody must draw me aside to confide this or that or ask what I mean to do now or tell me how you could have knocked them over with a feather. If I’d had a feather, half the people in this house would be stretched out on the floor.”

He looked at Leonie, his gaze softening in a way that made her heart flutter like a schoolgirl’s. “It’s taken eons to find you. You promised me a dance.”

“As I recall, you promised to do me the very great honor,” she said.

“Well, then, here I am,” he said. “I’ve been assured that the next is a waltz, and I believe your dress will show to great advantage in waltzing.”

“I spy Lord Geddings looking for me,” Lady Clara said. “I do want to see how this business between you comes out, but when one has promised a dance, one must keep the promise, except in cases of broken limbs—and then only if the fracture is multiple.”