Regency Rogues and Rakes

She’d said she was a determined woman. He’d under-stood—to a point—her wishing to dress Clara. Dressing a duchess would be highly profitable. But to run this risk—she, an English nobody—with the Comtesse de Chirac, stupendously high in the instep and one of the most formidable women in Paris? And to do so at a time like this, when the city was in a state of ferment on account of an impending trial of some alleged traitors, and nobles like the comtesse saw assassins lurking in every shadowy corner?

It was a mad chance to take, merely for a little shop.

Yet Madame Noirot had announced her lunatic intention as cool as you please, with a gleam in her eye. And why should this surprise him? She was a gambler. This gamble, clearly, was of vast importance to her.

“You may have slipped into other parties unnoticed but you won’t get into this one,” he said.

“You think they’ll know I’m a nobody shopkeeper?” she said. “You think I can’t fool them? You think I can’t make them see what I want them to see?”

“Others, perhaps. Not Madame de Chirac. You haven’t a prayer.”

He thought perhaps she did have a prayer, but he was goading her, wanting to know what else she’d reveal of herself.

“Then I reckon you’ll simply have to see for yourself,” she said. “That is, I presume you’ve been invited?”

He glanced down at his diamond stickpin, winking up at him from the deep neckline of her red dress. Her bosom was rising and falling more rapidly than before.

“Oddly enough, I have,” he said. “In her view, we English are an inferior species, but for some reason, she makes an exception of me. It must be all my deceitful French names.”

“Then I’ll see you there.” She started to turn away.

“I hope not,” he said. “It would pain me to see you manhandled by the gendarmes, even if that would enliven an exceedingly dull evening.”

“You have a dramatic imagination,” she said. “In the unlikely event they don’t let me inside, they’ll merely send me away. They won’t want to make a scene with a mob outside. The mob, after all, might take my side.”

“It’s a silly risk to take,” he said. “All for your little shop.”

“Silly,” she repeated quietly. “My little shop.” She looked up at the leering demigods and satyrs cavorting on the ceiling. When her gaze returned to him it was cool and steady, belying the swift in-and-out of her breathing. She was angry but she controlled it wonderfully.

He wondered what that anger would be like, let loose.

“That little shop is my livelihood,” she said. “And not only mine. You haven’t the remotest idea what it took to gain a foothold in London. You haven’t the least notion what it’s taken to make headway against the established shops. You’ve no inkling of what we contend with: not merely other dressmakers—and they’re a treacherous lot—but the conservatism of your class. French grandmothers dress with more taste than do your countrywomen. It’s like a war, sometimes—and so, yes, that’s all I think about, and yes, I’ll do whatever is necessary to raise the reputation of my shop. And if I’m thrown into the street or into jail, all I’ll think about is how to take advantage of the publicity.”

“For clothes,” he said. “Does it not strike you as absurd, to go to such lengths, when English women, as you say, are oblivious to style? Why not give them what they want?”

“Because I can make them more than what they want,” she said. “I can make them unforgettable. Have you drifted so far beyond the everyday concerns of life that you can’t understand? Is nothing in this world truly important to you, important enough to make you stick to it, in spite of obstacles? But what a silly question. If you had a purpose in life, you would give yourself to it, instead of frittering away your days in Paris.”

He should have realized she’d strike back, but he’d been so caught up in her passion for her dreary work that she took him unawares. An image flashed in his mind of the world he’d fled—the little, dull world and his empty days and nights and the pointless amusements he’d tried to fill them with. He recalled Lord Warford telling him, You seem determined to fritter away your life.

He felt an instant’s shame, then anger, because she’d stung him.

Reacting unthinkingly to the sting, he said, “Indeed, it’s all sport to me. So much so that I’ll make you a wager. Another round of cards, madame. Vingt et Un—with or without variations, as you choose. This time, if you win, I shall take you myself to the Comtesse de Chirac’s ball.”

Her eyes sparked—with anger or pride or perhaps simple dislike. He couldn’t tell and, at the moment, didn’t care.

“Sport, indeed,” she said. “One rash wager after another. I wonder what you think you’ll prove. But you don’t think, do you? Certainly you haven’t stopped to ask yourself what your friends will think.”

He hardly heard what she was saying. He was drinking in the signs of emotion—the color coming and going in her face, and the sparks in her eyes, and the rise and fall of her bosom. And all the while he was keenly aware of the place where her sharp little needle had stabbed him.

“Nothing to prove,” he said. “I only want you to lose. And when you lose, you’ll admit defeat with a kiss.”

“A kiss!” She laughed. “A mere kiss from a shopkeeper. That’s paltry stakes, indeed, compared to your dignity.”

“A proper kiss would not be mere, madame, or paltry,” he said. “You may not pay with a peck on the cheek. You’ll pay with the sort of kiss you’d give a man to whom you’ve surrendered.” And if he couldn’t make her surrender with a kiss, he might as well go back to London this night. “Considering your precious respectability, that’s high stakes for you, I know.”

One flash from her dark eyes before her face turned into a beautiful mask, cool, impervious. But he’d had a glimpse of the turbulence within, and now he couldn’t walk away if his life depended on it.

“It’s nothing to me,” she said. “Haven’t you been paying attention, your grace? You haven’t a prayer of winning against me.”

“Then you’ve everything to gain,” he said. “Easy entrée into the most exclusive, most boring ball in Paris.”

She shook her head pityingly. “Very well. Never say I didn’t warn you.”

She returned to her chair and sat.

He sat opposite.

“Any game you like,” she said. “In any way you like. It won’t matter. I’ll win—and it will be most amusing.”

She pushed the cards toward him.

“Deal,” she said.

At the time of the French Revolution, Marcelline’s aristocratic grandfather had kept his head by keeping his head. Generations of Noirots—the name he’d taken after fleeing France—had inherited the same cool self-containment and ruthless practicality.

True, her passions ran dark and deep, as was typical of her family, on both sides. Like them, though, she was quite good at hiding what she felt. She’d had to teach her sisters the skill. She, apparently, had been born with it.

But the casually disparaging way Clevedon referred to her shop and her profession made her blood boil.

That was noble blood, too, running in her veins—no matter that hers was the most corrupt blue blood in all of Europe. But Noirot was a common name, as common as dirt, which was why Grandpapa had chosen it. Now, most of the family was gone, taking their infamy with them.

Notorious or not, her family was as old as Clevedon’s—and she doubted all his ancestors had been saints. The only difference at the moment was that he was rich without having to work for it and she had to work for every farthing.

She knew it was absurd to let him provoke her. She knew her customers looked down on her. They all behaved the way Lady Renfrew and Mrs. Sharp did, speaking as though she and her sisters were invisible. To the upper orders, shopkeepers were simply another variety of servants. She’d always found that useful, and sometimes amusing.

But he…

Never mind. The question now was whether to let him win or lose.

Her pride couldn’t let him win. She wanted to crush him, his vanity, his casual superiority.

But his losing meant a serious inconvenience. She could hardly enter a ball on the Duke of Clevedon’s arm without setting off a firestorm of gossip—exactly what she didn’t want to do.

Yet she couldn’t let him win.

“We play the deck,” he said. “We play each deal, but with one difference: We don’t show our cards until the end. Then, whoever has won the most deals wins the game.”

Not being able to see the cards as they played through would make it harder to calculate the odds.

But she could read him, and he couldn’t read her. Moreover, the game he proposed could be played quickly. Soon enough she’d be able to tell whether he was playing recklessly.

The first deal. Two cards to each. He dealt her a natural—ace of diamonds and knave of hearts. But he stood at two cards as well, which he never did if they totaled less than seventeen. Next deal she had the ace of hearts, a four, and a three. The next time she stood at seventeen, with clubs. Then another natural—ace of spades and king of hearts. And next the queen of hearts and nine of diamonds.

On it went. He often drew three cards to her two. But he was intent, as he hadn’t been previously, and by this time, she could no longer detect the flicker in his green eyes that told her he didn’t like his cards.

She was aware of her heart beating faster with every deal, though her cards were good for the most part. Twenty-one once, twice, thrice. Most of the other hands were good. But he played calmly, for all his concentration, and she couldn’t be absolutely sure his luck was worse.

Ten deals played it out.

Then they turned their cards over, slapping them down smartly, smiling coolly at each other across the table as they did so, each of them confident.

A glance at the spread-out cards told her she’d beat him all but four times, and one of those was a tie.

Not that she needed to see the cards laid out to know who’d won. She had only to observe his stillness, and the blank way he regarded the cards. He looked utterly flummoxed.

It lasted but an instant before he became the jaded man of the world again; but in that look she glimpsed the boy he used to be, and for a moment she regretted everything: that they’d met in the way they’d done, that they were worlds apart, that she hadn’t known him before he lost his innocence…

Then he looked up and met her gaze, and in his green eyes she saw awareness dawn—at last—of the problem he’d created for himself.

Once again, he recovered in an instant. If he was at a loss—as surely he must be—there was no further sign. Like her, he was used to covering up. She should have covered up, too. He ought to have second thoughts. It was no more than she expected. His consternation, however faintly evidenced, rankled all the same, and more than it ought to have done.

“You’ve been rash, your grace,” she taunted. “Again. Another silly wager. But this time a great deal more is at stake.”

His pride, a gentleman’s most tender part.

He shrugged and gathered up the cards.

But she knew what the shrug masked.

His friends had seen him at the opera in the box of an aging actress, seeking an introduction to the actress’s friend. Émilien knew she was a London dressmaker, and by tomorrow night, at least half of Paris would know she was a nobody: no exciting foreign actress or courtesan, and certainly not a lady of any nationality.

What would his friends think, when they saw him enter a party he wouldn’t normally attend, bringing a most unwelcome guest, a shopkeeper?

“What hypocrites you aristos are,” she said. “It’s all well enough to chase women who are beneath you, merely to get them beneath you—but to attempt to bring them into good company? Unthinkable. Your friends will believe you’ve taken leave of your senses. They’ll believe you’ve let me make a fool of you. Enslaved, they’ll say. The great English duke is enslaved by a showy little bourgeoise.”

He shrugged. “Will they? Well, then, watching their jaws drop should prove entertaining. Will you wear red?”

She rose, and he did, too, manners perfect, no matter what.

“You put on a brave show,” she said. “I’ll give you credit for that. But I know you’re having second thoughts. And because I’m a generous woman—and all I want, foolish man, is to dress your wife—I’ll release you from a wager you never should have made. I do this because you’re a man, and I know that there are times when men use an organ other than their brains to think with.”

She gathered her reticule, arranged her shawl—and instantly recalled the brush of his fingers upon her skin.

Crushing the recollection, she swept to the door.

“Adieu,” she said. “I hope a few hours’ sleep will restore your good sense, and you’ll let us be friends. In that case, I’ll look forward to seeing you on Friday. Perhaps we’ll meet on the Quai Voltaire.”

He followed her to the door. “You’re the most damnable female,” he said. “I’m not accustomed to having women order me about.”

“We bourgeoise are like that,” she said. “No finesse or tact. So managing.”

She walked on, into the deserted corridor. From one room she heard low murmurs. Some were still at their gaming. From elsewhere came snores.

Mainly, though, she was aware of his footsteps, behind her at first, then alongside.

“I’ve hurt your feelings,” he said.

“I’m a dressmaker,” she said. “My customers are women. If you wish to hurt my feelings, you’ll need to exert yourself to a degree you may find both mentally and physically debilitating.”

“I hurt something,” he said. “You’re determined to dress my duchess, and you’ll stop at nothing, but you’ve stopped. You’re quite prepared to give up.”

“You underestimate me,” she said. “I never give up.”

“Then why are you telling me to go to the devil?”

“I’ve done no such thing,” she said. “I’ve forgiven the wager, as it is the winner’s prerogative to do. If you’d been thinking clearly, you would never have proposed it. If I hadn’t allowed you to provoke me, I should never have agreed. There. We were both in the wrong. Now go find your friends and arrange to have them carried home. I have a long day ahead of me, and unlike you, I can’t spend most of it recovering from this night.”

“You’re afraid,” he said.

She stopped short and looked up at him. He was smiling, a self-satisfied curve of his too-sensuous mouth. “I’m what?” she said quietly.

“You’re afraid,” he said. “You’re the one who’s afraid of what people will say—of you—and how they’ll behave—toward you. You’re quite ready to sneak in like a thief, hoping nobody notices, but you’re terrified to enter with me, with everybody looking at you.”

“It distresses me to shatter you illusions, your grace,” she said, “but what you and your friends think and say is not as important to other people as it is to you. I hope no one will notice me for the same reason a spy prefers not to be noticed. And it seems to escape you that the thrill of going where one isn’t wanted and hasn’t been invited—and getting away with it—will make the party more fun for me than it will be for anyone else.”

She walked on, her breath coming and going too fast, her temper too close to the surface. Her self-control was formidable, even for her kind, yet she’d let him provoke her. She only wanted to dress his wife-to-be, but somehow she’d been drawn into the wrong game altogether. And now she wondered if she’d bollixed it up, if he’d got her into a muddle with his beautiful face and falsely innocent smiles and his fingers brushing her skin.

His voice came from behind her.

“Coward,” he said.

The word seemed to echo in the empty passage.

Coward. She, who at scarce one and twenty had gone to London with a handful of coins in her purse and overwhelming responsibilities on her shoulders: a sick child and two younger sisters—and staked everything on a dream and her courage to pursue it.

She stopped and turned and marched back to him.

“Coward,” he said softly.

She dropped her reticule, grasped his neckcloth, and pulled. He bent his head. She reached up, cupped his face, dragged his mouth to hers, and kissed him.

Chapter Four

Mrs. Clark is as usual constantly receiving Models from some of the first Milliners in Paris, which enables her to produce the earliest Fashions for each Month, and trust that her general mode of doing business will give decided approbation to those Ladies who will honour her with a preference.

La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, Advertisements for June 1807

It was no surrender, but a slap in the face of a kiss.

Her mouth struck and opened boldly against his, and the collision rocked him on his heels. It was as though they’d been lovers a long time ago and hated each other now, and the two passions had melded into one: They could fight or love, and it was all the same.

She held his jaw with a powerful grip. If she’d dug her nails into his face, that would have seemed fitting: It was that kind of kiss.

Instead she damaged him with her soft mouth, the press of her lips, the play of her tongue, like a duel. She damaged him, above all with the taste of her. She tasted like brandy, rich and deep and dark. She tasted like forbidden fruit.

She tasted, in short, like trouble.

For a moment he reacted instinctively, returning the assault in the same spirit, even while his body tensed and melted at the same time, his knees giving way and his insides tightening. But she was wondrously warm and shapely, and while his mind dissolved, his physical awareness grew more ferociously acute: the taste of her mouth, the scent of her skin, the weight of her breasts on his coat, and the sound of her dress brushing his trousers.

His heart beat too fast and hard, heat flooding through his veins and racing downward. He wrapped his arms about her and splayed his hands over her back, over silk and the neckline’s lace edging and the velvety skin above.

He slid his hands lower, down the line of her back and along the curve from her waist to her bottom. Layers of clothing thwarted him there, but he pulled her hard against his groin, and she made a noise deep in her throat that sounded like pleasure.

Her hands came away from his face and slid between them, down over his neckcloth and down over his waistcoat and down further.

His breath caught and his body tensed in anticipation.

She thrust him away, and she put muscle into it. Even so, the push wouldn’t have been enough to move him, or-dinarily; but its strength and suddenness startled him, and he loosened his hold. She jerked out of his arms and he stumbled backward, into the wall.

She gave a short laugh, then bent and collected her reticule. She brushed a stray curl back from her face, and with an easy, careless grace, rearranged her shawl.

“This is going to be so much fun,” she said. “I can hardly wait. Yes, now that I think about it, I should like nothing better, your grace, than to have your escort to the Comtesse de Chirac’s ball. You may collect me at the Hotel Fontaine at nine o’clock sharp. Adieu.”

She strolled away, as cool as you please, down the passage and through the door.

He didn’t follow her.

It was a splendid exit, and he didn’t want to spoil it.

So he told himself.

Yet he stood for a moment, collecting his mind and his poise, and trying to ignore the shakiness within, as though he’d run to the edge of a precipice and stopped only inches short of stepping into midair.

But of course there was no precipice, no void to fall into. That was absurd. She was merely a woman, the tempestuous type, and he was a trifle…puzzled…because it had been a while since he’d encountered her kind.

He went the other way, to find his friends—or the bodies of the fallen, rather. While he arranged for their transport to their respective lodgings and domiciles, he was aware, in a corner of his mind, of a derisive voice pointing out that he had nothing more important to do at present than collect and sort a lot of dead-drunk aristocrats.

Later, though, when he was alone in his hotel and starting a letter to Clara because he couldn’t sleep, he found he couldn’t write. He could scarcely remember the performance. It seemed a lifetime ago that he’d sat in the theater, anticipating his next encounter with Madame Noirot. His notes about the performance became gibberish swimming before his eyes.

The only clear, focused thought he had was of Madame de Chirac’s ball looming mere hours away, and the fool’s bargain he’d made, and the impossible riddle he’d insisted on solving: how to get the accursed dressmaker in without sacrificing his dignity, vanity, or reputation.

When Marcelline returned to her hotel, she found Selina Jeffreys drowsing in a chair by the fire. Though the slender blonde was their youngest seamstress, recently brought in from a charitable establishment for “unfortunate females,” she was the most sensible of the lot. That was why Marcelline had chosen her to play lady’s maid on the journey. A woman traveling with a maid was treated more respectfully than one traveling alone.

Frances Pritchett, the senior of their seamstresses, was probably still sulking about being left behind. But she’d come last time, and she hadn’t taken at all to playing lady’s maid. She wouldn’t have sat up waiting for her employer to return, unless it was to complain about the French in general and the hotel staff in particular.

Jeffreys awoke with a start when Marcelline lightly tapped her shoulder. “You silly girl,” Marcelline said. “I told you not to wait up.”

“But who will help you out of your dress, madame?”

“I could sleep in it,” Marcelline said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Oh, no, madame! That beautiful dress!”

“Not so beautiful now,” Marcelline said. “Not only wrinkled, but it smells of cigar smoke and other people’s perfumes and colognes.”

“Let’s get it off, then. You must be so weary. The promenade—and then to be out all night.”

She had accompanied Marcelline on the Longchamp promenade and obligingly faded out of sight when Marcelline gave the signal. Unlike Pritchett, Selina Jeffreys never minded in the least making herself inconspicuous. She’d been happy simply to drink in the sight of so many rich people wearing fine clothes, riding their beautiful horses or driving their elegant carriages.

“One must go where the aristocrats go,” Marcelline said.

“I don’t know how they do it, night after night.”

“They’re not obliged to be at work at nine o’clock every morning.”

The girl laughed. “That’s true enough.”

While she was quick, it was efficiency rather than hurry. In a trice she had Marcelline out of the red dress. She soon had hot water ready, too. A full bath would have to wait until after she’d slept—later in the day, when the hotel’s staff were fully awake. Meanwhile Marcelline needed to scrub away the smell of the gambling houses. That was easy enough.

The taste and smell of one gentleman wouldn’t be eradicated so easily. She could wash her face and clean her teeth but her body and mind remembered: Clevedon’s surprise, his quick heat, the bold response of his mouth and tongue, and the thrumming need he’d awakened with the simple motion of his hand sliding down her back.

Kissing him had not been the wisest move a woman could make, but really, what was the alternative? Slap him? A cliché. Punch him? That hard body? That stubborn jaw? She’d only hurt her hand—and make him laugh.

She doubted he was laughing now.

He was thinking, and he would need to be thinking very hard. Harder, probably, than he’d done before in all his life.

She felt certain he wouldn’t back down from the challenge. He was too proud and too determined to have the upper hand—of her, certainly, and probably the world.

It would be entertaining, indeed, to see how he managed her entrée into the comtesse’s party. If it ended in humiliation for him, maybe he’d learn from the experience. On the other hand, he might come to hate Marcel-line instead, and forbid his wife to darken the door of Maison Noirot.

But Marcelline’s instincts told her otherwise. What-ever his faults—and they were not few—this was not a mean-spirited man or the sort who held grudges.

“Go to bed,” she told Jeffreys. “We’ve a busy time ahead of us, preparing for the party. Everything must be perfect.”

And it would be. She’d make sure of it, one way or another.

Awaiting her was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, nearly as important as stealing the about-to-be Duchess of Clevedon from Dowdy’s.

Clevedon had complicated what ought to have been a straightforward business. On her own, getting in would have merely demanded expert camouflage, evasive maneuvers, and, of course, thorough self-assurance. But no matter. Life had a way of wrecking her careful plans, again and again. Roulette was more predictable than life. Small wonder she was so lucky at it.

Life was not a wheel going round and round. It never, ever, returned to the same place. It didn’t stick to simple red and black and a certain array of numbers. It laughed at logic.

Beneath its pretty overdress of man-imposed order, life was anarchy.

All the same, every time life had knocked her plans awry, she’d made a new plan and salvaged something. Sometimes she even triumphed. She was nothing if not resilient.

Whatever happened this night, she’d make the most of it.

That night

It would have served the insolent dressmaker right had Clevedon made her wait. He was not accustomed to taking orders from anybody, let alone a conceited little shopkeeper. Nine o’clock sharp, she’d said, as though he was her lackey.

But that was a childish reaction, and he preferred she not add childishness to the list of character flaws she seemed to be compiling. She was sure to ascribe any delays to cowardly heel-dragging. She’d already as much as called him a coward, in offering to release him from the wager.

He arrived promptly at nine o’clock. When the carriage door opened, he saw her outside at one of the tables under the portico. A gentleman, whose manner and dress proclaimed him English, was bent over her, talking.

Clevedon had planned so carefully: what to wear to the ball and what to say to his hostess and what expression to wear when he said it. He had taken up and discarded half a dozen waistcoats and left his valet, Saunders, a heap of crumpled neckcloths to tend to. He had composed and rejected scores of clever speeches. He was, in short, wound up exceedingly tight.

She, on the other hand, could not have appeared more at ease, lounging under the portico, flirting with any fellow who happened along. One would think she’d no more on her mind than an idle conversation with yet another potential payer of dressmakers’ bills.

And why should she consider anything else? It wasn’t her friends who’d be whispering behind her back and shaking their heads in pity.

He could easily imagine what his friends would whisper: Cupid’s arrow had at last struck the Duke of Clevedon—and not on account of Paris’s greatest beauty, not on account of its most irresistible courtesan, not on account of its most fashionable, sought-after titled lady.

No, it was a nobody of an English shopkeeper who’d slain his grace.

He silently cursed his friends and his own stupidity, stepped down from the carriage, and strolled to her table.

As he approached, her dark glance slanted his way. She said something to the talkative fellow. He nodded at her and, without taking any notice of Clevedon, bowed and went into the hotel.

When Clevedon came to the table, she looked up at him. To his very great surprise, she smiled: a warm, luscious upturn of the mouth that had nearly brought him to his knees.

But he was not slain, not by half.

“You’re prompt,” she said.

“I never keep a lady waiting,” he said.

“But I’m not a lady,” she said.

“Are you not? Well, then, you’re a conundrum. Are you ready? Or would you prefer a glass of something first, to fortify yourself for the ordeal?”

“I’m as fortified as I need to be,” she said. She rose and made a sweeping arc with her hand, drawing his attention to her attire.

He supposed a woman would have a name for it. To him it was a dress. He knew that the sleeves would have their own special name—à la Taglioni or à la Clotilde or some equally nonsensical epithet, comprehensible only to women. Their dresses were all the same to him: swelling in the sleeves, billowing out in the skirts, and tight in the middle. It was the style women had been wearing throughout his adulthood.

Her dress was made of silk, in an odd, sandy color he would have thought bland had he seen the cloth in a shop. But it was trimmed with puffy red bows, and they seemed like flowers blooming in a desert. Then there was black lace, yards of it, dripping like a waterfall over her smooth shoulders and down the front, under a sash, down over her belly.

He made a twirling gesture with his finger. Obligingly she turned in a complete circle. She moved as effortlessly and gracefully as water, and the lace about her shoulders floated in the air with the movement.

When she finished the turn, though, she didn’t pause but walked on toward the carriage. He walked on with her.

“What is that dreadful color?” he said.

“Poussière,” she said.

“Dust,” he said. “I congratulate you, madame. You’ve made dust alluring.”

“It’s not an easy color to wear,” she said. “Especially for one of my complexion. True poussière would make me appear to be suffering from a liver disease. But this silk has a pink undertone, you see.”