Scandal Wears Satin (17 page)

A moment later it was over. The laughter dwindled to a smile. She shook her head. Then she took off the hat and put it on straight, trying to see in the unhelpful glass.

He came behind her, and arranged it correctly.

She turned and looked up at him, her great blue eyes shining with an expression that alerted some instinct and made him wary.

He didn’t stop to work out what it was. He simply heeded the instinct.

He tied the ribbons. Then he stepped away, out of reach of that shining blue.

“Well, then,” he said. “We’d better be off.”

N
o one had to tell Sophy that kissing her meant nothing special to the Earl of Longmore. He was a man, and one not famous for celibacy or even constancy.

For her, though, it had been a shocking learning experience. For whole stretches of time, she hadn’t had even a wisp of a thought about Maison Noirot, or clothing, except for feeling there was too much of it. In the way.

If this sort of thing happened all the time with men, she’d never be able to afford a love affair: She wouldn’t have any mind left for the shop.

How on earth did Marcelline manage it?

A stronger mind? Or was it marriage? Maybe matrimony had a quieting effect.

It was hard to imagine a more horrifying prospect than marrying Longmore. It was bad on so many counts that her mind shrank from contemplating it.

She’d have to quiet herself somehow. Yet even now, fully aware he was simply doing what men did, she had to work very hard to get her mind back on Lady Clara and the simplest part of that problem: where she was headed.

The answer came only a few miles down the road from Hampton Court, at the Bear Inn at Esher.

It was a large, busy coaching inn. When they arrived, several coaches were either entering its yard or leaving it. They were bound for London, Longmore told her. “The down stages will all arrive at about the same time,” he said. “You might have noticed them when you were waiting for me at the Gloucester Coffee House. Or maybe you didn’t notice, being surrounded by men trying to attract your attention.”

“Don’t fret about those men, my lord,” she said. “I had eyes only for you.”

“At least you have taste,” he said.

And that was the end of that exchange, because he had to make his way past the other vehicles. When he drew the carriage to a halt, Fenwick promptly jumped down and went to the horses’ heads.

It dawned on her that the boy—a street urchin—had done this, again and again, from the start.

“He does it so easily,” Sophy said as she alighted. She looked up at Longmore. “You trusted him with your team yesterday, at Bedford Square. Is that usual?”

“There are always boys loitering about, willing to hold one’s cattle for a coin,” he said while hustling her toward the inn. “But you said yourself how quickly and smoothly he leapt up onto the back of my curricle to rob me. It would seem he’s had experience in a stable or a coach house. Not that one can extract from him any sort of information. That’ll want thumbscrews, I daresay.”

“I’m glad, for this journey’s sake,” she said. “But you’re not to imagine you can poach him from me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “My man Reade would murder him in his sleep. Very possessive fellow is my tiger. Even now, I daresay he’s plotting against the boy for usurping his place.”

The conversation broke off as they entered the inn, to be jostled by various parties coming and going. In a very few minutes, though, the London-bound coaches were gone, the flurry had ceased, and Longmore was able to corner the landlord and tell the story of the forgotten pocketbook.

As busy as the place was, the innkeeper had no trouble remembering the cabriolet and the two ladies. He even showed the entry in the guest book: They’d signed as Mrs. Glasgow and Miss Peters. Sophy recognized Lady Clara’s elegant handwriting. Davis, who probably wasn’t in the habit of signing anything, had written her false name in tight, square letters that looked as disapproving as letters could look.

“They left midmorning,” the innkeeper said. “Bound for Portsmouth.”

“Damnation,” Longmore said.

“P
ortsmouth, of all places,” he said when they were once more in the carriage. “Naval town. Bursting at the seams with brothels and drunken sailors and every sort of pimp and bawd looking for pigeons to pluck. And ships bound for everywhere. The Continent. Ireland. America.”

This was worse, far worse than Clara’s simply being on the road alone.

He was aware of panic welling up and trying to swamp him. He beat it down.

“She can’t leave the country,” Sophy said.

“She doesn’t know that,” he said. “She’ll try. In a place teeming with cheats and scoundrels happy to take advantage of an ignorant female. They’ll see her coming from a mile away, a sheltered miss and thorough greenhorn.”

“She isn’t on her own,” Sophy said. “She has Davis. Anyone who wants to get to Lady Clara will have to get past the maid. Davis may have to yield to her mistress’s whims, but she went with her in order to protect her.”

“One female,” he said.

He didn’t have to look. He felt the stiffening, the something in the air that told him he’d got her back up. Again.

“Why do you assume all women are weaklings?” she said.

“Because they are,” he said. “I can pick you up with one hand. Can you pick me up, even using both hands?”

“That’s not the only kind of strength,” she said.

“She’s a lady’s maid,” he said. “She’s at the top of the female servant ladder. No heavy lifting necessary.”

“She’s up at all hours and out in all weathers,” Sophy said. “When she isn’t dancing attendance on her mistress, she’s mending and cleaning and taking things out and putting them away. If milady falls ill, it’s her maid who does the dirty work of nursing her while doctors and mothers give orders. The maid runs up and down stairs all day and night, fetching and carrying. She’s keeping an eye on the lower servants, making sure everything done to or for milady is done properly. No weakling would survive for half a day.”

Longmore stared at the horses’ heads. He’d never thought about the woman who looked after his sister, beyond noting that she was plain and her expression reminded everybody of a bulldog.

“I’ll give you that she’s strong,” he said. “The fact remains, she’s only one female.”

“A formidable female,” Sophy said. “Lady Clara was in more danger from Lord Adderley than she is from naval Lotharios in Portsmouth.”

“Clearly, you’ve had little to do with naval men,” he said.

“How little you know,” she said.

So it seemed.

“Enlighten me, then,” he said.

“I’m a dressmaker,” she said. “A milliner. Everybody knows we’re fair game.”

“You don’t seem to know that,” he said. “You’re deuced uncooperative.”

“I spoke ironically,” she said.

“Better not,” he said. “Goes right over my head.”

“Furthermore, I have powerful reasons for being uncooperative, which I explained to you last night. Don’t tell me you didn’t understand.”

“I wasn’t completely listening,” he said.

“You’re going to make me hurt you,” she said.

“You’ll need a brick,” he said.

“My aim is excellent,” she said.

They passed through the Cobham Gate, where they learned—in case they’d any doubts—that the cabriolet had passed the day before.

The sun was lowering toward the horizon. It would set near eight o’clock. They had a long drive to Portsmouth, more than fifty miles. Thanks to the time of year and the moon, it wouldn’t be an altogether dark journey, if the weather didn’t turn on them again.

He wasn’t going to stop this time, even if a hurricane blew their way.

He looked at her. Her hat had deflated somewhat. The ribbons were limper and the flowers not as sprightly as before. No wonder, after she’d tried to beat him with it. He smiled, remembering.

She was an amazing antidote to gloom.

“Tell me about the naval men,” he said. “Did you spill hot tea on them? Trip them over their own swords?”

“Did you know you could kill a person with a hatpin?” she said.

“I did not,” he said. “Do you speak from experience? Have you murdered anybody? Not that I’d dream of criticizing.”

“I’ve only ever wounded anybody,” she said. “It’s amazingly effective. There was a captain who screamed like a girl and fainted.”

“A pity you hadn’t the training of my sister,” he said.

“A few tricks wouldn’t do her any good,” she said. “She’d need a lifetime’s experience—and even then she might have fallen into the trap. Adderley is a beautiful man, and he has a winning manner. But Lady Durwich thought your sister was trying to make another man jealous—that, or she was upset with somebody. Maybe
she
was jealous—and it was a case of ‘I’ll show you’ or ‘Two can play that game’ or—”

“Is it always like this?” he broke in. “Does your busy mind never rest?”

“If not for imagination, Marcelline, Leonie, and I wouldn’t be where we are today,” she said. “You don’t need to think of such things. Men rule the world, and the world is made for the convenience of aristocratic men. But women need to imagine, to dream. Even Lady Clara. We taught her to dream a little and to dare a little—and I refuse to feel guilty for that—but I was a sort of Pygmalion, wasn’t I? And I should have—”

“Classical allusions,” he said. “Clevedon does it all the time. Now you. Which one was Pygmalion?”

“The sculptor who created the beautiful statue, and—”

“That one, right. She came to life.”

“Yes.”

“How do you know these things?” he said. “Where does a shopkeeper find time to learn who Pygmalion was? Where does she learn to write overwrought prose?”

She turned the politely interested look upon him: the look that made a blank of her almost-beautiful face. “It’s not marvelous to you when a gentleman can speak, read, and write three or six languages, make speeches in Parliament, perform chemical experiments, write botanical papers, and found or help direct half a dozen charities? Don’t you ever wonder where any gentleman finds the time to do all that? I certainly do. Take Dr. Young, for example.”

“Never heard of him.”

She enlightened him.

The fellow had died a few years ago. He’d been a prodigy. A physician at St. George’s Hospital. Active on the Board of Longitude, the
Nautical Almanac
, the Royal Society. Wrote about geology and earthquakes, about light and life-insurance calculations and musical harmony. Even helped decipher the Rosetta Stone.

Longmore’s mind returned to the conversation with Lady Durwich and what she’d said about the wild DeLuceys. He remembered Lady Lisle, who’d spent most of the years since her marriage traveling in Egypt with her husband. A charismatic female, too, who exuded a similar energy . . .

He turned to study Sophy . . . and discovered Fenwick hanging over the hood.

Longmore scowled at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Listening,” the boy said. “The fings you nobs talk about.”

“Things,” Longmore said automatically.

“
Th
ings,” Fenwick said. He rested his folded arms on the hood, making himself comfortable. “It’s like listening to stories. What was the one about the pig man?”

“Pygmalion,” she said. She went on to tell the story, not sparing adjectives and adverbs. The telling took several miles. Then she launched into other tales: Atalanta and the apples, Icarus and his wings, and thence to Odysseus and his wanderings.

Listening to her now was a different experience from reading her stories about clothes. When she spoke, she took on the characters’ personalities. She held spellbound not only the boy but Longmore as well, and he forgot Lady Lisle altogether.

N
o one would ever mistake Lord Longmore for an intellectual prodigy. Still, being a simple man, he could take hold of a notion and not let go of it. Sophy had dealt with Lady Durwich’s reference to the DeLuceys easily. Distracting Longmore wasn’t difficult, either.

She knew he wouldn’t care at all about her being a Dreadful DeLucey. He wouldn’t care that the Noirots were equally disreputable. The trouble was, since he didn’t care, he mightn’t think it important enough to keep to himself. If she could drive it out of his mind—where, she reasoned, there wasn’t overmuch room—he was less likely to speculate aloud to any of his friends.

The
Odyssey
got them through the next two changes. Then Longmore decided she looked tired and hungry. As they consumed a hasty meal at an inn, he told her to rest. “The moon’s been up since early afternoon,” he pointed out. “It’ll set in the early-morning hours. I need to concentrate on driving—and the fantastical adventures of Greek heroes are too distracting. And Fenwick needs to sleep.”

He kept the horses to a steady clip, and let them gallop on the flat stretches. Now and then he’d point out sights along the way, some ghostly in the moonlight, like the Devil’s Punchbowl, or gibbets on the side of the road.