Vixen in Velvet (10 page)

He was aware of his hands clenching. She’d taken that pose on purpose, to disorder his wits.

It worked, too.

The back of her dress was almost as elaborate as the front: Delicate lace touched the nape of her neck. Thence descended rows of finely pleated muslin alternating with embroidered rows of the same material, in the shape of a V whose point rested on her waist. From under the lace cap, stray tendrils of garnet-colored hair drifted near her ears, as though her coiffure was coming undone.

He knew it wasn’t. The arrangement was for effect, and most effective it was. He wanted to make a wild disorder, of her, of everything. He wanted to make her ledgers crooked and put her pencils where the pens ought to go. He wanted passionately to leave the stopper off the inkwell. He wanted to sweep everything from the desk and bend her over it . . .

She straightened and came around to face him, making a pretty flurry of white muslin and lace.

She was a dressmaker, he told himself. She knew how to wield clothes as a weapon. And it worked all too well, like a club to the head.

She gave him the enigmatic smile, so like the one Botticelli’s Venus wore. “A wager,” she said.

“Everybody else is doing it,” he said. “Why shouldn’t we?”

“Because you’ll lose?” she said.

“Oh, but I’m sure you’ll lose,” he said. “And my mind is wandering over an interesting range of forfeits.”

“Mine, too,” she said. “Money means nothing to you, so I must use my powers of imagination.”

“I had higher stakes in mind,” he said. “Nothing so ordinary as money. Something significant.”

She set her hands on the edge of the desk and leaned back.

He couldn’t exactly see her calculating. She was too good at not showing what she was about. Yet he knew she was weighing and measuring, and so he calculated, too.

He sensed the moment when she’d worked out her answer. Yet she waited one moment. Another.

Playing with him, the vixen.

Drawing it out, pretending to deliberate.

She was fascinating.

He waited.

Then, “I know,” she said. “The Botticelli.”

He heard his own gasp, one quick, involuntary intake of breath. He smoothed his face, but he suspected he was too late.

Whatever else he’d expected, it wasn’t this. Yet it should have been the first thing. The
very first thing
.

“You said high stakes,” she said. “I don’t know what it’s worth, but I do know it’s irreplaceable.” She gazed at him with limpid innocence.

For a moment, the air between them crackled.

Then he laughed. “I’ve grievously underestimated you, madame. High stakes, indeed. Let’s see. What will you put up against my Botticelli? What’s irreplaceable to you? Time. Profit. Business. Your clients.” He paused for a heartbeat, two. “Well, then, will you stake a fortnight?”

“A fortnight,” she repeated blankly.

“With me,” he said. “I want a fortnight.”

Her blue gaze sharpened then.

“Of your exclusive attention,” he said. “At a place of my choosing.”

He couldn’t be sure—she was so skilled at concealment, she seemed even able to control her blushes—but he thought a hint of pink washed her cheeks before it faded.

“You do understand, don’t you?” he said.

“I’m not naïve,” she said.

What he’d seen must have been a blush, because it had washed away completely, leaving her pale. With fear? Good gad, what did she think he’d do to her? With her. But she was a milliner and beautiful. Countless men must have made themselves obnoxious.

He wasn’t that sort of man, yet he felt as though he’d stepped wrong, and he was aware of heat stealing up his neck—the disagreeable, embarrassed kind of heat.

“I don’t ravish women, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I had supposed that women stood in line waiting for you to relieve them of their virtue.”

Then why had she paled?

Or had he only imagined it? Her color seemed normal now.

“I want two full weeks of your undivided attention, that’s all,” he said.

“That’s all?”

“I should like a fortnight of not taking second or third or eighteenth place to
business
.”

“And?” she said.

He smiled. “You cynic, you.”

“And?” she said. “Not that it matters, because you’ll lose, but I’m interested to hear what, precisely, you have in mind.”

“Precisely?” he said.

“Yes.”

He gazed at her for a moment, his head tipped to one side, considering.

Then he advanced.

L
isburne clasped the edge of Leonie’s shoulders, just above the sleeve puffs.

She stood very still, her heart racing, her gaze fixed on his blindingly white, perfectly tied, folded, and creased neckcloth.

“Madame,” he said.

She looked up. That was a mistake.

She saw his beautiful mouth, turning upward at the corners, turning into a dangerous curve of a smile. She saw his eyes, as green as the sea must have been between Scylla and Charybdis, here and there catching the sun in glints of gold. Dangerous waters, and she—the responsible one—wanted to leap in.

Then the smile vanished and he bent toward her and kissed her.

A touch of his lips to hers. Only that, and the world changed, grew infinite and warm, offering a glimpse . . . of something. But it was over before she could tell what it was she glimpsed or felt.

He started to draw back, then “Blast!” he said.

It would have been wise to pull away, but she was lost and wondering, unable to be wise.

He brought his hands to her waist and lifted her straight off the floor, until they were eye to eye. He kissed her again.

It was more than a touch of his lips, this time. So much more. The sheer physical power of him, the way he lifted her up as easily as he might pluck a flower. He pressed his mouth against hers, firmly this time, like a dare, and she took the dare, though she didn’t know what to do. She’d thought she knew, but the feel and taste of his mouth was sweet and dangerous and entirely beyond the little naughtinesses she’d once called
kisses
. This was like an undertow.

She lifted her hands to his shoulders and held on while the world tumbled away. Something pressed against her heart and set feelings into flight, like flocks of startled birds, wings beating as they darted away.

Only a moment, and it was over. Only a moment like years passing, a lifetime between Before and After.

He set her down on her feet. She let go of him, and she could still feel the texture of his coat against her palms. The room tilted, like a ship in heavy weather.

He stared at her for a moment. She stared back while she tried to get her brain back in balance and the crowd of little Leonies in her head cried,
Don’t you dare faint!

“Er, that sort of thing,” he said.

“I thought so,” she said.

“Did you?”

“I’m not naïve,” she said.

“Really? I could have sworn—”

“Not
experienced
,” she said, too hotly. She was not in control. She’d slipped out of control so swiftly that her head was still spinning. But he’d done things to her or she’d done something to herself.

One thing was painfully clear: She’d made a mistake. No great surprise. She was a Noirot-DeLucey, and being the most sensible one of them all still didn’t count for much. “There’s a difference. Not that it matters either way, because you’ll lose.”

“I think not,” he said. “And I’m looking forward to furthering your experience.”

W
hatever else Lisburne had expected, he hadn’t expected her to be . . . surely not
virginal
?

No, no, that was too absurd. She was a French milliner. From Paris. She was one and twenty, hardly a child. Her sisters had swept two of London’s most sophisticated men off their feet.

Inexperienced, she’d said. Not quite the same. And yet . . . the tentative way she’d held herself at first and the hint of uncertainty before she’d let go and kissed him with something like assurance, and . . . feeling.

Perhaps, after all, it was nothing more than uncertainty about a man she scarcely knew. He hadn’t had time to tell, really. So brief a kiss.

He shook off his doubts and watched her stroll back to the desk in a flutter of ruffles and billowing muslin.

“We ought to be specific about the terms,” she said, brisk and businesslike once more, while he was still trying to find his balance. “I’ve made general statements, open to interpretation. What would you take as proof?”

“Proof?” he said.

“Of Lady Gladys’s conquest of the beau monde.”

“The entire beau monde?” he said. “I shouldn’t dream of disputing your genius, madame, but I believe that would be a great deal to accomplish in half a month’s time, for any young woman who isn’t Lady Clara Fairfax.”

She stiffened. The temptation was almost unbearable, to cross the room and kiss the back of her neck until she melted.

But he’d already rushed his fences.

He never rushed his fences.

His patience was prodigious. He enjoyed the game of pursuit as much as the conquest.

Yet he’d been so hasty and clumsy.

He made himself think, as he ought to have done earlier. He tried to remember what she’d said.

Gladys. She’d become so emotional about Gladys.

“What do you believe
Gladys
would wish to accomplish?” he said.

“That is not a sensible question.” She walked round to the back of the desk, as though she knew what he’d been thinking about her neck and wanted a large piece of furniture between them. “You know perfectly well Lady Gladys would be happy if people stopped behaving as though she were one of those horrid little dogs some ladies take everywhere with them.”

For a moment he couldn’t take it in. Surely Gladys took no notice of others’ reactions to her, any more than she gave a thought to what she said and did to offend and hurt them.

“Anybody in need of the lady’s goodwill pretends it isn’t foul-tempered, ill-bred, and ugly, and regards it with a pained smile,” she said. “Lady Gladys believes a pained smile is the most kindly reaction she can expect. I aspire to a great deal more than that, my lord. I mean for gentlemen to want her company. I mean for her to receive offers of marriage. I mean for her to have dancing partners who ask her of their own free will, not because their relatives order them to. I mean for her to be invited to not one but several country house parties.”

He reminded himself how insufferable Gladys had been at a time when he was trying so hard to be the man of the family and not give way to the black misery engulfing him. And her father!

Lisburne was shaken, all the same, and acutely uncomfortable.

“It’s easy enough to ascertain when a young lady is popular with gentlemen and when she isn’t,” he said. “If we fail to see it, the scandal sheets will point it out. Let’s say that if my cousin Gladys acquires a following by the end of the month, you win. Will that do?”

She looked up at him. “You’re making it too easy, my lord. She’ll acquire a following in a matter of days.”

She exuded confidence.

Enough to make him doubt himself.

But no, she had to be out of her mind. In this regard, at any rate. One of the perils of her trade. Like mad hatters.

Still, she wasn’t completely insane. She couldn’t have been more lethally precise in choosing the Botticelli. Of all his possessions, the loss of that one would hurt deeply. On the other hand, it would go to a good home, to a young woman he had no doubt appreciated it as much as, perhaps even more than, he did. And she’d probably share it with those indigent girls of hers.

But losing the fortnight in which he might educate Leonie Noirot at delicious length? Now that he’d had a taste of what he could look forward to?

Out of the question.

“What then?” he said. “Shall we say half a dozen beaux? An offer of marriage?”

“But not by anybody in financial straits,” she said. “Lady Gladys’s dowry, I estimate, is something between twenty-five and fifty thousand pounds. No obviously mercenary offers.”

“Are you
trying
to lose?” he said. “I’m flattered, madame.”

“Half a dozen beaux,” she said. “Either men hang about her or they don’t, and that’s easy enough to judge. Social success is measured by invitations, too. She’ll have at least three invitations to country house parties. And, yes, at least one offer of marriage.”

“All by the thirty-first of July,” he said.

“Yes. Is there anything else, or would these three conditions satisfy you?”

“I have every expectation of being satisfied,” he said.

She rolled her great blue eyes.

He wanted to laugh. He wanted to kiss her witless. What a treat she was!

She took out from a desk drawer a sheet of paper.

He approached the desk.

She folded the paper in half, took up a pen, and wrote out their agreement twice. She signed her name twice. She handed him the pen. “Here and here,” she said, pointing.

He signed.

Using a ruler, she tore the sheet into two precisely equal halves. She gave one copy of the signed agreement to him, and bid him good day.

T
he following morning, Lisburne was at breakfast, reading
Foxe’s Morning Spectacle,
like nearly every other member of Fashionable Society.

And like everybody else that day, he found himself reading the account of the previous night’s assembly at Almack’s twice. Because, like everybody else, he didn’t believe what he’d read the first time.

The ball on Wednesday was numerously attended, there being present upwards of 500 persons of distinction. Weippert’s band filled the orchestra, and dancing continued until four o’clock. One of the more notable among the brilliant assembly was Lady Gladys Fairfax, who wore a dress of an altogether new style, in gold satin, ornamented with black blond, a creation by Maison Noirot’s talented mantua-makers. We are informed that her ladyship regaled a small group of the attendees with her delightful recitation of a comic poem, her own adaptation of Aristophanes’s naughty Lysistrata, which her ladyship had composed, she said, in response to a Member of Parliament’s declaring that women had no rights.