Vixen in Velvet (34 page)

T
he last time he’d carried Leonie to the shop had presented no hardship. She was no pocket Venus, but he was a good deal stronger than he looked. In any event, he would have carried her to the moon, if necessary. This wasn’t necessary. He had only to walk downhill. And talk, to distract her.

He was successful but not for long. “Lisburne, are you drunk?” she said. “The shop is the other way.”

“But the hackney stand is this way,” he said.

“Oh, am I too heavy for you?” she said. “Put me down, and I’ll walk.”

“No,” he said.

A taut pause then, “Where are you taking me?” she said.

“Home,” he said.

“It’s only up the street a few paces.”

“I didn’t say whose home,” he said.

H
ow could she have been so stupid, to believe he’d give in so easily?

He was an aristocrat. Once they got an idea in their heads, all the horses in the Augean stables, pulling at once, couldn’t drag it out.

“This is not the Dark Ages,” she said. “You can’t carry me to your lair.”

“Watch me,” he said.

She struggled. “Put me down!”

His grip only tightened.

“Put me down or I’ll scream,” she said.

“I have an idea how to stop the screaming,” he said.

He would kiss her and she’d melt and give in and abandon everybody who depended on her. She’d abandon herself.

She wriggled and punched and pushed and made such a frenzy that he had to let her down. But before she could start up the street, he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder and marched down toward St. James’s Palace.

“Lisburne, put me down!” she said.

“Simon,” he said.

“I will never call you that,
my lord
! Put me down you—you—”

“Brute,” he said. “
Brute
is a good word. A bit clichéd, but clichés are apt, else they wouldn’t be clichés. Ah, here we are.” He stopped at the first hackney in line, and wrenched open the door.

“I’m being abducted!” she called. “Help me!”

Lisburne threw her inside. “My wife,” he told the driver. “Drunk, I’m afraid. Gets lively.” He tossed a coin to the driver. It was probably a guinea, curse him.

“The Regent’s Park,” he said.

Chapter Eighteen

We looked in vain for many fashionists belonging to the higher order of society, who had gradually disappeared; and though the town cannot yet be called empty, it is very visibly thinned; and the few stragglers that still remain, are hastening from us, to overtake their modish contemporaries at the different summer recesses.

—
La Belle Assemblée
, August 1823

T
he night being warm, previous passengers had let down the coach window. Knowing she could reach the door handle without much trouble, Leonie pretended to slump in a corner of the seat while Lisburne settled into the seat opposite. But when she jumped up to open the door, he was up, too, and pulling her back.

She remembered the swiftness with which he’d caught her when she tripped at the British Institution. Of all the men in the world to carry her off, she had to have the one with impossibly quick reflexes.

“Faster!” he called to the coachman. Then Lisburne put the window up more than halfway. “A fine abduction this would be, if you escaped when we’d hardly set out,” he said as he settled back into his seat.

At this hour St. James’s Street was not congested, and the coachman made speed. Even if she succeeded in getting the window down quickly enough, if she tried to jump out she’d break her neck.

She was in a panic. She was not suicidal.

She sat back and folded her arms.
Think
, she told herself. She was a Noirot. And a DeLucey. She could get out of this.

But she needed to be calm to think, and she couldn’t make herself calm. She tried estimating the number of guests at the ball, the proportion of men to women, and the percentage of ladies who were not wearing Maison Noirot creations. It didn’t work. She tried planning instead.

The coach traveled Piccadilly and turned into the Quadrant while plan after plan presented itself, only to be discarded as impossible or insane. She was at a loss, a state of mind she hated. Tears started to her eyes, which only made her angrier. The farther they progressed from St. James’s Street the more difficult it would be for her to get home. She had no money for another hackney. The return walk was growing longer by the minute, and the gaslights couldn’t drive away the darkness altogether. Lit or not, even Regent Street held danger for a woman alone at this hour.

For the average woman, perhaps, but not Leonie Noirot. Hadn’t she traveled alone in far less salubrious neighborhoods in Paris and other cities?

But then she’d been a child, a young girl, dressed so as not to attract attention. In those days she’d never worn such finery or such expensive jewelry. Marcelline had insisted on lending her pearls, and the ones about Leonie’s throat were monstrous. Even if she concealed the jewelry . . .

Stupid. Futile. Walking alone was out of the question.

“I hate you,” she said.

“Come, madame, you can do better than that.”

“I detest you,” she said. “You’re loathsome to me. You are
no gentleman
.”

“That’s more like it.”

She felt stupid and helpless, and she wanted to throw herself into his arms and cry like the child she wasn’t. She was a grown woman who ran a business, possibly London’s most successful dressmaking shop. She’d seen more of life than gently bred ladies twice her age. She’d been in far worse situations than this.

But she was falling to pieces.

And so she made herself angrier, and launched into French, the better to scourge him with. Bitter words came more easily to her in French, and she hadn’t yet run out of execrations when the hackney stopped at the door of Lisburne’s villa in the Regent’s Park.

He alit and held his hand out to her.

What could she do? Run? Whatever else she was, she wasn’t a coward. He’d brought her here to exploit her weaknesses, that was all.

Her weakness for him, certainly. Which meant seduction was on the menu. Physical and financial. He’d show her his splendid house—and this was only one of several—and make her realize how ridiculous she was, to refuse to marry him.

Everybody in the world would think her ridiculous. Or mad.

Because nobody else could understand.

Very well. Let him do his worst. She’d survived Paris during the cholera epidemic. She’d survive this.

She lifted her chin, took his hand, and let him help her out of the hackney.

She looked up at the front of the house—a modern house, not ten years old, she estimated. With its classical-style portico and austere, elegant lines conjuring Greek and Roman temples, it was a residence eminently suited to a Roman god.

He glanced up, too. “It’s Burton’s work, like so many other handsome modern structures in London. My father built it. He loved this house. A shame he had so little time to enjoy it.”

She caught the odd, taut note in his voice and looked at him, but his face had closed.

Had she put that shuttered look there?

Had she hurt him, truly?

Guilt flooded her, and she was ashamed of herself, so ashamed.

She had her own troubles, and they loomed large. Yet he hadn’t hurt her. Never once, in all the time she’d known him, had Lisburne been unkind. Annoying, yes, but never hurtful.

What was wrong with her that she should hurt him?

“Are you quite, quite sure,” she said, “you don’t want to toss me into the hackney and send me back?”

“The temptation is nearly overpowering,” he said. “But I’m determined to resist. Ah, here’s my house steward, Edkins, who does us the inestimable honor of opening the door himself. No doubt one of the servants spying at the windows has informed him of his master’s arriving with a beautiful young woman in tow, identity unknown. I hope he doesn’t faint. I never bring beautiful young women home. Yet I daresay he’s up to this or any other occasion, are you not, Edkins?”

“Your lordship pleases to jest,” Edkins said. “I have not fainted in several days.”

By this time Lisburne had handed over his hat and gloves. “Send refreshments to my study, as soon as you may,” he said over his shoulder as he headed toward a great staircase.

Leonie followed blindly for a moment, then stopped short. “Your study?”

He paused and turned to regard her with upraised eyebrow. “Did you think I’d take you to my bedchamber, after the way you’ve behaved?” he said in an undertone. “No, the study it will be, and I’ve half a mind to use it as my father used to do the one at our town house, to deliver a lecture and a birching.” He looked her up and down. “Maybe more than half a mind.” His voice dropping further, he added, “I should bend you over the desk, and lift your skirts and petticoats, and then . . .” He trailed off and shook his head. “I’m unbearably tempted, for you’ve used me abominably. But we’ve business to attend to.”

He continued up a splendid staircase and into a corridor and she followed, her mind tangling with lifted skirts and petticoats and . . . spankings? She was hot everywhere.

He stopped in front of a doorway and opened the door.

She looked in. Bookshelves filled with books. A desk and a few chairs. A fine rug. Everything expensive and comfortable and without question the furnishings of a study.

“You brought me all this way for . . . business,” she said.

“You can’t think I brought you here for pleasure? After what you said in the hackney—”

“About that, Lisburne—”

“I didn’t even know some of those words,” he said. He opened the door and ushered her inside.

He walked behind the desk and drew out the chair but did not sit down. He opened a desk drawer and took out three pieces of writing paper. He tapped them on the desk to align the sides exactly. He moved the inkstand within easy reach. He brought out from another drawer three sharp pencils and laid them neatly next to the inkstand, ends precisely aligned. He took out a ruler, and set it down alongside the paper. Then he moved the ruler one inch farther to the right. He straightened the inkstand to make it exactly parallel to the paper.

“There,” he said. “Or do you want me to rule the sheets for you?”

She stared at the stationery items he’d laid out. “What game are you playing? Did you bring me here to do your accounts? I thought your secretary—”

“Don’t be nonsensical,” he said. “I brought you here to explain to me, in a logical and concise manner, why you won’t marry me. You may wish to draw two columns, one listing the pros and one listing the cons. If you need anything, ring the bell over there.” He indicated a bellpull near the chimneypiece. “Or open the door and tell the footman outside what you require. His name is John.”

He walked to the door and paused. “I could send Uttridge to you with a list of my assets and liabilities, but I’m sure you’ve a fair estimate of my financial worth.”

She found her voice, “Oh, Lisburne, as though I cared about that!”

“That’s emotion speaking,” he said. “If I were an investment you were looking into, you’d care. View this as a question of investment—of your life.”

And he went out, closing the door behind him.

L
isburne waited as long as he could, but when two hours had passed, his willpower ran out.

He opened the door to the study. The tray of refreshments looked decimated. So did she.

She sat, head resting on one hand, the other holding the pen, which inched along the paper. Her lower lip trembled.

She looked up. Her eyes brimmed. “Oh, Simon!” She leapt up from the chair and threw herself at him. His arms went round her.

Simon.
At last.

“I love you,” she said against his neckcloth. “How does one write that in a column? Two yards of this and six ells of that. How do I measure love, or what makes it? You know how it happens. That beastly little boy—Cupid or Eros, or whoever he is. He shoots his arrow and you’re done for. Love won’t be weighed and measured. It isn’t so much of this silk and so much of that, this quantity of bows and this embroidery pattern. What do I put under pros? His beautiful eyes. The sound of his voice. The scent of his skin. The way he ties his neckcloth. I wrote it all down, but it doesn’t add up.”

The knot in his chest eased.

“You might add to your list,” he said, “his willingness to move heaven and earth to make you happy.” He kissed the top of her head, careful to avoid impaling his eye on one of the decorative sprouting things. “I hope you included my assets.”

“All of them,” she said on a sob. “Including the ones we don’t mention in public.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t know why he loved her or how or when, exactly, he’d come to fall in love with her. That was all as she said: One couldn’t add it up or point to precisely this or that. But she made him laugh and she taxed his intellect and he’d not felt truly happy until he found her. He hadn’t thought it possible to be truly happy again.

“Well, then, I forgive you,” he said, “for all those ghastly things you said in the carriage.”

“I was overwrought.”

“Do you think so? Leonie Noirot, in Lord Warford’s garden, covering her ears, like a child, and shrieking to drown me out. It was so out of character that I became truly alarmed.”

She drew away a bit and looked up at him. “Is that why you took me away in that highhanded manner?”

“Somebody had to keep his feet on the ground,” he said. “And somebody had to help you get yours back down there as well.”

She closed her eyes. “That’s why you sat me down with sharp pencils and a ruler and paper.”

“If that didn’t work, I planned to dose you with laudanum. The trouble is, one has to be very careful with dosing. I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of enacting a tragedy.
Romeo and Juliet
is all very well on the stage, but in real life, one wonders at their stupidity.”

She opened her eyes, a deep twilight blue by lamplight. “I believe they were quite young,” she said. “During a certain phase of youth, everything is tragic.”

“Thus my cousin’s popularity,” he said. “And it’s so typical of Swanton to find his true love and win her in a matter of days, while I work and slave for weeks, and cannot bring my girl to the sticking point.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s embarrassing to be tragic. But I’ve written them down. The cons. And if you mean to move heaven and earth, you’ll have your work cut out for you.”

She straightened her posture and squared her shoulders and slipped out of his arms. She returned to the desk and picked up the three sheets of paper. She’d filled them, both sides, with her curiously precise and inescapably feminine script. She gave them to him and walked to the window and looked out into the darkness.

He scanned them quickly. “This is rather . . . overwhelming,” he said.

“I warned you it was complicated,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I feel a strong desire to lie down. And have my brow bathed in lavender water.”

She turned away from the window. “I can do that,” she said.

W
here else should Lisburne lie down but in his bed? And if Leonie didn’t get far with bathing his fevered brow in lavender water, that was only because he pulled her down into his arms when she’d scarcely begun, and kissed her, and she dropped the cloth onto the floor. The papers he’d had in his hand, the papers she’d labored over, flew about before floating to the floor as well. In another moment he and she were making love, urgently, too impatient to trouble with undressing. And that was an experience, all the silk and lace foaming about them, and the pearls knocking him in the head until he swore, and stopped wrestling with her petticoat to take them off.

It was not the most elegant coupling of his life. Her carefully assembled coiffure nearly blinded him, but he persevered. A simple enough matter of unfastening his trousers and lifting her skirts and petticoat. Then it was elegant enough, this night, to be inside her, to watch her face as they moved together, to hear her voice—a soft moan, a sigh, murmured French—and to watch her open her great blue eyes and to see pleasure there, and love, and wicked laughter.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you.”

He told her over and over, like an incantation, while he watched her face and the way it changed, because in bed she hid nothing. He watched until he saw her nearing the peak. Then he let go of self-control, and gave himself up to the onrush of pleasure, and heard her give a little cry at the same moment he spent himself inside her.