Anna Campbell - Regency Rogues and Rakes

“No, madam, you don’t need a bit of it,” she said, “and I wonder at your coming out at this hour, wasting your valuable time.”

“Yes, I’ve wasted quite enough,” Mrs. Downes reached into her reticule. “Here’s your money. But if you want more, you’d better bring me something better.”

“How much more?” the seamstress said as she pocketed the money.

“One can’t do much with scraps. One dress at a time. The book of sketches, now that would be worth something.”

“It certainly would,” said the seamstress. “It would be worth my place. It’s one thing to copy a pattern. But the book of sketches? She’d miss it right away, and they’re sharp, those three, you know.”

“If she lost her book of sketches, she’d lose everything,” Mrs. Downes said. “You’d have to find another place then. And I daresay seeking new employment would be a more agreeable experience, were you to have twenty guineas to ease the way.”

A lady’s maid in a noble household might earn twenty guineas per annum. That was a great deal more than an experienced seamstress was paid.

“Fifty,” the seamstress. “It’s worth fifty to you, I know, to have her out of your way, and I won’t risk it for less.”

Mrs. Downes drew in a long, slow breath while she did some quick calculations. “Fifty, then. But it must be everything. You’d better note every last detail. I’ll know right away, and if I can’t make an exact copy, you shan’t have a penny.” She stalked away.

The seamstress watched her retreating back and said, under her breath, “As if you could make any kind of copy, you stupid hag, if I didn’t tell you every last detail.”

She chinked the coins in her pocket and went into the house.

Paris, the same night

Since the Italian Opera was closed on Wednesdays, Clevedon took himself to the Théâtre des Varieties, where he could count on being amused as well as treated to a superior performance. Perhaps, too, he might find Madame Noirot there.

When she failed to appear, he grew bored with the entertainment, and debated whether to cut his stay short and proceed directly to Frascati’s.

But Clara looked forward to his reports, and he’d failed to give her an account of Tuesday’s performance of The Barber of Seville , one of her favorites. Now he recalled that he’d come away from Longchamps with nothing as well—nothing, that is, he chose to describe to Clara.

He stayed, and dutifully made notes in his little pocket notebook.

Its pages held none of Madame Noirot’s remarks about Clara’s style—or lack thereof. At the time, he’d dismissed them from his mind. Or so he’d thought. Yet he found them waiting, as though the curst dressmaker had sewn them onto his brain.

When last he’d seen Clara, she’d been in mourning for her grandmother. Perhaps grief’s colors did not become her. The style…Confound it, she was grieving! What did she care whether she wore the latest mode? She was a beautiful girl, he told himself, and a beautiful girl could wear anything—not that it mattered to him, because he loved her for herself, and had done so for as long as he could remember.

Still, if Clara were to dress as that provoking dressmaker did…

The thought came and hung in his mind through the last scenes of the performance. He saw Clara, magnificently garbed, making men’s heads turn. He saw himself proudly in possession of this masterpiece, the envy of every other man.

Then he realized what he was thinking. “Devil take her,” he said under his breath. “She’s poisoned my mind, the witch.”

“What is it, my friend?”

Clevedon turned to find Gaspard Aronduille regarding him with concern.

“Does it truly matter what a woman wears?” Clevedon said.

The Frenchman’s eyes widened and his head went back, as though Clevedon had slapped him. “Is this a joke?” he said.

“I want to know,” Clevedon said. “Does it really matter?”

Aronduille looked about him in disbelief. “Only an Englishman would ask such a question.”

“Does it?”

“But of course.”

“Only a Frenchman would say so,” said Clevedon.

“We are right, and I will tell you why.”

The opera ended, but the debate didn’t. Aronduille called in reinforcements from their circle of acquaintance. The Frenchmen debated the subject from every possible philosophical viewpoint, all the way to the Hotel Frascati.

There the group separated, its members drifting to their favorite tables.

The roulette table was crowded, as usual, men standing three deep about it. Clevedon saw no signs of any women. But as he slowly circled it, the wall of men at the table thinned.

And the world shifted.

Revealed to his view was a ravishingly familiar back. Again, her coiffure was slightly disarranged, as though she’d been in a lover’s embrace only minutes ago. A bit was coming undone, a dark curl falling to the nape of her neck. The wayward curl drew one’s gaze there and down over the smooth slope of her shoulders and down to where her sleeves puffed out. The dress was ruby red, shockingly simple and daringly low cut. He wished, for a moment, he could have her captured like that, in a painting.

He’d title it Sin Incarnate .

He was tempted to stand beside her, close enough to inhale her scent and feel the silk of her gown brush his legs. But a roulette table was no place for dalliance—and by the looks of things, she was as engrossed in the turn of the wheel as everybody else.

He moved to a place opposite her. That was when he recognized the man standing next to her: the Marquis d’Émilien, a famous libertine.

“21—Red—Odd—Passed,” one of the bankers said.

With his rake another banker pushed a heap of coins toward her.

Émilien bent his head to say something to her.

Clevedon’s jaw tightened. He let his gaze drop to the table. Before her stood piles of gold coins.

“Gentlemen, settle your play,” the banker called. He threw in the ivory ball, and set the wheel spinning. Round and round it went, gradually slowing.

That time she lost. Though the rake took away a large amount of gold, she appeared not at all troubled. She laughed and bet again.

Next time Clevedon bet, too, on red. Round the ball went. Black—Even—Missed.

She won. He watched the rakes push his coins and others toward her.

The marquis laughed, and bent his head to say something to her, his mouth close to her ear. She answered with a smile.

Clevedon left the roulette table for Rouge et Noir. He told himself he would have come whether or not she was here. He told himself she was on the hunt for other men’s wives and mistresses and he wasn’t the only well-to-do bill payer in Paris. Émilien had deep pockets, too, not to mention a wife, a longtime mistress, and three favorite courtesans.

For about half an hour Clevedon played. He won more than he lost, and maybe that was why he became bored so quickly. He left the table, found Aronduille, and said, “This place is dull tonight. I’m going to the Palais Royal.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Aronduille. “Let’s see if the others wish to join us.”

The others had moved to the roulette table.

She was there still, in the crimson silk one could not ignore. The marquis remained at her side. In the same moment Clevedon was telling himself to look away, she looked up. Her gaze locked with his. An endless time seemed to pass before she beckoned with her fan.

He would have come whether or not he’d expected to find her here, he assured himself. He’d come, and found another man glued to her side. It was nothing to him. Paris abounded in fascinating women. He could have simply nodded or bowed or smiled an acknowledgment and left the hotel.