Loretta Chase: Silk Is For Seduction

‘They’re French,’ she said. ‘They take art seriously.’

‘And you’re not French?’

She smiled. ‘That’s the question, it seems.’

‘French,’ he said. ‘You’re a brilliant mimic, but you’re French.’

‘You’re so sure,’ she said.

‘I’m merely a thickheaded Englishman, I know,’ he said. ‘But even I can tell French and English women apart. One might dress an Englishwoman in French fashion from head to toe and she’ll still look English. You…’

He trailed off, letting his gaze skim over her. Only consider her hair. It was as stylish as the precise coifs of other French-women…yet, no, not the same. She was…different.

‘You’re French, through and through,’ he said. ‘If I’m wrong, the stickpin is yours.’

‘And if you’re right?’ she said.

He thought quickly. ‘If I’m right, you’ll do me the honour of riding with me in the Bois de Boulogne tomorrow,’ he said.

‘That’s all?’ she said, in French this time.

‘It’s a great deal to me.’

She rose abruptly in a rustle of silk. Surprised— again —he was slow coming to his feet.

‘I need air,’ she said. ‘It grows warm in here.’

He opened the door to the corridor and she swept past him. He followed her out, his pulse racing.

LORETTA CHASEhas worked in academe, retail and the visual arts, as well as on the streets—as a meter maid (aka traffic warden)—and in video, as a scriptwriter. She might have developed an excitingly chequered career had her spouse not nagged her into writing fiction. Her bestselling historical romances, set in the Regency and Romantic eras of the early nineteenth century, have won a number of awards, including the Romance Writers of America’s RITA ®.

Website: www.LorettaChase.com.

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In Memory of Princess Irelynn

Thanks to:

The milliners and tailors of colonial Williamsburg’s margaret Hunter Shop, with special thanks to mantua-maker and mistress of the shop Janea Whitacre and tailor mark Hutter, for helping me with numerous details of the art of dress, and for so generously sharing their expertise and enthusiasm

Chris Woodyard, for her invaluable help with dolls and demolished houses and every other pesky question I could think to ask her

Susan Hollowy Scott for storms at sea, as well as her usual wit, wisdom and moral support

My husband Walter for his cinematic eye, unceasing supply of encouragement and inspiration, and numerous acts of undaunted courage

Cynthia, nancy, and Sherrie for what they always do

and, of course,

Trinny and Susannah

Cover

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Copyright

I n the summer of 1810, Mr. Edward Noirot eloped to Gretna Greene with Miss Catherine DeLucey.

Mr. Noirot had been led to believe he was eloping with an English heiress whose fortune, as a result of this rash act, would become his exclusively. An elopement cut out all the tiresome meddling, in the form of marriage settlements, by parents and lawyers. In running off with a blue-blooded English lady of fortune, Edward Noirot was carrying on an ancient family tradition: His mother and grandmother were English.

Unfortunately, he’d been misled by his intended, who was as accomplished in lying and cheating, in the most charming manner possible, as her lover was. There had indeed been a fortune. Past tense. It had belonged to her mother, whom John DeLucey had seduced and taken to Scotland in the time-honored fashion of his own family.

The alleged fortune by this time was long gone. Miss DeLucey had intended to improve her financial circumstances in the way women of her family usually did, by luring into matrimony an unsuspecting blue-blooded gentleman with deep pockets and a lusting heart.

She, too, had been misled, because Edward Noirot had no more fortune than she did. He was, as he claimed, the offspring of a French count. But the family fortune had been swept away, along with the heads of various relatives, years before, during the Revolution.

Thanks to this comedy of errors, the most disreputable branch of one of France’s noble families was united with its English counterpart, better known—and loathed—in the British Isles as the Dreadful DeLuceys.

The reader will easily imagine the couple’s chagrin when the truth came out shortly after they’d made their vows.

The reader will undoubtedly expect the screaming, crying, and recriminations usual on such occasions. The reader, however, would be mistaken. Being the knaves they were—and furthermore quite truly in love—they laughed themselves sick. Then they joined forces. They set about seducing and swindling every dupe who crossed their path.

It was a long and convoluted path. It took them back and forth between England and the Continent, depending on when a location became too hot for comfort.

In the course of their wanderings, Catherine and Edward Noirot produced three daughters.

THE LADIES’ DRESS-MAKER. Under this head we shall include not only the business of a Mantua Maker, but also of a Milliner…In the Milliner, taste and fancy are required; with a quickness in discerning, imitating, and improving upon various fashions, which are perpetually changing among the higher circles.

The Book of English Trades, and Library of the Useful Arts , 1818

London

March 1835

M arcelline, Sophia, and Leonie Noirot, sisters and proprietresses of Maison Noirot, Fleet Street, West Chancery Lane, were all present when Lady Renfrew, wife of Sir Joseph Renfrew, dropped her bombshell.