Loretta Chase - Regency Rogues and Rakes - Silk is for Seduction / Scandal Wears Satin / Vixen in Velvet / Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed / A Rake's Midnight Kiss / What a Duke Dares

Now he looked about him at the gaslit streets. The shops would soon be closing, but the streets were busy, the pavements crowded with people passing to and fro, some pausing to look in the shop windows, others going inside—no doubt to the despair of shopkeepers eager for their dinners and the quiet of their hearths. Before long workers would spill from the various establishments, some hurrying home, others to their favorite chop houses and public houses.

What was the last place he’d wanted to hurry to? he wondered. When had he been eager for his own hearth-side?

“If we’ve forgotten anything, it’s minor,” he said.

“We’ll see soon enough,” she said.

He told his coachman to take them back to the shop on St. James’s Street.

After what seemed an eternity of crawling through London’s streets at a snail’s pace, Marcelline climbed down from the carriage and faced a darkened, empty shop.

“I can’t believe they’re all gone,” she said. She heard her voice wobble. She couldn’t remember when last she’d felt so deeply disappointed. “I thought—I thought—”

“We were more efficient than we guessed,” he said. “I’ll wager anything they’ve gone home—to Clevedon House, I mean—for a well-earned dinner and rest. As we shall do—as soon as we’ve had a look round.” He took out a key and brandished it. “I am the landlord, you know.”

Enough light entered from the street to allow them to make their way into the shop without tripping over furniture. After a moment, Clevedon got a gas lamp lit, then another.

Marcelline stood in the middle of the showroom, her hands clasped tightly against her stomach, against the butterflies quivering there—eagerness mixed with anxiety at once. She turned, slowly, taking it in: the gleaming woodwork, the elegant chandeliers, the artfully draped curtains, the furniture arranged as though in a drawing room.

“Does it pass the test?” Clevedon said. “Satisfactory?”

“More than that,” she said. “My taste is impeccable, I know—”

“Really, Noirot, you must strive to overcome this excessive humility.”

“—but to see it in its proper setting…” She paused. “Well, I shall need to rearrange the furniture tomorrow morning. Leonie is very good with numbers and legal gibberish, and her eye for artistic detail is better than most, but she can be a little conventional in her arrangements. The showroom is most important, because that’s what our patrons see. The first impression must be of elegance and comfort and the little something else that sets me apart from others.”

“The little touches,” he said.

“Nothing too obvious,” she said.

“The French would say je ne sais quoi,” he said. “And so would I, because while I know it’s there, I can’t for the life of me say what it is.”

She let herself look at him, but only for an instant. “You’ve come a long way from Paris,” she said. “Then you claimed not to notice such things.”

“I’ve tried not to notice,” he said. “But everywhere I look, there it is. There you are. I’ll be glad to be rid of you. When a man sinks to reading fashion journals—no, it’s worse than that. When a man finds himself plumbing their depths, seeking arcane knowledge of no use to him whatsoever…Oh, it’s your corrupting influence. I shall be so glad to see the back of you Noirots, and return to my life.”

“It annoys you to be a guardian angel,” she said.

“Don’t be absurd. I’m nothing of the kind. Come, let’s see the rest of the place.”

They moved more quickly through the rest of the shop: the offices and work and storage areas. He would be eager to be gone, she thought. For a time the details of setting up a shop, the details of trade might have offered an interesting change of pace for him. But he was no tradesman. Money meant something entirely different to him, insofar as it meant anything. And she supposed he was tired as well of being the subject of tedious gossip, and tired of having his household disrupted.

Little did he know how small a disruption that had been, compared to what her family typically did. Her ancestors had torn whole families apart, lured the precious offspring of noblemen from their luxurious homes to vagabond lives at best, abandonment and ruin at worst.

She had seen all of the new place that mattered, she thought, when he led her, not back the way they’d come, toward the entrance, but to the stairs.

Then it dawned on her what she’d missed. The first floor was to contain work areas: a well lit studio for her, a handsome parlor for private consultations with clients, and private work spaces for Sophia and Leonie.

The second and third floors had been reserved as living quarters.

And that hadn’t crossed her mind, not once while she shopped today.

“Good grief, I hope you’ve a mattress or two you can spare from Clevedon House,” she said. “A table and chairs would be useful, too, though not crucial. We’ve camped before. I can’t believe I forgot to buy anything for us.”

“Let’s go up and see what’s needed,” he said. “Maybe the absconders left something.”

He led the way, carrying a lamp.

He didn’t pause at the first floor but continued up to the second.

At the top of the stairs, he paused. “Wait here,” he said.

He crossed to a door, and opened it. A moment or two later, the faint light of the lamp gave way to soft gaslight.

“Well, well,” he said. “Come, look at this.”

She went to the door and looked in. Then she stepped inside.

A sofa and chairs and tables. Curtains at the windows. A rug on the floor. None of it would have suited Clevedon House. The furnishings weren’t grand at all. But they reminded her of her cousin’s apartment in Paris. Quiet elegance. Comfort. Warmth. Not a showplace like the shop below, but a home.

“Oh, my,” she said, and it was all she could trust herself to say. Something pressed upon her heart, and it choked her.

From this pretty parlor he led her into a small dining parlor. Then he led her to a nursery, laid out with so much affection and understanding of Lucie that her heart ached. She had her own little table and chairs and a tea set. She had a little set of shelves to hold her books, and a painted chest to hold her toys and treasures.

Thence he led Marcelline to another, larger room.

“I thought you would prefer this room,” he said. “If it doesn’t suit, you ladies can always rearrange yourselves. But you’re the artist, and I thought you should not overlook the busy street but the garden—such as it is—and perhaps catch a glimpse of the Green Park, though you might have to stand on a chair to do it.”

She was a Noirot, and self-control was not a family strong suit. But she, like the others, had a formidable control over what she let the world see.

At that moment, it broke. “Oh, Clevedon, what have you done?” she said, and the thing pressing on her heart pushed a sob from her. And then, for the first time in years and years and years, she wept.

MRS. HUGHES BEGS leave to inform her Friends and the Public in general that she intends opening Shew-Rooms on Tuesday, the 4th inst. with a new and elegant assortment of Millinery and Dresses, in the first style of fashion…Mrs. Hughes takes this opportunity of returning thanks for the great patronage she has already received from her numerous friends…An Apprentice and Improver wanted.