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

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Ackermann’s Repository , Vol. XI, 1814

T ears had never come easily to her. When she learned the cholera had taken her parents, she’d ached for the missed opportunities and for what she’d always hoped for from them, against all odds and all evidence. When the disease killed Cousin Emma—who’d taken in Marcelline, Sophy, and Leonie time and again when Mama and Papa abandoned them—Marcelline had been deeply saddened. She’d grieved for Charlie, too, for whom she’d given up all her young girl’s heart.

Yet Marcelline hadn’t wept like this. She’d never had time to indulge her grief. Each loss had meant she had to act, right away, to save her family.

She hadn’t wept when Lucie had been so very ill, because there wasn’t time for tears, only for working as hard as one could to keep her alive. When it seemed the fire had consumed her, the searing shock and pain left Marcelline nothing to cry with.

But now…but this…

It was the last straw, the very last straw, and she broke down and wept. But no, wept was too small a word for the great sobs that seized her, like talons trying to tear her apart. She tried to get free of them, but they were too strong. She could only stand, her face in her hands, and weep helplessly.

“Oh, come,” Clevedon said. “Is it truly as ugly as all that? I flattered myself I had a little taste—a very little. One would have thought some of yours would have rubbed off—Dammit, Noirot.”

She would have laughed if she could, but a dam had burst inside her. All she could do was stand, her face in her hands, and grieve for she hardly knew what.

“Curse you,” he said. “If I’d known you’d make such a fuss, I should have taken you straight back home—I mean, to Clevedon House.”

Home. His home. He’d given her a home when she’d lost hers. Then, today, while she thought of nothing but business, he’d made her a home. Another wave of misery churned through her, making her shudder.

“It was supposed to be a pleasant surprise,” he said. “You were supposed to say, ‘How good of you to think of it, Clevedon.’ Then you were to accept it as your due. The way you accept everything as your due. Really, I hope your clients never see you carry on like this. They’ll lose all respect for you. And you know it’s crucial to cow them. You must rule them with an iron hand, or they’ll run roughshod…” He gave up. “Devil take it, Noirot. What’s the matter?”

You. You’re all that’s the matter. Only you .

But the storm was subsiding. She took her hands away from her face. To her amazement, they trembled. She found her handkerchief and wiped her face. It was then she saw how he stood, so stiff, his hands fisted at his sides.

He’d wanted to do the natural thing, she supposed. To move to her and put his arms about her and comfort her. But he wouldn’t let himself. What had he done? Conjured Lady Clara in his mind, and thought, for once, of her and what he owed her?

Marcelline wanted to laugh then, too. The irony was too rich.

Now, when he’d demolished her defenses at last, he’d found the moral fiber to keep away.

“You d-don’t underst-stand,” she said.

“You couldn’t be more correct,” he said.

“No one,” she said, and her voice wobbled again. “N-no w-w-one.” Another sob racked her chest. She bit her lip and waved the handkerchief at their surroundings. “In all my life. No one. A h-home. You made a h-home.”

It was true. No one in all her life had ever made a home for her. Her parents had never stayed in any place for long. There had been lodgings, places to hide, to camp, like gypsies. Never a home, until Cousin Emma had taken them in, and even then, what they had was a place to eat and sleep and work. Nothing in it had belonged to Marcelline and her sisters. Nothing in it was arranged for them. The small rooms on the upper floors of the building on Fleet Street constituted the first true home they’d ever had.

Now this. He’d done all this. He’d done it today, quietly, while she was otherwise occupied. He’d planned a surprise for her.

“Oh, Clevedon, what am I to do?” she said.

“Live in it?” he said.

She looked up at him, into those haunting green eyes, where she’d seen the devil dance, and the heat of desire, and laughter and rage. Oh, and affection, too, for Lucie.

“Someone had to think of it,” he said. “You had so much else to do. The shop was—is—the most important thing, of course. Without it, you have nothing. But you only needed me to stand about and look ducal, and I grew bored.”

And there was that, too: He understood what her business meant to her. In a few short weeks he’d gone from completely dismissive—no, scornful was more like it—to this. She’d read in novels of people who couldn’t speak because their hearts were too full and she’d always thought, Not my black heart .

But now she couldn’t speak, because it was too much, whatever it was. Everything was falling into place, a great puzzle she hadn’t realized wanted solving. Now the pieces shifted into place, and she saw.

“It seemed stupid to distract you with ordinary household matters,” he went on. “As it was, you were undertaking the impossible. But that’s so like you, to undertake the impossible. Clara’s gown. Stalking me in Paris. Who on earth would think to do such a thing? Who on earth could imagine she’d succeed? If you had asked my opinion, I should have told you it was a harebrained scheme—”

“And you’d be right,” she said. “It was a mad scheme.”

“But it succeeded.”

“Yes. Yes, it did.”

Except for one slight miscalculation. She felt her eyes filling. She blinked and forced a smile. “I’m happy,” she said. “I couldn’t be happier. Everything I wanted.” She gestured. “And more. A fine shop in St. James’s Street. Scope for my imagination, my ambition.”

He looked about him. “I’m not sure it’s big enough. I’m not sure St. Paul’s Cathedral would be big enough to contain your ambition. Are there bounds to your ambition? Ordinary, mortal bounds, I mean?”

He knew her so well. She laughed. It hurt to laugh, but she did it.

He turned sharply toward her. “Noirot?”

“I was only thinking,” she said. “It’s all turned out as I’d imagined. No, better than I’d supposed. And yet…Oh, what a joke.”

She shook her head and moved away and sat on a chair and folded her hands and stared at the floor, at the rug he’d chosen. Crimson poppies intertwined among black tendrils and leaves on a background of pale gold…with a subtle pink undertone.

The colors of the dress she’d worn to the Comtesse de Chirac’s ball.

Then she realized: This home he’d created for them was his goodbye gift.

How ironic. How fitting.

She’d hunted him and she’d caught him and she’d got what she’d set out to get.

And she’d bollixed it up, after all.

What a joke.

She’d fallen in love.

And he was saying goodbye, in the time-honored fashion of men of his kind, with an extravagant gift.

“Noirot, are you unwell? It’s been a very long day, and we’re both overwrought, I daresay. It’s no small strain, even for you, trying to do the impossible—all this racing from one place to the next, buying, frantically buying. And I—shopping with a woman—it’s possible my sensibilities will never recover from the shock.”

She looked up at him.

They had no future.

Given who he was and what he was, she couldn’t be anything to him but a mistress. And that she couldn’t be. It wasn’t because of moral scruples. She barely understood what those were. It was for business reasons, for the business that supported her family, the business she loved, the great passion of her life.