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

“You saw them at work,” Clevedon said. “They know their trade.”

“That is undoubtedly why Mrs. Michaels imagined they were women of rank who’d fallen on hard times,” Halliday said. “I must confess that at first I thought it was one of your jokes. I beg you will forgive me, sir, but it did cross my mind that these were some cousins from abroad, and you were testing us. Only for an instant, sir. Naturally, it was obvious there had been a fire, and it was no joke.”

The footman Thomas appeared in the doorway. “I beg your pardon, your grace, but Lord Longmore is here to see you, and—”

Longmore pushed past Thomas, strode past Halliday, and marched up to Clevedon.

“You cur!” Longmore said. He drew back his arm, and his fist shot straight at Clevedon’s jaw.

Meanwhile, at Maison Noirot

Lucie sat in the window, gazing down into St. James’s Street.

She’d been sitting there for hours.

Marcelline knew what she was watching for, and she was dreading what was to come. “It’s time for your tea,” she said. “Sarah has laid out the tea things on your handsome tea table, and your dolls are in their places, waiting.”

Lucie didn’t answer.

“Afterward, Sarah will take you to the Green Park. You can see the fine ladies and gentlemen.”

“I can’t go out,” Lucie said. “What if he comes, and I’m not here? He’ll be very disappointed.”

Marcelline’s heart sank.

She moved to sit next to Lucie on the window seat. “My love, his grace is not coming here. He looked after us for a time, but he’s very busy—”

“He’s not too busy for me.”

“We’re not his family, sweet.”

Lucie’s eyes narrowed and her mouth set.

“He made a beautiful home for us,” Marcelline said, keeping her voice steady with an effort. “Only look at all the fine things he bought for you. Your own tea set and tea table. Your own little chair and the prettiest bed in the world. But there are others in his life—”

“No!” Lucie jumped down from the window seat. “No!” she screamed. “No! No! No!”

“Lucie Cordelia.”

“I’m not Lucie. I’m Erroll. I’ll never be Lucie again. He’s coming back! He loves me! He loves Erroll!”

She threw herself on the rug. She shrieked and sobbed and kicked her feet.

Sophy and Leonie ran into the nursery. Sarah raced in, and stopped short, her expression horrified. This was her first experience of Lucie in a tantrum.

She started toward the raging child.

Marcelline put up a hand, and the maid backed away. “Lucie Cordelia, that is quite enough,” she said, keeping her voice calm and firm. “You know ladies do not throw themselves on the floor and scream.”

“I’m not a lady! I hate you!”

Sarah gasped.

“Come, Erroll,” Sophy said. “You’ll only make yourself sick.”

“He’s coming back!” Lucie shrieked. “He loves me!”

Marcelline squared her shoulders. She moved to Lucie and scooped the child into her arms, in spite of flailing arms and feet and deafening shrieks. She held Lucie tight against her and rocked her, as though she were still the tiny infant she’d been once.

“Stop it,” Marcelline said. “Stop it, love. You need to be a big girl.”

The kicking and punching stopped, and the screaming softened into weeping. “Why c-can’t we st-stay th-there? Why d-doesn’t he k-keep me?”

Marcelline carried her to the window seat and held her, rocking her and stroking her back. “If everyone who loved you kept you, where would you live?” she said. “Then where should Mama be? Don’t you want to live with Mama and Aunt Sophy and Aunt Leonie? Have you grown too fine for us? Do you want to go away and live in a castle? Is that it? What do you think, Aunt Sophy? Shall we dress Erroll in a princess gown and send her away to live in a castle?”

It was nonsense, most of it, but it quieted Lucie. She tightened her hold of her mother’s neck. “I can live here,” she said. “Why can’t he come?”

“He’s a great man, sweetheart,” Marcelline said. “He has his own family. Very soon he’ll be married and have his own children. You can’t have every handsome gentleman who takes your fancy, you know.”

Erroll quieted. The motion of her eyes told Marcelline the child was thinking. She was only six, and children had difficulties with logic, but the prospect of being a princess might suffice to distract her.

The tempest over, Sarah said, “I’ll tell you what, Miss Erroll. Let’s have our tea with the dolls, then we’ll take a walk in the Green Park. Perhaps we’ll see the Princess Victoria. Do you know who she is, miss? She’s the king’s niece, and one day she’ll be the Queen of England.”

“If you do see her,” Marceline said, “you must take special note of what she’s wearing, and tell us all about it.”

While a little girl threw a tantrum on St. James’s Street, the Earl of Longmore was throwing his own in the library of Clevedon House.

Clevedon caught hold of his friend’s arm. There was some pushing, and a brief scuffle. Then the shouting started.

Halliday had tactfully taken himself out of the room and closed the door. Having failed to break Clevedon’s jaw or provoke him into a duel, Longmore was drinking the duke’s brandy to sustain him while he paced the room and raged in his usual hotheaded fashion.

Clevedon knew he deserved a dressing down. All the same, it was very hard to bear. It was not as though he was enjoying himself. His life, at the moment, seemed to be utter excrement.

“You don’t deserve my sister,” Longmore said. “I should never have come to Paris. She raked me over the coals for doing it. She was right. I should have left you there to rot. I should have encouraged her to look elsewhere. I should have told her the leopard doesn’t change his spots. But no, I was completely taken in. I wondered why you came back so soon—but I told myself it was because you’d realized how much you missed Clara. Gad, I was a naïve as she is!”

“I don’t recall appointing a particular time to return,” Clevedon said.

“I told you the end of the month was soon enough,” Longmore said. “I knew you weren’t done. I only wanted to be able to tell my mother you were coming back. I wish now I’d told her to mark you down in the column under dead losses. I’ve half a mind to tell her so now.”

“If this is about the dressmakers—”

“Who else would it be about?” Longmore snapped. “Who else has been so thoroughly lost to propriety—”

“‘Lost to propriety,’” Clevedon echoed. “I can’t believe those words are issuing from your mouth. When did you ever care for propriety? As I recall, your father was happy enough to pack you off to the Continent.”

“I’ve never pretended to be a saint—”

“Good thing, too. No one would believe you.”

“But I don’t invite milliners to sleep in the ancestral home!”

“They were burnt out of their lodgings,” Clevedon said. “It was in all the papers. Do you think that was a fabrication? But why the devil do I ask? If you were rational, you wouldn’t be here, guzzling my brandy as though it was Almack’s lemonade—”

“I never drink the filthy stuff.”

“You’re not rational. I don’t know what’s got into you, and I’m not sure I care. But the women are gone. I took them in for only a few days—”

“You couldn’t put them up at a hotel?”

“You don’t understand a damned thing,” Clevedon said. “They have a business to run. They can’t afford to lose time. They needed a place to work. They needed help. Bringing them here was the simplest plan. They drove themselves to distraction to finish a dress for Clara—”