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

He gave a short laugh and left the window. He wandered the showroom. He fingered a length of muslin. He turned pages in the pattern book. He moved with careless grace, but his wasn’t the usual lazy ease of an idle aristocrat.

Her skin prickled with awareness. He was a man, merely a man, she told herself. Yet an aura of danger surrounded him, and it seemed as though a wolf prowled the room.

She detected footsteps and voices approaching the door to the shop’s back rooms.

“If I’d known this was the way London shopkeepers treat their best patrons, I should have had my dress made in Manchester,” she said more audibly. “To be kept waiting endlessly—when there isn’t another customer in the shop! I’m sure I should have something quite as elegant made at home as anything on offer here. And at a fraction of the price.”

Dowdy burst through the door. She was a painfully thin woman of medium height. An elaborate pelerine of embroidered cambric, extending over the wide à la Folle sleeves of her printed muslin dress, helped create the illusion of a fuller figure. Large, round dark curls framed her face under the lacy tulle cap.

The ensemble was handsome, one must give her that. It was a shame she didn’t dress her ladies as carefully as she dressed herself.

“My lady, my lord, my apologies,” she said breathlessly. “I never expected you so early in the day.”

“The shop opens at ten o’clock,” Longmore said. “Or so I was told.”

“The sign in the window says so,” Sophy said.

“You are quite right, miss—my lady.” Dowdy bustled out from behind the counter. “I was called away. A—erm—a little difficulty in the workroom. But we are all in order now. A dress for the nuptials of Lady Clara Fairfax, is it not? Would her ladyship care to peruse the pattern book? We have all the latest styles from Paris, and a splendid selection of silks.”

Judging by the crumbs on the pelerine, she must have been enjoying a leisurely breakfast.

“My aunt says I’m to place myself in your hands,” Sophy said.

“And mind you do her up well,” Longmore said. “None of your fobbing off that putrid green you bought too much of on account of seeing it in the wrong light.”

Sophy strangled a laugh.

“My cousin may be a rustic,” he said, “but—”

“I! A rustic!”

“My dear girl, your idea of sophistication is attending a lecture on stuffed birds at the Manchester Museum.”

“England’s finest mills are in Manchester!” she cried.

“Certainly, your ladyship,” Dowdy said. “But I must say a word for our Spitalfields silks, you know. And as to that, I do believe we have exactly the thing for you. Madame Ecrivier, kindly show her ladyship the silk I mean.”

Ecrivier gave Sophy a swift survey, then glided away to a drawer. She withdrew a length of blue silk.

“Blue!” Sophy said. “But I never wear blue.”

“With the greatest respect, milady, perhaps it is time, yes?”

“What color is my aunt wearing?” Sophy said. “I can’t wear the same color, and I know she likes blue.”

Dowdy smiled. “I regret that we cannot divulge that information. Her ladyship—”

“Not divulge it!” Longmore said. “See here. I won’t have my cousin trifled with. And I don’t mean to hang about having my time wasted. You can deuced well show us what my mother is wearing to the wedding. By gad, do you think we’ll report it to the newspapers?”

He slanted one incinerating black glance at Sophy.

“Do you know, Cousin, I’m finding this shop exceedingly tiresome,” Sophy said. “Aunt assured me we’d receive every attention. But first we’re made to wait, and then they’re suddenly coy about my aunt’s dress, when it’s of the utmost importance that my own complement hers.”

“I do beg your ladyship’s pardon, but Lady Warford expressly forbade us to share the details,” Dowdy said. “She was concerned that copies might be made, in advance of the matrimonial occasion, which I am sorry to say has happened in the past. Other dressmakers, you see, send their girls into the shop to spy, and—”

“Do we look like dressmakers’ spies to you?”

Longmore demanded. “I vow, this is the most aggravating experience. Come away, Cousin. I’ve had a bellyful of this dithering and delaying.”

He started for the door.

Ye gods, he was perfect.

Sophy followed. “I cannot think what I’ll say to Aunt,” she said. “You know she’ll ask me why I went to that other place—the French dressmakers on St. James’s Street. What is it?”

“Maison Noirot,” he said. He opened the door.

Sophy heard a muttered oath behind her.

Then, “You heard his lordship, Madame Ecrivier. Show the lady the silk Lady Warford selected.”

Longmore closed the door. He turned toward the two shop women. “And the pattern,” he said.

“The pattern?” Dowdy’s beady eyes widened.

“You heard me,” he said. “Here’s my cousin, fresh from the country. She’s not at all comfortable with London ways, and the treatment she’s received here this day has done nothing to reassure her. Show her the pattern. If she likes it, we’ll stay. If she doesn’t, this will be the last you see of us.”

She was Gladys, through and through. Never slipped out of character, even for an instant.

Longmore didn’t slip, either. Well, how could he, when he was only required to be himself, a role he could perform admirably.

She, on the other hand … but guile came to her so naturally.

She reacted to whatever he said in the same way Gladys would have done. She had the same mingled arrogance and uneasiness that made Gladys so tiresome. And the same vulnerability.

Cousin Gladys was disagreeable company, yet he always felt a little sorry for her.

There were moments when he almost forgot she wasn’t Gladys. But the scent reminded him who she was.

It was all great fun while he and she played off each other. When she went into another room with the two dressmakers, though, he grew uneasy. She hadn’t told him what he was to do if she was unmasked. She’d dismissed the possibility.

But when they undressed her how could they help but find out she wasn’t shaped like a potato?

She’d said she was wearing numerous layers. How many?

How long would it take him to get them all off?

That would depend, wouldn’t it?

His mind painted images that made him smile. He indulged himself for only a moment, though. He was expecting trouble—looking forward to it, in fact.

Best to keep his mind on what went on about him.

He leaned his stick against a chair, picked up a ladies’ magazine on the table nearby, and put it down again. He went to the shop window, folded his hands behind his back, and looked out.

With all the colorful bits of cloth and ribbons and things hanging on display, it wasn’t easy to see what was going on outside, but he found a position that allowed him to keep an eye on Fenwick.

The carriage still stood on the opposite side of the street, next to the fenced-in oval of greenery at the center of the square. Longmore had left it there because the place was shady and the vehicle would be out of the way of anybody collecting or dropping off passengers.

He heard the interior door open.

He turned quickly away from the window.

But it was only a tired-looking girl. She carried a tray bearing a glass of wine and a plate of biscuits. After a moment’s hesitation, she set it on the table nearest the chair where he’d left his walking stick. She hunted up some sporting magazines and arranged them next to the refreshment tray. She took away the ladies’ magazine and placed it on a table farther away.

She asked if she might get him anything else.