Scandal Wears Satin. Loretta Chase
this would be her last chance for extravagance in that regard, unless he found a way to dispose of Adderley and restore Clara’s reputation at the same time.
He wasn’t sure Clara wanted Adderley disposed of, but if she didn’t she was either stupid or mad, which meant her wishes didn’t signify.
He must have frowned without realizing, because she said, “It’ll be fun for me, but I know you’ll be bored to death. You needn’t stay. I’ll take a hackney home.”
“A hackney?” he said. “Are you mad? I’d never hear the end of it.” He laid a limp wrist against his temple, pitched his voice an octave higher, and in the put-upon tone his mother had perfected said, “How could you, Harry? Your own sister, left to a dirty public conveyance? Heaven only knows who’s seen her, traveling the London streets like a shop clerk. I shall be ashamed to look my friends in the eye.”
From behind him came the rustling of petticoats—and a stifled giggle?
He turned, his pulse accelerating.
Three young women—one brunette, one blonde, one redhead—regarded him with expressions of polite interest. The two latter had large, shockingly blue eyes. Only in the eyes did he detect any sign of the amusement he’d thought he’d heard, and it wasn’t much of a sign.
It would be more accurate to say he detected it only in her eyes, since Sophy Noirot’s sisters might as well have been shadows or a Greek chorus—or window curtains, for that matter.
They were all very well, each entertaining in her own way, and all quite good-looking, if not great beauties.
But she cast the others into the shade.
Why, only look at her. Pale gold curling hair under the frothy lace cap. Enormous, speaking eyes of deepest sapphire. A haughty little nose. A plump invitation of a mouth. A sharp, obstinate little chin. Below the neck … ah, that was even better. Delicious, in fact, despite the lunatic clothing style deemed the height of fashion.
“Duchess,” Clara said, rising from her chair and curtseying.
“Pray don’t ‘Duchess’ me,” said Her Grace. “This is business. While on the premises, why do we not pretend we’re in France, where you’d address a duchess as madame, much as one addresses a modiste. Meanwhile, think of me simply as your dressmaker.”
“The world’s greatest dressmaker,” Sophy said.
“And that would make you …?” Longmore said.
“The other greatest dressmaker in the world,” Sophy said.
“Someone ought to explain superlatives to you,” he said. “But then, I’m aware that English isn’t your first language.”
“It isn’t my only first language, my lord,” she said. “Le français est l’autre.”
“Perhaps someone ought as well to explain the meanings of only and first,” he said.
“Oh, yes, please do enlighten me, my lord,” she said, opening her extremely blue eyes very wide. “I never had a head for figures. Leonie always complains about it. ‘Will you never learn to count?’ she says.”
“And yet,” he began.
It was then he realized she’d drawn him away from his sister—who was moving with the other two toward another door.
“Where are you slipping off to?” he said.
“To look at patterns,” said Clara. “You’ll find it exceedingly tedious.”
“That depends,” he said.
“On what?” Sophy said.
“On how bored I feel.” He looked around. “Not much entertainment hereabouts.”
“Your club is only a few steps up the street,” Sophy said. “Perhaps you’d rather wait there. We can send to you when Lady Clara is done.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel I ought to hang about and exert a calming influence.”
“You,” Sophy said. “A calming influence.”
“Excitable women. Clothes. The possible rape and pillage of our father’s bank account. A man’s cool head seems to be needed.”
“Harry, you know Papa doesn’t care how much I spend on clothes,” Clara said. “He likes us to look well. And I know you don’t care what I buy. It was kind of you to take me here, but you needn’t watch over me. I’m perfectly safe.”
His gaze traveled over the three sisters, and lingered on Sophy. He thought hard and fast and picked his words carefully. “Very well. A man can think more clearly when he isn’t surrounded by women, and I need to create an alibi.”
She took the bait, her gaze sharpening. “Why?” she said. “Are you planning to murder somebody?”
“Not yet,” he said. “You won’t let me murder the bridegroom. No, I want an alibi for Clara, who isn’t supposed to be here.”
“Mama said I must go to Downes’s,” Clara said, “but Harry took pity on me.”
“I took pity on me,” he said. His gaze returned to Sophy. “I brought her here to prevent scolding, ranting, and sobbing, that’s all.”
“Then the least I can do in gratitude is give you an alibi,” Sophy said.
He could think of any number of pleasing acts of gratitude, but this would do for a start.
“Not too complicated,” he said.
She rolled her great blue eyes. “I know that.”
“I’m a simple man.”
“This is so simple, even a dolt could remember it,” she said. “When Lady Clara returns home, she’ll say that you were intoxicated and drove her here instead of to Downes’s, drunkenly insisting this was the place.”
“Oh, that’s perfect!” Clara said.
“That will do admirably,” he said. “She can say I stood over her and made her order sixty or seventy dresses, and a gross of chemises and …”
His mind went hazy then, and images of muslin and lace underwear strewed themselves about his brain, and somewhere in that dishevelment was a blue-eyed angelic devil, mostly unclothed. He waved a hand, waving the images away. Now wasn’t the time. He was only beginning his siege, and he knew—he could always tell—he faced a very tricky fortress. All sorts of hidden passages and diversions and booby traps.
But then, if it were easy, it would be boring.
He continued, “ … and all those other sorts of trousseau things. And when our mother regains consciousness, and demands that Clara cancel the order, Clara will appeal to our overly conscientious sire, who’ll say one can’t simply cancel immense orders on a whim.”
Sophy folded her arms. Something flickered in her blue eyes. Otherwise, her expression was unreadable. “Good,” she said. “Keep with that. Don’t embellish.”
“No danger of that,” he said. “At any rate, it’s easy enough to make it partly true. I’ve only to toddle into my club and drink steadily until you’ve finished bankrupting my father. Then, when I return Clara to Warford House, no one will have any trouble believing in my inebriated obstinacy.”
He sauntered out of the sitting room.
He walked to the stairs and started down.
He heard hurried footsteps and rustling petticoats behind him.
“Lord Longmore.”
She said his name as everybody else did, not precisely as spelled but in the way of so many ancient names, with vowels shifted