“That looks very . . . French,” he said.
“I always dress the mannequin more dashingly and flamboyantly than I would dress my customers,” she said. “After seeing what the mannequin is wearing, they’re less likely to become hysterical when I propose something rather more exciting than they’re accustomed to.”
He smiled a little and came to the counter. “How fitting,” he said. “
You
are something rather more exciting than some of us are accustomed to.”
“Not
some,
” she said. “All of you. Maison Noirot is not the usual thing.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” he said. “I was glad to see that Miss Sophia turned last night’s debacle to good account. But of course, I should have expected no less.”
“I expected a good deal more from you,” Marcelline said. “You bungled it.”
“Yes,” he said. “What else could I do? I was asking the wrong woman to marry me.”
Her heart seemed to stop beating altogether. She felt dizzy.
He moved to the door and turned the sign to Closed.
“We are not closed,” she said. Her voice seemed to come from miles away.
“You’ve had enough business for one day,” he said.
“You do not determine how much business is enough,” she said.
He came back to the counter. “Come out from behind there,” he said.
“Absolutely not.”
He smiled. That was all he did. But to say
smile
conveyed nothing. Anybody could smile. What he did—only Sophy could have words for it.
His beautiful mouth turned up, a little crookedly, and his green eyes regarded her with an amused affection that went straight to her pounding heart, and left her disarmed and weak and wanting.
“I need all the customers I can get,” she said. “I’m not at all sure that Lady Clara will return—”
“You know she will. For more dresses to give her the strength to contend with stupid men.”
“—and since there’s to be no Duchess of Clevedon in the immediate future, I’ll have to make up for it with lesser mortals.”
“I was thinking,” he said, “that you ought to be the Duchess of Clevedon.”
She stood for a moment, speechless for once in her life, though she’d sensed trouble coming. Even so, as fine-tuned as her instincts were, she couldn’t take it in. She thought her ears must be playing tricks. Or he was playing tricks.
She was tired. It had been a long, very busy day, after a sleepless, wretched night—after hearing the news from Sophy and not knowing whether to laugh with relief or weep with despair, for all her plans and all she’d borne. All for nothing. She’d done her best, and she’d paid a price higher than she’d ever imagined. Then, when Sophy came home and told them what had happened, Marcelline had looked around at all her hopes and dreams for their future, smashed to pieces.
She took a steadying breath. Breathing wasn’t enough. She needed to sit down. She needed a strong drink.
She said, “Have you lost your mind?”
He said, “I don’t know about my mind. My heart, yes.”
She scrambled for her wits. “I know what this is. You had a shock to your sensibilities. There was that beautiful girl, the one you’ve loved all your life—”
“Like a
sister
. She was right. You were right.”
“You’re still in shock,” she said. “Angry, I dare say. She humiliated you. In front of everybody. People applauded her, I understand.”
“Did Miss Sophia tell you that? I deduced, from today’s
Morning Spectacle,
that she’d been there. Her style is unmistakable.”
She couldn’t let him distract her. “The point is, you’re striking back.”
“At Clara? Don’t be absurd. She was absolutely right. She knew my heart wasn’t in it. She knew I was acting. I followed your instructions to the letter. Exactly as one follows instructions. That isn’t how it ought to be. It ought to happen of itself, because nothing else is bearable.”
“Stop,” she said. “Stop right now.” She needed to run far away, the way her forebears ran from difficulties. She needed to run because with every fiber of her being she longed to say yes. And that was a quick route to self-destruction.
“When I left that party, I was shaking,” he said. He looked down at his hands, at the beautiful tan gloves. He set them on the counter. Her hands, still braced on the counter, were not so very far away. She had only to reach a very little way to touch him. She kept her hands where they were.
“I realized it was because I’d been on the brink of the worst mistake of my life,” he said. “A mistake that would have ruined two lives. I realized that Clara had spared me. She’d saved us both. She was right. I could never be the husband she deserves. For me there can’t be anyone but you.”
Don’t do this don’t do this don’t do this.
There was a weight on her chest. It hurt to breathe. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said.
“Listen to me,” he said.
“No, because you’re not thinking.”
“I’ve done nothing but think,” he said. “Last night, all this day, while I wandered up and down St. James’s Street, waiting for the mobs to leave, so that I could talk to you. I’ve had plenty of time for second thoughts, and I haven’t any. The opposite, in fact. The more time I’ve had, the surer I’ve felt. I love you, Marcelline.” He paused. “You said you loved me.”
He wasn’t going to stop. He wasn’t going to give up. He was obstinate. Hadn’t she already learned that, over and over again? When he wanted something, he went after it, single-mindedly, and he was not over-scrupulous in his methods.
He was like her, in other words.
The irony was too rich.
She slid her hands from the counter and folded her arms, protecting herself. “I told you that doesn’t matter,” she said. “You can’t marry me. I’m a
shopkeeper
. You can’t marry a shopkeeper.”
“Noblemen have married courtesans,” he said. “They’ve married their housekeepers and their dairymaids.”
“And it never turns out well,” she said. When gentlemen married far beneath them, their wives and children paid for it. They became outcasts. They lived in limbo, unable to return to their old world and shunned in their new one. “I can’t believe you think this is sane.”
“You know it’s the only sane thing,” he said. “I love you. I want to give you everything. I want to give Lucie everything she needs—not merely dolls and fine clothes and schooling, but a father. I lost a family, and I know how precious it is. I want you and I want your family and I want to be part of your lives.”
She heard the desperation in his voice, the urgency, and she wanted to weep.
“I know the shop is your passion,” he said, “and it would kill you to give it up—but you don’t have to. I thought about that, too. In fact, I’ve been thinking about your shop for weeks.”
She didn’t doubt it. She didn’t doubt that he meant every word.
“I have ideas,” he went on eagerly. “We can do this together. Other noblemen have business interests. I can write, and I’ve the resources to create a magazine. Like
La Belle Assemblée,
but better. I’ve other ideas about expanding the business. You said you were the greatest modiste in the world. I can help you make all the world realize it. Marry me, Marcelline.”
It wasn’t fair.
She was a dreamer, yes. All of her kind were. They dreamed impossible dreams. Yet she and her sisters had made some of them come true.
It was a beautiful dream he offered. But he saw only the beautiful part.
“Other noblemen’s business interests have to do with property,” she said. “And great schemes. They own mines and invest in canals and the new railways. They do not open little shops and sell ladies’ apparel. The Great World will never forgive you. These aren’t the old days, Clevedon. These aren’t the days of the Prince Regent and his loose-living set. Society isn’t as tolerant as it used to be.”
“Then Society is a great bore,” he said. “I don’t care whether they approve of my going into trade. I believe in you and in what you do. I want to be part of it.”
He didn’t know what he was saying. He didn’t understand what it meant to lose Society’s regard and his friends’ respect, to be barred from the world to which one ought to belong. She knew all too well.
Even if he could understand that and accept it, there remained the nasty little business of who she really was.
She had no choice. She had to be the sane one. This was one dream she couldn’t dream. He was watching her, waiting.
She unfolded her arms.
She put her hands together, like one offering a prayer, and said, “Thank you. This is kind and generous, and, truly, you do me a great honor—I know that’s what one is supposed to say, but I mean it, truly—”
“Marcelline, don’t—”
“But no, your grace, no. I can never marry you.”
She saw his face go white, and she turned away, quickly, before she could weaken. She walked to the door that led to the back rooms, and opened it, and walked through, and closed it, very, very gently, behind her.
C
levedon walked blindly from the shop, down St. James’s Street. At the bottom of the street he paused, and gazed blankly at St. James’s Palace. There was a noise in his head, a horrible noise. He was aware of misery and pain and rage and the devil knew what else. He hadn’t the wherewithal to take it apart and name its components. It was a kind of hell-brew of feelings, and it consumed him. He didn’t hear the shout. He couldn’t hear above the noise in his head.
“What the devil is wrong with you, Clevedon? I’ve been shouting myself hoarse, running down the street like a damn fool. One damn fool after another, obviously. I saw you come out of that shop, you moron.”
Clevedon turned and looked at Longmore. “I recommend you not provoke me,” he said coldly. “I’m in a mood to knock someone down, and you’ll do very well.”
“Don’t tell me,” Longmore said. “The dressmaker doesn’t want you, either. By gad, this isn’t your day, is it? Not your week, rather.”
The urge to throw Longmore against a lamp post or a fence or straight into the gutter was overpowering. The guards would probably rush out from the palace gates—and there Clevedon would be, in the newspapers again, the name on every scandalmonger’s lips.
Hell, what was one more scandal?
He dropped his walking stick and grasped Longmore by the shoulders and shoved him hard. With an oath, Longmore shoved back. “Fight me like a man, you swine,” he said. “I dare you.”
A moment later, they’d torn off their coats. In the next instant, their fists flew, as they tried, steadily and viciously, to pummel each other to death.
M
arcelline sent Sophy out into the showroom to close the shop.
Though she was so tired, tired to death and heartsick, she knew better than to go to bed. Lucie would think she was ill, and she’d get panicky—and very possibly do something rash again.
In any case, Marcelline knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She needed to focus on making beautiful clothes. That would calm her.
She was trying to redesign the fastening for a pelisse when Sophy came in. Leonie trailed after her. Sophy hadn’t said anything before, but she’d given Marcelline a searching look. Even wearing a card-playing face, it was hard to hide one’s emotions from one’s own kind.
The two younger sisters had come to find out the trouble and comfort her as they always did.
“What happened?” Sophy said. “What’s wrong?”
“Clevedon,” Marcelline said. She jammed her pencil into the paper. The pencil broke. “Oh, it’s ridiculous. I ought to laugh. But I can’t. You won’t believe it.”
“Of course we will,” Sophy said.
“He offered you carte blanche,” Leonie said.
“No, he asked me to marry him.”
There was a short, stunned silence.
Then, “I reckon he’s in a marrying mood,” Sophy said.
Marcelline laughed. Then she started to sob.
But before she could fall to pieces, Selina Jeffreys came to the door. “Oh, madame, I beg your pardon. But I was just out—I went to get the ribbons from Mr. Adkins down the bottom of the street—and when I came out of his shop, there were the two gentleman fighting down at the palace, and people coming out of every shop and club, and running to watch the fight.”
“Two
gentlemen
?” Leonie said. “Two ruffians, you mean.”
“No, Miss Leonie. It’s his grace the Duke of Clevedon and his friend, the other tall, dark gentleman.”
“Lord Longmore?” Sophy said. “He was here only a little while ago.”
“Yes, miss, that’s the one. They’re trying to kill each other, I vow! I couldn’t stand to watch—and besides, there was all sorts of men coming along to see. It wasn’t any place for a girl on her own.”
Sophy and Leonie didn’t have Jeffreys’s delicate scruples. They ran out to watch the fight. They didn’t notice that their older sister didn’t follow.
S
ophy and Leonie returned not very long after they’d gone out.