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Chapter One

THE LADIES’ DRESS-MAKER. Under this head we shall include not only the business of a Mantua Maker, but also of a Milliner…In the Milliner, taste and fancy are required; with a quickness in discerning, imitating, and improving upon various fashions, which are perpetually changing among the higher circles.

The Book of English Trades, and Library of the Useful Arts, 1818

London

March 1835

Marcelline, Sophia, and Leonie Noirot, sisters and proprietresses of Maison Noirot, Fleet Street, West Chancery Lane, were all present when Lady Renfrew, wife of Sir Joseph Renfrew, dropped her bombshell.

Dark-haired Marcelline was shaping a papillon bow meant to entice her ladyship into purchasing Marcelline’s latest creation. Fair-haired Sophia was restoring to order one of the drawers ransacked earlier for one of their more demanding customers. Leonie, the redhead, was adjusting the hem of the lady’s intimate friend, Mrs. Sharp.

Though it was merely a piece of gossip dropped casually into the conversation, Mrs. Sharp shrieked—quite as though a bomb had gone off—and stumbled and stepped on Leonie’s hand.

Leonie did not swear aloud, but Marcelline saw her lips form a word she doubted their patrons were accustomed to hearing.

Oblivious to any bodily injury done to insignificant dressmakers, Mrs. Sharp said, “The Duke of Clevedon is returning?”

“Yes,” said Lady Renfrew, looking smug.

“To London?”

“Yes,” said Lady Renfrew. “I have it on the very best authority.”

“What happened? Did Lord Longmore threaten to shoot him?”

Any dressmaker aspiring to clothe ladies of the upper orders stayed au courant with the latter’s doings. Consequently, Marcelline and her sisters were familiar with all the details of this story. They knew that Gervaise Angier, the seventh Duke of Clevedon, had once been the ward of the Marquess of Warford, the Earl of Longmore’s father. They knew that Longmore and Clevedon were the best of friends. They knew that Clevedon and Lady Clara Fairfax, the eldest of Longmore’s three sisters, had been intended for each other since birth. Clevedon had doted on her since they were children. He’d never shown any inclination to court anyone else, though he’d certainly had liaisons aplenty of the other sort, especially during his three years on the Continent.

While the pair had never been officially engaged, that was regarded as a mere technicality. All the world had assumed the duke would marry her as soon as he returned with Longmore from their Grand Tour. All the world had been shocked when Longmore came back alone a year ago, and Clevedon continued his life of dissipation on the Continent.

Apparently, someone in the family had run out of patience, because Lord Longmore had traveled to Paris a fortnight ago. Rumor agreed he’d done so specifically to confront his friend about the long-delayed nuptials.

“I believe he threatened to horsewhip him, but of that one cannot be certain,” said Lady Renfrew. “I was told only that Lord Longmore went to Paris, that he said or threatened something, with the result that his grace promised to return to London before the King’s Birthday.”

Though His Majesty had been born in August, his birthday was to be celebrated this year on the 28th of May.

Since none of the Noirot sisters did anything so obvious as shriek or stumble or even raise an eyebrow, no onlooker would have guessed they regarded this news as momentous.

They went on about their business, attending to the two ladies and the others who entered their establishment. That evening, they sent the seamstresses home at the usual hour and closed the shop. They went upstairs to their snug lodgings and ate their usual light supper. Marcelline told her six-year-old daughter, Lucie Cordelia, a story before putting her to bed at her usual bedtime.

Lucie was sleeping the sleep of the innocent—or as innocent as was possible for any child born into their ramshackle family—when the three sisters crept down the stairs to the workroom of their shop.

Everyday, a grubby little boy delivered the latest set of scandal sheets as soon as they were printed—usually before the ink was dry—to the shop’s back door. Leonie collected today’s lot and spread them out on the worktable. The sisters began to scan the columns.

“Here it is,” Marcelline said after a moment. “‘Earl of L____ returned from Paris last night…We’re informed that a certain duke, currently residing in the French capital, has been told in no uncertain terms that Lady C_____ was done awaiting his pleasure…his grace expected to return to London in time for the King’s Birthday…engagement to be announced at a ball at Warford House at the end of the Season…wedding before summer’s end.’”

She passed the report to Leonie, who read, “‘Should the gentleman fail to keep his appointment, the lady will consider their ‘understanding’ a misunderstanding.’” She laughed. “Then follow some interesting surmises regarding which gentleman will be favored in his place.”

She pushed the periodical toward Sophia, who was shaking her head. “She’d be a fool to give him up,” she said. “A dukedom, for heaven’s sake. How many are there? and an unmarried duke who’s young, handsome, and healthy? I can count them on one finger.” She stabbed her index finger at the column. “Him.”

“I wonder what the hurry is about,” Marcelline said. “She’s only one and twenty.”

“And what’s she got to do but go to plays, operas, balls, dinners, routs, and so on?” said Leonie. “An aristocratic girl who’s got looks, rank, and a respectable dowry wouldn’t ever have to worry about attracting suitors. This girl…”

She didn’t have to complete the sentence.

They’d seen Lady Clara Fairfax on several occasions. She was stunningly beautiful: fair-haired and blue-eyed in the classic English rose mode. Since her numerous endowments included high rank, impeccable lineage, and a splendid dowry, men threw themselves at her, right and left.

“Never again in her life will that girl wield so much power over men,” Marcelline said. “I say she might wait until her late twenties to settle down.”

“I reckon Lord Warford never expected the duke to stay away for so long,” said Sophy.

“He always was under the marquess’s thumb, they say,” Leonie said. “Ever since his father drank himself to death. One can’t blame his grace for bolting.”

“I wonder if Lady Clara was growing restless,” Sophy said. “No one seemed worried about Clevedon’s absence, even when Longmore came home without him.”

“Why worry?” said Marcelline. “To all intents and purposes, they’re betrothed. Breaking with Lady Clara would mean breaking with the whole family.”

“Maybe another beau appeared on the scene—one Lord Warford doesn’t care for,” said Leonie.

“More likely Lady Warford doesn’t care for other beaux,” said Sophy. “She wouldn’t want to let a dukedom slip through her hands.”

“I wonder what threat Longmore used,” Sophy said. “They’re both reputed to be wild and violent. He couldn’t have threatened pistols at dawn. Killing the duke would be antithetical to his purpose. Maybe he simply offered to pummel his grace into oblivion.”

“That I should like to see,” Marcelline said.

“And I,” said Sophy.

“And I,” said Leonie.

“A pair of good-looking aristocratic men fighting,” Marcelline said, grinning. Since Clevedon had left London several weeks before she and her sisters had arrived from Paris, they hadn’t, to date, clapped eyes on him. They were aware, though, that all the world deemed him a handsome man. “There’s a sight not to be missed. Too bad we shan’t see it.”

“On the other hand, a duke’s wedding doesn’t happen every day—and I’d begun to think this one wouldn’t happen in our lifetime,” Sophy said.

“It’ll be the wedding of the year, if not the decade,” Leonie said. “The bridal dress is only the beginning. She’ll want a trousseau and a completely new wardrobe befitting her position. Everything will be of superior quality. Reams of blond lace. The finest silks. Muslin as light as air. She’ll spend thousands upon thousands.”

For a moment, the three sisters sat quietly contemplating this vision, in the way pious souls contemplated Paradise.

Marcelline knew Leonie was calculating those thousands down to the last farthing. Under the untamable mane of red hair was a hardheaded businesswoman. She had a fierce love of money and all the machinations involving it. She labored lovingly over her ledgers and accounts and such. Marcelline would rather clean privies than look at a column of figures.

But each sister had her strengths. Marcelline, the eldest, was the only one who physically resembled her father. For all she knew, she was the only one of them who truly was his daughter. She had certainly inherited his fashion sense, imagination, and skill in drawing. She’d inherited as well his passion for fine things, but thanks to the years spent in Paris learning the dressmaking trade from Cousin Emma, hers and her sisters’ feelings in this regard went deeper. What had begun as drudgery—a trade learned in childhood, purely for survival—had become Marcelline’s life and her love. She was not only Maison Noirot’s designer but its soul.

Sophia, meanwhile, had a flair for drama, which she turned to profitable account. A fair-haired, blue-eyed innocent on the outside and a shark on the inside, Sophy could sell sand to Bedouins. She made stonyhearted moneylenders weep and stingy matrons buy the shop’s most expensive creations.

“Only think of the prestige,” Sophy said. “The Duchess of Clevedon will be a leader of fashion. Where she goes, everyone will follow.”

“She’ll be a leader of fashion in the right hands,” Marcelline said. “At present…”

A chorus of sighs filled the pause.

“Her taste is unfortunate,” said Leonie.

“Her mother,” said Sophy.

“Her mother’s dressmaker, to be precise,” said Leonie.

“Hortense the Horrible,” they said in grim unison.

Hortense Downes was the proprietress of Downes’s, the single greatest obstacle to their planned domination of the London dressmaking trade.

At Maison Noirot, the hated rival’s shop was known as Dowdy’s.

“Stealing her from Dowdy’s would be an act of charity, really,” said Marcelline.

Silence followed while they dreamed their dreams.

Once they stole one customer, others would follow.

The women of the beau monde were sheep. That could work to one’s advantage, if only one could get the sheep moving in the right direction. The trouble was, not nearly enough high-ranking women patronized Maison Noirot because none of their friends did. Very few were ready to try something new.

In the course of the shop’s nearly three-year existence, they’d lured a number of ladies, like Lady Renfrew. But she was merely the wife of a recently knighted gentleman, and the others of their customers were, like her, gentry or newly rich. The highest echelons of the ton—the duchesses and marchionesses and countesses and such—still went to more established shops like Dowdy’s.

Though their work was superior to anything their London rivals produced, Maison Noirot still lacked the prestige to draw the ladies at the top of the list of precedence.

“It took ten months to pry Lady Renfrew out of Dowdy’s clutches,” said Sophy.

They’d succeeded because her ladyship had overheard Dowdy’s forewoman, Miss Oakes, say the eldest daughter’s bodices were difficult to fit correctly, because her breasts were shockingly mismatched.

An indignant Lady Renfrew had canceled a huge order for mourning and come straight to Maison Noirot, which her friend Lady Sharp had recommended.

During the fitting, Sophy had told the weeping eldest daughter that no woman in the world had perfectly matching breasts. She also told Miss Renfrew that her skin was like satin, and half the ladies of the beau monde would envy her décolleté. When the Noirot sisters were done dressing the young lady, she nearly swooned with happiness. It was reported that her handsomely displayed figure caused several young men to exhibit signs of swooning, too.

“We don’t have ten months this time,” Leonie said. “And we can’t rely on that vicious cat at Dowdy’s to insult Lady Warford. She’s a marchioness, after all, not the lowly wife of a mere knight.”

“We have to catch her quickly, or the chance is gone forever,” said Sophy. “If Dowdy’s get the Duchess of Clevedon’s wedding dress, they’ll get everything else.”

“Not if I get there first,” Marcelline said.

Chapter Two

ITALIAN OPERA, PLACE DES ITALIENS. The lovers of the Italian language and music will here be delighted by singers of the most eminent talents, as its name indicates; this theatre is devoted exclusively to the performance of Italian comic operas; it is supported by Government, and is attached to the grand French opera. The performances take place on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

Francis Coghlan,

A Guide to France, Explaining Every Form and Expense from London to Paris, 1830

Paris, Italian Opera

14 April 1835

Clevedon tried to ignore her.

The striking brunette had made sure she’d attract attention. She’d appeared with her actress friend in the box opposite his at the last possible moment.

Her timing was inconvenient.

He had promised to write Clara a detailed description of tonight’s performance of The Barber of Seville. He knew Clara longed to visit Paris, though she made do with his letters. In a month or so he’d return to London and resume the life he’d abandoned. He’d made up his mind, for Clara’s sake, to be good. He wouldn’t be the kind of husband and father his own father had been. After they were wed, he would take her abroad. For now they corresponded, as they’d been doing from the time she could hold a pen.

For the present, however, he intended to make the most of every minute of these last weeks of freedom. Thus, the letter to Clara wasn’t his only business for the night.

He’d come in pursuit of Madame St. Pierre, who sat in a nearby box with her friends, occasionally casting not-unfriendly glances his way. He’d wagered Gaspard Aronduille two hundred pounds that Madame would invite him to her post-opera soirée whence Clevedon fully expected to make his way to her bed.

But the mysterious brunette…

Every man in the opera house was aware of her.

None of them was paying the slightest attention to the opera.

French audiences, unlike the English or Italians, attended performances in respectful silence. But his companions were whispering frantically, demanding to know who she was, “that magnificent creature” sitting with the actress Sylvie Fontenay.

He glanced at Madame St. Pierre, then across the opera house at the brunette.

Shortly thereafter, while his friends continued to speculate and argue, the Duke of Clevedon left his seat and went out.

“That was quick work,” Sylvie murmured behind her fan.

“Reconnaissance pays,” Marcelline said. She’d spent a week learning the Duke of Clevedon’s habits and haunts. Invisible to him and everyone else, though she stood in plain sight, she’d followed him about Paris, day and night.

Like the rest of her misbegotten family, she could make herself noticed or not noticed.

Tonight she’d stepped out of the background. Tonight every eye in the theater was on her. This was unfortunate for the performers, but they had not earned her sympathy. Unlike her, they had not put forth their best effort. Rosina was wobbling on the high notes, and Figaro lacked joie de vivre.

“He wastes not a moment,” said Sylvie, her gaze ostensibly upon the doings on stage. “He wants an introduction, so what does he do? Straight he goes to the box of Paris’s greatest gossips, my old friend the Comte d’Orefeur and his mistress, Madame Ironde. That, my dear, is an expert hunter of women.”

Marcelline was well aware of this. His grace was not only an expert seducer but one of refined taste. He did not chase every attractive woman who crossed his path. He did not slink into brothels—even the finest—as so many visiting foreigners did. He didn’t run after maids and milliners. For all his wild reputation, he was not a typical libertine. He hunted only Paris’s greatest aristocratic beauties and the crème de la crème of the demimonde.

While this meant her virtue—such as it was—was safe from him, it did present the challenge of keeping his attention long enough for her purposes. And so her heart beat faster, the way it did when she watched the roulette wheel go round. This time, though, the stakes were much higher than mere money. The outcome of this game would determine her family’s future.

Outwardly, she was calm and confident. “How much will you wager that he and monsieur le comte enter this box at precisely the moment the interval begins?” she said.

“I know better than to wager with you,” said Sylvie.

The instant the interval began—and before the other audience members had risen from their seats—Clevedon entered Mademoiselle Fontenay’s opera box with the Comte d’Orefeur.

The first thing he saw was the rear view of the brunette: smooth shoulders and back exposed a fraction of an inch beyond what most Parisian women dared, and the skin, pure cream. Disorderly dark curls dangled enticingly against the nape of her neck.

He looked at her neck and forgot about Clara and Madame St. Pierre and every other woman in the world.

A lifetime seemed to pass before he was standing in front of her, looking down into brilliant dark eyes, where laughter glinted…looking down at the ripe curve of her mouth, laughter, again, lurking at its corners. Then she moved a little, and it was only a little—the slightest shift of her shoulders—but she did it in the way of a lover turning in bed, or so his body believed, his groin tightening.

The light caught her hair and gilded her skin and danced in those laughing eyes. His gaze drifted lower, to the silken swell of her breasts…the sleek curve to her waist…

He was vaguely aware of the people about him talking, but he couldn’t concentrate on anyone else. Her voice was low, a contralto shaded with a slight huskiness.

Her name, he learned, was Noirot.

Fitting.

Having said to Mademoiselle Fontenay all that good manners required, he turned to the woman who’d disrupted the opera house. Heart racing, he bent over her gloved hand.

“Madame Noirot,” he said. “Enchanté.” He touched his lips to the soft kid. A light but exotic scent swam into his nostrils. Jasmine?

He lifted his head and met a gaze as deep as midnight. For a long, pulsing moment, their gazes held.

Then she waved her fan at the empty seat nearby. “It’s uncomfortable to converse with my head tipped back, your grace,” she said.

“Forgive me.” He sat. “How rude of me to loom over you in that way. But the view from above was…”

He trailed off as it belatedly dawned on him: She’d spoken in English, in the accents of his own class, no less. He’d answered automatically, taught from childhood to show his conversational partner the courtesy of responding in the latter’s language.

“But this is diabolical,” he said. “I should have wagered anything that you were French.” French, and a commoner. She had to be. He’d heard her speak to Orefeur in flawless Parisian French, superior to Clevedon’s, certainly. The accent was refined, but her friend—forty if she was a day—was an actress. Ladies of the upper ranks did not consort with actresses. He’d assumed she was an actress or courtesan.

Yet if he closed his eyes, he’d swear he conversed at present with an English aristocrat.

“You’d wager anything?” she said. Her dark gaze lifted to his head and slid down slowly, leaving a heat trail in its wake, and coming to rest at his neckcloth. “That pretty pin, for instance?”

The scent and the voice and the body were slowing his brain. “A wager?” he said blankly.

“Or we could discuss the merits of the present Figaro, or debate whether Rosina ought properly to be a contralto or a mezzo-soprano,” she said. “But I think you were not paying attention to the opera.” She plied her fan slowly. “Why should I think that, I wonder?”

He collected his wits. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is how anyone could pay attention to the opera when you were in the place.”

“They’re French,” she said. “They take art seriously.”

“And you’re not French?”

She smiled. “That’s the question, it seems.”

“French,” he said. “You’re a brilliant mimic, but you’re French.”

“You’re so sure,” she said.

“I’m merely a thickheaded Englishman, I know,” he said. “But even I can tell French and English women apart. One might dress an Englishwoman in French fashion from head to toe and she’ll still look English. You…”

He trailed off, letting his gaze skim over her. Only consider her hair. It was as stylish as the precise coifs of other Frenchwomen…yet, no, not the same. Hers was more…something. It was as though she’d flung out of bed and thrown herself together in a hurry. Yet she wasn’t disheveled. She was…different.

“You’re French, through and through,” he said. “If I’m wrong, the stickpin is yours.”

“And if you’re right?” she said.

He thought quickly. “If I’m right, you’ll do me the honor of riding with me in the Bois de Boulogne tomorrow,” he said.

“That’s all?” she said, in French this time.

“It’s a great deal to me.”

She rose abruptly in a rustle of silk. Surprised—again—he was slow coming to his feet.

“I need air,” she said. “It grows warm in here.”

He opened the door to the corridor and she swept past him. He followed her out, his pulse racing.

Marcelline had seen him countless times, from as little as a few yards away. She’d observed a handsome, expensively elegant English aristocrat.

At close quarters…

She was still reeling.

The body first. She’d surreptitiously studied that while he made polite chitchat with Sylvie. The splendid physique was not, as she’d assumed, created or even assisted by fine tailoring, though the tailoring was exquisite. His broad shoulders were not padded, and his tapering torso wasn’t cinched in by anything but muscle.

Muscle everywhere—the arms, the long legs. And no tailor could create the lithe power emanating from that tall frame.

It’s hot in here, was her first coherent thought.

Then he was standing in front of her, bending over her hand, and the place grew hotter still.

She was aware of his hair, black curls gleaming like silk and artfully tousled.

He lifted his head.

She saw a mouth that should have been a woman’s, so full and sensuous it was. But it was pure male, purely carnal.

An instant later she was looking up into eyes of a rare color—a green like jade—while a low masculine voice caressed her ear and seemed to be caressing parts of her not publicly visible.