Vixen In Velvet. Loretta Chase

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СКАЧАТЬ Monday 13 July

      A steady routine is of first importance,” Leonie heard Matron explain. “Four hours of lessons, four hours of work, two hours for exercise and chores, half an hour for meals. As your lordship will see, the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females is a modest enterprise. We can take in but a fraction of the girls who need us. But this is only the beginning. The Philanthropic Society, as you may be aware, began in a small house on Cambridge Heath and currently accommodates some two hundred children in Southwark. We, too, expect to grow, with the aid of charitable contributions as well as sales of our girls’ work, which I will be pleased to show you.”

      From where Leonie stood in the corridor, no one in the workroom could see her. However, even with only a view of his back, she had no trouble recognizing the gentleman Matron was falling all over herself to accommodate.

      Ah, yes, undoubtedly Lord Lisburne would like nothing better than to look at needlework.

      Leonie debated for a moment. Not about what to do, because she was seldom at a loss in that regard. She did wonder, though, what had brought him here, of all places. She knew he was bored in London. He’d said he wanted to return to the Continent. In the meantime, he seemed interested merely in amusing himself, and she seemed to be one of the amusements.

      Very well. Easy enough to turn that to her advantage. Business was business, he was rich, and he was here.

      She swept through the open door.

      “Thank you, Matron, for undertaking tour duty,” she said. “I know Monday is a busy day for you. I’ll continue Lord Lisburne’s tour, and you may return to your regular tasks.”

      Matron relinquished Lord Lisburne with poorly concealed reluctance. And who could blame her? All that manly beauty. All that charm.

      Unfortunately, all that manly beauty and charm must have turned Matron’s brain. Otherwise she’d have known better than to bring him into the workroom. Many of the girls in the bright, airy room stood on the brink of adolescence if not well in. Putting a stunning male aristocrat in front of them was asking for trouble.

      Most sat in a stupor. Three had stuck themselves with their needles and were absently sucking the wounded fingers. Verity Sims had overturned her workbasket. Bridget Coppy was sewing to her dress sleeve the apron she was making.

      They’d be useless for days, the lot of them.

      Even Leonie was aware of a romantic haze enveloping her brain. Last night he’d sneaked into her dreams. And today he’d plagued her as well. Her mind made pictures of him as he’d been at Astley’s Royal Circus, the tantalizing glimpses she’d had of the openhearted boy he might have been once upon a time.

      Nonetheless, she briskly led his lordship out of the workroom and into the corridor.

      “We’re somewhat cramped, as you see,” she said.

      “Yet what efficient use you’ve made of the quarters you have,” he said. “Given your penchant for order, I oughtn’t to be surprised. Still, it’s one thing to write numbers and such neatly in a ledger and quite another to organize a poky old building into something rather pleasant and cozy.”

      Though she had her guard up, she couldn’t squelch the flutter of gratification. She and her sisters had worked hard to make the most of what they had. They hadn’t much. Their financial success was only very recent, and she knew better than to take it for granted. In the dressmaking business, failure could happen overnight, from natural catastrophes or merely the whims of fashionable women. With the Milliners’ Society, they’d proceeded cautiously, incurring no expenses they couldn’t cover with ready money.

      They’d done it because of Cousin Emma, who’d given to three neglected children a real home and an education. She’d taught them how to make beautiful things and she’d saved them from the pointless, vagabond life of their parents.

      And she’d died too young, with only the first taste of her own success.

      Leonie thanked him calmly enough and said, “All the same, we’d prefer rather less coziness. We should like to expand into the house next door.”

      “I daresay. Always room for expansion.”

      By this point they’d moved out of the others’ hearing range.

      “Very well, I’m stumped,” she said. “Did you merely stumble upon the place and decide to look in, or is this all part of a master plan?”

      “Master plan,” he said. “Swanton charged me with finding out your charity. He wants to raise funds for you while everybody still loves him. You know how fickle the public can be, especially the female part of it.”

      “He charged you,” she said.

      “To be strictly accurate, I volunteered,” he said. “Eagerly. This is because I have two uses at present. One, I can watch and listen to him make poetry. Two, I can hang about him, ostensibly to shield him from poetry-maddened females, but actually to do very little and enjoy the edifying experience of being invisible to the females.”

      “Despair not,” she said. “You weren’t invisible to Matron or the girls in the workroom.”

      “Be that as it may, I had a good deal more fun looking into your activities,” he said.

      Inside her head, a lot of panicked Leonies ran about screaming, What? What did he find? What did he see? Why?

      Outwardly, not so much as a muscle twitched, and she said, “That sounds tedious.”

      “It proved far more difficult than I expected,” he said. “You and your sisters are strangely quiet about your philanthropy.”

      The inner Leonie settled down and said, Oh, that’s all right, then.

      She said, “It isn’t much to boast about.”

      “Is it not?” He glanced back toward the room they’d left. “I’ve lived a sheltered life. Don’t think I’ve ever seen, in one room, so many girls who’ve led …” He paused, then closed his eyes and appeared to think. “Let us say, unsheltered lives.” He opened his eyes, the green darkening as he studied her for one unnerving moment. “You keep getting more interesting. It’s rather a trial.”

      “It’s business,” she said. “Some of the girls turn out to be more talented than others. We get to pick the crème de la crème as apprentices for Maison Noirot. Too, we’ve trained and educated them ourselves, which means that we know what we’re getting. We’re not as disinterested as your duchesses and countesses and such. It isn’t pure philanthropy.”

      “The fact remains, you pluck them from the streets and orphanages and workhouses.”

      She smiled. “We get them cheaply that way. Often for free.”

      She led him into the small shop, where the girls’ productions were on display. “If your lordship would condescend to buy a few of their trinkets, they’ll be in raptures,” she said.

      She moved to a battered counter and opened a glass display case.

      He stood for a moment, gazing at the collection of watch СКАЧАТЬ