Vixen In Velvet. Loretta Chase

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СКАЧАТЬ mantilla, attached to the tops of the sleeves, not only added drama but drew the eye upward, toward Lady Gladys’s ample bosom. It was, perhaps, not quite the thing for an unwed young lady, but Lady Gladys would look ridiculous in the types of dresses that suited the average maiden.

      She brought her hand up to the edge of the bodice. “It’s very low-cut,” she said.

      “But of course, my dear,” Marcelline said. “You have a beautiful bosom. We want to draw the eye to it.”

      “I’ll feel naked,” Lady Gladys said.

      “What’s wrong with that?” Lady Clara said. “You’ll feel naked and still look perfectly respectable.”

      “Hardly perfectly respectable,” said her cousin.

      “It’s all right to look tempting,” Lady Clara said.

      “Will you stop it!” Lady Gladys snapped, her vehemence startling everybody. “Stop being kind. I can’t tell you how provoking it is. No, wait, yes I can. You’ve only to crook a finger to have any man you want. You have no idea what it’s like to be—to be—not to be beautiful and sweet-natured!”

      “I’m not sweet at all,” Lady Clara said. “People only think that because of my looks.”

      “That’s the point! You can say anything!”

      “No, I can’t,” Lady Clara said sharply. “I can’t be myself. There’s Mama, looming over me all the time. You don’t know how suffocating it is.”

      “Oh, yes, all those men crowding about you, clamoring for a smile.”

      “They only see the outside. They don’t know who I am, or care particularly. You know me—or you ought to know. And you know I’m on your side and always have been, in spite of how difficult you make it.”

      Lady Gladys went scarlet and her eyes filled. “I don’t know how to behave!” she cried. “I don’t know how to do anything! You complain because your mother is always at you. But at least you have one. You’ve had women about to teach you how to be womanly. Look at me! My father’s a soldier, and I might as well have been raised in an army camp. He treats me like a regiment. He gives orders and then off he goes, to smash some Foe of England.” She flung away and stormed back to the dressing room. “Jeffreys! Get this thing off me!”

      With a panicked look at Leonie, Jeffreys trotted after her.

      Lady Clara stomped to a chair and flung herself onto it.

      Marcelline looked at Leonie.

      Leonie lifted her shoulders and mouthed, I have no idea.

      “What on earth is the matter?” Marcelline said to Lady Clara.

      “I don’t know,” Lady Clara said.

      “I can tell you what’s the matter,” Lady Gladys said from behind the curtain. “I’m not going to Almack’s tonight, no matter how they cajole. I told them I wouldn’t do that sort of thing ever again, yet Clara won’t stop plaguing me about it. And now you’ve given her this curst dress for ammunition!”

      “You look very well in it, but you’re too obstinate to admit it!” Lady Clara cried.

      “I don’t care if I look well. They should never have made it, because I’ll have no occasion to wear it. I don’t want it! I wish I’d never come to London!”

      Lady Clara sighed, braced her forehead with one hand, and stared at the floor.

      From behind the dressing room curtain came a choked sob.

      Other than that, the consulting rooms were silent, apparently peaceful.

      That was when Mary Parmenter came in, all flustered, to report that Lord Lisburne and Lord Swanton had arrived. They had business with Miss Noirot, they said. Should Mary ask them to wait in the showroom or in the office?

      “We’re busy,” Leonie said. “You may tell them to make an appointment.”

      She heard a gasp from behind the curtain. Then, “You can’t make Lord Swanton wait,” Lady Gladys called out shakily. “You’re not busy with me anymore. You might as well see what the gentlemen want.”

      “Tell them to make an appointment,” Leonie told Parmenter.

      Then she sent the others away and walked behind the curtain.

      Leonie found Lady Gladys sitting on the edge of the dressmaking platform, head in her hands.

      “I’m not talking to you,” her ladyship muttered. “You’re like a human thumbscrew.”

      “One of the secrets of our success is knowing our ladies’ minds,” Leonie said. “We squeeze it out of you one way or another. You might as well tell me and save us both energy we can employ more happily elsewhere.”

      “Happy!”

      Leonie dropped onto the platform beside her.

      Lady Gladys lifted her head. “You only pretend to be my friend. You only want me to order more clothes.”

      “I haven’t got to pretending to be your friend yet,” Leonie said. “But I do want you to order more clothes. Why else be in business?”

      “It hasn’t occurred to you that I might put you out of business? All of London knows you’ve taken me in hand. They’re already betting on the outcome.”

      In truth, of all the matters that might be making Lady Gladys irrational, this hadn’t been the first to cross Leonie’s mind—probably because of the large mental distraction known as the Marquess of Lisburne.

      Still, the betting didn’t surprise Leonie. Members of the ton, men and women alike, gambled, mainly because they were bored and idle. And whether they made bets or not, the women would be deeply interested in the results of Lady Gladys’s visits to the shop.

      Leonie knew this. It was, in fact, part of what had propelled her toward Lady Gladys. Once Maison Noirot succeeded in showing her ladyship at her best, all the fashionable world would be pounding on Maison Noirot’s doors.

      But her ladyship did have to cooperate.

      “Aristocrats wager about everything,” Leonie said briskly. “Naturally, you find it galling—”

      “Especially when Lady Bartham’s irritating daughter takes great pains to explain the terms,” Lady Gladys said. “As will not surprise you, the phrase ‘silk purse from sow’s ear’ came up more than once.”

      Lady Bartham was a close friend and venomous social rival of Lady Clara’s mother, Lady Warford. Leonie didn’t understand why anybody would make friends—or having made them in ignorance, continue—with an adder. She was aware that one of Lady Bartham’s daughters, Lady Alda, was equally toxic.

      “Some people are either so ignorant, self-centered, or deeply unhappy that hurting others makes them feel good,” Leonie said. “It’s perverse, but there it is. The best way to fight СКАЧАТЬ