Regency Rogues and Rakes: Silk is for Seduction / Scandal Wears Satin / Vixen in Velvet / Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed / A Rake's Midnight Kiss / What a Duke Dares. Loretta Chase

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ