said with a suspicious sweetness. “Joseph will help me.” She set down her cutlery, wiped her hands carefully on her napkin, and made to climb down from her throne. The footman Joseph obediently came forward, helped her down, and followed her to the sideboard. She pointed and he dutifully filled the plate according to her directions.
“It’s grand to be a duke,” the blonde sister said.
“So it is,” he said. “I live in a house large enough to accommodate your work without disrupting my own life. I have a good number of servants, all of whom will be happy to do something a little different, if offered. And I possess the resources to assist you, without the least discomfort to myself, in getting your business going again.”
Joseph set the filled plate down before Mrs. Noirot, then returned to Lucie, who directed him regarding her aunts’ breakfasts.
“Accommodate us?” Noirot said. “You can’t be serious.”
“I understand that time is of the essence,” he said. “You don’t wish to lose any more business than can absolutely be helped. I’ve consulted with Varley on the matter. It’s his opinion that a suitable new location can be found within a few days. In the meantime, he agreed that you can do what needs to be done more quickly and easily from here.”
“Here,” she repeated. “You’re suggesting we set up shop in Clevedon House.”
“It’s the simplest solution,” he said.
He knew it was. He’d thought about the problem and little else for most of the night. By concentrating on her business difficulties, he’d kept the other thoughts at bay. “I’m not used to so much drama in my life. I was too excited, you see, to fall asleep. While I lay awake, my mind gnawed on your dilemma.”
“It didn’t occur to you that your mind might be addled by all the excitement?”
“On the contrary, I believe my mind was sharpened by the experience, in the way that metal is sharpened after being thrust into a fierce flame,” he said.
Her dark gaze met his, and then he couldn’t block out the memory of their hurried, furious coupling on the worktable: her choked sounds of pleasure, the mad heat and ferocious joy…
Business, he told himself. Stick to business. Order. Logic.
“Mrs. Michaels can help you organize a proper work space,” he said. “You and your sisters may take my vehicles and servants, and purchase what you need to fill the most pressing orders. Your seamstresses may come here, as soon as you like, to start working. If you need additional help, Mrs. Michaels will select the better needlewomen from among the maids.”
Her face had gone very white, indeed. Her sisters were watching her. He couldn’t tell whether they were alarmed or not. They showed as little of their feelings as she did. But they must have sensed she needed help because the blonde jumped in.
“I like it better than our plan,” she said. “Marcelline was going to play cards, to win the money to buy what we needed.”
Marcelline.
He was aware of his pulse racing and of the mad excitement that made it race. So ridiculous. Through shipwreck, physical intimacy, catastrophic fire, they’d maintained the polite forms of address. She’d been “Noirot” to him and he was “your grace” or “Clevedon” to her. But now he sat among family members, and they’d revealed who she was to them.
He couldn’t say it aloud, but he could feel it on his tongue.
Marcelline. It was a name like a secret, a whisper in the dark.
She was all secrets and guile—and of course she would play cards to get money, he thought.
“We can send for Belcher,” the redhead said. “He and your grace’s solicitor—Varley, is it?—can draw up papers for a loan.”
“Nonsense,” Clevedon said. “Whatever your supplies cost can be only a fraction of what we give away to sundry charities every month.”
Noirot’s—Marcelline’s—color came and went. “We’re not a charity,” she said. She leaned toward him, and in a low, choked voice, she added, “I owe you my daughter’s life. Don’t make me owe you any more.”
His heart tightened into a fist, and it beat against his chest. There was a moment of pain so fierce he had to look away and catch his breath.
His gaze went to Lucie, the child he had saved.
Noirot thought it was a debt she owed him, one impossible to repay. She had no way of knowing the value of the gift he’d been given.
He couldn’t save Alice. He’d been far away when the accident happened. He knew he could never bring her back. He knew that saving this child could not bring her back.
But he knew, too, that when he’d carried Lucie, alive and unhurt, out of the burning building, he’d felt not only profound relief but a joy greater than anything he could have imagined.
Lucie, with Joseph’s help, was settling back upon her throne.
“It isn’t the same,” he said, scorning to whisper. Let the servants hear, and make what they would of it. “For once, put your pride aside and your need to dominate everybody, and do the sensible thing.”
“You’re the one who’s not being sensible,” she said. “Think of the talk.”
“My sister is being sensible in that regard, certainly,” the redhead said. “We can’t accept gifts from you, your grace. We’ve lost our shop, but we can’t lose our reputation.”
“We can’t give the tittle-tattles ammunition,” the blonde said. “Our rivals—”
“We have no rivals,” Noirot said, chin up, dark eyes flashing.
He bit back a smile.
“I mean, those who fancy themselves our rivals will be sure to tell lurid tales,” the blonde said.
He looked at Lucie. “What do you say, Erroll?”
“May I play with the dollhouse?”
“Of course you may, sweetling.”
To Noirot he said, “You three drive a hard bargain. A loan it is.”
“Thank you,” Noirot said. Her sisters echoed her. At her glance, they all rose. “May I leave Lucie in your servants’ care, your grace?” she said. “You’re all determined to spoil her, and she’s not going to discourage you, and I haven’t time for a battle of wills. We haven’t a minute to lose. We absolutely must have Lady Clara’s dress ready by seven o’clock this evening.”
He stared at her. “You must be joking,” he said. “Your shop burnt down. Surely your customers won’t expect you to complete orders today.”
“You don’t understand,” Marcelline said. “Lady Clara has nothing to wear to Almack’s tonight. I threw out all of her clothes. She must have that dress. I promised.”
Five o’clock that afternoon
Clevedon House was in a state of what its owner hoped was controlled chaos.
Servants hurried to and fro, some carrying in the goods the women had shopped for in the morning—what seemed to Clevedon like bales of fabric, along with boxes containing who knew what—while others raced from one part of the house to another, carrying messages or sustenance, fetching this or that from cupboards and closets and even the attics.
A bevy of seamstresses had arrived in the late morning, gaping at their surroundings before they disappeared into the rooms on the first floor set aside for the temporary workplace.
The redhead—Miss Leonie Noirot she turned out to be—at some point assured him that all would settle by tomorrow, once everyone was properly installed and their materials in place. She