Silk Is For Seduction - Loretta Chase [107]
Erroll quieted. The motion of her eyes told Marcelline the child was thinking. She was only six, and children had difficulties with logic, but the prospect of being a princess might suffice to distract her.
The tempest over, Sarah said, “I’ll tell you what, Miss Erroll. Let’s have our tea with the dolls, then we’ll take a walk in the Green Park. Perhaps we’ll see the Princess Victoria. Do you know who she is, miss? She’s the king’s niece, and one day she’ll be the Queen of England.”
“If you do see her,” Marceline said, “you must take special note of what she’s wearing, and tell us all about it.”
While a little girl threw a tantrum on St. James’s Street, the Earl of Longmore was throwing his own in the library of Clevedon House.
Clevedon caught hold of his friend’s arm. There was some pushing, and a brief scuffle. Then the shouting started.
Halliday had tactfully taken himself out of the room and closed the door. Having failed to break Clevedon’s jaw or provoke him into a duel, Longmore was drinking the duke’s brandy to sustain him while he paced the room and raged in his usual hotheaded fashion.
Clevedon knew he deserved a dressing down. All the same, it was very hard to bear. It was not as though he was enjoying himself. His life, at the moment, seemed to be utter excrement.
“You don’t deserve my sister,” Longmore said. “I should never have come to Paris. She raked me over the coals for doing it. She was right. I should have left you there to rot. I should have encouraged her to look elsewhere. I should have told her the leopard doesn’t change his spots. But no, I was completely taken in. I wondered why you came back so soon—but I told myself it was because you’d realized how much you missed Clara. Gad, I was a naïve as she is!”
“I don’t recall appointing a particular time to return,” Clevedon said.
“I told you the end of the month was soon enough,” Longmore said. “I knew you weren’t done. I only wanted to be able to tell my mother you were coming back. I wish now I’d told her to mark you down in the column under dead losses. I’ve half a mind to tell her so now.”
“If this is about the dressmakers—”
“Who else would it be about?” Longmore snapped. “Who else has been so thoroughly lost to propriety—”
“ ‘Lost to propriety,’ ” Clevedon echoed. “I can’t believe those words are issuing from your mouth. When did you ever care for propriety? As I recall, your father was happy enough to pack you off to the Continent.”
“I’ve never pretended to be a saint—”
“Good thing, too. No one would believe you.”
“But I don’t invite milliners to sleep in the ancestral home!”
“They were burnt out of their lodgings,” Clevedon said. “It was in all the papers. Do you think that was a fabrication? But why the devil do I ask? If you were rational, you wouldn’t be here, guzzling my brandy as though it was Almack’s lemonade—”
“I never drink the filthy stuff.”
“You’re not rational. I don’t know what’s got into you, and I’m not sure I care. But the women are gone. I took them in for only a few days—”
“You couldn’t put them up at a hotel?”
“You don’t understand a damned thing,” Clevedon said. “They have a business to run. They can’t afford to lose time. They needed a place to work. They needed help. Bringing them here was the simplest plan. They drove themselves to distraction to finish a dress for Clara—”
“Don’t speak of her and them in the same breath, you philandering swine.”
“They’re gone, you idiot! I had them packed up and out of here in seventy-two hours. They were gone on Saturday morning.”
“And you were in bed with the brunette on Friday night,” Longmore said.
It was completely unexpected. It was like one of Longmore’s lightning blows, coming from the one angle one wasn’t prepared for.
For a moment Clevedon saw red, literally: flames danced before his eyes. He clenched his fists, and when he spoke, his voice was deadly calm. “The temptation to knock you down is nearly overwhelming,” he said.
“Don’t act all nobly outraged with me, as though I’ve compromised her virtue.