Silk Is For Seduction - Loretta Chase [135]
Lady Adelaide agreed with the queen that the Duchess of Clevedon, in intending to keep up her shop, presented the Court with a social dilemma. On the other hand, said her ladyship, the duchess acted on good moral principle in being unwilling to abandon either her customers or the young women she was training as seamstresses. In any event, as the duke had pointed out to his aunts, one could not expect an artist to give up her art.
In the end, Lady Adelaide received permission to present the new duchess to the queen. She did so at the Drawing Room held in honor of the King’s Birthday, commemorated on the 28th of May. At one point during the festivities, the king summoned Clevedon, and spoke to him privately. His Majesty was heard to laugh.
When Clevedon returned to his wife’s side, she said, “What was that about?”
“The Princess Erroll of Albania,” Clevedon said. “He asked after her.” His smile was conspiratorial. “I think we’ve done it. They’ve decided I’m eccentric and you’re irresistible.”
“Or the other way about,” she said.
“Does it matter?” he said.
“No,” she said. She bent her head, and the sound was soft, but he recognized it. “Duchess,” he said, “are you giggling?”
She looked up, laughter dancing in her dark eyes. “I was only thinking: This has to be the greatest trick any Noirot or DeLucey has ever brought off.”
“And to think,” he said, “this is only the beginning.”
Not many days thereafter, in the course of a promenade in St. James’s Park, Miss Lucie Cordelia Noirot allowed the Princess Victoria to admire Susannah. The doll, as would be expected, was dressed for the occasion, in a lilac pelisse and a bonnet of paille de riz, trimmed with white ribbons and two white feathers.
About the Author
After a heroic attempt to be an English major forever, LORETTA CHASE stoically accepted her degree but kept on reading and writing. As well as working in academe, she had an enlightening if brief life in retail and a Dickensian six-month experience as a meter maid. In the course of moonlighting as a corporate video scriptwriter, she succumbed to the charm of a producer, who lured her into writing novels . . . and marrying him. The union has resulted in what seems like an awful lot of books and quite a few awards, including the Romance Writers of America’s RITA®. To learn more, please visit www.LorettaChase.com. To get in touch, please e-mail her at Author@LorettaChase.com.
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By Loretta Chase
Silk Is For Seduction
Last Night’s Scandal
Don’t Tempt Me
Your Scandalous Ways
Not Quite A Lady
The Last Hellion
Lord of Scoundrels
Captives of the Night
The Lion’s Daughter
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Loretta Chekani. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780062092366
FIRST EDITION
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