Silk Is For Seduction - Loretta Chase [50]
“We can’t rely on the mail’s arriving late,” Sophy said. “I’ll have to find Tom Foxe tonight. But that might answer very well: a late-night summons . . . a story whispered in the dark. I’ll wear a disguise, and let him think I’m Lady So-and-So. He won’t be able to resist. We’ll have the front of the paper, a prime spot.”
“The ladies will flock to see the dress,” said Leonie. “We may even see some as early as tomorrow afternoon. I know for a fact that the Countess of Bartham reads the Spectacle devotedly.”
“The dress had better be on display, then,” Marcelline said. “It needs repairs. Jeffreys was able to clean it before the packet sailed, but she was too sick afterward to stitch the bodice. And I lost at least one papillon bow. What else?” She rubbed her head.
“We’re perfectly capable of seeing for ourselves what needs to be done,” Leonie said. “I’ll work on it while Sophy goes out to her clandestine meeting with Tom. You’d better go to bed.”
“You’ll want to be rested,” Sophy said. “We’ve got a—”
She broke off, and Marcelline looked up in time to catch the look Leonie sent Sophy.
“What?” Marcelline said. “What are you not telling me?”
“Really, Sophy, you might learn to curb your dramatic impulses,” Leonie said. “You can see she’s weary.”
“I did not say—”
“What haven’t you told me?” Marcelline said.
There was a pause. Her two younger sisters exchanged reproachful looks. Then Sophy said, “Someone is stealing your designs and giving them to Horrible Hortense.”
Marcelline looked to Leonie for confirmation.
“It’s true,” Leonie said. “We’ve a spy in our midst.”
On Monday night, Lady Clara Fairfax received a note from the Duke of Clevedon, informing her of his return to London and of his wish to call on her on Tuesday afternoon, if convenient.
The family were not usually at home to callers on Tuesday, but the usual rules did not apply to the Duke of Clevedon. For one thing, as her father’s former ward, his grace was considered a part of the family; for another, he was no better at following rules than her brothers were. Papa had forbidden Clevedon and Harry to go abroad three years ago, citing the raging cholera epidemic. They went anyway, leaving Papa no alternative but to shrug and say Clevedon needed to sow his wild oats, and since Longmore was bound to do damage somewhere, it might as well be in another country.
The Tuesday appointment was not, in short, inconvenient to anybody else, and Lady Clara told herself it wasn’t inconvenient to her, either. She had missed Clevedon, truly, especially when Longmore was behaving in a particularly obnoxious manner and in dire need of one of the duke’s crushing setdowns—or, better yet, his powerful left fist.
But Clevedon in person was a different proposition than Clevedon via letter.
Now that he was here, she wasn’t sure she was ready for him to be here.
But any doubts or shyness she’d felt vanished the instant he entered the drawing room on Tuesday. He wore the same affectionate smile she knew of old, and she smiled at him in the same way. She loved him dearly, always had, and she knew he loved her.
“Good grief, Clara, you might have warned me you’d grown,” he said, stepping back to look her over, quite as he used to do when he came home from school. “You must be two inches taller at least.”
He didn’t remember, she thought. She’d always been a tall girl. She hadn’t grown at all since last he saw her. He was used to French women, she supposed. The observation, which she wouldn’t have hesitated to put in a letter, she wouldn’t dream of uttering aloud, most certainly not in front of her mother.
“I should hope she is not such a gawky great Amazon as that,” said Mama. “Clara is the same as she ever was, only perhaps a little more womanly than you recollect.”
Mama meant more shapely. For a time, she’d claimed that Clevedon had “run away” because Clara was too thin. A man liked a woman to have some flesh on her—and she would never have a good figure if she would not eat.
It hadn’t occurred to Mama at the time that Grandmama Warford had