Silk Is For Seduction - Loretta Chase [66]
“It’s upsetting when someone takes one’s clothes away,” Clara said. “I find I’m not as philosophically detached as I had supposed. But why are you here, at the house, I mean? You know Papa is never at home on Tuesdays, and you would never come to see Mama, even if she were at home, which she isn’t, else Mrs. Noirot wouldn’t be here. She’s my dark secret, you know.”
“I came to take you for a drive,” Clevedon said. Had she always used to be so talkative?
“But you can see I’m not at liberty. Why did you not tell me you meant to come?”
“I did, on Saturday.”
“You did not. You did not spare me above five minutes on Saturday, and if you uttered ten words to me, that’s all you did. Today, obviously, is inconvenient.”
“We’re nearly done,” Noirot said.
“Hardly,” Clara said. “Now we must decide what to tell Mama.”
Noirot didn’t roll her eyes, which he considered evidence of superhuman self-control. Clara was driving him mad, and he’d only been here for a few minutes. Noirot must be wanting to throttle her.
But her expression only became kindly. “Tell her, my lady, that one can’t expect a fashionable gentleman—who has spent time in Paris—to come up to scratch—”
“Come up to what?” Clevedon said.
“—when one looks like a dowd and a fright and elderly to boot,” Noirot continued past the interruption. “Be sure to hold your head high when you say it, and make it sound like a fact that ought to be obvious to the meanest intelligence. And if there’s a difficulty, throw a tantrum. That’s what high-bred girls generally do.”
“But I never did,” Clara said aghast.
“A moment ago you stamped your foot,” Clevedon said. “You pouted, too.”
“I did not!”
“Your ladyship was too distressed to realize,” Noirot said. “However, you must do it with greater force and with absolute confidence in the rightness of your cause. Still, we must remember that a temper fit is simply a way to obtain the audience’s notice. Once you have her ladyship’s full attention, you will become sweet reason itself, and tell her this anecdote.”
Noirot folded her hands and, while Clevedon and Clara watched, astonished, her eyes filled. The tears hung there, glistening, but did not fall. She said, “Dearest Mama, I know you do not wish for me to be mortified in front of all my acquaintance. And here,” Noirot added in a more normal voice, “be sure to mention somebody your mother loathes. And when her ladyship says this is all nonsense, as she well might, you will tell her about the French gentleman who was mad in love with a married woman—”
“That isn’t the sort of thing for Clara to—”
“Pray let her finish,” Clara said. “You’re the one who brought me to this aggravating person, and I’ve steeled myself to suffer with her in order to be beautiful.”
“Your ladyship is already beautiful,” Noirot said. “How many times must I repeat it? That’s what’s so infuriating. A perfect diamond must have the perfect setting. A masterpiece must have the perfect frame. A—”
“Yes, yes, but we know that argument won’t work with Mama. What about the gentleman and the married woman?”
“His friends reasoned with him, pleaded with him—all in vain,” Noirot said. “Then, one night, at an entertainment, the lady asked him to fetch her shawl. He hastened to serve her, imagining the silken softness of a cashmere shawl, the scent of the woman he loved enhancing its perfection . . .”
Clevedon remembered Noirot’s scent, the memory reawakened only minutes ago: the scent her bonnet held. He remembered inhaling her, his face in her neck.
“. . . a cashmere shawl that would put all the other ladies’ cashmeres to shame. He found the garment but—quelle horreur!—not cashmere at all. Rabbit hair! Sick with disgust, he fell instantly and permanently out of love, and abandoned her.”
Clara stared at her. “You’re roasting me,” she said.
Clevedon collected himself and said, “You’ll find the anecdote in Lady Morgan’s book about France. It was published some years ago, but the principle remains. I wish you’d seen my friend Aronduille’s face when I asked him whether it mattered what a woman wore. I wish you