Silk Is For Seduction - Loretta Chase [86]
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