Silk Is For Seduction - Loretta Chase [92]
They certainly did press about her, a greater throng of them than usual. That, he supposed, was as she deserved. She looked very well in the dress Noirot and her women had slaved over. More important, he saw on the London ladies’ faces the same expressions he’d noticed on their Parisian counterparts. He wished Noirot could see those faces.
The time dragged on until at last he could claim his one dance. As he led her out, he told Clara she was the most beautiful girl in the place.
“The dress makes more of a difference than I could have guessed,” she said. “I couldn’t believe Madame Noirot was able to complete it so quickly, after all that had happened.”
“She was determined,” he said.
She glanced up at him and swiftly away and said, “Your dressmaker is a proud creature, I think.”
Proud. Obstinate. Passionate.
“She’s your dressmaker, my dear, not mine,” he said.
“Everyone says she’s yours. She lives in your house, with her family. Have you adopted her?”
“I didn’t know what else to do with them on short notice,” he said.
There was a pause in the conversation as they began to dance. Then Clara said, “I read once, that if one saves someone’s life, the person saved belongs to the rescuer.”
“I beg you won’t start that ridiculous hero talk, too,” he said. “It isn’t as though a man has a choice. If your mother had been trapped in that burning shop, I should have hardly stood by, looking on. Longmore would have done exactly what I did, no matter what he says.”
“Oh, he had something to say,” Clara said. “When he returned to Warford House after visiting you today, he told Mama not to make a fuss over a lot of dictatorial milliners. He said it was just like you to house the provoking creatures. He said they were ridiculous. Their shop had burned down, their child had nearly burnt to death, they had nothing but the clothes on their backs and some rubbishy ledgers, yet all they could think about was making my dress.”
“They’re dictatorial,” he said. “You saw for yourself.”
He’d seen, too: Noirot, as imperious as a queen, ordering Clara about.
So sure of herself. So obstinate. So passionate.
“I daresay everyone is shocked at me for having anything to do with her,” Clara said.
“Everyone is easily shocked,” he said.
“But I wanted the dress,” she said. “In spite of what Harry said, Mama didn’t want to let Mrs. Noirot in the house. But I made a dreadful fuss, and she gave in. I’m a vain creature, it seems.”
“What nonsense,” he said. “It’s long past time you stopped hiding your light under a bushel. Sometimes I wonder whether your mother—”
He broke off, dismayed at what he’d been about to say, and shocked that he’d only thought of it now: that her vain, proud mother had deliberately dressed her daughter like a dowd. She’d done it in hopes of keeping the other men off, because she was saving Clara for Clevedon.
She’d been saving Clara for a man who loved her but didn’t want to be here, didn’t want this life, and ached for something else, though he wasn’t sure what the something else was.
No, he knew what it was.
But it was no use knowing because it was the one thing his power, position, and money couldn’t buy.
“What were you about to observe regarding my mother?” Clara said.
“She’s protective,” he lied. “More than you like, I don’t doubt. But you got what you wanted in the end.”
He didn’t notice the searching gaze Clara sent up at him. His own attention was wandering to the ladies’ dresses floating about them. Nearly all wore the latter stages of court mourning: every shade of white, some black, soft shapes against the stark angles of black and white and grey of the men’s attire.
The air was warm, and thick with scent, recalling another time and place. But this wasn’t like Paris, and the difference wasn’t merely the monochromatic colors.
It was the monochromatic