Regency Rogues and Rakes. Anna Campbell

to the heart and then lower down.

      “So it would seem,” he said. “A more dangerous trade than I’d supposed.”

      “You’ve no idea,” she said.

      “This promises to be interesting,” he said. “I’ll see you at Frascati’s.”

      He made her a bow, and it was pure masculine grace, the smooth and confident movement of a man completely at ease in his powerful body.

      He took his leave, and she watched him saunter away. she watched scores of elegant hats and bonnets change direction as other women watched him pass.

      She’d thrown down the gauntlet and he’d taken it up, as she’d known he would.

      Now all she had to do was not end up on her back with that splendid body between her legs.

      That was not going to be easy.

      But then, if it were easy, it wouldn’t be much fun.

       London

       Wednesday night

      Mrs. Downes waited in a carriage a short distance from the seamstress’s lodgings. Shortly after half-past nine, the seamstress passed the carriage. She glanced up but didn’t stop walking. A moment later, Mrs. Downes stepped down from the carriage, continued down the street, and greeted the young woman as though theirs was an accidental encounter of two old acquaintances. They asked after each other’s health. Then they walked a few steps to the door of the house where the seamstress lived. After a moment of conversation, the seamstress withdrew from her pocket a folded piece of paper.

      Mrs. Downes reached for it.

      “The money first,” the seamstress said.

      “Let me see what it is first,” Mrs. Downes said. “For all I know, it’s nothing out of the way.”

      The seamstress stepped closer to the street lamp and opened the folded sheet of paper.

      Mrs. Downes gave a little gasp, and hastily covered it up with a disdainful sniff. “Is that all? My girls can run up something like that in an hour. It’s hardly worth half a crown, let alone a sovereign.”

      The seamstress folded up the paper. “Well, then, let them do it if they can,” she said. “I’ve made notes on the back about how it’s done, but I’m sure your clever girls don’t need any help working out how to keep those folds the way she has them, or how to make those bows. And you don’t need to know which ribbon she uses and who she gets it from. No, indeed, you don’t want any of that. So I’ll take this in with me, shall I, and throw it on the fire. I know how it’s done, and Madame knows how it’s done, and one or two of our less clumsy girls know the trick.”

      This particular seamstress spoke dismissively of the others, deeming herself superior to them and not half-properly appreciated. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been standing in the street, late at night, when she was hungry for her supper. She certainly wouldn’t be talking to the competition if Some People valued her as they ought to do.

      “No, madam, you don’t need a bit of it,” she said, “and I wonder at your coming out at this hour, wasting your valuable time.”

      “Yes, I’ve wasted quite enough,” Mrs. Downes reached into her reticule. “Here’s your money. But if you want more, you’d better bring me something better.”

      “How much more?” the seamstress said as she pocketed the money.

      “One can’t do much with scraps. One dress at a time. The book of sketches, now that would be worth something.”

      “It certainly would,” said the seamstress. “It would be worth my place. It’s one thing to copy a pattern. But the book of sketches? She’d miss it right away, and they’re sharp, those three, you know.”

      “If she lost her book of sketches, she’d lose everything,” Mrs. Downes said. “You’d have to find another place then. And I daresay seeking new employment would be a more agreeable experience, were you to have twenty guineas to ease the way.”

      A lady’s maid in a noble household might earn twenty guineas per annum. That was a great deal more than an experienced seamstress was paid.

      “Fifty,” the seamstress. “It’s worth fifty to you, I know, to have her out of your way, and I won’t risk it for less.”

      Mrs. Downes drew in a long, slow breath while she did some quick calculations. “Fifty, then. But it must be everything. You’d better note every last detail. I’ll know right away, and if I can’t make an exact copy, you shan’t have a penny.” She stalked away.

      The seamstress watched her retreating back and said, under her breath, “As if you could make any kind of copy, you stupid hag, if I didn’t tell you every last detail.”

      She chinked the coins in her pocket and went into the house.

       Paris, the same night

      Since the Italian Opera was closed on Wednesdays, Clevedon took himself to the Théâtre des Varieties, where he could count on being amused as well as treated to a superior performance. Perhaps, too, he might find Madame Noirot there.

      When she failed to appear, he grew bored with the entertainment, and debated whether to cut his stay short and proceed directly to Frascati’s.

      But Clara looked forward to his reports, and he’d failed to give her an account of Tuesday’s performance of The Barber of Seville, one of her favorites. Now he recalled that he’d come away from Longchamps with nothing as well—nothing, that is, he chose to describe to Clara.

      He stayed, and dutifully made notes in his little pocket notebook.

      Its pages held none of Madame Noirot’s remarks about Clara’s style—or lack thereof. At the time, he’d dismissed them from his mind. Or so he’d thought. Yet he found them waiting, as though the curst dressmaker had sewn them onto his brain.

      When last he’d seen Clara, she’d been in mourning for her grandmother. Perhaps grief’s colors did not become her. The style…Confound it, she was grieving! What did she care whether she wore the latest mode? She was a beautiful girl, he told himself, and a beautiful girl could wear anything—not that it mattered to him, because he loved her for herself, and had done so for as long as he could remember.

      Still, if Clara were to dress as that provoking dressmaker did…

      The thought came and hung in his mind through the last scenes of the performance. He saw Clara, magnificently garbed, making men’s heads turn. He saw himself proudly in possession of this masterpiece, the envy of every other man.

      Then he realized what he was thinking. “Devil take her,” he said under his breath. “She’s poisoned my mind, the witch.”

      “What is it, my friend?”

      Clevedon turned to find Gaspard Aronduille regarding him with concern.

      “Does it truly matter what a woman wears?” Clevedon said.

      The Frenchman’s eyes widened and his head went back, as though Clevedon had slapped him. “Is this a joke?” he said.

      “I want to know,” Clevedon said. “Does it really matter?”

      Aronduille looked about him in disbelief. “Only an Englishman would ask such a question.”

      “Does it?”

      “But of course.”

      “Only a Frenchman would say so,” said Clevedon.

      “We are right, and I will tell you why.”

      The opera ended, but the debate didn’t. Aronduille called in reinforcements from their circle of acquaintance. The Frenchmen debated the subject from every possible philosophical viewpoint, all the way to the Hotel Frascati.

      There