Chapter 10
Ten
The Duke of Marchmont had arranged with Lexham to collect the ladies and take them to the Queen’s House in his state coach.
The vehicle was one he employed on ceremonial occasions, and it was large enough to accommodate comfortably a pair of ladies in hooped petticoats and two gentlemen encumbered with dress swords.
Only three would travel in the carriage today, though, because Lexham was otherwise engaged.
Marchmont arrived a little before his time, more uneasy than he’d ever admit to being. He’d attended too many levees and Drawing Rooms to view them as anything more than social events.
This occasion, though, could determine Zoe’s future. It could decide whether she would move freely in the ton, as all her sisters did, or be pushed to its fringes, permanently on the outside looking in.
While he waited at the bottom of the main staircase, however, his mind wasn’t on the challenge ahead but on the dinner party of the previous week. In the cold light of the following day, and in the dark misery of the world’s vilest headache, he had not been happy with his behavior.
He hadn’t seen her since then. He’d told himself he didn’t need to.
He’d done all he could. He’d helped her order her wardrobe for the Season—or at least the start of her wardrobe.
He’d accomplished the impossible by finding a horse lively enough to suit her while not the sort of fire-breather liable to kill her.
He’d had her measured for a saddle and fitted for riding attire.
He’d obtained the crucial invitation to the Drawing Room.
The rest was up to her, and if she—
The sound of rustling fabric made him look up.
She appeared at the landing.
She paused there and smiled, then flipped open her fan and held it in front of her face, concealing all but her eyes—while meanwhile, below, the low, square neckline of her gown concealed almost nothing.
The deep blue eyes glinted as they regarded him.
“How splendid you are,” she said.
He wore a satin frock coat with an extravagantly embroidered silk waistcoat and the obligatory knee breeches. Under his arm he carried the required chapeau bras. His court sword hung at his side.
“Not a fraction as splendid as you,” he said.
She was beyond splendid. She was…delicious.
Younger women viewed court gowns as ridiculous and old-fashioned.
They were, certainly, when one tried to combine today’s fashion for high waists with the great skirts of olden times.
But he’d told Madame Vérelet to drop the waistline of Zoe’s court gown.
The bodice and petticoat were a deep rose sarsnet.
The combination of vibrant color and lowered waist created a more balanced effect.
The layers of silver net and the delicate lace trimming the drapery and train made her seem to be rising out of a cloud upon which sunlight sparkled, thanks to the diamonds her mother and sisters must have lent her.
The gems adorned the gown, her neck and ears, her plumed headdress, her gloved arms, and her fan.
It helped, too, that Zoe didn’t seem to regard hoops as an encumbrance. Judging by the way she descended the stairs, she seemed to have adopted them as an instrument of seduction.
She closed the fan and made her way down slowly, every sway of the skirts suggestive.
His mouth went dry.
“Ah, well done, well done,” came Lexham’s voice beside him.
Belatedly, Marchmont discovered his erstwhile guardian, who must have come out into the hall while Marchmont was gawking at Zoe and getting exactly the sorts of ideas he strongly suspected she wanted him to have, the little devil.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, her father walked to her and kissed her cheek. His eyes glistened with unshed tears. “How glad I am to see this day arrived at last,” he said.
If all went well, this day would give Zoe the life she would have had if she had grown up in the way her sisters had done.
If all went well.
Lady Lexham followed Zoe down the stairs a moment later. “Isn’t she lovely?” said she. “How clever you were about the dress, Marchmont. There will be nothing like it at court today—and next week, everyone will want the same thing.”
“That’s why he’s a leader of fashion,” said Zoe.
“And all this time I thought it was my wit and charm.”
“Try to be dull on the way to the Queen’s House,” Zoe said.
“I have a thousand things to remember: what to say and what not to say. Mainly it’s what not to say.
If I were wearing the usual kind of dress, I could simply tell Mama to kick me if I said the wrong thing—but with all this great tent under me, it would take forever to find something to kick, and by then I should have disgraced myself. ”
“Never fear,” said Marchmont. “If I detect the smallest sign of your going astray, I’ll create a diversion. I’ll accidentally trip over my sword.”
“There, you see, is the mark of a true nobleman, Zoe,” said her father. “He’ll fall on his sword for you.”
“I said I’d get her through this and I shall,” said Marchmont. “I shall do whatever is necessary.” His gaze reverted to Zoe, floating in her cloud of rose and silver. “Ready, brat?”
She smiled a slow, beatific smile, and a summer sun broke out upon the world.
“Ready,” she said.
It was the most amazing sight. As they neared the Queen’s House, Zoe watched long lines of carriages advancing through the Green Park from Hyde Park.
Others—from the Horse Guards and St. James’s, Marchmont said—came by way of the Mall.
Along both routes people crowded, watching the parade of vehicles.
She heard the blare of trumpets and the crack of guns.
As they neared the courtyard, where they were to alight, she saw another line of carriages going the other way, heading toward what Mama said was Birdcage Walk.
“I wish I could open the window,” she said.
“Don’t be silly, Zoe,” said her mother.
“You want to hang out of it, I don’t doubt,” said Marchmont. “Your plumes will fall off into the dirt, and the dust will coat your gown. You may open the window when we depart. Nobody will care what you look like then.”
“It’s beyond anything,” she said. “Everyone said there would be a great crowd, but I had no idea.”
The carriage stopped and she took her nose away from the glass to which it had been pressed. She smoothed her skirts, not because they needed it but because she relished the feel of the silver net, like gossamer. “I feel like a princess,” she said.
“The princesses are agreeable enough ladies, but I fear you’ll outshine them,” said Marchmont. “Perhaps I should have let you hang out of the window after all.”
She smiled at him. She couldn’t help it. He’d tried her patience the week before, but she had missed him, and seeing him at the bottom of the stairs today had made her heart lift. Descending the stairs, she’d felt as light as a cloud.
He had called her “brat,” as he used to do so long ago.
And though he’d stood in all his grandeur of court dress, looking every inch the duke he was, descended from a very long line of them—for all that pomp, he was Lucien, too.
The coach door opened.
It was time.
They all knew who she was, and Marchmont wasn’t in the least surprised.
Only the London mob—ordinary people—had been present when she’d appeared on the balcony of Lexham House.
Few if any members of the aristocracy would have been in that crowd, mingling with the unwashed.
He doubted that anyone in the entrance hall of the Queen’s House had seen any more of Zoe than the caricatures and the single etching that had accompanied Beardsley’s story.
Pamphlets having sold like Holland bulbs during the tulip craze, a book version had come out this week, the more expensive editions containing colored illustrations of her adventures.
That was all anyone in Society but the handful who’d attended the dinner had seen of Miss Lexham.
The world knew who she was all the same. Even the Beau Monde was capable, in desperate circumstances, of putting two and two together. Its members observed him and observed her mother and drew the logical conclusion.
They also drew away, insofar as the crowded quarters and court dress would allow. The hall was the customary seething sea of people, the ladies with their gloved hands down, keeping their hoops compressed—and out of range of the gentlemen’s swords.
He was aware of some of the ladies compressing a little more tightly and edging away from Zoe, as though in fear of contamination.
He fumed, but there was nothing he could do except remember the names of each and every lady who did this and resolve that each and every one of them would live to regret it very much, indeed.
He felt a hand on his arm and looked down.
It was Zoe’s hand, encased in its long white glove, with diamond bracelets hanging from the wrist. She’d had to draw near to touch him, her elbows being occupied with keeping the hoops out of danger.
Her scent wafted up to him, rising, he was all too aware, from the warm flesh abundantly displayed mere inches from his nose and framed in lace and rose-colored satin.
The bottommost and largest diamond of her necklace nestled in the inviting valley between her breasts.
“You look very dangerous,” she said in an undertone. “You can’t murder them only because they’re…shy.” She smiled up at him.
“I was not looking danger—‘Shy’?”
“Let’s pretend that’s what it is.”
He preferred to imagine himself knocking their plumed headdresses off their heads.
“Never mind them,” she said. “They don’t trouble me. When first I went into the harem, almost everyone tried to make me feel unwanted, and they were much less inhibited about it than English ladies.”