Allowances
Chapter seven
Violet
Madame Renard’s establishment occupied the first floor of a narrow building on Conduit Street.
The stairs were carpeted. The walls were papered in a pale stripe.
At the top of the stairs a woman perhaps in her forties met them with a curtsey that was precisely calibrated to be deep enough for a duchess, shallow enough to suggest that she curtsied to duchesses regularly.
“Your Grace, what a pleasure. Mrs Greer, how well you look. And Miss Baker, do come through.”
The fitting room was warm and smelled of new cloth and lavender. Bolts of fabric lined the walls. A large glass stood in the corner. Two young women in plain dresses waited with pincushions at their wrists.
“I have taken the liberty of selecting several fabrics I thought might suit Your Grace’s colouring.” Madame Renard gestured toward a table on which six or seven lengths of cloth had been laid out. “Now, then. If Your Grace would be so good as to step behind the screen.”
Violet stepped behind the screen. She removed the blue dress and stood in her chemise and stays. Madame Renard’s face made a small, unmistakable wince, but she said nothing. One of her assistants took the blue dress and hung it up. The other brought a tape measure.
Madame measured her and called out the numbers which one of the assistants wrote down.
“Your Grace is very slender.” Madame Renard wound the tape around her waist a second time.
“We shall want to build the bodice to give some fullness here.” A finger tapped Violet’s sternum.
“And here.” A tap on each hip. “The right boning and the right cut will do a great deal. A great deal can always be done, Your Grace, with the right modiste.”
Violet’s hands clenched at her sides. The underhanded insult cut where it had intended.
“Now, I understand we are dressing for Lady Carstairs’s ball.
” The woman moved around her, eyes appraising.
“That is rather soon, but I think we can manage. I always say one can do a great deal with the right fabric and a willing client.” She paused at Violet’s stays and ran a fingertip along the boning.
“These are quite old, Your Grace. We shall want new ones before anything else. The foundation must be right, or everything built upon it shows.” She turned to her assistant.
“Fetch the French coutil, the firm weight. And the longer busk.”
Violet’s hands clenched at her sides. Nothing the woman had said was wrong. The stays were old. The foundation did matter. But the pause, the taps, the way she had said everything built upon it shows—those were not about stays.
Sarah, who was standing by the wall watching, dropped her gaze to the floor.
“I think that will be all, Madame Renard.” Violet ran her palms over her dress and stepped down from the small platform.
The modiste’s smile faltered. “Your Grace, we have not yet discussed—”
“Thank you. You have been most informative.”
She stepped behind the screen and Sarah helped her dress. When she came out, she did not look at Madame Renard. She thanked the assistants, walked down the stairs and out into Conduit Street.
Sarah caught up with her in the street. Mrs Greer, who had been waiting in the carriage, looked alarmed.
“Your Grace?”
“I should like to go home, Mrs Greer.”
She climbed into the carriage. She sat with her hands in her lap. Sarah climbed in after her and sat opposite.
“Your Grace,” Sarah said, as the carriage turned onto Regent Street. “Madame Renard is a very fine dressmaker.”
“I am sure she is.”
“There are other dressmakers, Your Grace.”
“I do not wish to discuss it, Sarah.”
The carriage moved through the streets. Violet watched London pass the window.
She went upstairs when they arrived. She went to her bedroom and closed the door. It came up at last, in the privacy of an empty room, with no one to see her. A few seconds of shaking, a breath she could not let out evenly. Her vision blurred, and she wiped the tears with the back of her hand.
She straightened and rang for Sarah. Mrs Greer had sent word that His Grace would not be home for dinner.
She had not seen him since he turned away from her and accused her of lying.
She did not know if he would come to her tonight, whether the anger had hardened and he was now with his solicitor discussing the terms of her removal.
She did not know, and the not knowing sat in her chest. She feared his coming and feared his absence and could not have said which would be worse.
Later that evening, alone, she poured the cold remains of her morning tea through a twist of muslin and held the residue to the candle.
The sediment was finer than tea dust, pale where tea would be dark.
She folded it into a paper, wrote the date, and put it at the back of the desk drawer.
She did not know what it was. She knew it was not tea.
She woke to boots on the stairs. Heavy and uneven, one heel landing clean and the next dragging half a beat behind.
She lay still and listened.
The boots reached the landing and came down the corridor toward her room. They passed her door. They stopped. Then they came back, the handle turned, and the door swung open.
The duke stood in the doorway with a candle in his hand, tilting. Wax ran down his fingers. He did not seem to notice.
“Violet.”
His voice was thicker than she had heard it, slower, with the consonants softened at the edges. He smelled of brandy and cigar smoke and the cold night air, and beneath all of it a perfume that was not his, sweet and floral.
She sat up and pulled the covers to her chest. The fire had burned to embers, but there was enough light to see him.
His cravat hung undone around his neck. His waistcoat was unbuttoned.
His hair, which she had only ever seen combed back from his face, had fallen forward across his brow. His eyes would not hold steady on hers.
He set the candle on the corner table, swaying slightly. It took him two attempts.
“You were asleep.” He was pronouncing each word with deliberate care but failing to sound sober.
“I was.”
“I woke you.”
“Yes.”
He pulled at his cravat and let it fall to the floor.
He shrugged off his coat, which landed on the chair half on and half off.
He sat on the edge of her bed without invitation, and the mattress dipped under his weight.
He began to work at his boots. The first came off.
The second gave him difficulty, and he yanked at it with both hands until it came free and hit the floor with a thud.
“So many women tonight.” He pulled his shirt over his head, lost his bearings inside it, and emerged with his hair wilder than before.
“Beautiful women. You would not… You cannot imagine. Cranbrook had the Fontaine sisters. Wiltshire brought his…” He waved a hand.
“They were everywhere. Laughing and touching. A man cannot think.”
Violet said nothing. She sat with her hands in her lap beneath the covers.
He stood and unfastened his trousers and stepped out of them. He turned toward her, already half aroused, and then seemed to remember what he had come for, because he moved to the small table and opened the drawers where the vial of oil was kept.
“Had me thinking about you.” He took out the vial and held it. “All those women, and I was thinking about you. My wife.” He held up the vial and raised it as if to toast. “Is that not… something.”
“No.”
He froze, the vial still half raised.
“No?”
“No.”
He turned to face her fully.
She avoided looking at his naked body while he blinked at her. In the firelight, she could see the silhouette of his lean body. She did not think any wife had ever said no to him.
“I will not lie with you when you are in this state.”
“What state?” He looked down at himself as though checking.
“You are deep in your cups.”
“I am not. I am…” He looked up at the ceiling. “Relaxed.”
“You cannot even stand without swaying.”
He straightened his spine while rocking side to side.
“I have had a few glasses of brandy. It is what men do at their clubs. We drink. We talk. We come home to our wives.”
“You come home smelling of other women’s perfume and expect me to… submit to you.”
She had not meant to say it so boorishly. His mouth closed. He set the vial down on the table with a click.
“I did not touch them.” His voice dropped. “I did not touch a single one of them. They wanted to. They tried to. But I sat in my chair, and I drank my brandy, and I thought about you. You. In this bed. Waiting.”
“I was not waiting.”
“You were asleep, then. Which means you were in bed. Which is…” He sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress. “I admit I was aroused, but at the thought of you, not them. I think I still am.” He looked down at himself then back up at her. “I did not touch them, Violet. I want that noted.”
“I have noted it.”
“So.” He turned toward her.
“So nothing. I have told you no.”
“But I did not touch them.” His voice was louder. “A man resists temptation, comes home to his wife, and his wife says no. That is not... that is not fair.”
“Fair,” she repeated.
She looked at him now, at the heavy slope of his shoulders, the muscles on his back. He half turned and his brows were still furrowed, waiting for an answer.
“You hardly touch me either,” she said.
“What?”
“You come to my bed. You use the oil. You do what you came to do. You leave. You have touched me twice, and both times your eyes were open and looking at nothing.”
A coal broke apart in the grate. Violet stared at the burning logs.
“We have a contract,” he said at last. His voice had gone careful.
“Obviously.”
He frowned. “What do you mean, obviously?”
She pulled the covers tighter around herself. “I mean that I am aware of what we have, what we are to each other, Your Grace. You need not remind me.”
“Then…” He opened his hands as though the logic should be plain. “Then what is the difficulty?”
She looked at this man who had married her for the use of her body and the hope of an heir, naked and drunk in her bed, with another woman’s scent on him, and so fixed on the question of her difficulty that it had not occurred to him he might be the source of the difficulty and the solution.
“I have accepted Lady Carstairs’s invitation to her annual ball. Sarah tells me it is important that we attend.”
His head came up. Alarm, dulled by the brandy, appeared on his face.
His features settled into a frown he could not fully organise.
His head fell back onto the mattress, his face sinking into it.
“Carstairs.” His muffled word came out as if he was tasting something off.
“You should not have accepted without consulting me.”
“You were not at home to consult, and Sarah said they were an affluent family we must acquaint ourselves with.”
A sound came out of him, something like Pfft. “Send your regrets.”
“I will not appear feather-brained. I mean to keep my commitment.”
He tried to lift his head and failed. He waved a hand instead.
“Go to bed, Henry.”
She had not used his Christian name before. His eyes sought out hers but were barely able to hold hers steady.
“I am in bed.”
“Your bed. Through the door. Where you sleep.”
“I shall sleep here.”
“You shall not.”
“I have been alone for a long time, Duchess, and have been lonely longer.” He swung his legs up onto the mattress, slowly, fighting gravity the whole way.
He lay down on the far side of the bed. He pulled the edge of the blanket over himself, lay on his back, and folded his hands across his bare chest.
“There,” he said, with a soft sigh.
“Get out of my bed.”
She pushed at his shoulder. He was warm and heavy and did not move. She pushed harder, bracing her hands against him. He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her with his eyes half closed.
“Violet.” The word was soft and blurred. “You smell lovely. What is that? Lavender?”
“Get out.”
But he was already gone. His breathing deepened. His chest rose and fell beneath his folded hands, and then the first snore came out of him.
She pushed at him once more, and she might as well have pushed at the bedframe. He was fifteen stone of unconscious duke, and he was not going to be moved by a woman who weighed eight and a half in her chemise.
The snoring grew louder. It came from deep in his chest and rattled through his sinuses on the way out. She could feel it through the mattress.
She sat for a moment with her hands still pressed against his shoulder and her breath coming short. The candle on the table guttered. The fire had gone to ash.
She withdrew her hands and gathered the pillow from beneath his head. She yanked on it hard. He did not stir. She took it as far from him as the mahogany frame allowed. She pulled what remained of the blanket around herself and drew her knees up and turned her back to him.
The snoring continued, rising and falling in a rhythm. She pressed the pillow over her ear. It did not help.
She thought of her mother steering her father up the stairs at Thornwick while laughter came through the floorboards, those early days when they were happier.
Violet lay curled in the dark and listened to the duke breathing.