Chapter 40
“What Adelaide had known for certain was that there was an entire world of people that went invisible, unseen by the upper class. A sea of faces never having the opportunity to be trusted and heard and reveal themselves, until now.”
Adelaide, Chapter 30
In short order, the carriage slowed to a rolling stop in front of a discreet, unassuming store front in Fitzrovia. Both sisters and their governess were hooded as the footman helped them alight onto the pavement. Noelle did her best to appear aloof, as if her hopes weren’t pinned to this very spot.
“What is this place?” Bridget asked, looking around them, one hand on her hood to keep it from slipping and revealing her red hair.
Lady Moria pointed with a gloved finger to the emblem of a needle and thread painted in minimal white and gold shapes on the storefront window. “I think Madame Blackshear…is a seamstress?”
She and Bridget turned to glance at Noelle like she was prepared to offer enlightenment. She simply shrugged.
Inside, the three women were greeted by a voluptuous figure in an elegantly tailored day dress free of any embellishment.
She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but something about her bleached blond hair and simple face adorned with a perfectly placed mole, was a face that left an impression.
Belatedly, Lady Noelle registered there were other patrons in Madame Blackshear’s establishment.
“Ladies, you can have a seat in the back, I’ll be with you in a moment,” Madame Blackshear spoke in an accent that was neither polished, nor base.
Several moments after the three ladies had been seated, the woman joined them, pulling a privacy screen closed behind her as the bell to the shop signaled that it was closed.
“My ladies,” Madame Blackshear said, gesturing for them to take a seat on one of the upholstered pieces of furniture that looked too luxe for an unassuming seamstress shop, “I’m glad you’re here. I was worried when I received word of his lordship’s…flight. I assume he told you where to find me?”
“Who are you?” Lady Noelle looked at her, bewildered.
“My accomplice,” Said a voice from behind Noelle. If the blood in her veins hadn’t sung with familiarity at the sound, the sight of Moria squeezing Miss Kelley’s hand, her free hand coming up to cover her mouth in shock, had confirmed the source.
Noelle felt silver mist coating her eyes as she turned to see Fitz in the doorway.
He was rumpled and dirty and injured, holding Howler in his arms.
At the sight of her dressed as Adelaide, one dirt-smudged dimple held up a smile.
Her knees wobbled as she stepped toward, or rather, leapt toward him despite the corset and loudly rustling skirts.
He was faster. He had handed off the hound to the seamstress and caught Noelle in his arms in a fluid movement that told her he wasn’t as injured as he appeared.
Tears streamed down her face as Fitz’s visage swam in her vision.
She could barely make out the sounds of the other women excusing themselves from the room.
“How did you…?” She began, but his fingers were at her lips, wiping the tears that collided with them.
“I survived a Shang-haiiing on a ship bound for god-knows-where, a linen cart, and just now a carriage accident-”
“A carriage accident?” She cried in outrage, looking once again, over his appearance. “You came here before going home, because of the note.”
He took in the dawning understanding and tears on her face and clutched her tighter. “You are my home.”
Her lip wobbled and the tears came back. “How were you sure I’d be here?”
“After the carriage collision, I made for Pembrooke House; but on my way there, I heard a crowd saying they’d seen Adelaide. They pointed me in the right direction.”
She caught his face in her hands and brought his mouth to hers in a kiss marked with joy and relief.
He matched her efforts; she could taste all the emotions that he poured right back into her.
Emotions oft felt, rarely conveyed with words; but easily said with the right kiss. He must have worried for her as well.
“God, Fitz, I was so…” Noelle took a steadying breath.
Tears broke free, they ran down her cheeks in what felt like overpowering, gorgeous release, leaving her breathless.
Fitz was here, rumpled and dirty and bruised and smelling like a fish market, carrying his injured dog, but…
. Fitz was in front of her, touching her.
He chased her lips with his, a hand at her waist pressed her against him. “It’s alright, love. I’m here now.”
He held her, stroking comforting patterns on her arms. She pulled back an inch or so to study him, there was a prominent bruise across his left cheek, a long scratch that trailed behind the hair at his temple, a prominent blood stain marked his shirt.
“My god, you’re bleeding,” she remarked, placing a tentative hand at his ribs, “Who did that to you?”
“Why? Planning to use one of your knives to avenge me, my lady?”
He asked, as he held his shoulder with his opposite hand.
She wrapped an arm around his waist and threw his arm over her shoulder as she led him to a settee, “Don’t tempt me, because I just might. First, you are going to explain everything while I see to these wounds.”
“A bath,” he groaned, stretching out on the settee as Noelle helped him out of his coat, “would be a great place to start.”
“Oh my,” Noelle whispered. He looked like he’d been thrown off the ship and dragged for miles behind a carriage.
“I’d prefer to cause you reactions like that for a different, much more pleasurable reason, love. Especially looking like you could both heal me and be the end of me at the same damn time.”
Fitz leaned to remove one of his boots, Noelle leaned down to help him. He removed her hand, and placed a kiss at her palm, dragging it to his cheek.
“How,” he breathed and closed his eyes briefly, “How on earth do you look even more beautiful than you did in my visions?”
“You have hit your head then,” she laughed, sitting on the settee beside him and taking hold of his lips with her own.
Kissing him like she could erase the events of the last three days, the nefarious forces that conspired against him, against them both, and the fear.
His hand came up to play with the artful locks of hair that trailed from the wig’s coiffure at her back.
“I love you…Noelle, Adelaide, princess, viscountess, madwoman…whoever the hell you are. I am entirely in your thrall. Nothing could keep me from you.”
His throat worked, drinking her in with those black and blue eyes.
There would be time to tell him her own feelings.
For now, she took ownership of his lips and drank in his sighs and breaths.
When she was sated, she rested her heavy head on his chest.
He was dirty and bruised and God, those clothes he was wearing would need to be burned, but she’d dreamt of laying on his chest like this since the morning she’d woken up in his bed alone.
Even before then, if she was being honest.
She could feel the tattoo of his heart beat slow as she clasped his fingers in her free hand.
A tear slid onto the grimy lawn of his shirt.
She could feel a creased cut in his lip as he placed a kiss on her forehead.
Somehow, she’d ended up in the exact place she wanted to be more than anywhere in the world, in Fitz’s arms.
Of course they were interrupted from their blissful reunion in the dressmaker’s shop by three other women. Noelle had almost forgotten they existed as her tearful reunion with Fitz had occupied the whole of her consciousness.
“As much as I hate to interrupt-“
Fitz held up a hand in the woman’s direction, “Letty, don’t insult me with untruths. You’ve never hated interrupting anyone in your entire miserable life.”
Noelle sat up and looked to Fitz and the seamstress, then to her sister and governess who stood behind her. Moria gave her a watery smile.
“I’m sorry,” Noelle said, standing to her feet, and smoothing her skirts, “I still have no idea who you are.”
The woman merely smiled down at her folded hands. Moria didn’t look ready to tear her hair out, so she couldn’t be a foe or a paramour of Fitz’s.
She introduced herself, bobbing into a curtsy. “I’m Letitia Shearer, my lady. Better known as Madame Blackshear. Pleased to finally meet your acquaintance.”
“You can tell her the rest of it after you tell me where the hell my dratted dog is.”
Letitia peered around Noelle to assure Fitz, “He’s upstairs in my quarters with a veterinarian, my lord. He thinks Howler will make a recovery, albeit not a speedy one. But Howler will pull through.”
Fitz finally sank into the cushions of the settee behind him with relief. The palpable concern for a pet after the danger he’d endured and survived, tugged at what scraps were left of her heart he hadn’t already claimed. He waved a hand in front of him, “Don’t leave her in suspense, then. Go on.”
Letitia gestured for Noelle to sit, which she did, once again at Fitz's side, somewhat possessively, but she didn’t care. He draped an arm about her middle and pulled her closer to him on the small settee.
Her bottom jutted into his hip, and he played with her hair at her back.
The seamstress made herself comfortable in a chair opposite, Moria and Miss Kelley watched her closely all the while from a safe distance.
“Well….I suppose I’ll start at the beginning. I am the daughter of a blacksmith and a prostitute. What I remember most about growing up in a brothel…was all of the gowns. My mother had suitors that kept her in the best wares,
” the seamstress steeled her composure as though the rest of it required courage, “but once I reached my maturity, my mother sold me to a handsome young lord, in a sale orchestrated by his father and his uncle without his knowledge. I was terrified, but he looked at me and said,
‘if you can trust me, I will get you out of here. Where do you want to go?’ I’d always wanted a shop of my own. So, he made everyone involved believe that I’d…become a woman…and he’d…become a man…that night. He left without ever touching me.”
“What a git,” Fitz remarked, watching her with fond fascination.
Letitia rolled her eyes and shook her head.