Vixen in Velvet by Loretta Chase Page A

contents,” he said. “We can hardly stir a step in the library without tripping over pincushions and purses and who knows what. Having to plan prevented Swanton from excessive weeping. I was so glad I didn’t bring him to the shop with me. He’d have wanted weeks to recover. And I very much doubt we have weeks, young women being famously fickle.”
    “You said you had a plan,” she said, womanfully crushing her impatience.
    “Ah, yes. The plan.” He went on to describe it. In detail. With various detours and contingencies.
    If he’d hoped for an explosion, he’d underestimated her.
    She moved to her desk, took up a pen, and took brisk notes.
    While she wrote, he talked and wandered seemingly aimlessly about her office, gradually drawing nearer, until he paused beside her to watch her write.
    She had compressed his meandering verbiage amazingly: a charity fête at Vauxhall during the grand gala on Monday night. Swanton to read new poems in one of the smaller theaters. An additional five-shilling fee for admission to the poetry reading. A small percentage of proceeds to Vauxhall’s proprietors for use of the hall. The rest to the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females.
    He was aware of the words but more aware of the sounds. Everything upon her person fluttered and billowed, so that even nearly still, only writing, she made a sort of murmuring sea of sound, audible below the pen’s scratching. Mingling with the sibilance was her scent, light and clean, of lavender.
    His mind conjured nights in the Tuscan mountains, high in a villa overlooking a tiny village . . . glowworms flickering in the darkness of the terraced vineyards below . . . and the scent of lavender, carrying his first intimations of grief easing and a possibility of peace.
    He was aware of a stabbing in his chest, and of heat, in so sudden a surge that it startled him, and he drew back a fraction.
    She looked up at him.
    “What a knack you have for . . . reducing the thing to its essentials,” he said.
    “I’ve had plenty of practice,” she said. “My sisters are geniuses, but they’re not concise.” Before he could comment she went on, “Monday night is rather short notice. Most of the ton will be engaged already.”
    “While Swanton’s star is in the ascendant, people will make time,” he said. “We start early, which allows his admirers to listen to him for an hour, then go on to their other amusements. But it will be all new poetry, always a draw. Well, then, will it do?”
    She put her pen back into its place. “Certainly. This is most generous of his lordship.”
    “You rescued his lecture the other night,” he said. “And then there were the things the girls made. Very touching.”
    “Yes, I daresay.” She straightened away from the desk, getting away from him so smoothly that he didn’t realize it until she’d done it, and the tantalizing scent was gone. “I expect you shall want one of the patronesses of the Milliners’ Society to put in an appearance.”
    He resisted the urge to draw near again. He oughtn’t to have been breathing down her neck in the first place. He knew better than to be so obvious.
    “And she ought to make a little speech,” he said. “To solicit additional donations. Men are more likely to empty their pockets if an attractive woman is onstage, asking them.”
    “It will have to be me,” she said. “Marcelline’s unwell and Sophy’s away. But I’m good at talking about money and getting it out of people, so that’s all right. Well, then, my lord.” She set down her pen and stepped back from the desk. “I do thank you, indeed. Will there be anything else?”
    The dismissal couldn’t have been clearer.
    He told himself he wasn’t provoked and certainly needn’t provoke in retaliation, like a child. Yet he took his time. First he reread her notes, then he looked over the items on her desk.
    “Did you forget a part of your plan?” she said. “Mistake the time?