Vixen In Velvet. Loretta Chase
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The shop was quiet enough. The showroom held a few shopgirls restoring order after their most recent customers. They were putting ribbons and trinkets into drawers, reorganizing display cases, straightening hats their clientele had tipped askew, and rearranging mannequins’ skirts. The only remaining customer was an elderly lady who couldn’t make up her mind among several shades of brown ribbon.
Swanton was pacing at one end of the showroom when the girl returned to inform them that they needed to make an appointment.
“They must be busy with an important client,” Lisburne told him. “Why don’t you toddle up to White’s? The club will be free of women, and you can compose your turbulent mind with the aid of a glass of wine or whiskey.”
Swanton had stopped pacing when the girl returned from her errand. Now he looked about him as though he’d forgotten where he was. “White’s,” he said.
“Yes. The young ladies can’t get to you there.”
“And you?”
“I’m going to wait,” Lisburne said. “I’m perfectly capable of carrying out our errand on my own. And I can do it in a more businesslike manner if you’re not mooning about.”
“I need to write half a dozen new poems in less than a week!” Swanton said. “You’d be in a state of abstraction, too.”
“All the more reason for you to go away to a quiet place, where the women are not giggling and blushing and making up excuses to get close to you.”
Naturally Swanton didn’t realize what was going on about him. The shopgirls would have to hit him on the head with a hat stand to get his full attention. Still, unlike the young ladies of the ton, they were mainly excited to have a celebrity in their midst. They probably hadn’t time to read his poetry—if they could read. Their interest wasn’t personal, in other words.
Swanton looked about him, seeing whatever hazy version of reality he saw. “Very well,” he said. “I can take a hint.”
No, you can’t, Lisburne thought.
With any luck, Swanton would manage to cross St. James’s Street without walking into the path of an on-coming carriage. If not, and if he seemed headed into danger, a sympathetic female would rush out and rescue him, even if she was one of the two people in London who didn’t know who he was. Because he looked like an angel.
In any case, Lisburne wasn’t his nursemaid. Furthermore, he’d wrestled with enough of the poet’s problems in the past two days.
He was in dire need of mental relief.
Such as Miss Leonie Noirot.
Who was too busy to see him.
He walked about the shop, studying the mannequins and the contents of the display cases. He even allowed himself to be consulted on the matter of brown ribbons.
He was solemnly examining them through his quizzing glass, trying to decide which had a yellower cast, when Gladys hurried out into the showroom, then swiftly through the street door. Clara followed close behind. Neither noticed him, and he didn’t try to attract their attention.
“I wonder if Miss Noirot will see me now,” he said to the girl who’d told him to make an appointment.
The girl went out.
She returned a quarter hour later and led him to Miss Noirot’s office.
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