Scandal Wears Satin by Loretta Chase

her blue eyes. Otherwise, her expression was unreadable. “Good,” she said. “Keep with that. Don’t embellish.”
    “No danger of that,” he said. “At any rate, it’s easy enough to make it partly true. I’ve only to toddle into my club and drink steadily until you’ve finished bankrupting my father. Then, when I return Clara to Warford House, no one will have any trouble believing in my inebriated obstinacy.”
    He sauntered out of the sitting room.
    He walked to the stairs and started down.
    He heard hurried footsteps and rustling petticoats behind him.
    “Lord Longmore.”
    She said his name as everybody else did, not precisely as spelled but in the way of so many ancient names, with vowels shifted and consonants elided. Yet it wasn’t quite the same, either, because it carried the faintest whisper of French.
    He looked up.
    She stood at the top of the stairs, leaning over the handrail.
    The view was excellent: He could see her silk shoes and the crisscrossing ribbons that called attention to the fine arch of her instep and her neat ankles. He saw the delicate silk stockings outlining the bit of foot and leg on view. His mind easily conjured what wasn’t on view: the place above her knees where her garters were tied—garters that, in his imagination, were red, embroidered with lascivious French phrases.
    For a moment he said nothing, simply drank it in.
    “That was a beautiful exit,” she said.
    “I thought so,” he said.
    “I hated to spoil it,” she said. “But I had an idea.”
    “You’re a prodigy,” he said. “First an alibi, then an idea. All in the same day.”
    “I thought you could help me,” she said.
    “I daresay I could,” he said, contemplating her ankles.
    “With your mother.”
    He lifted his gaze to her face. “What do you want to do to her?”
    “Ideally, I should like to dress her.”
    “That would be difficult, considering that she hates you,” he said. “That is, not you, particularly. But you as a near connection to the Duchess of Clevedon, and your shop as harboring same.”
    “I know, but I’m sure we can bring her round. That is, I can bring her round. With a little help.”
    “What do you propose, Miss Noirot? Shall I drug her ladyship and carry her, senseless, to your lair, where you’ll force her into dashing gowns?”
    “Only as a last resort,” she said. “What I have in mind for you at present is quite simple—and no one will ever know you aided and abetted the Enemy.”
    “This is London,” he said. “There’s no such thing as ‘no one will ever know.’ ”
    “No, really, I promise you—”
    “Not that I care what anybody knows,” he said.
    “Right,” she said. “I forgot. But I must not be recognized.”
    “Does that mean a disguise?” he said.
    “Only for me,” she said. “I need to visit Dowdy’s, you see, and—”
    “And Dowdy’s is . . . ?”
    “The lair of the reptile, Horrible Hortense Downes, the monster who puts your mother into those dreary clothes. I need to get into her shop.”
    In her world, he knew, clothes were the beginning and the end of everything, and worlds were lost on the wrong placement of a bow.
    “You’re proposing a spying expedition behind enemy lines,” he said.
    “Yes,” she said. “That’s it exactly .”
    “Are you going to blow up the place?”
    “Only as a last resort,” she said.
    He was quite happy to take her, even if she didn’t blow the place up. He’d be happy to take her anywhere. But his promptly agreeing meant her prompt departure and he wasn’t yet tired of looking at her ankles.
    He pretended to ponder.
    “It’s only for an hour or so,” she said. “That shouldn’t disrupt your busy schedule.”
    “Ordinarily, no,” he said. “But I’ve got this Adderley problem to work on, and that wants deep and lengthy cogitation.”
    “You do not have the Adderley problem to work on,” she said. “Did I not tell you my sisters and I would deal with it?”
    “It’s