Vixen in Velvet by Loretta Chase Page A

humiliating return. The reviewers were savage. Didn’t you know?”
    “I’m not very literary,” she said. “I look at the reviews of plays and concerts and such, but mainly we’re interested in what the ladies are wearing. I rarely have time for the book reviews.”
    “He’d had a few of the poems published in magazines before Alcinthus and Other Poems came out,” he said. “The reviewers loathed his work, unanimously and unconditionally. They lacerated him. They parodied him. It was a massacre. Until he saw the reviews, Swanton had been on the fence about coming back to London when his book was unleashed on the general public. After that, the choice was clear: Return and face the music or stay away and be labeled a coward.”
    “I had no idea,” she said. “I was aware that his lordship had returned to London when the book came out because everybody was talking about it. Certainly our ladies were. I haven’t heard that much excitement since the last big scandal.” The one Sophy had precipitated.
    “We’re still not sure what happened, exactly,” he said. “We arrived in London the day before it was to appear in the shops. We had a small party, and Swanton was a good sport about the rotten reviews—he doesn’t have a high opinion of himself to start with, so he wasn’t as desolated as another fellow might have been. We made jokes about it at White’s club. Then, a few days after we arrived, we had to order more copies printed, and quickly. Mobs of young women were storming the bookshop doors. The booksellers said they hadn’t seen anything like it since Harriette Wilson published her memoirs.”
    Harriette Wilson had been a famous courtesan. Ten years ago, men had paid her not to mention them in her memoirs.
    “Lord Swanton seems to have struck a chord in young women’s hearts,” she said.
    “And he’s as bewildered as the critics.” Lord Lisburne looked out of the window.
    At this time of year, darkness came late, and even then it seemed not a full darkness, but a deep twilight. Tonight, a full moon brightened it further, and Leonie saw that they must have crossed Westminster Bridge some while ago. She saw, too, the muscle jump in his jaw.
    “Sudden leaps to fame can be dangerous,” he said. “Especially when young women are involved. I should like to get him back to the Continent before . . .” He trailed off and shrugged. “That crowd tonight troubled you. The one at the lecture.”
    “When I see so many people crowded together,” she said slowly, “I tend to see a mob.”
    A moment’s pause, then, “That’s what I see, too, Miss Noirot. I should have remained and stood guard. But . . .” He paused for a very long time.
    “But,” she said.
    “I had a chance to steal a pretty girl from the crowd, and I took it.”
    L eonie and Lord Lisburne arrived in time for the concluding event of the poetic evening when, according to the program, Lord Swanton would debut one of his recent compositions.
    As Lord Lisburne had predicted, the crowd had thinned. Though the hall remained full, the men had moved out of their cramped quarters along the walls and into seats in the back rows. The galleries no longer seemed in danger of collapsing.
    While she and Lord Lisburne paused in the doorway, looking for a place to sit, what looked like a family group bore down on them. He drew her back and, either out of courtesy or because he wasn’t in a hurry to join the audience, made way for the departing family. When the other gentleman thanked him, Lord Lisburne smiled commiseratingly and murmured some answer that made the other man smile.
    That was charm at work, charm of the most insidious kind: humorous, self-deprecating, and disarmingly frank and confiding.
    Leonie well understood that type of charm. Her family specialized in it.
    She of all people knew better than to let it work on her. The trouble was, it truly was insidious. One was drawn closer without realizing. One believed one had found a