Silk Is For Seduction by Loretta Chase

added—all this was distinctively Noirot. Being French, these ladies noticed the touches, and were sufficiently intrigued to approach her, though she was a social anomaly—not a person but an exotic pet.
    Clevedon’s exotic pet.
    She was still seething over that, though a part of her couldn’t help but admire his cleverness. It was the sort of brazen nonsense members of her family typically employed when they found themselves in a tight spot.
    But she’d deal with His Arrogance later.
    “I am English and a dressmaker,” said Marcelline. She opened her reticule and produced a pretty silver case. From the case she withdrew her business cards: simple and elegant, like a gentleman’s calling card. “I come to Paris for inspiration.”
    “But it is here you should have your shop,” said one lady.
    Marcelline let her gaze move slowly over their attire. “You don’t need me,” she said. “The English ladies need me.” She paused and added in a stage whisper, “Desperately.”
    The ladies smiled and went away, all of them mollified, and some of them charmed.
    Then the men swarmed in.
    “T his is a mystery,” said Aronduille.
    “All women are mysteries,” Clevedon said.
    They stood at the fringes of the dance floor, watching the Marquis d’Émilien waltz with Madame Noirot.
    “No, that is not what I mean,” said Aronduille. “Where does a dressmaker find time to learn to dance so beautifully? How does an English shopkeeper learn to speak French indistinguishable from that of the comtesse? And what of the curtsey she made to our hostess?” He lifted his gaze heavenward, and kissed the tips of his fingers. “I will never forget that sight.”
    I’m not a lady , she’d said.
    “I admit she’s a bit of a riddle,” Clevedon said. “But that’s what makes her so . . . amusing.”
    “The ladies went to her,” said Aronduille. “Did you see?”
    “I saw.” Clevedon hadn’t imagined they’d approach her. The men, yes, of course.
    But the ladies? It was one thing for the hostess to admit her, politely overlooking a high-ranking guest’s bad manners or eccentricity. It was quite another matter for her lady guests to approach his “pet” and converse with her. Had Noirot been an actress or courtesan or any other dressmaker, for that matter, they would have snubbed her.
    Instead, they’d pushed men aside to get to her. The encounter was brief, but when the women left, they all looked pleased with themselves.
    “She’s a dressmaker,” he said. “That’s her profession: making women happy.”
    But the curtsey he couldn’t explain.
    He couldn’t explain the way she talked and the way she walked.
    And the way she danced.
    How many times had Émilien danced with her?
    It was nothing to Clevedon. He’d never do anything so gauche as dance with her all night.
    But considering he’d risked humiliation for her, he was entitled to one dance, certainly.
    T hough Marcelline appeared to heed only the partner of the moment, she always knew where Clevedon was. It was easy enough, his grace standing a head taller than most of the other men, and that head being so distinctive: the profile that would have made ancient Greece’s finest sculptors weep, the gleaming black hair with its boyish mass of tousled curls. Then there were the shoulders. No one else had such shoulders. But then, no one else had that body. Very likely he could have spouted any nonsense he pleased at their hostess, and she would have accepted whatever he said, for aesthetic reasons alone. Well, prurient ones, too, possibly. The countess was old and cold but she wasn’t dead.
    For a time he’d danced, and now and again, the steps took them within inches of each other. But he always appeared as attentive to his partner as Marcelline did to hers. One might have believed he was completely indifferent to what she did. He’d got her into the party, and anything after that was her affair.
    But one must be an extremely stupid or naïve woman to