Free Vixen in Velvet by Loretta Chase

consequence of her brain not being awash in grief and sorrow when we returned, she had the presence of mind to save your bacon.”
    Swanton’s harassed expression smoothed into a smile. Then he laughed outright. “I remembered Miss Leonie, of course. From Paris. Who could forget those eyes? And the mysterious smile. But I’d forgotten how quick-witted she was. That was no small kindness she did, turning the audience’s mood.”
    “You don’t know the half of it,” Lisburne said. “Your poetical event wasn’t the only thing she saved. My cousin Gladys almost got Valentine in a duel.”
    “Was your cousin Gladys the girl who gave the noisy fellow what for?” Swanton said. “I couldn’t see her. Men were standing up, and she was behind a pillar. And I couldn’t hear exactly what she said. But her voice is splendid! So melodious. A beautiful tone.”
    Lisburne had never thought about Gladys’s voice. What she said was so provoking that one never noticed the vocal quality.
    “Gladys is best heard at a distance,” he said. Lancashire, he thought, would be an acceptable distance at present.
    Swanton closed the portfolio, his brow furrowed. “I’ll have to thank Miss Noirot. No, that’s insufficient. I need to find a way to return the favor. Without her, we should have had a debacle. That will teach me to let these things run on for so long. An hour, no more, in future.”
    “But the girls want you to wax poetic all day and all night,” Lisburne said. “Half of them had to be dragged out of the lecture hall. If you give them only an hour, they’ll feel cheated.”
    Swanton was still frowning. “Something to do with girls,” he said. “They take in charity cases or some such.”
    “Who does?”
    “Mesdames Noirot,” Swanton said. “Somebody told me. Did Miss Noirot mention it? Or was it Clevedon?”
    “I know they took in a boy they found on the street,” Lisburne said.
    Swanton nodded. “They do that sort of thing. I’d better look into it. I might be able to arrange an event to raise funds for them.” He grimaced. “But something less boring and . . . funereal.”
    “I’ll look into it,” Lisburne said. “You’ve got your hands full, fending off all those innocent maidens whose adulation you’re not allowed to take advantage of. I’m the one with nothing to do.”

 
    Chapter Four
    SYMMETRICAL PERFECTION.—Mrs. N. GEARY, Court Stay-maker, 61 St James’s street, has the honour to announce to the Nobility and Gentry, that she has returned from the Continent, and has now (in addition to her celebrated newly-invented boned “Corset de toilette”) a STAY of the most novel and elegant shape ever manufactured . . . totally exterminating all that deadly pressure which has prevailed in all other Stays for the last 300 years . . . two guineas, ready money.
    — Court Journal , 16 May 1835
    Monday 13 July
    A steady routine is of first importance,” Leonie heard Matron explain. “Four hours of lessons, four hours of work, two hours for exercise and chores, half an hour for meals. As your lordship will see, the Milliners’ Society for the Education of Indigent Females is a modest enterprise. We can take in but a fraction of the girls who need us. But this is only the beginning. The Philanthropic Society, as you may be aware, began in a small house on Cambridge Heath and currently accommodates some two hundred children in Southwark. We, too, expect to grow, with the aid of charitable contributions as well as sales of our girls’ work, which I will be pleased to show you.”
    From where Leonie stood in the corridor, no one in the workroom could see her. However, even with only a view of his back, she had no trouble recognizing the gentleman Matron was falling all over herself to accommodate.
    Ah, yes, undoubtedly Lord Lisburne would like nothing better than to look at needlework.
    Leonie debated for a moment. Not about what to do, because she was seldom at a loss in that regard. She did