Free Vixen in Velvet by Loretta Chase Page B

girls in the workroom.”
    “Be that as it may, I had a good deal more fun looking into your activities,” he said.
    Inside her head, a lot of panicked Leonies ran about screaming, What? What did he find? What did he see? Why?
    Outwardly, not so much as a muscle twitched, and she said, “That sounds tedious.”
    “It proved far more difficult than I expected,” he said. “You and your sisters are strangely quiet about your philanthropy.”
    The inner Leonie settled down and said, Oh, that’s all right, then .
    She said, “It isn’t much to boast about.”
    “Is it not?” He glanced back toward the room they’d left. “I’ve lived a sheltered life. Don’t think I’ve ever seen, in one room, so many girls who’ve led . . .” He paused, then closed his eyes and appeared to think. “Let us say, unsheltered lives.” He opened his eyes, the green darkening as he studied her for one unnerving moment. “You keep getting more interesting. It’s rather a trial.”
    “It’s business,” she said. “Some of the girls turn out to be more talented than others. We get to pick the crème de la crème as apprentices for Maison Noirot. Too, we’ve trained and educated them ourselves, which means that we know what we’re getting. We’re not as disinterested as your duchesses and countesses and such. It isn’t pure philanthropy.”
    “The fact remains, you pluck them from the streets and orphanages and workhouses.”
    She smiled. “We get them cheaply that way. Often for free.”
    She led him into the small shop, where the girls’ productions were on display. “If your lordship would condescend to buy a few of their trinkets, they’ll be in raptures,” she said.
    She moved to a battered counter and opened a glass display case.
    He stood for a moment, gazing at the collection of watch guards and pincushions and handkerchiefs and sashes and coin purses and such.
    “Miss Noirot,” he said.
    She looked up. He was still staring at the display case’s contents, his expression stricken.
    “The girls made these things?” he said. “The girls in that classroom?”
    “Yes. Remember Matron telling you that we raise funds by selling their work?”
    “I remember,” he said. “But I didn’t . . .” He turned away and walked to the shop’s one small window. He folded his hands behind his back and looked out.
    She was baffled. She looked down into the display case then up again at his expertly tailored back.
    After what seemed a long time, he turned away from the window. He returned to the counter, wearing a small smile. “I’m moved,” he said. “Perilously near to tears. I’m very glad I came on this errand instead of Swanton. He’d be sobbing all over the place and writing fifty-stanza laments about innocence lost or abused or found or some such gobbledygook. Luckily, it’s only me, and the public is in no danger of suffering verse from this quarter.”
    For a moment, she was at a loss. But logic swiftly shoved astonishment aside. He might feel something on the girls’ account or he might be feigning greatheartedness and charitable inclinations, as so many aristocrats did. Philanthropy was a duty and they performed it ostentatiously but they didn’t really care. If even half of them had truly cared, London would be a different place.
    But it didn’t matter what he truly felt, she told herself. The girls mattered. And money was money, whether offered in genuine compassion or for show.
    “It would seem that your friend’s poetry has infected you with excessive tenderheartedness,” she said.
    “That may be so, madame, yet I wonder how any man could withstand this.” He waved his hand at the contents of the display case. “Look at them. Little hearts and flowers and curlicues and lilies of the valley and lace. Made by girls who’ve known mainly deprivation and squalor and violence.”
    She considered the pincushions and watch guards and mittens and handkerchiefs. “They don’t have Botticelli