Page 34 of An Extraordinary Lord

“How have you been?” Madame Noir purred as she stepped aside to let the woman into her rooms.

“Terrible!” Madame Barnaud heaved out a long-suffering sigh. Then with a wave of her hand, she launched into a diatribe in French about worthless shop girls and assistants, aristocracy who never paid their accounts, and the rising cost of fine Chinese silk.

Merritt glanced at Veronica, who stood demurely at the side of the room and watched the dressmaker’s arrival. A knowing smile tugged at her lips, indicating that she understood every word. So she not only knew how to dance, she also spoke French, and not just that drawing room fribble taught to society misses either but real French. Her past just blossomed into an even bigger mystery.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice.” Madame Noir took the woman’s arm and turned her toward Veronica. “This is the reason I sent for you. Miss Chase. She needs a very special gown.”

Madame Barnaud raked an assessing look over Veronica from head to toe. “You are to attend a grand soiree, correct?”

“Yes.”

“With the snake,” Madame Noir confirmed with a dismissing wave of her hand in Merritt’s direction.

He smiled widely in acknowledgment.

Ignoring him, Madame explained, “We need you to dress her. For Carlton Place.”

“Hmm.” As Madame Barnaud circled Veronica to evaluate her from all angles, she gestured at the footmen waiting in the hallway to bring inside the three trunks she’d brought with her. Following in the wake of the footmen and trunks came a very tired-looking mouse of an assistant who had obviously been roused from her sleep in the dead of night. “Supper or ball?”

“Ball,” Madame Noir answered for her.

“Will she dance?”

“Most likely.”

“Satin?”

“Of course.”

“Husband hunting or status climbing?”

“Neither,” Merritt interjected from behind his newspaper, interrupting the volley. “I want her to be invisible.”

A flare of surprise crossed Madame Barnaud’s face. Surely, none of her aristocratic clientele had ever asked for that before. Then she narrowed her eyes at Veronica and gave a sharp nod, accepting the challenge. “I possess those skills.”

She snapped her fingers, and the timid assistant rushed to open the trunks and unpack them. In a matter of moments, every spare piece of furniture in the room was covered with an assortment of ball gowns and accessories of all kinds.

“There isn’t time to make a new gown,” Madame Barnaud explained. “I have brought several that can be altered. But such rapid work will cost…”

“Price is no concern,” Madame Noir assured her, sliding a victorious smile at Merritt. “None at all.”

With a roll of his eyes, he pretended to return his focus to the newspaper, yet he surreptitiously watched Veronica as she let the two women consult between themselves about what she should wear. Her attention had been captured by a sage-green gown decorated with thousands of tiny cream-colored pearls that the assistant had placed across the back of the settee. More than admiration for the dress crossed her face, more than appreciation for the detailed embroidery on the delicate bodice—it was a melancholy longing for things that her life in the Court of Miracles could never provide.

His chest panged for her. He bit back the impulse to tell the two Madames to make a second dress for her.

Madame Barnaud snapped her fingers again. Her nervous assistant raced to fetch the stool from Madame Noir’s dressing table and put it in the center of the room.

“Now.” She directly addressed Veronica. “You. Here.” When Veronica blinked, puzzled at what the woman wanted, Madame Barnaud clapped her hands together sharply as if scolding a misbehaving dog and pointed at the floor in front of the stool. “There—now!”

Veronica did as ordered and came forward, although judging from the irritation and embarrassment coloring her face, she would have loved to have shackled the woman with her handcuffs.

Madame Barnaud took a yardstick and tapped Veronica on the shoulders to make her lift her arms. Immediately, the assistant darted forward like a border collie. The girl’s fingers unbuttoned her bodice with lightning speed, then grabbed the hem of the dress and stripped it up Veronica’s body, over her head, and off, all before Merritt could think to look away.

He sucked in a mouthful of air at the unexpected sight of her. She stood there in short stays and a chemise that hid little from the light of the lamp behind her, which silhouetted her curves through the thin cotton. Instantly, she covered her bosom with crossed arms, but that did nothing to hide the outline of her long legs beneath, the curve of her hips, the dark patch of feminine curls between her legs—

God have mercy.He raised the newspaper high enough that he couldn’t see over the edge and did his best to summon what few tendrils of gentlemanly manners were left inside him. At that moment, in the brothel’s warren of rooms, women were in stages of undress far more revealing than Veronica, yet none of them could have affected him the way that fleeting glimpse of her just did.

More snapping of fingers. “Remove that corset.”