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“You’re a perfect boor,” said Miss Yardley after a long pause. “Very well. The truth will out. I had to force him to take me here. He’s embarrassed to face you.”
Lucy looked up.
“Because he still can’t draw a horse!” Miss Yardley laughed again. “Let’s ignore him. I have another reason for my visit.”
Lucy blinked rapidly. Miss Yardley’s radiance was painful to behold.
“I want your aunt to make my wedding dress!”
The silence thundered. Finally, Anthony spoke, warningly.
“We discussed this, Lavinia.”
“And I told you the decision is mine.” Miss Yardley tossed her head. “A groom mustn’t meddle.”
“I meddle in nothing,” said Anthony flatly. “Your mother gave me to understand that your London dressmaker is already at work.”
Lucy kept her eyes fixed on Miss Yardley, who was beginning to pout.
“She’s always at work because she makes everyone’s wedding dress. And they’re horrid dresses! I might as well pay a common laborer to pave me with seed pearls. I want something original, something that Celestia Jordan would have worn.”
Lucy felt a muscle in her eyelid twitch. If only she could travel back in time and sew her lips together before she’d said a word to Miss Yardley about Celestia Jordan!
Don’t scream. Reason.
“Aunt Marian would love to make your dress.” She resisted the urge to still her eyelid with the pad of her finger, tried to open her eyes instead, making them as round and sincere as possible. “But we don’t have the right satin in stock, or the lace. We’d have to order it, and that would take time, too much time. It could delay the wedding. You wouldn’t want that.”
“No,” said Anthony, his voice like smoke. “We wouldn’t want that.”
Despite herself, she let her glance stray. His beauty stopped her breath.
He’d visited his tailor, and his barber. His suit molded to his broad shoulders, his narrow waist, his long, muscled legs. The black waves of his hair had been cut close to the scalp, accentuating the boldness of his features, the strong nose and chiseled mouth. The light straggling through the windows lit his pale eyes between their fringe of lashes. His gaze was hot, bright. The force of it pierced her.
The green dart.
Her face warmed. She had devised this perfect torture. It was all her own doing.
“Miss Stirling!” Miss Yardley rushed to Aunt Marian, who had entered the shop from the back hall, a deep line of perplexity drawn between her brows.
“I’m Lavinia Yardley, soon-to-be Duchess of Weston. Your dear niece Lucy told me you designed Celestia Jordan’s gown in She Stoops to Conquer, my absolute favorite. My grandmother had a scrapbook where she kept clippings of all the sketches of Celestia’s gowns they published in the Ladies Column of the Illustrated News. I adore every one of them. I want diamond trim and shoulder straps on my wedding dress, like on the gown in A Royal Necklace.”
Aunt Marian stared at her. Anthony came a few steps forward.
“Miss Stirling,” he said and bowed.
Aunt Marian’s knees could excuse her negligible curtsey.
“So, you’re the Duke of Weston, are you?” she said, eyeing him with considerable suspicion. “I should have known. And you”—she rounded on Miss Yardley—“are in want of a wedding dress in which to marry him.”
Miss Yardley beamed. Aunt Marian jammed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose, shaking her head.
Another proper mess. Lucy could all but hear her thoughts.
“Well,” said Aunt Marian at last. “I can’t help you with your wedding dress, or with your taste in husbands, but I do have the sketches from A Royal Necklace, as well as the lace evening gown with the rose sequins from The Degenerates packed away, if you’d like to see them.”
Miss Yardley’s face registered shock, disappointment, and excitement in comically quick succession.
“Come along, then.” With a glance at Lucy, Aunt Marian shooed Miss Yardley toward a chair.
