Catherine Lovelock, Mrs. Edward Lovelock, née Catherine Cooke of the London stage, originally Kate Cooksey of the West Midlands, had gooseflesh.
In the cold fitting room of the modiste’s shop, she stood on a high platform with five women clustered around her, taking measurements. She wanted to tell them there was no need for new measurements. Nothing had changed about her body in the last fifteen years. Not since she had recovered from giving birth to Arabella.
Catherine knew that it was silly to order a new dress in October in the hopes she would have it for November. Very silly. Madame Beauchamp and her seamstresses were exhausted at this time of the year. The shop was a hive of activity, the very loud bell that hung on the front shop door had been ringing constantly since she had arrived, warning of customers coming and going. Normally, Catherine would have had the modiste come to the Lovelock house in Mayfair to discuss fabrics and design. But Madame Beauchamp was so very much in demand that Catherine, like all other customers, had been forced to come to the shop today.
And she had come to the modiste’s shop alone.
Catherine seemed to be spending more and more time alone. Her oldest stepdaughter Mary had been married four and a half years ago, just six months after her father had died, and lived in Wales with her husband, the Viscount Tregaron. Her other stepdaughter Harriet, known to the family as Harry, had married last spring, just two months after Lady Huxley’s ball. Harry now lived with her husband Thomas Drake, the Earl Drake, at his country seat Sommerleigh where she was fervidly pursuing her one and only love, mathematics. And Arabella, the only child Catherine had had with her dear late husband Edward, had gone off to see a puppet show today with the Dalrymple family. Arabella, at sixteen, was a little old for such amusement, but the Dalrymple girls ranged in age from seventeen to seven, and the whole family still enjoyed going to see the puppets. And afterward, all the daughters along with Arabella would go back to the Dalrymple house and recreate the puppet play with their own Toy Theatre in the nursery, with great hilarity.
The modiste Madame Beauchamp, tall and angular, dressed in a puce-colored frock of her own design, her dark hair streaked with white and scraped into a severe chignon, cast a critical eye over Catherine and then spoke to the apprentice seamstress who was scribbling notes.
“Write down, if you can manage that much, idiote, that la Veuve Lovelock is très petite. We would use the child dress form but for the bosoms, which are of a large size. Comprends-tu, petite sotte?”
The harassed apprentice bit her lip and nodded.
Madame Beauchamp was a bully. But there was no arguing that her dresses were the most fashionable in all of London.
“Do you know, Madame Lovelock,” Madame Beauchamp said in a loud whisper, “that we have a lover’s door for this salle d’essayage?” She raised her voice. “If you have a gentleman who is interested in your gowns, he can enter here” she strode to a corner and indicated a tall, narrow door, partially hidden by a cheval glass, “and supervise your fittings, help you select your fabrics and trims, and no one would ever be the wiser.”
Except the modiste herself, of course, and her seamstresses, Catherine thought. Who would all be sure to spread the gossip.
“Even my husband, when he was alive, had no say in my clothes, Madame Beauchamp,” Catherine said, smiling politely but seething on the inside. “He trusted my taste in all things.” And then she lied, “And I assure you that there is no gentleman of my acquaintance who is interested in my gowns.”
“For now,” Madame Beauchamp said and nodded to another assistant who moved a small set of steps next to the platform where Catherine was standing. Madame Beauchamp offered Catherine her hand to descend, and Catherine walked carefully down. Madame Beauchamp pulled her in front of a mirror and stood behind her, placing her hands on Catherine’s shoulders, easily peering over the top of her head.
Catherine was forced to look at her reflection. She knew she looked much younger than her age of forty-five. Golden curls, still bright, gathered in a simple twist atop her head but with a few loose curls framing her largely unlined face. Pink lips with white teeth. Smooth neck and shoulders descending into her corseted torso. And yes, as Madame Beauchamp pointed out, her bosom was of a large size in comparison to her height. A small waist with or without stays and then the flare of her hips, which while feminine, were not as pronounced as her breasts. Her legs were hidden by a petticoat, but Catherine knew that they were well-shaped. Just short. Like all the rest of her.
Madame Beauchamp spoke, “Madame Lovelock, is it time? Is it time to shed the lavender, les vêtements de la veuve, how do you say, the widow’s weeds? You have been in the half mourning for—what?—many years. Far too long. It is time for you to start living again.”
“Yes,” Catherine faltered. “Perhaps it is time.”
Because, of course, there was a gentleman who was interested in how she dressed. Sir Francis Ffoulkes had been pressing her to discard her lavender for the last three months, ever since he had proposed marriage to her.
“What will it look like if you go straight from half mourning to a wedding dress?” he had asked her in her own drawing room.
“Edward has been gone for five years. Surely people can have no grounds to say that I didn’t wait an adequate amount of time before remarrying?” Catherine had smiled. “Would they not say the same for you then?” Sir Francis’ wife had only died a year ago.
Sir Francis had frowned. “I do not think anyone would find any fault or impropriety in my behavior.”
“Of course not, Sir Francis.” Catherine had stopped smiling. “I am myself very sensitive to propriety. But I have not yet consented to be your wife so there is no need to worry about what people will say.”
He had swept her hands up to his mouth and kissed her fingers. “But Catherine, I must marry you soon. Why do you delay your answer? Do you hope to inflame my ardor for you?”
“No.” She had withdrawn her hands from his. No, his polite ardor was more than adequate. Her ardor was the thing that was absent. In regards to him.
But surely that was what she wanted. Was that not the primary reason she had encouraged Sir Francis’ courtship? She did not want to feel the throb between her legs that would lead her down the path to degradation and obliteration. The path she had trodden all those years ago.
She needed to be steered away from temptation. The temptation to hunt down and seduce a very silly but oh-so-arousing gray-eyed James Cavendish. Because that way madness lies. That boy-man was pure peril. Just as Roger had been for her all those years ago when she had come so close to irrevocable ruin.
That peril, that temptation had been reason enough for her to encourage Sir Francis Ffoulkes, whose older and rather solid presence reminded her at times of her late husband Edward.
She had not thought of marrying again. Not until she met James and felt the hibernating lust demon begin to wake up and claw at its cage. But perhaps marriage could save her from herself. As it had once before.
Of course, Sir Francis had not the goodness nor the wisdom nor the tenderness of the late Mr. Lovelock. But he seemed safe. Calm. Quelling. She needed to be quelled. Sir Francis, so respectable, could quell her.
Then why had she still not said yes to him?
Madame Beauchamp lifted her hands off Catherine’s shoulders and clapped them together twice. “Fantastique. There is une soie bleue that when I saw it, I said, if only la Veuve Lovelock would consent, it is the exact shade of her eyes. Someone bring it, immédiatement!”
A lovely rich-blue silk cascaded off a roll and over Catherine’s chest.
“Parfait!” Madame Beauchamp cooed. And she named a price for the dress.
Catherine looked serene but Kate Cooksey, the farm girl who lived inside her, blanched. It was more than Catherine had paid for her last three ball gowns put together. But she could afford it. And, what’s more, Madame Beauchamp knew she could afford it. Catherine nodded her consent.
“Bien sûr. And I warn you, it will be au décolleté audacieux.” Madame Beauchamp indicated with a trace of her finger over Catherine’s chest that the dress would be cut so low as barely to cover Catherine’s areolas. “It will be a masterpiece of daring. This will bring la passion back to your life. L’excitation! You will excite loins and break hearts everywhere you go! You will be submergé with lovers. And who knows, chérie, maybe someone will capture your heart, too.”
Catherine, still shivering, smiled blandly at Madame Beauchamp. Turning away from the mirror, she stepped toward the apprentice who was holding the lavender dress that she had worn to the shop.
As her own dress slid over her arms and head, Catherine sternly told herself—as she had many times over the last six months—that she had no interest whatsoever in loins or passion or breaking hearts or having her heart captured. None whatsoever. No interest, at all.
She just wanted a new gown. For Sir Francis Ffoulkes’ house party next month. When she would likely consent to be his wife. That was all.
For her, la passion est morte.
She nodded her thanks to the apprentice, presenting a calm countenance. Unruffled, untroubled. Virtuous widow, worthy mother.
But deep inside, she could hear the lust demon howling one word.
Jamie.
