How to Seduce a Bride

“You have some scruples, Lee. They’ll be the ruin of you, too, if you don’t watch out.”

They laughed. But they looked pleased, too. They nodded at each other, because whatever the outcome, at least they would be working together.

Chapter Five

“I want a gold gown,” Daisy told the dressmaker. “Not the one you showed me the other day. Not precisely, that is. I loved it, but I don’t want Viscount Haye sneering at me all night. You heard how he felt about how revealing it was, or at least how it would be for me. But I’ve been invited to dinner with him and the earl tonight. They said they have a surprise, an old friend come to see me, and so I want to look wonderful! I know there isn’t much time and so I thought if you could alter a gown that was already made up? That one was so lovely. Oh, please, madame, say you can somehow make it acceptable for me!” This one, Madame Bertrand thought, as she saw the doting look the lady’s companion bent on her charge, could charm a mossy rock. And money is money, and Haye brought her here. That one’s approval could make her rich.

“I could, I think,” the modiste said. “I haven’t sold that one yet. I could make… alterations. But in a day? I don’t know.”

“Oh, please. Surely you could add an underskirt, or something, to make it more the thing for me. Price,” Daisy said, and paused as she swallowed down her fear, “is not an object.”

She waited, half hoping the answer would be no. Price was always an object, and spending money frightened her. But if the viscount had been telling the truth, and the earl and her companion agreed that he was, then it would be some time before she had to pay her bills. If it was true that creditors gave ladies special favors, then time was on her side, and timing was everything in life. By the time she absolutely had to pay she could be married, or her investments could have made more money. And so far, everyone thought she was a lady. So she had to act like one and run up debts, though it went against the grain.

She’d taken a hired carriage to the dressmaker’s as soon as Helena said the shops would open. She was delighted to find that, as Helena had also said, no lady would be up at this hour. It was easier to play the lady of leisure when there weren’t any real ones around.

“Please?” she added, smiling at Madame Bertrand.

“Let me see,” the dressmaker said. She clapped her hands. “Margot!” she called. “Put on the gold cloth gown and come out here at once, if you please.”

A few moments later, the same tall, dark-haired model she had seen the day before came gliding out in the daring gold cloth gown. It still looked wondrous to Daisy.

Madame Bertrand walked around the model, muttering. “A train would add elegance,” she murmured. “Oui. But it must be rose-colored, a gauzy spray of rose spread out in a train, floating behind the gold, moderating it, like a sunrise seen through clouds. And an underskirt, mais oui. We raise the neckline and add a chemise so the gold cloth doesn’t lie like a second skin. Add long sleeves, puffed at the shoulders… Oui. And rose ribbons; gold is too harsh for you, mademoiselle, the viscount was right. But a touch of rose here, a dash of it there, to tame the gold, and you will glow.

“Yes,” the dressmaker added. “We can have the gown looking proper enough so that even the Viscount Haye won’t be able to say it is daring, though daring it would still be. But it will not be audacious. It’s beautiful as it is,” she added with regret, “but he’s right. Such gowns are best left to those women who know how to use them, and who can. But yes, mademoiselle, it could be done.”

“Thank you! Then do it!” Daisy said, then added, “And it is Madam Tanner, madame. I am a widow. I know how to use such gowns, too, you see, but alas, I’m a lady, and so I cannot.” Her grin was nothing like a lady’s.

This one, the dressmaker thought appreciatively, will go far. “I must find the right gauze, and begin,” she said, and marched back to her workroom. “Margot!” she called over her shoulder, “Please return the gown to me, and put on the blue one. The countess is coming, and we know how she loves blue.”

Daisy didn’t need the rose gauze in order to glow; she felt triumphant. Whatever surprise Geoff had planned, now she could meet it with equanimity. She had a proper companion and would wear a wonderful gown, and whomever she met from the old days would have to forget the shame and degradation of her marriage and see only the success she’d become.

She was smiling when the tall model in the gold gown approached her.

“Congratulations,” the woman said in a cool, low voice. “The gown will look beautiful on you. It is only too bad you can’t wear it as it is. Viscount Haye was much taken with it, you know.”

“He was?” Daisy asked. She had to look up at the model, and got the feeling that the woman was looking down at her in other ways, too. She was smiling, which somehow made it worse. The woman was slender and long- limbed as a boy, with only her small breasts and a hint of supple hips to show her gender, but she nevertheless exuded female sensuality. Daisy wasn’t surprised. She’d met too many kinds of women in jail to ever make the mistake of comparing the size of a woman’s breasts or hips with the size of her sexual appetites or inclinations.

She also knew when she was being taunted, and she’d been oppressed long enough to know too well how people who couldn’t speak freely could still voice their opinions clearly. She waited because she wanted to know more.

The model understood. “He offered to buy the gown for me,” the model said, nodding her sleek head. “But I have no use for it, and so I told him. Anyway, he liked it even better when it was off.” Her smile grew wider; she nodded again and glided away, looking as though she’d accomplished something.

Her words could be taken several ways. Daisy was no fool and took them each and every way they could be. She’d been warned. That much, she was sure of. She just didn’t understand what she’d been warned of, or off.

“What did she mean by that?” Helena asked, frowning.

Daisy had known Helena Masters for only the week since she’d hired her, but already knew she was a dear person. Her new companion was an educated woman who’d been married for a decade before she was widowed. But she’d been married to a decent man and had always lived among decent people, and so was still an innocent at heart.

Daisy laughed. “She could mean that the viscount likes to wear gowns, or that he likes women who don’t wear them. It doesn’t matter. Really it doesn’t.”

But it did; it mattered to her plans for the future, and she was still thinking about it as she left the shop.

The light at sunset showed the glorious sunrise of Daisy’s new gown. It was silken and it slithered, scintillating with every step; it flowed and glowed gold, moderated by a pink that looked as innocent as the underside of a rose petal. The dressmaker delivered it in plenty of time to dress for dinner. But Daisy had to try it on right away to be sure it was what she wanted to wear tonight.

She wanted to wear it; in fact, she never wanted to take it off. It glorified her; it flattered her, and made her feel both rich and right. She stood in the center of the bedchamber of her hotel and gaped at the magnificent creature she saw in the long looking glass. She was, she thought, a long, long way from Botany Bay, and a universe distant from the stinking prison ship that had brought her there. The elegant beauty in the mirror could never have set one silken slipper’s toe in such a place, or ever dreamed of it. Nor had she dreamed she could look like this. And Tanner! If he’d ever seen her in such a dress…

Daisy’s eyes went dark and blind to the moment as she saw something that wasn’t in the mirror.

Tanner would have stopped and stared at her the way he always did when he saw her looking good, or in a different light-the way he did if he chanced to see her rising from the tub after a bath, or with her arms in the air as her gown slid down over her body while she was dressing, or even outside, hanging up the wash, with the sunlight silhouetting her body.

His mouth would get loose; he’d grin and grab for her, and she was never ever allowed to say no. It wasn’t a great hardship, not really; she didn’t know why she never got used to it, why she never stopped dreading it, her skin crawling, her stomach in a knot whenever she saw him looking at her like that. What he did took only a few