Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(17)
Time, she reminded herself. Her sister required some time to warm to her. Daisy knew Bridget’s early years in Ireland had not been easy. Her mother had died when she was but a girl, and she’d come to London to eke out her existence. While Daisy’s life had not been easy either, she had nevertheless known wealth and privilege.
Madame Villiers herself was on the floor today, her mahogany curls artfully arranged, a fashionable fringe of bangs cut across her high forehead. “How may I help you, mademoiselle?”
Daisy smiled. “I would like ten of your newest creations, if you please, Madame, delivered immediately to my address. I trust your impeccable sense of fashion implicitly.”
Madame Villiers’s eyes lit up. “But of course, Mademoiselle Vanreid. We will give nothing but the best, les meilleurs chapeaux. Our designs rival Parisian fashion plates.”
“I’ve changed my mind, Madame,” Daisy said in a voice loud enough to carry to her fellow patrons milling about. “I’d like fifteen of your best.”
The woman smiled, resembling nothing so much as a satisfied feline. Her creations, though sought after, were dear. An order of fifteen hats was worth a handsome sum.
“Naturellement. We will be more than happy to send fifteen of our finest to the celebrated heiress Mademoiselle Vanreid, whom all of London admires. We are trés honored.”
Perfect. Fortunately for Daisy, Madame Villiers didn’t require much flattery to resort to bombast. In a much quieter voice, she said for the milliner’s ears alone, “And, of course, if Miss O’Malley is on duty, I would appreciate a word.”
“Ah, oui,” said Madame in an equally subdued pitch. “I believe you’ll find Miss O’Malley at her usual post, working with the feathers.”
“Merci,” Daisy said, sotto voce, before instructing her lady’s maid to await her in the main shop. Her half sister needed her, and Daisy owed her so much. She had been raised in a life of privilege and plenty while Bridget had suffered. She had vowed to see that her sister was always provided for, and a union with the duke could call that promise into question.
It was something she hadn’t considered in her selfish desire to gain her own freedom from an insupportable marriage with Breckly. But she wouldn’t forget her sister, nor would she turn her back upon her. So much depended upon her now. The weight of it all threatened to consume her.
She retained hope that Trent possessed a softer side, an understanding. He had sworn to protect her against her father’s wrath, hadn’t he? However, it almost seemed too good to be true, the prospect of freedom from tyranny and violence.
Nevertheless, it hung there, a lure tenuously within her faltering grasp. Hers if she but took it.
Daisy slipped discreetly into the room that Madame Villiers had indicated. Within, her half sister was alone. Bridget, toiling over the proper placement of an ostrich feather, paused at her entrance. Despite her raven hair and the fact that she’d had a different mother, Bridget’s features closely resembled Daisy’s own. They were three years apart in age and worlds apart in every other way save appearance.
She pinned Daisy with a forbidding frown now. “And what are you doing here, Miss High-and-Mighty heiress?”
When the Duke of Carlisle held a private party at his Belgravia address, he put elite dens of vice to shame. Sebastian took in the decadence before him with a jaundiced eye. Some of the most powerful men in the ton thronged the ballroom, twirling with the crème de la crème of London Cyprians. Champagne flowed aplenty. The ladies were painted and scantily clad, the men already deep in their cups. And damn if he didn’t smell the cloying scent of opium in the air.
The opium likely emerged from one of the surrounding chambers where the duke kept rooms devoted to sin. On his slow perambulation, Sebastian had noted a chamber where a nude woman acted as a serving platter for charcuterie, a shrouded, low-lit room with pillows on the floor, and yet another where couples were coming and going in various stages of dishabille.
Sybarite fêtes such as these were what Carlisle deemed “hiding in plain sight,” one of the best means of achieving communication and maintaining his fa?ade without arousing suspicion. If all the polite world thought him a dissolute rakehell, none would be inclined to question the company he kept. For his part, Sebastian adopted the same voluptuary lifestyle, sans the hedonistic all-night parties.
Unlike Carlisle, he required sleep.
He accepted a flute of champagne from a servant bearing a gilded tray and pretended to take a long gulp. In truth, he needed a clear head tonight, for the last of their plans would be laid in motion. And he would sure as hell need a clear head on the morrow when he faced the matrimonial equivalent of the gallows.
For as much as his body reacted to the notion of Miss Daisy Vanreid becoming his wife, his mind couldn’t help but feel the exact opposite. He’d learned long ago that his body was weak. His mind was stronger. He could harness his inconvenient attraction to her into a more focused energy—pursuing the plotters at large before they injured or murdered hundreds of innocent civilians.
Feigning another sip of his champagne, he stole a discreet look at his pocket watch. Thank God. The appointed time had come. Careful to blend with the boisterous revelers, he slipped from the ballroom and decamped for the secret portal hidden in the elaborate Rococo wood panels gracing the great hall beyond. He made certain he was alone before locating the mechanism behind a scroll that allowed the door to open inward.