When the Duke Returns (Desperate Duchesses #4)

When the Duke Returns (Desperate Duchesses #4) Page 20

“We’re not supposed to call each other by given names.”

“I already call you Isidore.”

“I didn’t give you permission to do so!”

“Every time you call me Cosway, it sounds like cock to me,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe you should go right on calling me Cosway, and I’ll just—”

Isidore laughed. “Fine. Simeon.”

Signora Angelico worked in a large open room on the bottom floor. The first thing Simeon saw were the open shelves that lined the room. Rolled cloth—silk, satin, taffeta—was stacked to the topmost level. It reminded him of souks in Morocco. The colors glowed coyly from the ends of the rolls, deep red silk, lilac shot with silver, the clear yellow of buttercups in early spring. Below the cloth were boxes, filled to the brim and spilling forth their contents: thread, buttons, yards and yards of ribbon. Everywhere there was lace. Lace hanging from wooden poles, lace thrown into piles, thin rivulets of lace and fatter rivers of it heaped on the tables that scattered the room.

Isidore had walked directly into the room, while Simeon paused on the threshold. Now she was dropping a deep curtsy before a woman in late middle age, with a deliciously curvy figure. The mantua-maker was kissing Isidore energetically on both cheeks, calling her bella.

Then they both turned and looked at him.

Simeon walked forward and swept into a flourishing bow. “Duke,” Isidore said, “may I present Signora Angelico?”

“Onorato di conoscerla, signora.”

Isidore raised an eyebrow. “I had no idea you spoke Italian.”

“I don’t really, but I can improvise from Portuguese.” He turned back to Signora Angelico who was declaring herself felicissima to encounter, finally, the marito of her darling little duchess, whom she had loved since the moment she first saw her.

“Signora Angelico made gowns for my aunt for many years,” Isidore explained.

“Your aunt?”

“I lived with my aunt after we married.”

“Of course! Your aunt.”

“Augustina Del’Fino,” Isidore filled in.

So he didn’t know every bit of information about what she’d been doing for the last eight years since they married…well, perhaps it was more than eight years.

Signora Angelico turned away, her hands in the air, scattering her seamstresses in all directions.

“How long have we been married?” Simeon inquired.

Isidore glanced at him. She would make an excellent politician; she had a way of putting a fellow in his place with nothing more than a raised eyebrow. “Don’t you remember?”

“Why would I ask if I did?” he said, surprised.

“We were engaged in June, 1765, married by proxy in June, 1773.”

“Of course. You said you were twelve when we actually married.”

Signora Angelico was gesticulating madly from the other side of the room.

“And you were eighteen.”

“I was in India. How long did you live with my mother?”

“A matter of a few months. I’m afraid that we were not suited temperamentally, and we all agreed that I would be happier with my aunt.” She turned away. “Cara signora, arriviamo!”

Signora Angelico was chattering away with Isidore in Italian, so rapidly that Simeon couldn’t follow. She was pulling bolts of cloth from the shelves and throwing them on the table, screaming at her assistants, waving her hands around…

Simeon went back to thinking. So Isidore went to live with her aunt and presumably expected him to collect her up at some point.

Signora turned away so he said to her, “Just when did you think I’d come back for you?”

“When I was sixteen.”

“But that was—”

“Seven years ago.”

He stared down at her.

“You’ve been waiting for me for seven years?”

“What did you think I’ve been doing?” And she turned away, cooing over the signora’s choice of cloth.

Simeon stared down at the bolt of fabric. It was spun of a material so fine that it looked like cobwebs, and yet he knew he had finer in his warehouses. He had shipped home trunks of fabric.

“Did you ever receive fabric I sent from India?”

She glanced up at him and her eyes were like chips of blue ice now. “They must have gone as astray as you yourself.”

With a sinking feeling, he remembered that he sent everything to his mother’s direction, who then refused acceptance. It seemed a strange decision on his part, now he thought of it.

He had chosen beautiful pieces and put them to the side, sending them home with instructions that they be delivered to the duchess. It was only now dawning on him that there really were—and had been for years—two duchesses.

The mantua-maker was matching the silvery fabric with a delicate lace tinted a faint blue. Isidore would look like the snow princess in a Russian fairy tale, the ones in which the princess had a heart of ice.

“I don’t like it,” he said abruptly.

Signora Angelico was clearly not used to being interrupted—nor to being countered. She flew into a paroxysm of exclamations, half in English, half in Italian.

Isidore turned to him and hissed, “You can’t say that sort of thing to Signora Angelico! The Queen of France herself has ordered night clothing from signora.”

“I don’t care whether she sews the king’s slippers with her teeth,” Simeon said. “This fabric isn’t of the quality I’d like you to wear. I may not care much for polite society, Isidore, but I know fabric.”

“You wouldn’t—”

He turned to Signora Angelico. She was as ruffled as a hen in the rain, her cheeks stained with crimson, her hands waving wildly around her head.

But Simeon had bargained with many a tradesman in places where to lose the bargain was to lose one’s head. “This fabric isn’t good enough,” he said.

“Not good enough!” Signora Angelico’s face took on a purple hue. “This is the very best, magnifico, lovely in every way, fit for—”

Simeon rubbed it between his fingers and shook his head. “Indian silk.”

“Silk from the looms of the Maharaja himself—”

Simeon shook his head. “Signora, signora…surely you don’t take me for a dunce?” He pushed the fabric to the side and sat on the table.

“Get up!” Isidore said to him in an urgent undertone. “You can’t sit before us.”

Simeon snapped his fingers at one of the girls, who were flocking nervously against the wall as if they thought he would faint merely from the signora’s frown. “Chairs for Her Grace and Signora Angelico.”

Two of them scuttled over with straight-backed chairs, used by the girls while they engaged in hand-sewing. Perfect. Signora Angelico was now seated just below him. He smiled down at her. “I can tell that you are a woman who adores fabric,” he cooed. “A woman ravished by antherine silk, so glossy and light, perhaps with a touch of mignonette lace.”

Signora’s whole face changed. “You know your fabrics, Your Grace.”

He smiled at her. “Now this—” he put a finger disdainfully on the silk she proposed. “Paduasoy. A nice strong silk. Perhaps good enough for some. But not,” and he gave every word a tiny emphasis, “not for my wife, signora.”