Belatedly, Marchmont discovered his erstwhile guardian, who must have come out into the hall while Marchmont was gawking at Zoe and getting exactly the sorts of ideas he strongly suspected she wanted him to have, the little devil.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, her father walked to her and kissed her cheek. His eyes glistened with unshed tears. “How glad I am to see this day arrived at last,” he said.
If all went well, this day would give Zoe the life she would have had if she had grown up in the way her sisters had done.
If all went well.
Lady Lexham followed Zoe down the stairs a moment later. “Isn’t she lovely?” said she. “How clever you were about the dress, Marchmont. There will be nothing like it at court today—and next week, everyone will want the same thing.”
“That’s why he’s a leader of fashion,” said Zoe.
“And all this time I thought it was my wit and charm.”
“Try to be dull on the way to the Queen’s House,” Zoe said. “I have a thousand things to remember: what to say and what not to say. Mainly it’s what not to say. If I were wearing the usual kind of dress, I could simply tell Mama to kick me if I said the wrong thing—but with all this great tent under me, it would take forever to find something to kick, and by then I should have disgraced myself.”
“Never fear,” said Marchmont. “If I detect the smallest sign of your going astray, I’ll create a diversion. I’ll accidentally trip over my sword.”
“There, you see, is the mark of a true nobleman, Zoe,” said her father. “He’ll fall on his sword for you.”
“I said I’d get her through this and I shall,” said Marchmont. “I shall do whatever is necessary.” His gaze reverted to Zoe, floating in her cloud of rose and silver. “Ready, brat?”
She smiled a slow, beatific smile, and a summer sun broke out upon the world.
“Ready,” she said.
It was the most amazing sight. As they neared the Queen’s House, Zoe watched long lines of carriages advancing through the Green Park from Hyde Park. Others—from the Horse Guards and St. James’s, Marchmont said—came by way of the Mall. Along both routes people crowded, watching the parade of vehicles. She heard the blare of trumpets and the crack of guns.
As they neared the courtyard, where they were to alight, she saw another line of carriages going the other way, heading toward what Mama said was Birdcage Walk.
“I wish I could open the window,” she said.
“Don’t be silly, Zoe,” said her mother.
“You want to hang out of it, I don’t doubt,” said Marchmont. “Your plumes will fall off into the dirt, and the dust will coat your gown. You may open the window when we depart. Nobody will care what you look like then.”
“It’s beyond anything,” she said. “Everyone said there would be a great crowd, but I had no idea.”
The carriage stopped and she took her nose away from the glass to which it had been pressed. She smoothed her skirts, not because they needed it but because she relished the feel of the silver net, like gossamer. “I feel like a princess,” she said.
“The princesses are agreeable enough ladies, but I fear you’ll outshine them,” said Marchmont. “Perhaps I should have let you hang out of the window after all.”
She smiled at him. She couldn’t help it. He’d tried her patience the week before, but she had missed him, and seeing him at the bottom of the stairs today had made her heart lift. Descending the stairs, she’d felt as light as a cloud.
He had called her “brat,” as he used to do so long ago.
And though he’d stood in all his grandeur of court dress, looking every inch the duke he was, descended from a very long line of them—for all that pomp, he was Lucien, too.
The coach door opened.
It was time.
They all knew who she was, and Marchmont wasn’t in the least surprised.
Only the London mob—ordinary people—had been present when she’d appeared on the balcony of Lexham House. Few if any members of the aristocracy would have been in that crowd, mingling with the unwashed. He doubted that anyone in the entrance hall of the Queen’s House had seen any more of Zoe than the caricatures and the single etching that had accompanied Beardsley’s story. Pamphlets having sold like Holland bulbs during the tulip craze, a book version had come out this week, the more expensive editions containing colored illustrations of her adventures.
That was all anyone in Society but the handful who’d attended the dinner had seen of Miss Lexham.
The world knew who she was all the same. Even the Beau Monde was capable, in desperate circumstances, of putting two and two together. Its members observed him and observed her mother and drew the logical conclusion.
