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“Though if I were the princess, I would have talked the sheikh into changing the contest.”

“And?” Simeon prompted.

“I think it would be very interesting if the princess too had been able to choose her future consort, the way the ladies of the harem were. I presume the gentlemen in question were not dressed?”

He looked genuinely surprised, which was very satisfying. He needn’t think he was the only one who could talk about bawdy things.

The carriage drew to a halt and she automatically started putting her gloves back on.

Simeon reached over and pulled one away.

“What—”

Then he snatched the other. And finally, when the carriage door opened, he flung them straight out into the street. They flew past the face of a startled groomsman, who gave a little shriek and stumbled backward, falling onto his bottom.

“You are utterly deranged!” Isidore said with conviction, leaning forward to look at the street. “I can’t go to my appointment without gloves.” Sure enough, her blue gloves were lying in a puddle of blackened rainwater.

“You hate them,” Simeon said, leaping out of the carriage and holding out his own ungloved hand.

She ground her teeth and then put her hand in his.

The shock of heat she felt was entirely unreasonable.

Chapter Ten

65 Blackfriars Street

February 27, 1784

They were before a row of houses, in a part of London Simeon didn’t know. Not that he really knew London. “Doesn’t your mantua-maker own a shop?” he asked. The groomsman was standing at the door of a small house.

“We are visiting Signora Angelico’s studio, Cosway,” Isidore told him. “This is a great honor, extended only to her countrywomen, so please try to behave yourself.”

“Couldn’t you call me by my given name?”

“It’s not polite.”

He ignored that. “My name is Simeon. It’s a good, workable name and I thank God I didn’t end up Godfrey, like my poor brother.”

“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.”