Her eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me correctly. Why did my wife rush out of here? Could it be because you ignored her? Offended her? Showed her anything but the utmost respect she deserved?”
Her mouth opened and stayed open.
“Answer me!”
She flinched. “Of course not. I was only trying to be helpful. I gave her my opinion and advice about dresses that might suit her.”
All the muscles in Henry’s body tightened. “My wife is a reasonable woman with the patience of an angel. She would not depart if you had not greatly affronted her.”
The woman’s head lowered. “I meant well.”
Henry stepped away from the desk.
“What did she order?”
“Your Grace?”
“My wife. What did she order?”
Madame Renard fumbled with her ledger, her fingers carefully avoiding the chocolate.
“Two walking dresses, Your Grace, and the ball gown for Lady Carstairs’s. Day slippers in two colours, evening slippers in white satin. Gloves.”
“The first complete set of morning and day dresses shall be in my wife’s dressing room three days from today. And the ball gown for Lady Carstairs’s shall be delivered within a week. You will dress my wife as a Duchess of Iredell ought to be dressed.”
The pen had rolled from the ledger and lay on the floor between them. Her hands were pressed flat to the wall behind her.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace, but one week for a ball gown by itself would mean—”
“You took my wife’s measurements a week ago. By your own account you have drafted your patterns and done nothing further. You have wasted the time you were given.”
His voice dropped, very low. Madame Renard flinched as though he had shouted instead.
“You will not waste what remains. The account is open. Do not make me return.”
“Y—Yes, Your Grace.”
Henry took up his hat from the corner of her writing table and walked out without sparing her another glance.
In the carriage Henry drew off his gloves and laid them on the seat beside him.
It had been about the disrespect, plainly and entirely. They had not insulted his wife so much as they had insulted his name. That was what he had defended this afternoon: the name.
He looked out at the wet street.
He had been a duke when thetonwould not have him to dinner, when ladies crossed the room at Almack’s, when no door in Mayfair would open to him the Season after Margaret died. And he had been a duke when the Alliance of Dukes did not acknowledge his wedding to his fourth wife.
What chance, then, had a poor baron’s daughter from Hampstead, walking into a Bond Street shop?
For an instant, with the rain striking the glass beside him, he saw her walking into that shop in her grey wool and her new shoes, alone, and giving her name to a man who laughed at it.
He let out a grunt and shifted in his seat.
She did not deserve his pity. She deserved a great deal better than that.
Chapter seventeen