Isabel signaled to Eva and Nell to stop and drew herself up to her fullest height. She’d known this fight was coming. “If they don’t go, I don’t go. Tilly?”
Tilly’s face popped into view. “Yes, miss?”
“Come out of there.”
Bretagne’s arm blocked the door opening. “Now, wait a minute.”
This, too, Isabel had predicted. She strode forward, now separated from him by a few inches. If he thought she couldn’t be as fierce as he, well, he would learn. Mayhap she did have a bit of Mama’s spirit. “I shan’t leave them in London to face the danger I’m escaping,” she hissed in rising anger. “Don’t you have a care for another single person in the world?”
He flinched, a flicker of movement, but she caught it. She’d scraped across a raw nerve. Ruthlessly, she pressed her advantage. “It’s all or none.”
A pair of riotous heartbeats galloped through her chest before he drew back and grandly waved their motley group inside. She sensed sarcasm in the gesture, but she cared not. She would take what victory she could manage.
“Miss?” Isabel heard at her back.
“Yes, Nell?”
Nell’s eye darted nervously toward the man inside. “I’ll be ridin’ up top, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
“If the babe needs a feed, just tap the roof.”
Isabel nodded, and Nell scurried up to sit beside the driver, who gave her a surly grunt.
First, Eva and the babe, assisted by Tilly, piled inside, then Isabel. Half in, half out the doorway, she glanced from side to side, the man to her right, Eva and Tilly to her left. Any other time, she would take the seat with the most spaciousness, but this was no usual time. She went left and squeezed her rump between Eva and Tilly. The man gave a snort before he tapped the roof twice. The carriage jerked into motion, and they were on their way.
An excited light in her eyes, Tilly squeezed Isabel’s hand. “Zounds! What adventures we be ’avin’.”
Isabel met the hard, unflinching gaze of the man opposite her. A chill of portent jangled up her spine.
Eva leaned over without disturbing the babe in her arms and pressed her mouth to Isabel’s ear. “I don’t know him.”
It hadn’t occurred to Isabel that Eva would, but shouldn’t it have, given Eva’s past and where Isabel had met this man? An unaccountable thread of relief ribboned through her. She didn’t know this man, not really, but she hadn’t thought him evil. Annoying and forceful, yes, but not evil.
Not like Montfort.
It wasn’t long before a heaviness began to pull at Isabel, and sand scratched at her eyes. She was tired, so very, very tired, and the jostle of the carriage so very, very restful. Each blink grew more weighty as she fell headlong into slumber beneath the watchful eye of a wolf.
Chapter 5
Eyes trained on the four sleeping figures opposite him, Percy wondered, not for the first time, what the blast he’d stumbled into.
Izzy and Tilly had descended into slumber rather quickly, considering, but the woman with the sleeping babe had trained a baleful eye on him until it could no longer hold open. Although no introductions had been made, it was clear she was Izzy’s sister as they shared the same sable hair and olive skin. Only their eyes differed, the sister’s a deep, bottomless brown to Izzy’s striking green. Never had he encountered eyes like Izzy’s.
Dawn began brightening the sky outside the window coated with London filth, illuminating familiar surroundings Percy hadn’t viewed in over a decade. Although his father owned any number of properties, Percy had always considered this one his true home. Sentiment tugged at him, and he tamped it down. He wouldn’t be staying.
He finally had something concrete on Montfort, and he wasn’t about to ease off the pressure. He was needed in London.
The carriage made a sharp right with less care than the driver could have taken. The man had been miffed at Percy’s request to drive them this far outside London, but, in the end, he’d been unable to refuse Percy’s coin. Still, his pique let itself be known in the quality, or lack thereof, of his driving. Opposite, his passengers stirred—Tilly emitting a mildly offended, “Whut?”—before settling back into sleep.
Percy’s eye fell on Izzy. She’d surprised him with the dressmaker’s shop in Cheapside. The neighborhood wasn’t Mayfair, but it was respectable.
Who was this woman, anyway?
He’d been readying himself to storm the shop when she’d emerged, wearing a modest dress, no sign of sheer black lace, and with three additional passengers in tow. The woman had a knack for collecting strays.
He couldn’t help studying her in the newly emergent light of dawn. She was young, but not so young as others in Number 9, like Tilly. No, Izzy had a fresh, soft look about her in sleep. If he was being dead honest, she looked like the most delectable sweet treat to ever cross a pair of lips. When she’d removed her black lace shawl to reveal upturned breasts, dusky pink nipples at their tips, he’d used every last shred of will he possessed to not look or react physically. Years of measuring and parceling his reactions had paid out in that moment.
She couldn’t have been at Number 9 for very long. She was too soft, too fresh. Further, in her manner and in her speech lay a . . . refinement.
About her speech, there was the Spanish accent she and her sister shared. Every instinct told him it was a crucial point.
He took in the details of her dress. It was modest. It was respectable. It wasn’t the dress of a strumpet. In fact, she didn’t look like a strumpet at all. Rather, she looked closer to a dressmaker.
How did she come to be in Number 9? One and one didn’t add up to two with this woman.
He only knew this with any certainty: no matter how seemingly soft, how seemingly fresh, how seemingly refined, the woman was Montfort’s creature. Yet Percy wasn’t convinced she knew the details of Montfort’s plan. Likely not. Montfort tended to hold his cards close to his chest, buried deep beneath his hale and hearty exterior of bluff English gentleman. Bit players only knew enough to perform their roles.
Still, this woman had mucked up Montfort’s scheme last night, an outcome that Montfort wouldn’t let pass without consequences, which was why Percy needed her out of London.
The house rolled into view, its gray stone burnished amber gold with the morning light. Gardencourt Manor. Constructed of Portland stone imported from Dorset, it had mellowed from white to an aged gray. At first glance, it struck one as a formidable fortification, a remnant of England’s medieval warlord past with its fantastical towers and crenellations. The house, however, had missed the illustrious past by a few hundred years, making it merely a palace constructed fifty years ago to resemble a castle.