Her eye fell on the chair she’d wedged beneath the door handle. Her reality was anything but idyllic.
The sequence of events that had landed her in this room ran through her mind. The card game. The wrong man. Her failure.
Now, she was wedded to that wrong man, who just so happened to be the son of a duke.
A pretend marriage, she corrected herself. But the duke and his son were not pretend at all. They were, in fact, very real. Too real.
She swung her legs off the bed, still fully clothed, prepared for another hasty flight. On light feet, so as not to alert anyone to her wakefulness, she made her way to the washbasin in the corner. What she wouldn’t give for toothbrush and powder.
She found her reflection in the small mirror. Dios mío. She looked as bad as her mouth tasted. She splashed water onto her pale, drawn face and pulled the pins from her hair, which fell about her shoulders and down her back in a stringy mess.
A soft tap-tap sounded on the door. “Izzy?” came a hiss through solid wood. “Milady?”
Milady? “Oh,” Isabel groaned aloud. She was “married” to a lord, which would make her a lady. If it were true.
“Just a moment,” she called out. She shimmied the chair out from beneath the door handle, and in walked the girl, her face bright with her usual smile.
“Tilly,” Isabel began on a stammer, “what are you wearing?”
“Ye like it?” The girl’s chest puffed out with pride. “Lord Percival—”
“Lord Percival?”
“Yer ’usband.” Tilly gave a broad wink.
“Oh.”
“Well, ’e told me to wear this”—she swept her hands up and down her person, indicating the modest black dress with the high white collar—“and tell any’un ’oo asked that I’m yer lady’s maid.”
“Oh.” It struck Isabel that Tilly’s maid’s uniform was constructed of finer wool than that of the dress she was currently wearing. As a matter of fact, this was one of her two best dresses. And still not as good as that of a duke’s servant.
Tilly’s gaze clouded over in the dreamy way specific to her. “Yer ’usband, ’e’s a right ’andful o’ man, ain’t ’e?”
Although she agreed whole-heartedly that Lord Percival would be a right ’andful for any woman, Isabel couldn’t allow Tilly to persist in her current fantasy. “Tilly, you know he’s not my husband. And I’m not your mistress,” she added for good measure.
Tilly gave an indifferent shrug. “Well, that’s ’oo we are while we’re ’ere. Anyway, I ain’t told ye the best part.” The girl ambled over to the vanity, picked up a brush, and waved Isabel over. “Yer ’air is a right rat’s nest.” Once Isabel settled onto a low stool, Tilly continued. “I was goin’ to sleep in a servant’s room by the kitchen downstairs, but ye know ’oo beat me there?”
“Who?” Isabel knew who, but had to ask.
“’Im.”
Tilly didn’t need to clarify. ’Im could only be one man.
“And ye know what ’e told me?”
“I can’t imagine. Truly.”
“’E told me to take me pick o’ rooms up ’ere and sleep there.”
This came as no surprise to Isabel as he’d said as much to her.
“And ye know what?” Tilly continued, conspiratorially. “I did. Me arse ne’er felt feathers so fine and fluffy. A gel can really get a dream in a bed like that.” The brush began running through Isabel’s hair with more ease. “Lawks be, Izzy, ye got the kinda ’air to strike envy in the best o’ us, all long and sable and silk. It’s a right good thing ye got out o’ Number 9 before Nan got ahold o’ it.”
“Oh?” Isabel met Tilly’s gaze in the mirror. “Was my hair in some sort of danger?”
Tilly’s light brown eyes went wide with alarm. “All it would take to separate yer ’air from yer ’ead is a sharp pair o’ scissors, and ye couldn’t be puttin’ that sort o’ thin’ past Nan. Ever since she lost that front tooth, she bin mean as a squirrel.”
Two light knocks sounded on the door. As one, Isabel and Tilly craned their necks around as a chambermaid shuffled into the room with a friendly, “A good morning to you, milady.”
“And to you,” was Isabel’s wobbly reply. How did English aristocrats address their servants?
“The Duchess sent this for you.” The girl extended a pressed newspaper to Tilly, who passed it along to Isabel on a snort.
A well-worn efficiency in her step, the maid set about her business, refreshing the basin water, smoothing bed linens, fluffing pillows, and so she went.
“What’s it say?” asked Tilly.
Isabel glanced at the paper in her hands. The London Diary. “It’s a scandal sheet,” she replied, dismissive.
“Zounds! I love me some gossip. ’Oo’s it about?”
Isabel gave the front page a quick scan. “Some twaddle about a Savior of St. Giles.”
“Ye ’aven’t ’eard of the Savior of St. Giles?” Tilly exclaimed, eyes wide.
“Should I have?” What did this savior have to do with anything? He wasn’t here, saving her or Tilly.
Tilly giggled and clasped her hands together, only just containing her glee to be the first to impart this delicious tattle. “Well, it started in April. A man—a nob every’un thinks—won Tiny Titus’s ’ell from ’im, and every’un got ready fer a big change, but not really a change, ye ken?” Tilly winked. “There ain’t really no way to change a ’ell. Fancy or foul, they be what they are beneath the surface and behind closed doors.”
Isabel could only suppose that was the sordid truth of the matter.
“Anyway, ye know what ’e did?” Tilly paused half a heartbeat. “’E shut the place down. ’Ad all the tables, beds, and furniture ’auled off. Place is nuthin’ but bare bones. Then, ye know what ’e did next?”
Isabel couldn’t help it, she wanted to know. “What?”
“A fortnight later, ’e did it again with another ’ell.”