“Again? How is that possible? Wasn’t he recognized?”
“Not ’til it were too late, ’e wadn’t. ’E’s got people thinkin’ ’e’s a European lord, or sumpthin’.”
“That seems a smidge far-fetched.” Someone had to insert a bit of logic into this conversation.
Tilly had no use for Isabel’s stab at reason. “’Cause ’e’s bin real quiet the last month. People are thinkin’ ’e went back to one of them countries o’er there.” Tilly waved her arm in the general direction of nowhere. “I always did ’ope ’e would show up at Number 9 and sweep me off me feet one night. But ’e don’t go fer them fancy ’ells, only the ones like where I got me start in St. Giles.”
“Got your start?” Isabel asked, a mite breathless. Her gut seemed to have fallen to her feet.
“Oh, yeah, when I was fourteen.”
Nausea stirred inside Isabel at the very idea.
A dreamy light entered Tilly’s eye. “But could ye just imagine if ’e did? Rumor ’as it ’e’s ’andsomer than the devil ’imself.”
A throat cleared, and Isabel half turned to meet the chambermaid’s gaze, eyes wide as saucers. Her ears had picked up everything. Dios mío.
“Will that be all, milady?” the girl asked in a small voice.
Isabel nodded. The girl dipped in a shallow curtsy and began to leave when she stopped abruptly. “Lawks! I almost forgot. These are for you.”
She dug two missives from her apron pockets and extended them toward Tilly, who took them with another amused snort. “Guess these toffs don’t do nothin’ fer themselves.”
The maid curtsied again and rushed from the room.
“Tilly, if this is going to succeed,” Isabel spoke in a low voice that wouldn’t carry, “you’ll need to mind your tongue.”
Tilly’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling. “If ye say so.”
Isabel broke the seal on the first note and scanned its contents.
You have a terrible megrim. It will keep you confined to the quiet of Rosebud Cottage for the duration of your stay. I shall make your apologies for you.
—P
She should have expected this, yet it rubbed her fur the wrong direction. She’d never been treated as someone to be ashamed of.
“What’s it say?” Tilly asked.
Isabel folded the note. “My head aches.”
“Ye seem fine to me.”
Isabel opened the second missive, and her heart did a little flip when she read the signature.
Our dear Isabel,
Do consider joining the family in the breakfast room as it would give us great pleasure to welcome you to the family.
—Lucretia, Duchess of Arundel
Postscript: It is my understanding that you have a megrim. As a frequent sufferer of the condition myself, I’ve devised a remedy that offers great relief. Cook will have a batch awaiting your arrival.
Isabel’s hands fell to her lap. The note fluttered to the floor, which Tilly immediately retrieved, squinting at contents she surely couldn’t read. “What’s this ’un say?”
“Her Grace has invited me to break my fast with the family.”
“Lawks be, don’t know ’bout that. Bet she got a good spread goin’, though.”
“I shall go,” Isabel said in sudden decision.
Even as part of her quaked at the very thought of joining a duke’s family for breakfast, another part of her rose to the idea of tweaking Lord Percival’s nose out of joint, if such a devastating man’s nose could, indeed, be tweaked askew.
“Well, if yer insistin’, then ye’ll be wantin’ to look yer tidy best fer Lady Exeter.”
“Lady Exeter?”
“She would be yer sister by law, if ye were well an’ truly ’itched to Lord Percival.”
“Who told you this?”
“Well, the chambermaid ’oo was ’ere? ’Er name is Jane, and she let me in on the runnin’s o’ this place when she delivered some food to yer sister and ’er servant.”
“Nell isn’t our servant,” Isabel said before adding, “Not exactly.”
“Well, then what is she?”
“It’s a complicated situation.” Wasn’t everything these days?
“About yer sister,” Tilly began and shifted on her feet. It was the first time Isabel had seen the girl discomfited. “She don’t say much, does she?”
“No.”
“Is it all right to say she scares me a mite?”
Isabel nodded, desperate to change the subject. “About Lady Exeter?”
“She’s the ’oitiest an’ toitiest of ’em all.”
It occurred to Isabel that she’d jumped from the frying pan directly into the fire. “Then do your best, Tilly.”
She wouldn’t enter that breakfast room looking a fright. She did have her pride, even if it had suffered a bruising in recent months.
Tilly’s nimble fingers plaited and coiled Isabel’s hair into a simple chignon at the base of her neck, leaving a few artful tendrils to fall in loose waves about her face. The girl bent down to admire her handiwork in the mirror alongside Isabel. “They’ll not find a ’air out ’o place.”
“You’re a magician, Tilly.”
Tilly should have been a proper lady’s maid, instead of—well, instead of what she’d become. How had the girl ended up in that life?
Oh, any number of ways, Isabel had recently learned.
Tilly found a small pot of rouge inside a drawer. She pried open its lid and dabbed her pinky inside. “Now fer a few touches o’ color.”
“No rouge,” Isabel said, firm. She was to be a lady.
Tilly gave a little shrug and set the pot aside. “I ain’t sure ye need it with yer pretty, dark complexion. What did ye call it the other day?”
“Olive.”