Isabel had no argument for that particular truth.
Hortense then explained it was a preferred manner of explaining away this sort of situation. Isabel shuddered at how many situations Hortense and Percy had handled for Hortense to be so cavalier.
No matter. The woman’s meaning had been clear: the law wouldn’t be coming for Eva. It was an assurance Isabel had a difficult time trusting in the light of day, and all the days since.
Today, at last, she could let the matter recede into the distant nightmare from a night that might or might not have happened.
If only.
One person from that night—although she’d neither seen nor heard from him since—refused to leave her thoughts be.
Where was Percy? What was he doing this very moment?
Oh, to have her mind as her own again.
“Miss?” Isabel heard at her back. She pivoted to face Nell, who was smoothing several yards of gray wool across a large rectangular table, one of three taking up much of the room. “Yes?”
“Do I cut it like this?” Nell indicated the vertical length of the cloth. “Or like this?” She waved across horizontally.
Isabel folded the newspaper and tucked it into the waistband of her apron. “Along the grain, here.” She grabbed a pair of scissors. “Like this.” She began to make the cut and quickly determined the scissors were dull and would fray the fabric. “I shall fetch a sharper pair.”
As Isabel made her way to the back of the shop, her step felt a hair lighter. In truth, a part of her—her heart, namely—would never recover from the events of that strange week or the night that had ended it. That she hadn’t succeeded in freeing Papa . . . It was a pain that never wholly receded, sticking in her heart with its flat ache. But it hadn’t truly been an option, she understood that now. Bertrand Montfort never intended to keep his word.
But she, Eva, and Ariel were safe. At least, for now. She wasn’t sure she would ever feel safe again or fully trust in the idea of security. She had lived how quickly a life could be turned on its head.
Life had certainly taught her one lesson: No outcome was perfect, and no happiness came without a cost. Life would exact its toll.
She was returning with the scissors when she encountered Eva, carrying three bolts of shantung silk, the finest fabric they owned. In fact, they hadn’t yet served a client who could afford a garment constructed of it. They’d been laying these bolts by on the hope that someday they would.
“What is that in your apron?” Eva asked.
Isabel considered lying and telling her sister it was nothing of importance. But it was important, and Eva needed to know.
Wordlessly, Isabel held out the paper and pointed out the article. Eva’s face transformed from cheery and open to tense and pinched as she scanned the words.
Once finished, she met Isabel’s eye. “Then it’s done.”
“Sí,” Isabel replied. She crumpled the paper and tossed it into the rubbish bin.
Eva’s face softened in relief. “Good.”
“Why do you have such fine fabrics out?” Isabel asked, ushering in a new subject.
The sparkle returned to Eva’s eyes. “We shall need them today.”
“Do we have clients arriving?”
The bell above the front door jingled, and Eva’s face lit up. “That will be them.”
“Them?” Isabel asked Eva’s back.
Eva rushed the silk into the show room she’d dubbed the Serendipity Room before doubling back and streaking past Isabel to the front of the shop.
Isabel’s gut churned. She’d come to dread the unexpected. At last, she heard the voices.
Familiar voices.
Her heart kicked up a notch.
Those voices came from a life she’d thought to forget. A life she needed to forget, because if she didn’t forget that life, she wouldn’t be able to forget him.
And, oh, how she needed to forget him.
But those voices, here, made it an impossibility.
Steps the consistency of molasses in winter, Isabel trudged into the front room to find Lucy, Miss Radclyffe, and a third woman conversing with Eva. If there were ever two birds of a feather for liveliness, it was Lucy and Eva.
Eva caught Isabel’s eye and waved her over. “Isabel, come and greet my muses.” Mischief shimmered about her. “And their mother, Lady St. Alban.”
All sets of eyes landed on Isabel. Lady St. Alban? Lucy’s mother. The woman who had been Percy’s wife, his real wife. Isabel went a trifle nauseous.
“If it isn’t my step-mama.” Lucy rushed over and gave Isabel a sweet buss on the cheek. “Do you know the date of my father’s return? For some reason I had it in my head that it was this week.”
Isabel almost answered that she hadn’t the faintest idea. Instead, she gave her head a tight shake.
Where had Percy gone? Back to his old life as a spy? And why would Lucy be asking her, of all people?
Minutes ago, life had, at last, gone right-side up. Now it was topsy-turvy again.
Lady St. Alban crossed the short distance separating them and took Isabel’s hand. “Lady Percival, I’ve heard so much about you. Although, I fear you look a trifle peaked. Is it possible you’re suffering from one of your famous megrims? Should we send for the Duchess’s special cure?”
“No,” burst from Isabel’s mouth, graceless and abrupt.
A playful smile crinkled the corners of Lady St. Alban’s eyes. “If you change your mind, I’m certain the Duchess would happily spare a dram for you.” Lady St. Alban glanced around the shop, her observant gaze taking in the implements of the dressmaking trade: spools of thread, bolts of fabric, a dress in the final stages of construction. “When Percy returned Lucy and Mina to London, he mentioned that you were quite devoted to your shop and unwilling to leave it while he was away. I find that admirable in a woman.”
“What is that?” Isabel barely had the presence of mind to ask. Percy had been discussing her?
“A desire to have a life outside a man.”
Isabel blinked. Besides the natural reserve Isabel observed in the other woman’s eyes, she detected something more. Knowledge. What precisely had Percy told this woman?