Isabel’s stomach did its usual flip-flop at the thought of him.
Lady St. Alban’s eyes fixed on a point over Isabel’s shoulder and lit up. “Oh, how lovely.”
Isabel didn’t need to turn to take Lady St. Alban’s meaning.
The roses.
The shop was up to its ears in roses.
Isabel couldn’t think about the roses at present. This day was proving too much.
“Lady St. Alban,” Eva said, “it would be such a pleasure to make a dress for you.” Her gaze turned appraising. “And perhaps a pose for our advertisement?”
“Advertisement?” Isabel asked, relieved to be pulled from other thoughts. This was the first she was hearing of an advertisement. Eva could be bold. It was a fact.
Lady St. Alban gave a breathy laugh. “You flatter me, Mrs. Gardiner, but I shall leave it to the girls. And I have your assurance their names will not be used?”
“Absolutamente. Now let me show you the fabrics and mock-up sketches I’ve done.”
As the group of four made their way to the Serendipity Room, Miss Radclyffe gave Isabel a nod and a smile. “Lady Percival, how very nice to see you.”
Isabel responded in kind. Ahead, she heard Lady St. Alban ask, “Do you mind if I pull out my sketchbook as well?”
“Is art an interest of yours, my lady?”
“A bit,” Lady St. Alban replied.
Again, Isabel was alone, her nerves ajangle with a swirl of emotion. What a morning. She looked down and realized she still held a pair of sharp scissors. Right.
She’d taken no more than two steps, when Tilly’s voice rang out, “Milady!”
Isabel exhaled a tiny huff of irritation before turning to face the girl. How many times had she told Tilly that she wasn’t a lady and not to call her one?
Countless. To no effect.
Tilly held up a dress of ivory muslin. It was one of Isabel’s best. “Will this suffice for dinner tonight?”
Isabel inhaled a groan. “Yes, thank you.”
The girl gave Isabel a satisfied smile. “And yer rose? Has it arrived today?”
“No.”
Oh, the roses. They couldn’t be avoided. A perfect, different-colored rose had arrived by messenger boy every day since . . . Well, since the day after that night. No note. No sign of who sent it.
In her heart, Isabel knew who.
What she didn’t know was why? To what end?
“It’s late,” Tilly persisted.
“Or it isn’t coming at all,” Isabel replied with forced indifference.
“Nah, that ain’t it,” Tilly said, dismissive. “No man sends a woman a perfect rose every day for fifty-eight days runnin’ and stops all sudden like.”
“A man might.”
Tilly’s eyes narrowed on Isabel. “Ye truly don’t know nuthin’ about men, do ye?”
Isabel wanted to take umbrage, but she couldn’t. “I, um, no, not especially.”
She knew something—a few somethings—about one man. Or thought she did. Really, she knew nothing.
“Well, I best get to pressin’ this dress.” With that, Tilly skipped up the stairs, a reedy whistle trailing in her wake.
While Nell had decided to apprentice as a dressmaker, a skill Isabel and Eva could quite proficiently teach her, Tilly had got it into her head that she wanted to be a lady’s maid. As Isabel saw it, this presented a pair of problems. One, Isabel didn’t need a lady’s maid. Two, she couldn’t afford one. She’d offered to inquire about placement or training for the girl, but—and herein lay a third problem—Tilly had no inclination to leave Isabel. In fact, the girl was decidedly set against it.
And the truth was, Isabel had grown fond of her. So, she dressed two, sometimes three, times a day and submitted to Tilly’s morning and evening ministrations. She wouldn’t let the girl go for anything.
What a rag-tag family they’d formed.
Isabel returned to Nell and began explaining the hows and whys of cutting fabric. Some cloths were destined to become beautiful creations, others, like the medium-grade wool beneath their hands, were of the useful, durable variety. This sort of dress was the bread and butter of their shop.
Eva, however, had other ambitions for the shop, ones that involved the aristocracy. Her sister craved the freedom of the beautiful rather than the workaday.
This activity usually settled Isabel’s mind with the rhythm of routine. Today, her mind wandered.
She’d just met the aristocratic lady who had scandalized all London Society by having her marriage set aside by Parliament. Lady St. Alban wasn’t anything like Isabel had expected, which was an adult version of Lucy. Instead, the woman was measured and steady, more similar to her step-daughter Mina in temperament. Isabel thought Lady St. Alban the sort of woman she could like.
Again, the bell above the front door jingled. Isabel left Nell with a few parting instructions and rounded the corner to assist whomever had entered the shop. A figure stood just inside the shadow of the door. A man. He was likely lost. They didn’t serve male clientele. “Are you in need of a direction?” she called out.
“I believe I have found my way,” the man said in Spanish.
Isabel stopped in her tracks and blinked. Her heart became a racehorse in her chest. Could it be? She blinked again. It couldn’t. How could it possibly? “Papa?” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes.
Papa threw his arms wide. “Cariña, ven aquí.”
With a small cry, Isabel rushed to her father, as if he were an apparition that would vanish the next instant. As he took her in an embrace that perhaps wasn’t as strong as the last time they’d held each other, Isabel inhaled. It was truly him. Ghosts carried no scent.
She angled back and took him in, searching for the familiar beneath the tributaries that creased his skin in all directions on his newly gaunt face. A sob equal parts joy, relief, and, yes, grief, escaped her “How are you here, Papa? In London?”
“May I sit while I tell the tale?” he asked, his voice rasped and winded. “My strength isn’t what it once was.”
“Sí, Papa, this way.” She hooked her arm through his as much to be closer to him as to provide support. She led him to the cutting room. There, she settled him into the chair with the most cushions. Nell met them with wide, silent eyes. “Will you fetch my father a pot of tea?”