Nell nodded once and flew down the corridor.
Papa glanced around, his keen eye sharp as ever. “You’ve arranged your shop very sensibly.”
Isabel perched on the edge of the chair opposite him and leaned forward, taking his hands in hers. They were dry and warm and home. She inhaled another sob. “How are you here, Papa?”
He shook his head, as if in disbelief himself. “By a miracle.”
“Papa, please tell me.”
He released a heavy sigh and nodded. “It was night, after the prison had gone quiet and settled into sleep. My cell gate swung open and in slipped a wisp of a woman. She beckoned me to follow her.”
A possibility occurred to Isabel. “A woman? English?”
“French, possibly. She wasn’t one for talk.”
Isabel knew—she knew—the woman’s identity. Hortense.
“She led me through a maze of tunnels until we reached a small gate. Two horses were waiting. We headed north to Bilbao.”
“That’s a long journey.”
“Traveling mostly by night, it took us several days to reach the port. She deposited me on the dock and wished me safe travels. A man took charge from there.”
The breath hitched in Isabel’s chest. “A man? What sort of man?”
“An Englishman.”
“Tall and lean? Dark hair that flops around?”
A humorous light entered Papa’s eyes. “Sí.”
“Wolfish?” She wouldn’t say devastating.
“The man mentioned you.”
Isabel’s heart sprang into a full gallop. “Oh?”
“He knew you.”
“Did he bring you here?”
“Sí.” Papa reached into his breast pocket. His hand emerged holding a . . . rose. “This is for you.”
“How did you—” Isabel started, unable to complete a thought, much less a sentence. This rose had quite stolen the ability away. “Who—?”
“It is my understanding you know who.”
“Oh, um,” she began, taking the pale pink rose with fingers that had gone trembly. She had risen to a stand without realizing it. “Nell!” she called.
The next instant, the girl clanked around the corner, bearing tea service. “Miss, I was just—”
“No matter,” Isabel said, impatient. “Please take my father to Eva. I must . . .” she trailed over her shoulder, her feet already on the run.
Through the front door, she flew, her blood singing through her veins with the certainty that he was waiting on the other side. But . . .
Oh. No him.
Not that there was a shortage of men as she scanned the lane. Men bustling about their business, coming and going, some tall and dark, even handsome, but none of them, him.
Isabel slumped her shoulder against a conveyance that could only be Lady St. Alban’s carriage, viscountly crest emblazoned on the side, and her heart sank. Percy had journeyed all the way to Spain to free her father and hurry him to London—and the roses . . . oh, the roses . . .—only to leave without saying good-bye?
Tilly was correct. She truly knew naught all about men.
A dark head bobbed above the back of the team of four’s lead horse for an instant before ducking back down. Isabel’s heart lurched. If only she could see the man’s face . . . “Percy?” she squeaked.
A face popped up.
Isabel blinked.
Before she gave her heart leave to soar in her chest, she needed to be certain her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her.
She blinked again.
It was him, unshaven and unkempt as if he’d taken not a lick of rest in all the weeks since she’d last seen him. But him, devastating as ever.
It was all the permission her heart needed to take wing.
“What . . . what are you doing?”
“Checking this horse’s hoof. He was holding it aloft.”
“Oh.” A horrible possibility occurred to her. “Were you about to leave without . . . without—”
His head cocked. “Calling on you?”
His gaze burned into her, and all she could do was nod.
“I wasn’t going anywhere, Isabel.”
She believed him.
“I thought to give you and your father a chance to reunite in private.”
He stepped around the team and onto the sidewalk, stopping before her not a yard away. An invisible string stretched between them that begged to be tugged.
Isabel grew a bit shy of him, the enormity of what he’d accomplished settling into her. “How did you free him?” she asked. “I was so certain Montfort was the only way.”
Percy shrugged. The man shrugged. “He isn’t the only man with connections.”
In that instant, the meaning of Isabel’s life came into focus. Her life could tick along with her moving through it for any number of days, weeks, months, or years, but it would lack all meaning without this man.
So, she needed to ask another question, one whose answer held her future happiness in its hand.
She held up the rose. “Why did you send them?”
Chapter 29
Percy hesitated.
Not because he didn’t know the answer to Isabel’s question, rather because he didn’t want to scare her away with it.
Yet he couldn’t not speak it.
“To remind you every day who you are. That you are not alone,” he said. “That you are safe.”
“Oh.”
“And to thank you.”
Her eyebrows knitted together, confounded. “Thank me? For what?”
“For acting selflessly that night. For standing up to Montfort and refusing to do his bidding at great potential cost to you and your family. For not subjecting Lucy to another round of scandal. You are the heroine of this story.”