“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 youhere, 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?”
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 andhome. 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.”
