“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.”
“Kin I ask ye ’bout sumpthin’ I noticed?”
“Ask away.” Isabel couldn’t help but warm to Tilly. The girl had a welcome honesty to her.
“What’s yer accent? I ain’t ’eard one like it in all me sixteen years.”
Sixteen years?Oh, life wasn’t fair, and that was a fact. With her pleasantly rounded figure and light brown hair streaked with the gold of girlhood not quite gone, Tilly was just the sort of girl places like Number 9 consumed whole on a nightly basis.
“Spanish,” Isabel offered around the lump that had become a permanent fixture in her throat.
“Yer from Spain?” Tilly’s mouth had fallen open.
Isabel nodded.
“Lawks be, yer an exotic one.”
Exotic.Isabel nodded tightly. She didn’t care to be described with that word. She could never be certain it was a compliment.
Isabel’s mind ran through the events of past, present, and future, namely last night, this moment, and her impending introduction to Lord Percival’s family. The part of her that trembled at the strange reality of this situation stilled. There was, in fact, a—slightly—reassuring angle from which to view this calamity. It was presently keeping her, Eva, Ariel, Tilly, and Nellsafe. She would go to any lengths to ensure they stayed that way, even if it meant deceiving a family of ’oity-toity aristocrats.
She gave each cheek a pinch, and this time when she met her own gaze in the mirror, she detected steel. “I don’t suppose the informative Jane gave you the direction to the breakfast room?”
~ ~ ~
Isabel cracked the heavy, oaken door wide enough for her to squeak through and found herself slipping into the spell cast by this magical house and garden, just as she had five hours ago when Lord Percival had rushed them through. How was it possible she’d arrived such a short time ago?
Seemed a lifetime.
With its steep-pitched, thatched roof and wattle-and-daub walls, Rosebud Cottage screamed its English charm louder than any house she’d ever encountered. If the manor house was the fairy-tale castle, this was its cottage counterpart.
When a decidedly taciturn Lord Percival had pushed open the front door and she’d crossed its threshold, bleary-eyed and weary to the bone, Isabel had half-expected to happen upon an evil witch waiting to bake them in her oven. Instead, she’d found a cozy fire burning tamely in the fireplace and no witch in sight. All the tension had fallen from her body in that instant. Here was a safe haven.
