“Allow me,” he said, stepping forward. “I insist.”
Isabel’s shoulder hunched around, denying him access “I would prefer not to rip the fabric. It’s such a fine garment.”
Impatiently—he couldn’t lose the group ahead to her stubbornness—Percy circled around and reached for the cloak before she had a chance to move away, and his fingers touched hers. A heartbeat of hesitation, the light touch of gloved fingers, nothing more. It wasn’t skin touching skin. Still, his hand jerked back.
Somehow, he’d maneuvered into the very position he’d been avoiding since the stables: physical proximity to this woman. Her scent enveloped him in honeysuckle and summer. A scent he liked too much.
And thereitwas, again, the tension of desire pulling taut inside him.
He clenched his jaw and tugged. The sound of rending fabric tore through the air.
She flashed him an annoyed glare and heaved a sigh. “You’ve ripped it.”
“A small tear,” he replied, gruff. He dropped the garment and hied off at a brisk pace. “We must hurry if we’re going to catch them,” he called over his shoulder.
Within a few steps, she was at his heels. They arrived at a fork in the path.Blast.He’d forgotten this.
“Which is the way to Mercy Island?” Isabel asked at his back.
“The path makes a large loop, so either direction will take us there.” He glanced up at the sky. “On such a bright night, there isn’t much risk of smugglers. They like to do their work beneath a new moon.”
“Shall we go right?” Isabel asked.
It was as good a route as the other, and, either way, they would eventually meet up with Lucy, Hugh, and Miss Radclyffe. As Isabel walked ahead, she kept worrying at the cloak. “The tear is no more than half an inch,” he called out, intuiting her concern.
She twisted around, slowing her pace. “I may be able to fix it.”
He caught up to her. “I take it you’re skilled with needle and thread.”
“What was your first clue? My dressmaking shop?”
“I suppose I deserved that.”
“To answer you, yes, I am,” she said without a hint of braggadocio, “but not like Eva or Papa.”
Percy could let it lie, or pursue it. In truth, he had but the one choice. “How did your father come to be ahidalgo de privilegio?” He pitched his voice low and, he hoped, nonthreatening.
“With his needle,” she replied, wistful. “He is . . .wastailor to King Ferdinand.”
Now they were getting somewhere. “And your father came to England, too?”
Isabel bit her bottom lip and shook her head. “He remains in Madrid.”
The admission emerged tight and unhappy. This was part of her, the realher, ahershe didn’t want him to know.
Well, too bad. “What brought you to England?”
“Great good luck, of course.” She gave a hollow laugh that implied the opposite. “Who doesn’t want to be English? Especially when one’s country is torn up by war.” Her words emerged bitter in both content and tone, but her face shone with the helpless anger he’d come to know all too well through years of war and its aftermath. “You were in Spain, Lord Percival.”
“Percy,” he reminded her.
“What of your time there,Percy? Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Enjoy?It was war.” He parceled out each word, syllable by slow syllable. What the blast was she on about?
“But you’re the son of a duke,” she pressed, her eyes bright. She had a statement to make. He would let her. “You were a young, handsome, moneyed aristocrat, your country’s golden son. I can’t imagine you were conscripted.”
“I wasn’t.”
