“You’ll be fine,” Isobelle promised, resisting an inexplicable urge to smooth that frown line away. “We’ll tell everyone you’re terribly shy, which should excuse you from plenty of missteps.”
“Iamterribly shy,” Gwen replied.
“Well, there you go, then.” Isobelle accepted this news as evidence of her genius without missing a beat. “I think that has to be the plan, Olivia. Sir Gawain’s sister ventures out into the world only when she must. Just as well—the absolute last thing we need right now is suitors.”
“Suitors?” Gwen squeaked, half reaching for a sword that wasn’t at her belt.
“A problem with which I am intimately acquainted,” Isobelle replied regretfully. “Though not as intimately as some of them would prefer. At tourney time, it’s something of a marriage market around here. You’re a newcomer of the appropriate age, so you’ll draw some interest. We can put them off by implying you have no money, but Olivia’s dressmaking is exquisite, so she’ll have to hold herself back if we don’t want them to decide they simply don’t care you’re poor.”
“I’m pretty good at discouraging men,” Gwen said, with a shrug and a wry smile. “I don’t think we need to worry too much.”
Isobelle raised one brow. “I find it hard to believe you don’t have admirers.”
“They find me intimidatingly competent,” Gwen replied with another shrug, Isobelle’s compliment rolling off the other girl’s back unnoticed. “And that’s when I’m not even trying to put them off.”
The clock on Isobelle’s mantel chimed the hour, drawing Gwen’s attention away. Shaped like a darling little chalet, its doors opened to emit a huntsman brandishing an axe—or they had done, before Isobelle replaced him with a sparkly little cat. Gwen turned to inspect it, her movements easy with a very different kind of grace than Isobelle had been taught all her life. Gwen was so unlike anyone Isobelle had ever known, and for the first time she could recall, Isobelle found herself restlessly self-conscious in her own domain.
“You find it hard to believe,” Olivia murmured by Isobelle’s side, “that she doesn’t have admirers?”
Isobelle folded her arms. “What?” Then she unfolded them immediately, so as not to appear defensive. Her mind told her she had nothing to be defensiveabout, and yet there was the urge to step back from Olivia’s inspection of her face, like her maid was some kind of inquisitor accusing her of a crime.
Olivia twitched a half smile.
“You’ll play the game just fine, my lady,” she said firmly.
For a moment, Isobelle thought Olivia was talking to her. The words were aimed at Gwen, though, who turned and blinked at her.
“We’ll get you dressed like a lady,” Olivia continued, “and you’ll be of no particular note quickly enough.”
“Think of the dresses like a new kind of armor,” Isobelle agreed, her mind still trying to sort out what Olivia had been implying with that aside, while also being somewhat reluctant to examine it too closely. Isobelle had a lot of practice at not examining her thoughts too closely, and she clambered back aboard the movingcarriage of the conversation without missing more than one or two beats.
“Indeed,” Olivia said. “I’ll see about your meal, if you’d like to take your places on the balcony, my ladies.”
Gwen, with the expression of one who was abandoning herself to her fate, allowed Isobelle to lead her through the double doors and out onto the balcony, which ran the length of Isobelle’s quarters. On one end a door led directly to Isobelle’s bedroom, and on the other end another door led to the spare room where Gwen would be staying. Here, in the middle, stood a table and a pair of chairs.
Isobelle took her place at the table and busied herself straightening the silverware, while Gwen drifted over to lean on the balustrade, studying the hills rolling out to meet the forest and the mountain that housed the newly reopened mine in the distance.
“Isobelle,” she said after a little while, her gaze having drifted downward toward the moat below. “I know I’m asking a lot of questions about this place, but...”
“Go on,” said Isobelle, suspicion dawning.
“Has someone hammered iron rings into the outside of your balcony?”
“Oh yes,” Isobelle replied. “That was Olivia.”
“Olivia.”
“There’s a rope in that wicker box over there. Olivia says you should always have at least one emergency exit, and nobody ever expects a lady to rappel off a balcony.”
Gwen turned to regard her—to make sure Isobelle wasn’t mocking her—and then turned back to study the rings once more. “I certainly wouldn’t expect you to,” she said eventually.
“It’s not easy with the skirts,” Isobelle agreed. “Oh, here’s brunch.”
Olivia appeared with a tray holding a quartet of croissants, adish of butter, and a pot of Isobelle’s favorite apricot jam. She set the plates down on the table as Gwen took her place, and then unloaded a teapot before disappearing once more.
“Olivia’s not sure about me,” said Gwen, once she’d craned her neck to be sure Olivia was gone. Olivia probably wasn’t gone, but Isobelle didn’t point that out.
“I’m sure she has every confidence,” Isobelle replied breezily.
