1
Brighton, England, November 1835
To someone from the outside looking at her life, Tilly might not have given the appearance of a person who had come up in the world.
She was a lady’s maid, and there were folk who looked down their snooty noses at lesser personages than themselves.
Lesser personages.
A phrase she’d picked up over these last nine years.
Not from her employer, Lady Percival, of course.
Naw, Isabel was the best of the best.
Isabel didn’t see Tilly as a lesser personage.
Now, other personages out in the world—the East End world Tilly had sprung from—would’ve taken the opposite point of view.
They would say she’d come up.
They might even say she’d acquired some airs about her along the way, too.
And they’d be right—on the first count, anyway.
As far as the second opinion went, some folk never liked other folk getting above themselves.
Tilly didn’t pay a lick of mind to those folk.
If she’d not gotten above herself and stayed where she’d come from, she would still be face down in the muck, now wouldn’t she?
The minute Isabel had taken her hand nine years ago and said, “Is this the life you want?” and when she’d said further, “Come with me,” Tilly had—and she’d never looked back.
Not even once.
“Is it a supper party you’re attending tonight?” Tilly had Isabel’s long sable hair in hand, and she needed to know before she began styling it. “A little early in the day for a supper party, ain’t it?”
Isabel’s striking green eyes met hers in the mirror. “Sí. A dear old friend of the duke’s invited us to view his gardens before the other guests arrive.” A little smile curved her mouth. “We dare not miss.”
By the duke, Isabel meant the Duke of Arundel.
Her husband Lord Percival’s pa.
That was how much Tilly had come up in the world—lady’s maid to a duke’s daughter-in-law.
As for Isabel’s hair, Tilly knew exactly how Isabel liked it styled for a supper party—severely parted in the middle, smoothed back, and arranged in a chignon at the nape of her neck.
Most ladies couldn’t carry off that hairstyle.
But Isabel could.
It was those cheekbones and luminous green eyes of hers.
Isabel made this hairstyle sing.
The first never-fail trick of her trade that Tilly had picked up was this: always pick one feature to accentuate.
One couldn’t go accenting the eyes and the hair and the décolletage and the lips and everything all the time.
