The bloody cheek of this man!
Tilly picked up her pace, her boot heels a sharp click-clack against cobblestones. Heat in both her step and her voice, she tossed over her shoulder, “We aren’t off to anywhere next.”
6
The thing was, Rhys didn’t have a day he was particularly keen to get on with.
For he’d found that the day he wanted to have, well, he was having it.
Except…he now had in his possession all the information he needed to start moving forward and earning Papa’s ring back.
He knew the blonde’s name—Miss Tilly Birdwell.
He knew for whom she worked—Lady Percival Bretagne—and, by extension, where she lived, for a lady’s maid lived in the household of her employer.
Strictly speaking, no more facts were required for him to be able to send a note informing her of his noble deeds.
He could part ways with this woman right here on this stretch of Piccadilly sidewalk.
But he found he didn’t want to part ways with her.
Simply, there was something about Miss Tilly Birdwell.
And, nay, it wasn’t her looks or her figure or her appeal to both eyes and other parts of the body.
Well, it wasn’t only that.
It was her.
This woman held a light inside her.
As someone who had spent the last year in the dark—and the ten preceding that, frankly—he wanted to bask in that light a little and perhaps understand it some.
She came to a sudden stop before a shop—The Pantheon of Play. His eyebrows winged together. “You’re shopping at a toy store?”
Miss Birdwell tilted her head to the side, observing him from a distance that allowed for the possibility that he’d gone daft. “It’s the Christmas season, ain’t it?”
His brow gathered. “You mean, December?”
Her head tipped to the other side. “You don’t celebrate Christmas?”
“My family gathers for Christmas Eve supper, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Her mouth turned down at the corners. “No gifts, then?”
Discomfort traced through Rhys. “My family believes gifts are for the—” He couldn’t finish that sentence, of course.
Miss Birdwell heard it anyway, and instead of taking offense, a laugh sprang from her. “Gifts are for us vulgar lower classes, innit?” Even as her smile teased, her eyes looked inclined to take pity on him. “It’s all right, Lord Rhys. I’m a servant in a grand household, and I’ve heard worse from your lot.”
A surprising urge to defend reared up inside him. “Do Lord and Lady Percival not treat you?—”
Miss Birdwell reached out and did the most surprising thing: she placed a calming hand on his arm. “Not them. Lord Percival and Isabel are the best of the best. And his pa the duke is, too, along with the duchess. Now, the duke’s heir and his wife, Lord and Lady Exeter, who live in the west wing of the house, they have a way of thinking about us of lower consequence that can come out in their words every so often.”
Ah.
Now Rhys knew something more about Miss Birdwell.
She was a tactful, forgiving sort. He’d met Lord and Lady Exeter on a few occasions, and they likely weren’t deserving of such grace.
