safety of stillness, waited, and Eliza relaxed. “Thank you for the fruit, Lady Irvine. Perhaps we should take our leave-the dressmakers get busy after noon. When most of the women of town are finally prepared to leave their homes.” She didn’t try to disguise her disdain, and Belinda found herself smiling.
“We should all take lessons from you, M’mselle Beaulieu,” she said with absolute sincerity. “The world would be a more interesting place.”
Eliza gave her another sharp look, and Belinda smiled again as they gathered themselves to leave. The carriage was Javier’s own, marked subtly with his signet. Belinda, allowing the coachman to help her down from the steps, knew she had been outdone: no one delivered to a dressmaker’s shop in the prince’s carriage would be allowed to pay for her own gowns. A tailor would bankrupt himself giving away wares, if it meant even the briefest notice in the royal household. He might gnash his teeth and pull his hair later, but in the moment, he would find himself without a choice.
And such was the expression on each owner’s face as they explored the row of dressmakers and tailor shops. Gratitude, delight, dismay, relief. There were gowns by the dozen to admire; Belinda asked for more than one to be set aside so she might consider it, but it was Eliza’s approval she waited on, and the street-born woman’s eyes remained shuttered, and no purchases were made. Not until the row was exhausted and the carriage regained did Belinda turn to Eliza with a curious tilt to her eyebrows. “I saw them, Lady Beaulieu. I saw their eyes on your gown, on the cut and workmanship. None of them have anything like it; they would have brought it out. Now they’ll copy it, but my lady, who designed the original?”
Hidden pleasure lit the brown of Eliza’s eyes, although she turned her head away to mask it. “No one who can make another soon enough for the opera.”
“I would not presume,” Belinda said, surprised by her own vehemence. “Fashion is yours to set, my lady. You are the prince’s friend; it is to you all eyes will look for guidance as to the season’s garments. I would not presume.” The passion left her and she exhaled more quietly. “But it seems nothing in these shops met with your approval. Shall I purchase a gown without your guidance?”
“Javier would know.” Wry irritation tinged Eliza’s voice. Belinda’s eyebrows rose.
“How?” Could it be that Javier shared the knowing that sometimes overwhelmed Belinda? The knowing of thoughts and desires that had so overwhelmed her in the Maglian pub? Hairs lifted on Belinda’s arms, remembering the unasked for intimacy in the overheated room. She shivered. Her thoughts had been unquiet all night, not letting her sleep until too close to dawn, but she had only considered the portent of Javier’s indominable will and how closely it seemed to match the silence she wore within herself like a shield. She hadn’t thought to wonder if that sense of self he’d tried to impose on her might run more deeply, might give him an uncanny awareness of the emotions that swam around him. Fascination and unwarranted hope shot through her, and she turned her attention to Eliza’s response with more interest than anticipated.
And Eliza shrugged, easy dismissive motion. “He knows my tastes. We’ve been friends for a long time.”
Belinda let go a breath of laughter, and with it a sting of disappointment. Javier was a prince, and his strength of will likely born from that, not any childish recognition of her own defenses mirrored in another’s eyes. “How long, my lady? If asking is not presumptuous.”
Eliza’s eyes glittered darkly as she glanced at Belinda. The carriage was moving through streets Belinda didn’t know; she hadn’t heard Eliza give the destination. The houses beyond were still wealthy, though, the streets mostly clear of beggars. No one here would accost the prince’s carriage, whatever their destination might be. Belinda let her gaze flicker back to Eliza’s, aware that the other woman studied her mistrustfully.
“Since I was ten,” Eliza said, “and he was eight. The entire city seems to know the story, so I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. I wanted a pear. I’d never had one, and they talked about them being grown in the royal gardens. My mother forbade me from fetching any, as the price for trespassing is imprisonment or death.”
“Certainly not for a child,” Belinda said, startled. Eliza made a small gesture with her hand, very much like the one Javier used. Belinda wondered if it had been Eliza’s first, or if she’d copied it unconsciously from years of exposure to the prince. She guessed the latter; there was grace to the motion that seemed inherent to royalty, although the prejudice of that made Belinda smile faintly.
“I could say that was what I thought.” Eliza shrugged again, watching the streets outside. “But truthfully, I never imagined I’d be caught. And I wasn’t, not by guard or gardener.”
“Javier.” Belinda smiled. Eliza gave her a sharp look and she realised with a start that she’d used the prince’s name with no honourific in an appallingly familiar fashion. Heat rushed to her cheeks, enough admission of guilt that Eliza went on without taking further note of the transgression.
“Javier. I was scrambling back over the wall when he asked, very politely, if I needed assistance.” Eliza’s mouth curved in a smile, gaze distant out the window. The smile, unexpectedly, reduced her beauty. It took her from untouchable to merely extraordinarily pretty, warming her eyes to a considerable degree. It made her approachable, Belinda thought curiously. She had seen many women in whom laughter brought out beauty, but never one in whom it brought out something more ordinary and human. “I fell off the wall,” Eliza went on, “and landed on Jav. I had bruises for a week, but he had a broken arm.”
“Oh!” Surprise pulled laughter from Belinda. “Oh no!”
“I’ve had pears any time I wanted, since that day. Jav made them let me stay all through his convalescence, and we’ve been friends ever since.” Eliza glanced at Belinda as the carriage drew to a stop. “You’re home, my lady.”
Belinda blinked and tilted to look out the window at the building beside her. “But a dress-?”
“One will be delivered to you on Friday.”
Belinda straightened, excitement speeding her heartbeat. She felt heat come to her cheeks again, and thought that Beatrice Irvine was a somewhat silly woman, to be so unexpectedly thrilled at the prospect of an unseen gown as a gift.
The coach door opened, the coachman offering his hand to help Belinda step down. Summarily dismissed and caught between offense and amusement, Belinda accepted it, inclining her head to Eliza as she stepped from the carriage. Vanity caught her and she turned back. “But if it needs alteration-?”
“It won’t,” Eliza said. “Good afternoon, Lady Irvine.” It didn’t.
Eliza’s vanity had won through as well, pluming a sparrow too enticing a challenge to pass up, or her relationship with Javier too genuine to embarrass him with a poorly dressed companion at the opera. Three days was too little time to dye fabric, to make the cuts and sew the gown together, but color and size alike seemed to whisper that the dress had truly been made for her. The fabric was green silk, shot with counterwoven threads of brown, until the shade echoed and strengthened Belinda’s eyes. The cut was less daring than the gown Eliza had worn-no doubt than the gown Eliza would wear-but it flattered and was fashionable, the lines clean and long. There were fewer layers to it than she was accustomed to, the petticoats abandoned for a more natural shape, making the weight of the gown so slight as to be all but unnoticeable. It reminded Belinda a little of the gown Ana had worn-she could ride a horse astride in this dress without its weight pressing her thighs. She never would; it would damage the silk beyond belief. But the sense of freedom in the dressing was there, and made her smile breathlessly at her own reflection.
Nina, caught between scandalized at the cut of the gown’s neck-far from off the shoulders, but a more open square, with angled sides that left a little more collarbone bare than current fashion dictated-and envious of the chance to wear it, reflected in the mirror as well, finishing the last touches to Belinda’s hair. It was worn up, exposing the delicate length of her neck, scraps of leaves and pale green flowers woven against the brunette waves.
Belinda heard carriages outside, and the thunk of the knocker that thudded through the entire house. “Will I do?” she asked Nina, amused. The girl rolled her eyes.
“I suppose, madam. I won’t be completely embarrassed to let you out of the house.” They smiled at each other in the mirror as the bedroom door popped open, another breathless servant-Marie; Belinda wanted to remember their names, just as she deliberately failed to remember men like Viktor-Marie forgetting to knock in her excitement.
“My lady, he’s here.”
Belinda stood, smiling. “He’s just a man, my dear. They’re not worth quite all that much fuss.” Her eyebrows lifted slightly, though the smile remained in place. “They’re certainly not worth forgetting manners over.”
Pink-cheeked guilt overcame the girl and she ducked her head, hands clasped together at her hips. “I’m sorry, my lady, please forgive me, it’s only that-”
