“If all else fails, you can always find employment as a tailor,” she murmured while he knelt on one knee before her, making sure the trouser cuffs were even.
“You should see my lacework,” he said. “As fine as a spiderweb.”
Above him she laughed softly. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”
“Not often,” he said, with more candor than usual.
Perhaps he would not need to lie to her, the way he lied to everyone else.
He rose to his feet. The waistcoat came with straps on the back and was easily enough cinched to fit her. The jacket required its armholes shrunk, the bagginess at the shoulders and the middle taken in.
But that was not the end of it. The shirt needed a collar attached and the necktie had to be fastened. Because she had no experience with either, he put them on for her.
They stood nose to nose, so close he could see the small pulse at her throat. The clothes smelled of the lavender sachets he had put in Fairfax’s drawers. Her breath brushed the tops of his fingers.
As he pulled her necktie into shape, his knuckles grazed the underside of her chin. She bit her lower lip. Something in him shifted out of place: his concentration.
He took two steps back. “Let me get your shoes.”
“How much practice with tailoring spells have you had?” she asked.
“Hundreds of hours.” And half again as much on cobbling. He made a pair of too-big black leather oxfords fit her and handed her a derby hat. “Here in England you never go anywhere without headgear.”
Did she pass for a boy? He was not entirely confident. But assumption was a powerful thing, especially such a big-belief assumption.
She examined herself in the mirror on the door, adjusting the angle of her hat. Suddenly she swiveled around.
“What is it?”
She opened her mouth, only to press her lips together again. “Never mind.”
But he knew what she had realized. That he could have watched her undress in the mirror. They stared at each other. She dropped her eyes and turned her attention back to the mirror.
He walked to the window, parted the curtains a sliver, and looked out. The clouds had begun to dissipate. A few rays of pallid sunlight reached the small meadow behind the house. There were no boys or house staff about—it was near teatime, and everyone must have returned inside.
She came to stand next to him.
“Vault out from here to behind those trees,” he instructed. “Then come through the front door of the house. I will meet you in the entry hall.”
He did not want her out of his sight. But there was nothing for it: Fairfax’s return had to be seen as an event entirely unrelated to the disappearance of one Iolanthe Seabourne. If he produced Fairfax from nowhere, they would both look more suspicious to agents of Atlantis.
“And the other boys will know who I am?”
“When they hear me say your name they will.” He turned toward her. “I know it is my fault you are here. But please be convincing as a boy—or I will have prepared in vain.”
She glanced at him, her gaze half-admiring, half-mystified. “You have prepared a great deal.”
You have no idea. “And therefore you will not fail me.”
It was as much a prayer as it was a command.
Mrs. Dawlish’s house was built of weathered red brick, the outlines neat and solid. Above the ground floor, behind a window at the southern end, stood the prince, watching her.
Had he also watched her when she had stripped down nearly to her skin? Was it her imagination or had he looked at her differently afterward? The underside of her chin, where he’d accidentally brushed her, scorched anew at the thought.
He raised his hand in a silent salute and disappeared. All at once she felt exposed. She’d thought her former life precarious; she’d had no idea how sheltered she’d been, protected at an impossible cost to Master Haywood.
She must remain safe, if only so that his sacrifice would not be in vain.
It had rained earlier in this place—everything was soaked. A watery light shone on the damp landscape. In the distance she could make out a grander building than the rest—the school? Farther away, in a different direction, the hulking shadows of what looked to be a squat castle.
She didn’t seem to be in a city—there was too much tree and grass and sky. Nor did she seem to be in isolated countryside. There were other houses. Carriages clattered down a nearby street, carriages drawn by—were they?—she squinted—yes, horses.
Real horses, without wings or a horn on the forehead, their hooves clacking wetly. She couldn’t help smiling, reminded of the picture books she’d loved as a child, stories of nonmage children who had nothing but their wits, their swords, and their loyal horses to accompany them on their adventures.
The carriages were black and closed, some with curtains drawn. The pedestrians in blacks, browns, and drab blues were entirely preoccupied with their own affairs, with no idea that a fugitive was among them, pursued with the full might of the greatest empire on the face of the earth.