She was smiling broadly as she started back down the path toward the house. Perhaps she was grinning too broadly to be able to see properly, or maybe it was still too dark yet to see well, because she ran into someone.
> “Gloria!” she said before she realized it was the French heiress. “I mean,” she said, stumbling, “I guess you’re not Gloria, are you? Where’s the lioness?” Dougless gasped at what she’d said. She’d rarely seen this girl, but when she had, she’d always been accompanied by her tall, overbearing guardian of a nurse. “I didn’t mean—” Dougless began, apologizing.
The heiress didn’t reply but sailed past Dougless with her nose in the air. “I am of an age to care for myself. I need no nurse.”
Dougless smiled at the girl’s plump back. She sounded just like Dougless’s fifth graders. They, too, thought they were old enough to take care of themselves. “Sneaked out, did you?” Dougless said, smiling.
The girl turned quickly and glared at Dougless, then her face softened. “She does snore,” she said with a bit of a smile; then she looked back at the fountain. “What do you here?”
When Dougless looked at the fountain, to her horror, she saw that the little pool was full of soap bubbles. To Dougless, the bubbles were pollution, but the heiress seemed to think they were wonderful. The girl lifted a handful of suds.
“I took a bath,” Dougless said. “Want one?”
The girl gave a delicate shudder. “Nay, my health is most delicate.”
“Bathing won’t hurt—” Dougless began but stopped. No missionary work, remember? she reminded herself. Moving to stand by the girl, Dougless looked at her closely in the early light. “Who told you you were delicate?”
“Lady Hallet.” She looked at Dougless. “My lioness.” There were tiny dimples in her cheeks.
Dougless considered what she was about to say, and she knew she was taking a chance, but the child looked as though she needed a friend. “Lady Hallet says you’re delicate so she gets to tell you what to eat, and where you can and cannot go, and who may be your friend and who not. In fact, she gets to keep you under her thumb so much that you have to sneak out before daylight just to see the gardens. Is that about right?”
For a moment, the girl’s mouth dropped open, but then she stiffened and gave Dougless a haughty look. “Lady Hallet guards me from the lower classes.” She looked Dougless up and down.
“Such as me?” Dougless asked, suppressing a smile.
“You are not a princess. Lady Hallet says a princess would not make a spectacle of herself as you do. She says you are not educated. You do not even speak French.”
“That’s what Lady Hallet says. But what do you think of me?”
“That you are not a princess or you would not—”
“No.” Dougless cut her off. “Not what Lady Hallet says, what do you think?”
The girl gaped at Dougless, obviously not knowing what to say.
Dougless smiled at her. “Do you like Kit?”
The girl looked down at her hands, and Dougless thought her face turned red. “As bad as that?”
“He does not notice me,” the girl whispered, tears in her voice. When her head came up and she glared in hate at Dougless, at that moment she looked so much like Gloria that it was eerie. “He looks at you.”
“Me?” Dougless gasped. “Kit isn’t interested in me.”
“All the men like you. Lady Hallet says you are close to being a . . . a . . .”
Dougless grimaced. “Don’t tell me. I’ve already been called that. Look . . . What’s your name?”
“Lady Allegra Lucinda Nicolletta de Couret,” she said proudly.
“But what do your friends call you?”
The girl looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled. “My first nurse called me Lucy.”
“Lucy,” Dougless said, smiling, but then she looked at the lightening sky. “I guess we better get back. People will be searching for . . .us.”
Lucy looked startled, then gathered her heavy, expensive skirt and started to run. She was obviously terrified of being found missing.
“Tomorrow morning,” Dougless called after her. “Same time.” She wasn’t sure Lucy heard or not.