The next morning Bibi knocked and came in with a bright smile, cheerfully asking how her lady had slept, and crossed the room to begin getting her ready for breakfast as usual.
"I'll be skipping breakfast today," Eloise said coolly. "There's no need to prepare anything."
Bibi froze mid-step.
"Yes — ma'am," she stammered, in the voice of a girl who did not entirely believe her own ears.
"Call the steward. Have the carriage readied at once."
"At once, my lady? This very moment? Only, it's rather sudden—"
"This very moment."
Bibi took the order and shifted gears so fast it was almost audible, her face setting into determination as she scurried out to carry out her lady's instructions without a moment's delay.
Left alone, Eloise reflected that although yesterday's negotiation had gone extremely well, she had since arrived at an entirely new truth about married life. It was this: she was under absolutely no obligation to torture herself by sitting through breakfast with Ian Cloud every single day.
If neither of them enjoyed the other's company — and neither of them did, demonstrably, on the record — why should the two of them force themselves to choke down a meal in the same room?
There was a knock, and Bibi asked permission to enter.
"Come in," Eloise said happily. She felt lighter already, as though she had put down a piece of furniture she had been carrying up a staircase.
Bibi came in with an entire team of maids behind her and announced proudly that since her lady was going out into the city today, they fully intended to dress her more splendidly than usual, so that she would not be outshone by anyone.
"Now, the hair." Bibi circled her, studying it from both sides. "Pinned up, elegantly? Or left down and soft, to match the latest style — that's what everyone's wearing this season. And for the feet, my lady, I'd recommend the low-heeled loafers. Much easier for walking the main street. Although with legs as long as yours, flats will still look stunning, so it hardly matters."
Eloise broke into a nervous sweat and watched the maid who was not going anywhere grow visibly more excited than the woman who was. She had meant to dress simply. She had meant a stroll. Somehow this had turned into a full fashion gala with a committee.
A knock rescued her.
The steward Harold reported that everything was ready, cutting Bibi's styling session off at the knees. He stepped into the room with impeccable poise and stood respectfully, awaiting his lady's orders.
"If I may say so, my lady, it has been a long time since you showed any interest in strolling through the main street."
"It has," Eloise agreed, smiling. "I've changed."
Then she leaned in slightly. "I'd like you to prepare two blank cheques for me. Right away."
Harold flinched. "Blank — blank cheques, my lady?"
"Why so shocked?" she asked calmly. "Do I not have the right to use this household's money?"
"Of course, of course, at once," the steward said, backtracking at speed for fear of upsetting her, and then, changing the subject with the smoothness of a man who had been doing this for thirty years, "Breakfast is laid out and waiting for you downstairs."
"I'm not interested," Eloise said. "Relay that to the Grand Duke exactly as I've said it."
What is wrong with this household, she wondered as Harold bowed himself out, that everybody has to eat breakfast together just to get through the day?
She left one small, spiteful message behind her as she went.
Let him eat alone. Let him find out whether it still tastes of anything.
At the vast dining table, Ian sat by himself.
The steward reported, trembling slightly, that his lady had said she would not be having breakfast today.
The room fell into a cold, heavy silence.
Ian waved him off. His face gave away nothing at all, though something was very clearly churning behind it over this unusual absence. He stared at the lavish spread in front of him — the covered dishes, the fruit, the two places laid — and wondered what on earth was going on with his wife, who had always followed the rule of silence between them so faithfully that he had come to think of it as her nature.
The memory arrived: Eloise leaning over his desk, declaring she was going to change him.
He smirked, briefly. She really was a woman of her word. She had chosen to begin by starving him emotionally.
He ate irritably. Yesterday she had barged into his study and raised a fuss loud enough to be heard in the corridor. Today she could not be found in the building. A baffling woman. An unpredictable one.
And then the smile came back to him. That radiant, provoking smile she had worn when she proposed a divorce — if he wanted one. It hung there in his mind and would not move, and it turned the meat in his mouth to tasteless straw.
Ian stopped. He set down his knife and fork with a sharp clink and found that he could not swallow another bite of breakfast, having been so openly stood up in his own house.
He clicked his tongue and admitted, privately, that he was irritated. For the first time in two years, he was unsettled by the nominal wife who had always faded so obligingly into the background.
Outside, the sky was a clear, gorgeous blue — a total contrast to the mood of a certain person sitting at home.
"But my lady, do you truly mean to go to that tailor's shop?" Bibi asked, for what was not the first time.
Eloise was concerned with one thing only. "Did we bring everything?"
Bibi raised the bag. "The blank cheques and all the necessary documents, my lady."
"Well done. Very well done."
"It's only—" Bibi hesitated, then said it honestly. "This is the first time I've ever seen you go to a tailor's shop yourself. You always had them called to the estate."
"I know," Eloise said, nodding. "I've changed."
She smiled mysteriously and kept the rest to herself, which was that the real reason she had got up early for a shopping trip had nothing whatsoever to do with clothes. There was something far more important waiting at the end of this street.
That reason was clearing the path for the heroine Diana's rise to stardom.
True fangirl dedication, in action, on behalf of an idol's future.
She had decided to live in this world, she reminded herself, and having decided that, she could not simply hole up in the estate for a year and wait. She had to charge forward and change the plot with her own two hands.
She struck an energetic pose against the carriage window and delivered her battle cry under her breath.
"Off we go. For love. For my goddess."
She was as fired up as if she were riding to a war, and in a sense she was, because her ultimate objective was Diana's happiness — and the image of the beautiful pink-haired heroine floated up into her mind like a saint illuminating her soul.
Her first task in this campaign was to get a proper read on the trends sweeping through the capital. She applied the classic maxim, the one that had never failed her in ten years of forum warfare: know your enemy and know yourself, and you will win every battle.
She stepped down onto the main street and walked it with confidence and poise.
Because in this era, clothing shops were not merely places to buy clothes. They were information hubs. Gathering places for high society. The birthplace of every rumour that ever ran through a ballroom. The social circles of the aristocracy were a bloody battlefield in their own right, minus the swords and the spears — armed instead with sharp tongues and sharper outfits.
"My lady." Bibi's voice came from behind her, hesitant. "My lady, you — you just walked straight past a large shop without even glancing at it."
"Did I?" Eloise said, feigning confusion, and kept walking, turning off the bright thoroughfare into a quiet alley.
Bibi followed in a state of thorough panic, quite certain now that they had taken a wrong turn somewhere and were about to be lost among the back walls of the capital.
"Follow along quietly," Eloise said, without slowing down. "The destination was decided from the very start. There's nothing to argue about."