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her head.
    What would she say?
    What was she going to wear?
    How should she arrange her hair?
    How would she manage to arrange her hair at all without her maid there to attend her?
    Since they hadn’t anticipated staying the night at Versailles, Isabella had sent Sofia ahead with their trunks and parcels to be loaded onto the ship at Calais. Thus she had nothing with her but the elegant yet simple day gown she had chosen that morning, and the traveling clothes tucked away in her portmanteau that she had intended to wear while she made the crossing to England.
    The coiffure Sofia had arranged for Isabella, a simple coil pinned at the back of her head, had been acceptable for visiting, and easily able to accommodate a smart straw hat for traveling. But supper was an entirely different circumstance, with an entirely different set of standards. And supper at Versailles with the King of France? The standard hadn’t yet been written for so eminent an occasion.
    She could ask her aunt to help her, she knew, but the thought of the woman’s own usual coiffure, a style popular at least four decades past, was enough to give her pause. She had little choice. She would simply have to manage on her own. She had watched her own maid nearly every day of the past two decades, and had even attempted the occasional
tête de mouton
on her sisters. Surely she could accomplish the semblance of a style, albeit informal, if only—
    Isabella didn’t see the gentleman standing on the path before her until the moment when she walked right into him.
    “Oh, goodness! I am so sorry. I ...”
    The collision sent the brim of her straw
bergère
hat to collapsing over one eye.
    Setting the hat to rights, Isabella looked up into eyes that were a soft gray-blue—on a face that was almost ...
    ... familiar.
    “Pardon, monsieur,”
she said quickly. “I’m afraid I was so caught up in my thoughts, I did not see you standing there.”
    He was a younger gentleman, very close to her in age. His hair was light, although he wore it powdered so she couldn’t quite tell its natural color. He was dressed in a coat of beautiful silver-gray silk that matched his eyes with shining silver buttons and a brocaded waistcoat in shades of pale yellow and blue. He wore a sword at his side and had a tricorne tucked
à la chapeau bras
under his arm, and he was looking at her oddly as he said, “It was my doing, Mademoiselle Drayton. I should not have stepped out onto the path unannounced like that.”
    He knew her name?
    He spoke to her in French, but his voice carried the slight timbre of an accent—Italian perhaps?
    “You know who I am?”
    “Oui, mademoiselle.
I missed seeing you earlier in the salon. A palace guard told me I might find you here in the
labyrinthe,
so I came to seek you out.”
    He had seen her with the king in the salon? Isabella was only growing more bewildered.
    “I am afraid you have the advantage, monsieur, for while you already know my name, I am not in possession of yours. We have been acquainted before today?”
    “Non, mademoiselle.
Not directly, though perhaps it would help if I told you I am acquainted with your sister ...”
    “I have four sisters, monsieur.”
    “Oh.” He was clearly surprised. “I speak of Lady MacKinnon, of course. She did me a great service once. In fact, if not for her assistance, I would not likely be standing here speaking with you now.”
    Isabella peered at him, realization suddenly dawning. “You ... you are Charles Stuart,” she said softly. “The young Chevalier.”
    Grandson of the deposed James II of England, Charles Edward Stuart—the Bonnie Prince—had arrived on Scotland’s coast two summers before to raise his father’s standard as the rightful holder of the united crowns of England and Scotland. Isabella and Elizabeth both had followed the reports of the rebellion closely. Isabella realized the reason he had looked familiar to her was because she had recognized him from the many engravings