Because the basket wasn’t toiletries, after all, it was food! A large linen napkin had covered it all up, but it slid partly off when I put everything down. And allowed a hearty ham sandwich to peek out at me, leaking some of that awesome hot English mustard down the sides.

I quickly pulled the rest of the napkin away to find that the sandwich had plenty of company. It was nestled next to another with some weird sort of—oh. It was cold cow’s tongue. I felt myself shiver slightly and pushed it aside. But there were also some fried oyster patties, a couple of sausages, a slice off some sort of terrine that was mostly meat and boiled eggs—because the Edwardians were basically carnivores—and a vol-a-vent, a small, puff pastry stuffed with creamy chicken, although there did appear to be a few peas in there, too.

Why everybody in this era hadn’t died of heart disease, I’d never know. Their meals consisted of multiple courses, but that mostly translated into fish, fish, some other type of seafood, meat, meat, meat, and sweets, with lots of wine accompanying every course. Not that I was complaining. Except about the missing sweet, that was, which I found after plowing through everything else, in its own little pot at the bottom of the basket: a Cassie-sized trifle made with ratafia biscuits and sherry.

Score!

I ate it all, washed down by a good English beer, except for the tongue, although I eyed even that. After all, it was just beef, right? But I couldn’t do it. Tasting something that might be tasting me back freaked me out.

But everything else was marvelous.

Damn—it was good to have a groupie!

I left the bedroom a short while later, stuffed and happy and looking for Iris to thank her. Only she appeared to have left, and everybody else was in bed. Well, at least I wouldn’t get any disapproving glances for once, because despite her attitude, most of the court seemed to find me a bit of an embarrassment.

That might have had something to do with the fact that they came back from training sessions without so much as dusty outerwear, and I… did not. I’d seen their looks when I schlepped in, covered in mud or blood or chicken feathers. I’d seen them watching me from the foyer or the courtyard as I clumped upstairs with my hair a mess and my makeup gone and sans a shoe.

Those had not been admiring glances.

But I might not have garnered too much disapproval tonight, with my hair freshly combed and my dressing gown as respectable as I could make it. Which wasn’t very, since the robe had absorbed a lot of salve, leaving me with more polka dots. Only these were greasy instead of burnt edged, and smelled of ten-day old fish instead of ashes.