Page 24 of Appointment in Bath

“If Spragg knew his business, I wouldn’t be obliged to,” he said. “Has Church summoned the blackguard?”

“Yes.”

“Much good he’ll do me.”

Meg wandered to her father’s mahogany dressing table. She absently straightened the brushes, bottles, and shaving implements that scattered its surface. When she’d finished, she did the same to the matched set of porcelain shepherdesses on his mantelshelf. It was an old habit. One she’d picked up in childhood as a way of coping with the nervousness she felt in her father’s presence. Bringing order to chaos, Miss Adams had called it. A laudable impulse.

Meg’s father took a less favorable view.

“It’s the common blood in you,” he’d said once. “Your mother’s influence.”

No doubt it’s what he still believed. Why else did his gaze follow her so morosely about the room? She was in every way a disappointment to him.

The thought stayed Meg’s hand in the middle of rearranging the two porcelain figures into their proper positions. She may have been raised by servants, but she wasn’t one of them. She was a lady. She must learn how to be still.

“When you’re finished playing parlor maid,” her father snapped, “you can fetch me a wet cloth from the washstand.”

She privately flinched at the insult. But it was no more than what she’d already been thinking herself. Moving to the washstand, she filled the basin from the silver pitcher and wet a linen cloth. She wrang it out before bringing it to him. “Are you f-feverish?”

He draped the cloth over his forehead. “I’m suffocating from the heat. Must Church have the fires burning all night and day?”

“The first day of winter is approaching,” Meg said. “It’s quite c-cold and damp outside. We m-may yet have snow.”

“You wouldn’t know it,” he grumbled. “Douse the fire, girl. It’s hot as Hades in here.”

Meg obediently retrieved the basin and poured its contents onto the flames. The fire hissed as it sputtered out, emitting a small cloud of smoke. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

“What’s that?”

“‘Girl,’” she said. “It’s how you address th-the housemaids.”

He squinted at her from beneath the cloth on his brow. “You act the part when it suits you.”

“But I’m n-not a housemaid. I am your d-daughter.” It was the second time she’d felt compelled to remind him of that fact this morning. “I have a n-name. I wish you would use it.”

This time he pulled the cloth away completely. He stared at her in the remaining smoke from the fire.

“It’s M-Meg,” she said, her stammer worsening. “Or M-Margaret if…if you p-prefer.”

His expression turned dangerous.

Meg’s heartbeat quickened, but she didn’t flee. This time, she was resolved to stand her ground. It didn’t prevent her anxious hands from moving to straighten her father’s coverlet. “If you d-don’t like the n-name, why d-did you give it to m-me?”

“To remind me of the perfidy of women,” he said.

Her hands stilled on the coverlet. “I thought…”

“You attributed some noble motive?” He gave a derisive snort. “You’ve been spending too much time with Church and Stapleton. They’ll have made a romance of the business. Damn fool old women.”

“Wasn’t it one?” she asked. “D-Didn’t you…Didn’t you love Lady Allendale?”

He must have done. It had been the reason he’d never loved Meg’s mother. The reason he couldn’t love Meg. And it was surely, without doubt, the reason for Meg’s own name. A love story, she’d called it, fully believing it to be true.

Her father’s ruddy face darkened like a thundercloud. “Love Margaret Honeywell? The devil I did.”

“But—”

“She was a pain in my backside. Never listened. Never did as she was told. Always insulting me and treating me as though I were beneath her contempt. But the way she treated him.” Sir Frederick’s eyes blazed. “He was the one I was thinking of when I named you.”