Page 40 of Appointment in Bath

“It wasn’t th-that.” Meg made an effort to disabuse him of his poor impression. Just because her father had named her out of spite, and just because he was grumpy and churlish, didn’t mean he was an out-and-out monster. “He isn’t a terrible person, you know.”

“No?”

“He m-may not love me, but he doesn’t strike me. He doesn’t lock me away in the tower.”

“A low bar.”

She bristled at the scorn underlying his words. Stopping on the riverbank, she turned to face him. “He hired the b-best governess to instruct me. He affords m-me the finest clothes I can find in Maidenbridge. He d-doesn’t refuse me the things I need.”

Ivo’s expression softened with something like compassion. “Is love not something you need?”

Meg’s burst of indignation fizzled as swiftly as it had arisen. Had she not been holding Ivo’s hand, she might have felt a little lost. She refused to show it. “I shall have it eventually,” she vowed, sounding more certain than she felt. “I m-mean to marry for love.”

His gaze sharpened. “Marry whom?”

“I d-don’t know. I shall have to wait and see who pursues me in Bath.”

Her heart gave a hopeful thump as she looked up at him. Was there any chance he’d follow her there? Any chance he might court her? Marry her?

Oh, but she wished it would be so!

In all her life, Meg had never met a gentleman she liked half as well as Ivo Beresford.

Admittedly, she hadn’t met many. Only spotty local lads or toplofty members of the local gentry. The former were sometimes impertinent, but the latter paid her no mind at all, not even when they dined with her father. Bran-faced, she’d overheard one of the young men call her once. A girl whose only appeal was her fortune, and that scarcely a temptation with a father as menacing as Sir Frederick.

Could Ivo stand up to her father? Would he even want to?

“Bath!” he exclaimed. “Is that where you mean to have your season?”

“Yes.”

“What on earth for?”

“I d-don’t want to go to London. I’m n-not as bold as your sister.”

“No one is as bold as my sister. Not even me.”

Meg’s mouth tilted up at the corners.

He smiled back at her, gray eyes gleaming behind his spectacles. “She’ll be a bad influence on you,” he warned. “I mean to introduce you to her just the same.”

“Do you?”

“Why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t we all of us be friends? I see nothing very wrong with the idea.”

She gazed at him in increasing bemusement.

His smile broadened. “What?”

“Nothing. Only that you’re so…”

Congenial. Handsome. Kind. Any one of those could have been used to describe him—and no doubt had been countless times. But they weren’t any of the words that sprang to her lips.

“You’re so very… odd,” she blurted out.

Ivo burst out laughing.

A tide of blistering heat suffused Meg’s face. “Oh, I b-beg your pardon! I d-didn’t mean to—”