Page 71 of Appointment in Bath

James studied him for a long moment. “I suppose he refused you.”

“Suppose what you will.”

“I could have predicted as much. Sir Frederick would no more give his permission for you to marry his daughter than Father would give for Kate to marry Roddy Burton-Smythe.”

Ivo ignored the fact that his brother had just compared him to a notorious wastrel. “It scarcely matters now,” he said.

James was blatantly skeptical. “Then you mean to end it?”

“I do.” Ivo continued down the path. “There’s to be no more slinking. If I’m to court a girl in future, my family will be well involved in the affair, you can be certain.”

James walked at his side. His eyes betrayed a guarded relief. “If that’s the truth…I’m pleased to hear it.”

I’ll bet you are, Ivo thought unkindly. But he didn’t say it. He pasted on a smile. “We’re in harmony, then,” he said. “For I’m pleased, too. Very well pleased indeed.”

* * *

The next evening, after her father had retired for the night, Meg withdrew to her room to change. With her maid’s assistance, she arranged her hair in a thick coil of plaits, dressed in her new apricot gown, and put on her heaviest cloak.

“Mrs. Church will dismiss me if she discovers I’ve helped you escape from the house,” Lucy fretted as she passed Meg a pair of ivory silk slippers with grosgrain ribbon ties.

Meg tucked the delicate slippers into her reticule. “You’re not helping me escape, Lucy. You’re only doing your job. The rest is down to me.”

“But you look dreadful, miss!”

Meg flinched. However, the maid wasn’t looking at Meg’s face or figure. She was staring at Meg’s heavy leather boots. “Never mind them,” Meg said. “They’re only for the walk. I’ll put my dancing shoes on when I arrive.”

Lucy wrung her hands. “Your skirts will be soaked through.”

“Not if I’m careful. And even if they are,” Meg added earnestly, “it will have been worth it!”

She set off a half hour later as the clock in the downstairs hall was striking a quarter to nine. An anxious buzz, like the aggravated swarm of bees, vibrated in her chest. It was fear, pure and simple. The fear of being seen. Of being caught.

Fortunately, Mrs. Church was still upstairs attending to Meg’s father. And Mrs. Stapleton was asleep in her chair by the fire. Her loud snoring permeated the kitchen as Meg tiptoed past to exit through the back door.

The snow had stopped and the night air, though cold as the dickens, wasn’t as icy as it had been yesterday. A full moon hung in the sky above, its soft glow illuminating the Somersetshire countryside.

Inhaling a deep breath to fortify herself, Meg set forth.

She was a good walker, even in a new gown, with several layers of petticoats, and a bustle tied round her waist. The latter was comprised of a pad of wool, used to give her skirts a more pronounced dome shape. Not the best undergarment for a mile-long walk in the moonlight.

But Meg was determined.

She held her skirts high for as long as she could, avoiding the deeper patches of snow. By the time the torchlights of Beasley Park came into view, her fingers and toes were numb and she was breathing hard, but she was otherwise in tolerably good order.

The bees in her chest, temporarily quieted by her vigorous walking, buzzed to life again as she beheld the grand Palladian manor house, with its stately columns and snow-frosted windows. It was a beautiful structure, made of honey-colored limestone, as though in silent acknowledgment of the family who had built it so many decades before.

It was here where Meg’s father had met and fallen in love with Margaret Honeywell.

Though it hadn’t been in love, he’d said. But surely it must have been something to have burned so violently in Meg’s father’s heart for so long.

Meg walked to the back door, where a lamp hung overhead, and two housemaids were gossiping as they returned from the privy. Taking one look at Meg, they stopped in the snow.

Meg swallowed hard. Her father would never forgive her for coming here. Certainly not in this hurly-burly fashion, turning up at the kitchen door like a waif begging for table scraps.

But it was too late to second guess herself now.

She drew back the hood of her cloak.