Page 72 of Appointment in Bath

The maids gasped. They immediately fell into curtsies. “Miss Burton-Smythe!”

“Good evening.” Meg was mortified to hear her teeth chattering. “I’m expected by Lord and Lady Allendale this evening, but I m-must first change out of these boots. May I leave them in front of the kitchen fire?”

One of the maids looked behind Meg, searching for a horse, a carriage, or even an accompanying servant. Finding neither, she exchanged a scandalized look with her compatriot. “Yes, miss.” Another curtsy. “This way, miss.”

Straightening her spine, Meg followed the girls into the kitchen. It was not unlike the kitchen at Letchford Hall, though the staff was larger in number and the cook appeared much younger than Mrs. Stapleton’s antiquated years.

A woman who could only be the housekeeper sailed forward. She had a brisk manner and an unmistakable air of authority. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

“It’s Miss Burton-Smythe, Mrs. Lewis,” the first maid said in a weighted undertone. “She’s come for the dancing, but must leave her boots.”

Mrs. Lewis betrayed no surprise. She cast a fleeting look at Meg’s feet. “Indeed. Allow me to assist you.” She addressed the maid. “You may tell Mr. Selby that Miss Burton-Smythe has arrived.”

The first maid departed in a flash of skirts.

Meg divested herself of her cloak and boots, handing them off to the housekeeper. She felt the stares of every servant in the kitchen. A discomfiting sensation. She pretended as though she didn’t notice as she changed into her dancing slippers, resisting the urge to explain.

“Would you care to stand in front of the fire a moment, miss?” Mrs. Lewis inquired. “Your hem is damp.”

“Yes, thank you.” Meg did as the housekeeper directed. The heat from the flames felt glorious, but she hadn’t much time to enjoy the warmth of it. Only a scant moment later, an elderly butler appeared to escort her to the drawing room.

His face was as purposefully blank as the housekeeper’s. “Miss Burton-Smythe,” he said, bowing. “Master Ivo is expecting you.”

Meg released the breath she’d been holding. Judging from the reaction of the servants, it had seemed as though Ivo had kept Meg’s arrival a secret. But no. Of course his family knew she was coming. Ivo would never put her in the position of being an uninvited guest.

Or so she believed.

But when she arrived outside of the drawing room—when the butler announced her name—Meg knew just how wrong she had been.

“Miss Burton-Smythe, sir,” he intoned.

And everything stopped. The music. The dancing. The conversation. Everyone in the drawing room came to a halt as one to stare at Meg with varying expressions of shock and horror.

And she knew.

Ivo hadn’t told anyone she was coming.

Chapter Twenty-One

Ivo had been waiting by the drawing room doors for the past two dances, rather conspicuously pacing the floor. He’d told Meg the dancing would commence between half eight and nine. But as the clock struck the hour, she still hadn’t arrived.

His mother, Lady Allendale, was seated on a velvet stool in front of the satinwood pianoforte, wearing a blue moiré evening dress trimmed in a rich fall of lace. At two and fifty, she could still command the attention of everyone in the room, and no one more than Ivo’s father.

John Beresford, Earl of Allendale stood over his wife, turning the pages of her music while she skillfully played a waltz. He was singularly, irrevocably devoted to her. And not in some rarified manner, as though she were perfection on a pedestal, but in an earthy, purely elemental fashion. The two of them were the closest thing Ivo had ever seen to soulmates.

Only a few years older than Ivo’s mother, his father’s golden hair was finely wrought with silver. He was still in perfect health, however. Lean, fit, and—at times—implacable. A formidable patriarch, but a loving one. Just as he’d been in Ivo’s youth.

Across the room, Jack hovered by the fireplace, warming himself. Meanwhile, Kate danced with Lieutenant Heywood, her arch expression softened by a smile. And James—

Ah, James.

Smitten to his ice-cold core.

Or so Ivo suspected.

The tall, frost-hearted heir apparent was waltzing with a blushing Miss Heywood, holding her with the stiff propriety of a dancing master, exactly an arm’s length apart, as they turned across the floor. Outwardly, it was nothing very revealing. Except that James was gazing down at Miss Heywood with a brooding frown, a look in his glacial gray eyes that was impossible to read.

But Ivo could read it.