Page 83 of Appointment in Bath

“Which was?”

“At the end of November. And I don’t only like her because she’s pretty,” he added, “but because she’s wonderful. She’s sweet and kind, and she makes me laugh. We understand each other and enjoy each other’s company. She’s my friend. Indeed, we were friends first.”

“Ah,” his father said.

Ivo flashed him a narrow glance. “Why must everyone act as though friendship is a lesser affection? It’s the purest form there is.”

“There’s an affection that’s purer.”

“Love, you mean.”

“If you manage to find it.”

Ivo stopped to face his father. His heart thudded heavily. “And if I have?”

Lord Allendale’s eyes softened with something like compassion. “You’re young, Ivo. Only three and twenty.”

A flare of indignation brought a scowl to Ivo’s brow. He wasn’t some immature boy. He was a man grown, with a man’s ability to know his own mind. “How old were you when you fell in love with mother?”

His father’s mouth curved in a sudden smile. “You know the answer to that. It won’t help you win this argument.”

“I don’t want to argue. But I don’t see how you were better able to know your own mind at eighteen than I know mine at three and twenty.”

This time, Lord Allendale’s eyes smiled too. “Eighteen? Is that when you imagine I fell in love with your mother?”

“You were friends first, as well, weren’t you?”

“It was rather different,” Lord Allendale said. “I’ve loved your mother for as long as I’ve known her.”

Ivo frowned. “Yet, you left her for a time. You didn’t marry until you were eight and twenty.”

The smile in Lord Allendale’s expression diminished. It was replaced by a familiar look of brooding solemnity. The look Ivo’s father often wore when discussing those parts of his past that were less pleasant in nature. “I did,” he acknowledged. “That separation wasn’t of my choosing.”

“Don’t say great-grandfather forbade you. I won’t believe it. He adored mother.”

“It wasn’t your great-grandfather’s doing,” Lord Allendale said. “It was Fred’s.”

Ivo stared. “What?”

His father lapsed into silence for several seconds, as though contemplating how much he was willing to reveal. “I worked here at Beasley Park as a lad,” he said at last. “I’d have stayed a servant forever if it meant remaining close to your mother. She was the whole of my world. And then, one day, Fred accused me of stealing the Honeywell jewels. He even went so far as to arrange to discover them in my rooms. It was a hanging offense.”

Ivo didn’t know what to say. He’d heard something of this, of his father’s humble beginnings, the years spent in Somersetshire before Ivo’s great-grandfather had rescued him from a life of poverty. Ivo had even heard whispers about the accusations of theft. But the threat of hanging…

This was something new.

“I was locked up in a loosebox in the stables, awaiting the magistrate. Your mother crept out in the night and freed me. She gave me all her pin money and lent me her horse to escape. The horse I returned, but the money I spent on passage to the continent. Had I remained in England, Fred would have seen me executed.”

A chill set into Ivo’s blood. It had nothing to do with his walk in the snow and everything to do with the significance of his father’s words. “I had no idea.”

“That isn’t the worst of it.” Straightening from the bookcase, Lord Allendale came to join Ivo in front of the fire. “In my absence, Fred became your mother’s guardian here at Beasley.”

“I know that much. Old Bessie told me.”

“Did she. And did she tell you how Fred attempted to press his hand?”

Ivo was unwilling to ask. He dreaded the answer.

“I’d just returned to England after having been legitimized by your grandfather. I had a new name, unconnected with the accusations of the past, and was in the midst of courting your mother. One night, after a ball which we had all attended, Fred joined her and her aged chaperone for the carriage drive home. While her chaperone slept, he attempted to force himself on your mother.”