Citit - Under the Mistletoe by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh [Balogh, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Playing House

The logs in the fireplace were crackling and shooting sparks up into the chimney. The fire’s warmth felt good to the young lady who had just come in from the cold and the wind and rain. She held her hands out to the blaze.

But she could not draw a great deal of comfort from the fire. She caught sight of the hem of her wool dress. It was heavy with wetness and streaked with mud. Her half-boots looked no better. And she wished she had not removed her bonnet and handed it to the footman with her cloak.

Her hair was hopelessly damp and flattened to her head. And she knew that her nose as well as her cheeks must be glowing red.

It was cold outside, and the mile-and-a-half walk across the park to Bedford Hall had been taken into the teeth of the wind and into the driving force of the rain and had seemed more like five miles.

Lilias lowered her hands from the blaze and brushed nervously at her dress. The darned patch near the hem was more noticeable now that the fabric was wet. She looked down at her right wrist and twisted her sleeve so that the darn there would be out of sight.

She should not have come. She had known that as soon as the footman had opened the front doors and asked her, after she stepped inside, if he could take her to Mrs. Morgan. But no, she had replied with a firmness that had been fast deserting her, she was not calling on the housekeeper today. She wished to speak with his lordship, if it was convenient.

She should not have come, a single lady, alone, to speak with a single gentleman. She knew she would never have dared to do so if she were in London or some other fashionable center. Even here in the country it was not at all the thing. She should have brought someone with her, though there was no one to bring except the children. And she did not want them to know she was paying this call.

And who was she, even if she had had a respectable companion, to be paying a call on the Marquess of Bedford? She was wearing her best day dress, yet it was patched in three places. She had had to walk from the village because she owned no conveyance or even a horse or pony. In two weeks’ time she was to be a servant.

She should have come to the kitchen entrance, not to the main doors.

Lilias took one step back from the fireplace, suddenly feeling uncomfortably warm. If she hurried, she could grab her cloak and bonnet from the hallway and be outside and on her way home before any more harm was done. The rain and wind would be at her back on the return journey.

But she was too late. The door to the salon in which she had been asked to wait opened even before she could take one more step toward it, and he stepped inside.

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