She smiled tightly and pretended that yes, the story was just as it was told.
Desperate for a friendly face, she tried to catch Fiona’s eye. Her friend’s gaze was directed at her lap, her toast a half-hearted tip of her glass. She looked meek and miserable—the complete antithesis of the fiery and independent trailblazer Amelia snuck away with for tea every other afternoon.
Something was amiss, and Amelia would get to the bottom of it.
If she could get away from her guests.Dash it.Tuesday. When they were all gone, she would find out exactly what was wrong.
Lady Luella laughed—obnoxious and annoying. She was talking to Edward, leaning over further than necessary to give him a direct view down her neckline.
How pathetic.
The cackle had grabbed Fiona’s attention. She flicked her gaze from her lap to Edward, and then Amelia and back to her lap. Her ears flushed red and jaw tensed. It might have been a trick of the light, but her eyes shone with unshed tears.
After dinner. Forget her guests. She’d make time for Fiona tonight.
Their newest footman cleared a soup dish from the head of the table, the plate quivering. A spoon dropped, the clatter of silver on china attracting the whole room’s attention.
More than one person sniggered. The footman’s ears turned bright red, but rather than simply pick up the spoon and move on, he attempted an odd synchronized bow/spoon-clearing maneuver and nearly clipped Lady Karstark in the ear with the dish.
Every inch of Amelia’s body wanted to turn in on itself. This would never happen in a proper London household.
“You stupid fool,” Lady Karstark hissed.
The footman swallowed, his face draining of color. “Apologies, m’lady.”
He looked to Amelia for direction, panic in his eyes.
She jerked her head toward the door. With every intrusive rattle of china on silver, her reascent back into theton’s ranks became that much harder.
Peter stepped in to clear the remainder of the table—his face stone, his lips pressed firmly together, his eyes flinty.
He was precise, perfect in his movements, the picture of an experienced footman, but the fury rolling off him gave away his lack of experience.
It was tempting to find a subtle way to dismiss him for the evening, but that would leave her with just butterfingers to serve the next course, and who knew what the consequences of that would be. Soup in Lady Wildeforde’s lap?
She turned back to her guests. “Excuse the interruption. What were we discussing?”
“I was about to comment on the difficulty of finding good staff in the country,” Lady Karstark said. “Your footman preempted my comment with a perfect demonstration.”
“There is some training required,” Amelia said, trying to remain neutral.
“You can give them all the training in the world, it doesn’t help. Why, our maids barely last a month before they leave.”
Lord Karstark smirked. At the other end of the table, Benedict made a half-strangled sound, which Amelia promptly ignored. “I do hope you have better luck with your next lot of maids.”
She turned to Lady Luella, trying to put the current conversation in the past before it derailed the entire evening. “Is there any London gossip I can wrangle out of you?”
Wrong move. Wrong guest to ask that question of. She’d never have made that mistake three months ago.
“You’ve more gossip than I do. Tell me, how did you and Mr. Asterly meet? I can’t say that I’ve ever seen him in a London drawing room, and you so rarely venture out of the city, Amelia. Surely you didn’t meet your current husband when you were visiting your former fiancé. That would be rather…scandalous.”
Once again, the room quieted. Guests on the next table over found excuses to lean in her direction.
Amelia looked at Benedict, her heart pumping faster. They had absolutely planned to say they’d met in Abingdale during her last visit. How had she not thought that through?
Benedict stepped in. “We met a year ago. In a London bookstore. We’ve been exchanging letters ever since.”
Lady Luella raised an eyebrow. “In a bookstore? I wasn’t aware that Lady Amelia read. It’s not really the done thing in our circles.”
