“Actually, I’m on time,” I said as the second porter disappeared into the wing of the foyer. “I wrote to my aunt that I would arrive on the twenty-fourth.”
“Your aunt?” the clerk asked. “Lady Bainbridge? Well then.”
I waited for more, but the clerk merely blushed again as Mr. Armitage turned the full force of a stern glare onto him.
“Thank you, Peter, you have a guest waiting,” Mr. Armitage said.
Peter the clerk nodded quickly then turned on his smile for the next guest. I stepped aside so he could serve the newcomer.
Mr. Armitage instructed the tall porter to take my trunk and hat box up to my room. I passed him my bag, feeling somewhat foolish now for refusing to do so outside. It wasn’t going to be stolen in a place like this. The porter headed off with my things, but not to the nearby stairs. He disappeared around the corner at the far end of the foyer. If my things were to be taken up to my room, why did the porter not take the stairs?
“May I offer my deepest condolences on the loss of your grandmother,” Mr. Armitage said.
The warmth in his eyes and voice almost undid me, then and there. I muttered my thanks and quickly looked away, determined not to cry in the middle of the hotel foyer. It helped to change the subject.
“Why did Peter not seem surprised by my aunt’s mistake about my arrival?”
The assistant manager blinked, caught unawares by my question. “I’m very sorry for the mix up. You won’t find us usually so flustered.”
“You don’t appear flustered, Mr. Armitage. You seem quite composed.”
“This is my flustered face.”
I laughed softly. His face hadn’t changed in the least. He still smiled and regarded me as if I were the most important person in the foyer. His smile widened just a little, however.
I leaned in conspiratorially. “Nice avoidance tactic.”
He tilted his head to the side, all innocence. But there was no innocence in his dark eyes. He’d deliberately tried to use his handsome face and charms to distract me from my pursuit of an answer. I suspected it worked on most women. It wouldn’t work on me.
“It’s quite all right,” I said. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t wish to. My aunt is married to your employer, and I wouldn’t want you to jeopardize your position by gossiping about her.”
He drew himself up to an even more impressive height. “My position wouldn’t be jeopardized. It’s my principles I prefer not to compromise. I don’t gossip, Miss Fox. I’m sorry if that frustrates you.”
“As I said, it’s quite all right. I’ll get to know my aunt soon enough and will be able to make my own judgements about her.”
“I’m sure you will,” he said with a sharp edge to his tone.
I sighed. This wasn’t going at all well. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. In my defense, I wasn’t ordinarily so prickly, but it had been a long day—a long month—and part of me wanted to see Mr. Armitage’s smooth façade crack just a little.
“We’ve got off on the wrong foot,” I said. “I’m sorry. Perhaps I wrote the wrong date in my letter to my aunt. It certainly is of no consequence to me that I wasn’t expected until tomorrow, but I feel awful that your staff have been put out. I do hope Mrs. Kettering isn’t too inconvenienced. I’ll apologize to her and to Peter again too.”
My speech seemed to have achieved the desired effect of thawing the frostiness in Mr. Armitage’s gaze. “Don’t worry about Mrs. Kettering. The head of housekeeping is the most efficient woman I’ve ever met. Her maids might curse you, however—entirely under their breath, of course.” He leaned down and lowered his voice. “Mrs. Kettering is a task master, so they tell me.” He straightened. “As to Peter, it’s almost impossible to get off on the wrong foot with him. He’s the friendliest member of staff. That’s why he’s on the front desk.”
Mr. Armitage’s gaze moved past the couple checking in at the desk to another desk further afield where a staff member attended to a tall woman with a large hat trimmed with every type of trim imaginable, from lace and velvet to ribbon and feather. The long feathers fluttered as her head bobbed. The entire effect was of a hen pecking at the poor man.
Mr. Armitage emitted a small, almost imperceptible sigh.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said, suddenly giving me his attention again.
“It’s all right, Mr. Armitage. You don’t have to treat me like a guest. If I am to make my way here, I’d like to be treated as one of the family, as someone with a purpose. I don’t yet know what role I can do, but I ought to learn as much about hotel life as I can so that I may find that role.”
He stared at me for several moments, his lips slightly ajar as if he’d been about to say something but the words had suddenly escaped him, or he’d thought better of speaking them.
“You might as well tell me which are the difficult guests and what can be done about them,” I went on. “I assume family members are called upon from time to time to assuage them.”
“I, uh, I see. Assuaging guests is the role of myself and the manager, not the owner’s niece.”
“That’s a shame. I’m quite good with people. For some reason, they seem to trust me.”
That smile returned, but this time it wasn’t the practiced one of an assistant manager of a luxury hotel. It was more genuine, and softer. “I don’t doubt it.”
I would have asked him what he meant, but a passerby caught his attention. “Mr. Hobart, do you have a moment?”
Mr. Hobart was dressed in a tailcoat too and wore the same practiced smile the assistant manager had used to greet me. That was where the similarities between them ended. Where Mr. Armitage was tall and dark, Mr. Hobart was balding, shorter and older. I guessed him to be in his late fifties, whereas Mr. Armitage could be no older thirty, and perhaps younger. Mr. Hobart had a friendly face, with bright blue eyes that sparkled and a web of red veins across rosy cheeks.
“Allow me to introduce you to Miss Cleopatra Fox,” Mr. Armitage said.
There was no confusion in Mr. Hobart’s demeanor. He knew my name instantly. He gave a brief bow, and when he straightened, his smile was kind. “Delighted to meet you, Miss Fox. Welcome to The Mayfair Hotel. I see you’ve met Harry already.”
“Mr. Armitage has been very kind clearing up the confusion surrounding my arrival date.”
“I’m very sorry you weren’t met at the station. Sir Ronald wanted one of the porters to meet you in a hotel conveyance and assist with your luggage. He’ll be disappointed you had to make your own way here.”
“It wasn’t terribly difficult. The cab driver knew the way.”
Too late, I realized that wasn’t what the manager meant. He meant that my uncle wanted me to be met at the station because I was representing his family now, and a Bainbridge lady shouldn’t have to catch a hackney cab from the station and organize such mundane things like porters herself. She had staff to do that for her. I could practically hear my grandparents’ voices saying as much. In our household, the Bainbridge snobbery was legendary.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that was why the staff were so concerned about such a trifling matter as my early arrival. They were worried my uncle might hear that my room wasn’t ready or that I wasn’t greeted properly. I also now understood the odd look Mr. Armitage had given me when I’d mentioned finding myself a role within the hotel. It was likely my aunt and cousin Florence had no role here except a decorative one.