“Miss Bathsheba Baxter, if I'm not mistaken? Alistair Hutton, your new neighbour. We were presented by your cousin, James. Admittedly, it was in the street, but as James is also a long-time friend, I felt that I might approach you.”
Bathsheba glanced around a little nervously and located her maid, Peggy, standing near to the archway leading into the next room. She was in discussion with the curator. Sometimes Peggy was very brazen, but then, maids were known for being bold. She wished that she, herself, were a little braver.
She returned her attention to Alistair. There was no point in hiding the fact that she was still recovering from her close examination of the suggestive painting and that he had witnessed her embarrassment.
“I can't imagine why they would exhibit such a picture among all these other delightful paintings,” she sounded indignant as she gestured around her with a limp hand.
“You are in the 'Exotic Room',” Alistair explained.
“What! How did that happen?” Bathsheba looked suitably aghast so that Alistair had no trouble believing that she had accidently gone astray in the museum's labyrinth of rooms.
“Allow me to lead you to the tearoom. It will give you time to recover your emotions before facing the world.”
He is very presumptuous, Bathsheba thought. She wasn't sure she liked the way he, he... presumed.
“Thank you Mr. Hutton, but I really should be returning home now. Papa will be expecting me.”
It was only a little white lie as her father would be expecting her, only not until seven this evening. It was also a polite way of telling him to go hang himself. She needed more than an introduction in the street before considering being seen with him in a teashop. Her cheeks flushed at the thought.
“In that case, let me escort you home. We do live next door to one another.”
Now she'd done it. She'd backed herself into a corner. Think. What would Peggy do in such circumstances?
She'd probably jump at the chance to be escorted by a gentleman, Bathsheba thought. Well, she did have Peggy with her, which would give a stamp of acceptability to being accompanied by Mr. Hutton.
Suddenly, she felt quite audacious.
“I do think a cup of tea might put me into a different mood before returning home. Most kind of you to offer,” she said in a tone as pleasant as she could muster.
Peggy jumped to attention as she saw her mistress coming her way. She spoke a few last words to the curator before joining her and a rather well-dressed man. The man was familiar to her and she suddenly realised that he was their newly arrived neighbour.
“Mr. Hutton has invited me to take tea with him, Peggy, so we are going to the tearoom. I'm sure you are ready for a cup by now, with all the chatting you've been doing,” Bathsheba reprimanded in a mild way. She was a wee bit irked about the way she alone was to blame for her present situation. If only she had paid more attention to the museum's rooms and programmes.
“Yes, Miss. I could fair do with a cuppa,” Peggy agreed good-naturedly.
She was fond of her timid, twenty-six-year old employer and the idea of her having a cup of tea with a gentleman was a step in the right direction, in a humble maid's opinion.
Peggy understood that her mistress's usual reluctance to engage in most social encounters made her seem staid and unapproachable to the outside world. Twenty-six was already considered to be spinsterhood. She had been her maid for eight years and had experienced Bathsheba's various enthusiasms and disappointments, all of which had contributed to her unwillingness to currently engage, in any way, with men.
Now she was curious as to what had happened for Bathsheba to have agreed to take tea with a relatively unknown man. Hopefully, she might find out later.
Bathsheba made a point of heading towards a table that would seat at least three. Now if it had been left up to Peggy, she would have sat at the adjacent table and left the two of them a little privacy. Mr. Hutton seemed content enough.
A waitress came over to take their order, and because Mr. Hutton insisted so pleasantly that it was the perfect hour to have cakes with their tea, the young woman returned with their tea service on a trolley laden with cakes, pies and biscuits.
Peggy didn't need prompting twice to choose something from the selection, which annoyed Bathsheba.
She really is lacking in restraint, Bathsheba scolded Peggy in her thoughts. Now I shall have to choose a cake to show that I am appreciative of Mr. Hutton's generosity too. Blast! The last thing I wanted was to be in his debt. Tea was one thing, cakes were another.
She chose the tiniest fairy cake on the tray and then regretted it because she had to watch Peggy eating her slice of rich chocolate cake with fresh cream. If she hadn't so many petticoats tangled around her feet, she'd kick herself.
“I was delighted to meet you here,” Mr. Hutton said to Bathsheba. “May I assume that you are a fan of the fine arts?”
“I was until today,” she answered. But the way she'd said it, made it sound as though he were the reason she was reconsidering.
“I mean - I still am, but it was - the painting - a subject that I wasn't expecting,” she tried to explain. She quickly looked at Peggy to see if she were following the conversation and was happy to see that she was thoroughly occupied with her cake.
He laughed at her obvious discomfort, in spite of himself.
“We have all had moments that have been a shock because we have not been expecting them. As a young man, my worse moment came after I had asked a young lady to the theatre and she declined because of a cold. I went alone as I already had the loan of a box.
Imagine how I felt to see her in perfectly good health in the box opposite with another man. It wasn't so much the rejection that hurt as the fact that she had lied.”
“Oh, how humiliating that must have been,” Bathsheba sympathised.