Secrets and Sensibilities: A Regency Romance Mystery (The Lady Emily Capers Book 1) Read Free

Miss
Martingale has yet to allow us a single male on whom to practice our wiles.”
    “And I’m sick of playing the boy every time we practice
waltzing,” Daphne put in.
    “And I of playing the boy while everyone tries their insipid
conversations,” Lady Emily grumbled.
    Priscilla made a face, somehow managing to look charming at
the same time. “There you go complaining again. Isn’t a week in the country
better than staying alone at school?”
    “Easy for you to say,” Lady Emily muttered. “You have a beau
waiting for you at Brentfield.”
    Ariadne clapped her hands over her mouth as if she’d been
the one to spill the secret.
    “You weren’t supposed to tell!” Daphne scolded.
    Hannah glanced around at the three worried faces and
Priscilla, who preened once again. She had a sudden vision of a strapping
farmer’s son riding up on a stallion and sweeping the fair Priscilla off to
Gretna Green the moment the coach stopped at Brentfield:  Hades Carrying Off
Persephone. The elopement would surely be followed by the outraged Lady
Brentfield demanding Hannah’s resignation. Worse, her reputation would be
ruined--she might never get another commission.
    “Beau?” she ventured, almost afraid to hear the answer.
    Priscilla’s eyes glowed. “My aunt the countess is arranging
for me to marry the new earl.”
    Hannah gaped. “But he’s your cousin, and he must be years
older than you are.”
    “He isn’t my cousin,” Priscilla maintained. “He is a distant
cousin of the previous earl, who was my aunt’s second husband. My father is
related to her first husband. And he isn’t so terribly old. He’s younger than
Mother.”
    Hannah opened her mouth to comment, then thought better of
it. She could not imagine why a man would want to marry a near-child he hadn’t
even met. It was certainly natural, she supposed, that he felt some duty toward
the widowed Lady Brentfield, but he hardly had to marry her niece.
    The description of the chaperone Lady Brentfield had
requested suddenly struck Hannah anew. Her ladyship had wanted someone quiet,
unassuming, dutiful. Priscilla’s confession proved what Lady Brentfield was
seeking:  someone who would keep the other girls occupied and provide no
competition to the beauteous Priscilla, either in looks or in trying to
ingratiate herself with the new earl. Hannah, more interested in her art than
Society, was a perfect choice. She wondered whether Miss Martingale had known,
or whether Hannah had truly been the only teacher available.
    “You see, Miss Alexander,” Ariadne grumbled. “It’s just as I
said. She’ll spend all her time billing and cooing, and the rest of us will be
bored to flinders.”
    “Lady Brentfield is far too good a hostess, I’m sure, to
invite you to no good purpose,” Hannah replied, hoping she was right. “She must
have all sorts of diversions planned for your visit.”
    Lady Emily looked unconvinced, but Ariadne and Daphne
brightened. As graceful as a bird, Priscilla waved a languid hand at the
passing scenery.
    “You will find out soon enough,” she told them. “We are
about to enter the estate.”
    Daphne and Ariadne scrambled over Lady Emily for a view out
the carriage window. Only Priscilla sat back in her seat, arms crossed under
her breasts. Hannah, however, could not resist a look out her own side of the
carriage.
    Since leaving the school shortly after Palm Sunday services,
they had circled the west end of the Mendip Hills, passing by the village of
Wenwood and running over the River Wen. Shortly thereafter, they had passed
through vineyards, vines greening with spring. Now a two-story stone gatehouse
hove into view. The carriage slowed. An elderly man clambered out of the house
and set about opening huge wrought-iron gates topped by balls of gold. As the
gates swung open against stone columns, the horses sprang though. The man
offered the girls a deep bow.
    Hannah knew she should sit back in her seat and not gawk
like her