Never Marry a Marquess

by Regina Scott

  “Well, you should be excited,” Priscilla said with a sniff where she sat beside Hannah. “If it hadn’t been for the countess’s invitation, you’d all be cooling your heels at the school during Easter holiday.”

  All three girls colored at the reminder.

  “It was very kind of her ladyship to invite all of us,” Hannah told Priscilla, determined to put on a pleasant face. “I’m sure a week at Brentfield will be most educational.”

  Emily grunted, Ariadne grimaced, and Daphne nodded in agreement. Priscilla eyed Hannah thoughtfully.

  “You say educational as if we were the ones to be educated, Miss Alexander,” she replied, smoothing down the skirts of her lavender wool traveling dress. “You might find you’ll learn something as well. I don’t suppose you ever went out much in Society before you became a spinster.”

  It took all of Hannah’s strength not to return the unkind remark with one of her own. She was aware that she was on the shelf, but somehow the reminder rankled. Her own mother, widowed at a young age, had tried to raise Hannah and her younger brother Steffen as their knighted father would have wished, but it was clear from the outset that Steffen must receive the schooling and training to make his way in the world. Hannah, it was hoped, would marry a country squire and raise children. But Hannah had fallen in love, with her painting. Given the choice of marrying an elderly vicar like her grandfather or finding a post, she had elected to apply for the position of mistress of art at a school in far-away Somerset. Hannah was probably the most surprised of anyone when she had been given the job.

  “I’m sure we’ll all learn something,” she replied to Priscilla, hoping her slight frown would reinforce her meaning that Priscilla had things to learn as well, such as manners. As usual, the subtle look was lost on the girl.

  “I don’t see how,” Ariadne muttered. “Priscilla’s already admitted that there won’t be any young men.”

  Hannah shook her head at their obsession. “Come now, Ariadne. There is more to life than flirtations.”

  At that, they all protested at once, forcing her to hold up her hands in mock surrender.

  “But Miss Alexander, how are we to practice for the Season?” Ariadne cried. “We have only a few weeks left before we are presented, and 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 through. The man offered the girls a deep bow.

  Hannah knew she should sit back in her seat and not gawk like her charges, but she had never seen such grandeur. Majestic oaks crowded on their left, and an emerald meadow dotted with jonquils swept away on the right. The meadow led up to the placid waters of a reflecting pond, which mirrored the front of a rose brick great house. The drive led up over a white stone bridge arching the stream that fed the pond and onto a circular patch of white gravel encircled by a shorter wrought-iron fence with gold balls on each post. A gate from the drive opened to a garden-edged path that led up to the porticoed porch of Brentfield.

  Hannah stared. The wings of the house led off in each direction, three floors full of huge, multipaned windows edged in white. Liveried footman as smartly dressed as the house strode out to assist the girls in alighting. Grooms sprang forward to hold the horses. The girls crowded past her, giggling and chattering. Hannah was so mesmerized that she didn’t even realize they had all left until a footman peered into the coach and started at the sight of her.

  “Can I help you down, miss?” he asked. Hannah blinked, then offered him her hand. Her half boots crunched against the snow-white gravel. She gazed upward, holding her straw bonnet to her head with one gloved hand, staring at the three golden urns that topped the pedimented porch.

  “They tell me,” said a warm male voice, “that the house was designed to mimic Kensington Palace.”

  “I was thinking of Olympus, actually,” Hannah replied. She glanced at what she had thought was another footman and froze. Standing beside her was a gentleman who took her breath away. A Modern David in the Field, her artist’s mind supplied, noting the tweed trousers and jacket. She wondered whether she’d brought enough brown with her to capture the warmth of his thick, straight hair. She’d need red for highlights too, or perhaps gold. No, she’d paint his eyes first, a deep, soft blue that would change, she would wager, with what he wore. And she would have to find a way to immortalize that we
lcoming smile, tilting more at one corner as if her wide-eyed stare amused him.

  And she was staring, she realized, although she couldn’t seem to help herself. She wanted to commit every detail to memory, as she did before painting a subject. She wanted to remember that his lower lip was more full than his upper lip, and both were a seashell pink. There were a dozen other things she needed to catch if she was to capture the man on canvas.

  “Are you all right?” he asked when she remained silent in study.

  He spoke with an accent, a twang that softened his speech. She had heard French, German, and Gaelic at the school, but she did not think this accent was a result of their influence.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she managed. She glanced about and found that the footmen were tossing down the luggage from the top of the carriage and the boot. The man beside her appeared invisible to the servants, who bustled past with loaded arms. He was equally invisible to the groomsmen who held the horses. None of them met his gaze as he glanced about. She wondered suddenly whether her bemused brain had conjured him, like a fairy from a mushroom circle, to grant her wish to paint. But no fairy she had ever read about dressed like a shepherd.

  “You’re the chaperone from the Barnsley School?” he asked politely.

  He was making conversation, and she was gawking again. She forced a smile. “Yes. I’m the school’s art teacher.”

  A light sprang to his eyes, making her catch her breath anew. “You’re an artist? What medium?”

  “Oil painting,” she replied a little surprised at his interest. “Although I like charcoal as well. There is a way of shadowing that gives the subject depth.” Realizing she sounded as if she were lecturing, she blushed.

  “Do you prefer landscapes, objects, or people?” he prompted eagerly.

  “People,” she answered.

  “Classical or portrait?” he quizzed.

  She was beginning to feel like the student for once. “Classical,” she responded before she could think better of it. Then, knowing how scandalous that confession was, she quickly corrected herself. “That is, I hope to one day paint portraits.”

  “Have you studied, then?” he asked. “Would you know a classical piece if you saw one?”

  Was this some kind of interview? She seemed to remember being asked such questions when she had arrived at the Barnsley School.

  “I am self-taught,” she told him proudly. “My family did not have the funds to send me to school. But I can assure you I know the Masters.”

  He grinned. “Then maybe I could show you a few of the Brentfield pieces.”

  She looked him askance, still trying to determine why he was so interested. She had met few who were interested in her painting, even among those she painted. “Are you an artist, too?”

  His smile deepened. “I’ve been called that a few times. But I work in leather, not paper or canvas.” He held out his hands, which she saw were stained brown. His smile faded. “Although my badge of honor looks like it’s wearing off. The mark of a gentleman, I guess.”

  Even with his gentle voice and accent, he made it sound as if being marked as a gentleman was a shameful thing. He shook himself and offered her a smile that was a pale copy of his original. “I’d love to see your work. And I do have a project that I’d like your help on. You’ll be staying until Easter, I hope?”

  “As long as the girls need me,” Hannah replied. Belatedly, she glanced up the drive after her charges. Not a single girl was in sight. She rolled her eyes at her own ineptitude. Her first assignment as a chaperone, and she hadn’t even escorted them into the house!

  A tall, elderly dark-skinned gentleman in tan knee breeches, navy coat, and the undisguisable air of command, was making his way toward them. Othello Coming to His People, her bemused brain suggested.

  “I’m in trouble now,” her companion murmured. “Derelict in duty once again.” He heaved a sigh, but the twinkle in his eye told her he was hardly sorry.

  “You’re needed inside,” the older man intoned with a nod. Hannah wondered why the Tenants would have use for their own in-house leather craftsman, but she felt a shiver of pleasure that she would be able to see him again during her visit. Perhaps she might find a moment to help him with his work here.

  The older man turned to her with a bow. “You’d be the Miss Alexander for whom the young ladies are searching?”

  “She’s still beside the carriage, so they can’t be searching very hard,” her David quipped. “Now, don’t glare, Asheram. You wouldn’t want to reduce me to a quivering pulp in front of Miss Alexander, would you?”

  “Perish the thought,” the man replied.

  “Good. Earn your keep and introduce me the way you tell me these Brits insist on.”

  The older gentleman rolled his wide-set eyes. “If you would be so kind as to tell me your first name, Miss Alexander?”

  Her David leaned forward as eagerly as when he had asked about her painting and set her blushing again. “Hannah,” she murmured.

  “Miss Hannah Alexander,” the man said solemnly. “May I present David Tenant, Earl of Brentfield?”

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  About the Author

  Regina Scott started writing novels in the third grade. Thankfully for literature as we know it, she didn’t sell her first novel until she learned a bit more about writing. Since her first book was published, her stories have traveled the globe, with translations in many languages including Dutch, German, Italian, and Portuguese. She now has more than forty-five published works of warm, witty romance.

  Unlike Ivy, she has no skill for baking. Her cupcakes are shaped more like craters, and she’s twice managed to melt a spatula into the food she was cooking. Her oldest son, however, is an accomplished chef, and her critique partner and dear friend, Kristy J. Manhattan, is an excellent cook. Kristy helped Regina come up with the idea for Fortune’s Brides. She is an avid fan of cats, supporting spay and neuter clinics and pet rescue groups. If Fortune resembles any cat you know, credit Kristy.

  Regina Scott and her husband of 30 years reside in the Puget Sound area of Washington State on the way to Mt. Rainier. She has dressed as a Regency dandy, learned to fence, driven four-in-hand, and sailed on a tall ship, all in the name of research, of course. Learn more about her at her website.