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

be closer to your charges.”
    “All of them occupied,” her ladyship announced, daring
anyone to disagree with her.
    “Try the east wing then,” David smiled. “I’m the only one in
it, and it gets downright lonely at times.”
    Her ladyship gasped, and Miss Alexander stared at him.
    “You wouldn’t!” her ladyship cried. “You couldn’t! My lord, even you have to see the impropriety.”
    “All I see is that I’m a poor host if I put my guests up in
the rafters,” David replied doggedly.
    Her ladyship stamped her foot. “I will not stand for such
goings on! There are impressionable girls in this house! Miss Alexander, you
claim to want to be their chaperone. Can you possibly condone sleeping alone,
near a man who isn’t related to you?”
    Hannah raised her head and looked the woman in the eye for
the first time. “I’m sure his lordship could be counted on to be a gentleman.”
    “I’m always a gentleman,” David replied, eyeing Lady
Brentfield, “as her ladyship has good cause to know.”
    Now it was the countess’s turn to blush.
    David bowed to Hannah. “Miss Alexander, you will be safe in
this house, wherever you choose to sleep.”
    Asheram cleared his throat, a clear indication that David
had overstepped his bounds once again. That was the problem with this earl
business--in some areas he could do anything he wanted; in others he had to
walk a dangerously narrow path. So far, he simply hadn’t gotten the hang of it.
    “Miss Alexander,” his man intoned, “if you’ll follow me. I
think we may have one more room in the west wing.”
    David could not help grinning in triumph. “I look forward to
dinner,” he called after them.
    Her ladyship flounced out of the room in high dudgeon.
    All in all, David thought, it hadn’t been a bad beginning.
     

Chapter Three
     
    A short time later, Hannah could only stare at the lavish
room to which Mr. Asheram had led her. The mahogany-framed box bed reached to
the low gilt-edged ceiling. The hangings flowed with rose, ivory, and jade. The
matching carpet under her feet was thicker than the comforter on her bed at the
school and easily ten times as big. With the bed, the twin wardrobes, the
dressing table, the set of dressers, several occasional tables, a writing table
and chair, a chaise lounge, and a quartet of chairs near the white marble
fireplace, the room held nearly as many furnishings as in her mother’s entire
home in Banbury. It was a room fit for a countess, not a portrait painter and
certainly not the mistress of art from the Barnsley School for Young Ladies.
She could not shake the feeling that she had somehow connived her way into such
wealth.
    It was quite clear to Hannah that the astute Lady Brentfield
had immediately seen how useless Hannah would be as a chaperone. There was no
other explanation for the woman’s instant antipathy. And she had good cause to
be annoyed. Hannah hadn’t even managed to lead the girls into the house! She
had conversed with a peer of the realm as if he were a shepherd! Small wonder
her ladyship had decided that Hannah should be sent packing.
    She should have been relieved at the dismissal. She could
have returned to the school, painted the Pentercasts as she had originally
planned. But it rankled that she had not been able to manage the girls. And
Miss Martingale would have been furious that Hannah had proven so inept. The
head mistress would see it as a reflection on the school, Hannah was sure. She
might dismiss Hannah out of hand. That would surely reflect on Hannah’s ability
to gain commissions.
    So, given the most nebulous of second chances, Hannah had
stayed. The countess had confessed she might actually find a need for Hannah’s
services. Lord Brentfield had mentioned she might be useful in some project of
his, although she did not believe that he truly desired her to paint his
portrait. He had only been trying to find a way out of a difficult situation.
Like it or not, she was back to where she