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had started on this adventure and
felt even less happy about it.
    A little blonde-haired maid in a dress as black and stiff as
Hannah’s was busy lighting a fire. “Shall I help you change, miss?” she asked,
rising.
    “Change?” Hannah murmured, glancing about the room again.
The only way she would ever feel comfortable in this room was if she were
miraculously changed. She did not think that was going to happen any time soon.
    “Change for dinner,” the maid explained. “All the young
ladies be changing.”
    “Oh, yes, the young ladies.” Hannah managed to bring her
wayward mind back to her duty. That was why she had agreed to stay, wasn’t it?
Her reaction had nothing to do with a need to prove herself after Lady
Brentfield’s criticism of her work. It certainly had nothing to do with a sudden
desire to impress the earl. “I should see about the girls,” she murmured. She
turned to leave and bumped into Mr. Asheram.
    “Miss Tate, the Misses Courdebas, and Lady Emily are fine,”
he assured her. “They’re all in their respective rooms deciding what they will
wear to dinner. I imagine it will take them some time to reach so momentous a
decision.”
    Despite her concerns, Hannah couldn’t help but smile.
“Knowing them, it will indeed.”
    “If you won’t be needing Clare, I’ll send her on.”
    Hannah shook her head, and he waved the maid away. He
started to follow, then stopped, eyeing her.
    “Is the room to your liking, Miss Alexander?” he asked.
    Hannah glanced about again at the immense room, guilt
washing over her anew. “It’s beautiful.”
    “But not what you were expecting,” he guessed. “Be assured
you are welcome to it. I hope nothing her ladyship said disturbed you.”
    Everything Lady Brentfield had said disturbed her. Hannah
knew she must behave perfectly as a chaperone from that moment on. And she had
to forget she was a painter, for a time. She could not let her pride in her
work cause her to insult her ladyship. “I was not as respectful as I should
have been,” she admitted with a sigh.
    “Neither was her ladyship,” Asheram replied. “However, it
seemed to me that some of his lordship’s comments troubled you the most.”
    Hannah felt herself blushing. His lordship had been
inordinately kind to her. She told herself not to be encouraged by that. He
would certainly focus the rest of his energies on his guests. She probably
wouldn’t get to say another word to him. Still, she hated Mr. Asheram to think
that she was annoyed with the earl. “I realized the minute he mentioned the
east wing that he couldn’t have meant it the way it sounded,” she told the man.
“He didn’t mean to imply he was installing me near his chambers.”
    “He seldom means anything the way it sounds,” Asheram
assured her with a sigh of his own. “Lord Brentfield is in the enviable
position of not taking life seriously. It is both his most admirable quality
and his besetting sin. Some things and people should be taken very seriously
indeed. But then, that’s my specialty.”
    “And I think you must do your job very well,” Hannah told
him, noting the wise eyes, the noble brow. Ancient Sage , her artist mind
suggested. “Mr. Asheram, is it?”
    He beamed at her, the first truly happy smile she had seen
on him. “Yes, Miss Alexander. It is Mr. Asheram. I’m very pleased you
noticed. Now, I’ll leave you to dress for dinner, though somehow I don’t think
that’s such a difficult choice for you.”
    He had meant it as a compliment to her intelligence, but as
she shut the door behind him, Hannah reflected that it was a painful truth. The
uniform of the school was the ugly black bombazine she wore. Besides her spare
uniform and the old lilac kerseymere she used when painting, she owned only one
other dress, the navy poplin she wore when going to consult with her painting
subjects. That she must surely save until a more formal occasion. In the end,
she could do no more than to remove her