Page 17 of Brave New Earl (The Way to a Lord's Heart 1)

“She marched over and picked up the papers he’d been working on, read out a few bits, and showed him a mistake he’d made. I can’t remember what it was, though she told me. Something complicated. She said he gaped at her as if he’d been poleaxed.”

Jean laughed.

The housekeeper nodded. “My lady wasn’t beautiful. Called herself right homely, she did. But she had the quickest wits.”

“And Lord Furness appreciated that.”

“He did.” Mrs. McGinnis smiled sadly. “The old lord wasn’t an easy man. He didn’t care much for people, in general. New maids went in terror of him until they became accustomed to his ways. He loved my lady though. Eleven years older, he was, and irascible, but he never raised his voice to her.” Her expression suggested that she would have had something to say about it if he had.

“I’m sorry I never met her. It sounds as if I’d have liked her very much.”

The older woman looked gratified. “Everyone did, miss. If she was still here, the house wouldn’t have got so—” She pressed her lips together as if to keep the rest of this sentence inside.

“When did she die?” Jean asked.

“Six years ago, of the influenza. Only forty-eight, she was. Never saw her son married or her grandson born.” Mrs. McGinnis shook her head sadly. “I hope the habit’ll do,” she added in the tone of a woman with a list of tasks on her mind.

“Very well, thank you,” Jean replied.

The housekeeper went out with a cordial nod. Jean sat on the bed and fingered the military-looking frogging on the jacket of the riding habit. Her host had suffered a series of losses, she thought. His father when he was young, his mother a few years ago, and then Alice a little after that. Did it seem as if the house had emptied around him? She remembered the feeling of a pervasive presence suddenly removed—like taking a step in the dark and finding the floor missing. Even when one’s chief emotion was relief.

Jean shook her head. There was one great difference between her case and her host’s. He had a child. When the man and boy had faced off this morning over the hope of a pony, the sight might have wrung her heart if she had allowed such a distraction from her mission—to see to it that Geoffrey had a childhood nothing like her own.

• • •

At eight o’clock the following morning, Jean stood before the mirror in her bedchamber and assessed her appearance. The borrowed riding habit was a bit loose on her, but not enough to matter. Its full red skirts fell to her ankles; the matching jacket had a small skirt of its own, which flared over her hips, and long, tight sleeves. A white stock and bow tie, white gauntlets, and the tricorn hat compiled the ensemble, old-fashioned but quite serviceable above her own sturdy traveling boots. The latter weren’t ideal for riding, but she could manage.

Jean settled the hat more firmly on her wayward hair, which was already threatening to escape its pins. She missed Sarah, her maid and sartorial magician. Wild curls didn’t plague her when Sarah had dressed them. Jean sighed and went downstairs to join the others.

Her entry into the breakfast room caused a minor sensation. Lord Macklin and Lord Furness both stopped eating and stared at her. “I remember that habit,” said the older man. “It was a favorite of Evelina’s. She insisted on the red, even though our mother thought it garish.”

“She told me that,” his nephew replied with one of his beguiling smiles. “Mama said her face gave her the right to any color she wanted. I never understood what she meant by that.”

“Evelina had this conviction that she was plain,” Lord Macklin said. “I once watched her stand at a mirror and inventory her supposedlytoo smalleyes andlumpynose andundernourishedlips. In a dismissive tone she wouldn’t have used about anyone else in the world. She never grasped that charm is in the life of a face more than its shape.”

Lord Furness gave him an approving look. “Precisely.”

They turned back to Jean, who had been absorbed in this interesting exchange. She felt self-conscious under their combined gazes, like a display model at a modiste’s shop. “Mrs. McGinnis got it out for me,” she said.

“I like seeing it again,” said Lord Macklin. “Evelina loved to ride.”

“She taught me horsemanship in that habit,” said his nephew. “Mama was so patient. She led my pony ’round and ’round a paddock while I learned how to manage him.”

“Soyouhad a pony,” said Jean.

He frowned at her, a spark of anger in his blue-gray eyes, and Jean was almost glad. When he smiled at her, it was too easy to forget all else.

A shout resounded from the front hall, followed by the patter of footsteps and then Geoffrey, dressed for the outdoors. “When are we going togo?” He danced from foot to foot with impatience.

“Miss Saunders has not had her breakfast,” said his father. “We cannot leave until she has eaten. She is our guest.”

Jean started to object—anything to keep Geoffrey from throwing a tantrum. But in fact she was quite hungry. She didn’t relish the thought of a morning’s ride on an empty and almost certainly growling stomach.

To the manifest surprise of every adult in the room, Geoffrey quieted at once. He gazed first at his father, and then at Jean, as if consulting some inner reference. “We never have any guests,” he said.

“Well, now we do.” Lord Furness seemed displeased by his own words. “For a short while.”

The boy cocked his head like a wild creature catching an unfamiliar scent. He had the face of her chocolate-box phantasm, Jean thought, but his inner workings were a mystery. “Can I have a muffin with her?” Geoffrey asked in an ingratiating tone.

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