The Earl's Marriage Bargain (Liberated Ladies)

‘I likes horses,’ he said, ‘but I want to be like Mr Partridge, a butler in a really nobby house with a striped waistcoat and long tails, and sit at the head of the table in the Hall.’

‘That is very ambitious, Jem, but I am sure if you work hard you will achieve your ambition.’

‘That’s what me ma said and I reckons if you wants something bad enough and you do the work, you’ll get there.’ He nodded his head emphatically. ‘And Billy the hall boy is after the under-footman’s place at Colne Hall, so I reckons I’ve got a chance there if he gets it.’ He looked round, cautious. ‘Do you think I can, miss?’

‘Certainly I do. How would you like it if I put in a good word for you with Lord Kendall and tell him what a hard worker you are?’

His eyes were round. ‘Yes, please, miss. Do you know him then, miss?’

‘I am going

to marry him,’ Jane said, suddenly certain.

‘If you wants something bad enough and you do the work, you’ll get there’ was not a bad motto and it might succeed in marriages as well as for ambitious small boys.

‘Oh, heck.’ Jem had gone pale. He got to his feet again, tugging at his forelock ‘Mr Partridge will have my hide.’

‘Nonsense. I will be talking to everyone and drawing them, too.’ She looked at the sketch and smiled. She was pleased with it and she thought she would pin it up in her bedchamber for when she felt low again. ‘Carry on polishing, Jem.’ As he worked she drew another study, then tore it off the pad and handed it to him. ‘Your mother might like that.’

Chapter Fifteen

‘You are very quiet, Jane,’ Ivo observed.

They were sitting at either end of one of the sofas in the drawing room after dinner. Great-Aunt Honoria was dozing in the largest, most comfortable armchair with her feet up and Eunice was diligently working on the petit-point seat cover the Dowager fondly imagined was all her own work after she exhausted herself by setting half a dozen stitches in it before dropping off. His grandfather was playing chess with Ranwick, whose dubious pleasure it was to be invited after family dinners to be soundly thrashed by his employer and then to have his every move critically examined afterwards.

‘I am a little tired, that is all.’

Her smile looked forced and he felt a pang of worry for her. Her life had been turned upside down within days and although most young women would have leapt at the chance to marry an earl—any earl—he knew that for Jane this was second best to independence and her art.

‘I went for a walk this afternoon and found it more draining than I had anticipated, so then I began work on my sketches with the boot boy, Jem.’

‘Walk? I did not see you.’ He cursed his own weakness in not obliterating that inscription, but it had seemed like the last nail in the coffin of his dead youthful dreams. He would go back tomorrow with hammer and chisel and do the job thoroughly. Unless Jane had already seen it.

‘I went into the park. That way.’ She gestured vaguely and Ivo released the breath he had not realised that he had been holding. She had gone in the opposite direction from the ice house and hermitage. ‘The grass was longer than I had thought and harder work, but I expect the exercise did me good.’

‘I will show you the best walks,’ he said. ‘The grounds staff scythe paths through the rough grass to make it easier. And we must begin our riding lessons.’

‘Later, I think,’ she said. ‘I have too much to think about without adding learning how to stay on a horse to the list.’

‘Yes, of course, it is not something to be rushed into. Tell me how the sketches are progressing. Is everyone being co-operative?’

‘So far, yes. I have drawn Jem, the boot boy—he is a very bright lad and he is exceedingly ambitious. Could you give him serious consideration for hall boy if Billy gets the footman’s post at... Colne Hall, is it? And I sketched Molly, the new scullery maid, who is homesick but being brave about it because she knows this is a good household and Mr Evans, the clerk, who found the whole thing very embarrassing because he is self-conscious about his ears.’

‘His ears?’ Ivo tried to recall what Evans looked like and realised he was having difficulty.

‘They stick out, so I am drawing him in half-profile and he is much more relaxed about it,’ she said. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘In half a day you have discovered the ambitions of the boot boy and the hall boy, consoled the scullery maid and set the clerk at ease. You are going to become a much-loved mistress of the house, that is clear.’ And he had not expected it and was now a trifle ashamed of himself. He had thought that Jane, not used to such a large staff, would have found the servants difficult to deal with and that she would be far too preoccupied with her art to give much thought to household management. He should have realised that to create a good portrait one must take an interest in the person you are painting. It was he who was too distracted to pay attention to the woman who would become his wife.

‘And that makes you smile? I suppose the prospect of domestic harmony must appeal.’

‘It makes me smile because I am reminded once again what a very nice person you are and what a good decision I made in proposing to you, Miss Newnham.’ She blushed and laughed a little and he reached across and took her hand, needing to touch her, feeling a strange sense of peace steal over him.

I have done the right thing asking her to marry me, he thought and found that the peace was disturbed by a tremor of desire.

He wanted to kiss Jane, not because she needed reassuring, or convincing, but because he wanted to. Wanted rather more than kisses.

Jane met his gaze and he saw it there, too, an awareness, a warmth. Her fingers tightened around his and her thumb moved over his knuckles.