Free Miss Mischief - A Regency Romance by Kate Harper Page B

hoping that gypsies had carried Johanna far, far away. Certainly, far enough to no longer be in her son’s orbit.
    ‘I am sorry you were all so worried,’ Johanna murmured. James Esk was a pleasant enough fellow but he did moon around to a quite ridiculous degree. His particular method of wooing her was to pen love songs, which he then tried to croon to her. On one memorable occasion he had done so beneath what he hoped was her window. It had not been. Instead, the housekeeper had heard him and, in a fright, had thrown a pail of water out the window, drenching the young would be lover beneath. Word had somehow gotten out and it had been a source of considerable amusement for some time.
    Johanna tried not to be unkind but it was hard not to tell him to buck up a little. ‘That is a very fetching hat, Pricilla,’ she added untruthfully. Pricilla and her mother had the worst taste in hats. This one looked like a lace bird’s nest, complete with birds, for two tiny feathered robins peeked over the edge of the frothy confection. Johanna sincerely hoped they were not real.
    ‘Thank you,’ Pricilla replied, a little breathlessly. Her attention seemed to be fixed on Marcus Hathaway, her eyes sliding past Johanna to rest on the new guest with considerable interest. Johanna allowed herself to follow the girl’s gaze for she, too, found Marcus Hathaway to be intriguing.
    He is far better looking than I initially thought , she reflected thoughtfully, glancing at that angular, intelligent face. He was possessed of a wealth of black curls that were unstyled but looked very well on him just the same. Combined with a pair of vivid blue eyes, her rescuer was one of the better-looking men who had come her way and a shiver of surprise rippled through her. I did not entirely see it before but who would have thought the man would have been so handsome under all that mud?
    She recalled the way he had stepped up behind that would be thug, his cool handling of the situation and the look in those watchful eyes. She might have known the whole thing was a silly sham but he certainly hadn’t. Clearly he was courageous as well as good looking. While both items were delightful in themselves, it was his air of slight abstraction, along with that quick ready humor that she found most appealing. That and the fact that he was not at all impressed by her beauty. Other females might have found that irksome but Johanna had been lauded for being pretty for as many years as she could remember and it was quite refreshing to have a man, if not ignore her looks, then certainly behave as if they were nothing out of the ordinary.
    In spite of the fuss others made of her looks, Johanna was not conceited for she was sensible enough to realize that her face was something outside of her control. She supposed it was far more pleasant to be pretty than plain – certainly, she knew girls who bore this surmise out, Pricilla being one such case – but there was more to her than that, as her grandmother had always told her. A pretty face might allow her to get her way more often than not but it frequently led others to overlook the fact that she was intelligent. It had been a strange discovery, realizing that the two things did not sit easily together with most people even those as fond of her as her father. If she made observations on current events or anything that was not trivial she was regarded rather as a precocious child who had said something clever. The only person who acknowledged that she was far more than her looks was Grandma, the woman who had brought her up and was canny enough to see beneath the surface of most facades.
    ‘Most men can’t see farther than what’s under their noses, lass,’ she’d said, years before. ‘I know you’re as sharp as Sheffield but I might be the only one who does. You just have to use it well, for a pretty face doesn’t last forever. An’ the man who does win you over… well, he’ll see beneath, sure