The Quizzing-Glass Bride

by Hayley Ann Solomon

Genres: Regency Romance; Romance; Victorian Romance

Synopsis

When Lady Fern Reynolds confided in a sympathetic houseguest that she was considering running away to London to escape betrothal to an unknown suitor, she did not expect him to offer her shelter. And she certainly did not imagine tumbling for him, the Viscount Sandford. But that was the least of her surprises, as she discovered the wedding was to go on as planned--and her groom was strangely familiar. . .

Previously published in My Dashing Groom.

21,000 Words

Release date: April 1, 2013

Publisher: eKensington

Print pages: 74

Sample

“Mistress Fern, I am usually as mild mannered as spring time, but if you wear them . . . them . . . spectacles to meet the marquis, it’s handin’ in me notice I am, and that be fact!”

Mimsy Garett glared defiantly at the little mistress. It was her grand title to be referred to as “dresser,” now, just as if she were living in London, and she took the title most seriously.

“How am I to arrange your hair, such a beautiful color, the color of spun gold even if it don’t curl the way it ought to? Bless me, we must order in some more curling papers. I must speak to Mrs. Fidget at once about that. . . . But I daresay I am runnin’ off me subject. . . .”

Fern, sitting docilely in front of the glass, was relieved. If only Mimsy would keep off the wretched subject of her spectacles, she could rest easy. But no! It was too much, of course, to hope. The dresser was rattling on again, playing with Fern’s short, cropped strands in front of the glass, just as if she were in short skirts rather than a lady grown. Her tone was heartily indignant.

“How, Mistress Fern, am I to arrange your . . . your glorious hair if you persist in wearing them spectacles? It is not possible, and don’t you say otherwise! Oh, I do wish we had not called Jenkins in to cut it! Still, no one can quibble about its condition. . . . Now where was I?”

Fern muttered something inaudible and rather unladylike, but fortunately Mimsy was too distracted to hear.

“Oh! The spectacles. Remember the Addingtons’ ball. . . .”

Fern groaned. She did remember. It was a hideous occasion, chaperoned by Lady Winterton, for Mama had the fever, and it had been an unqualified disaster.

Somehow, Fern had landed behind a great potted plant all evening, squashed between the dowagers’ chairs and a large trestle of lemonade. She was certain it was the spectacles, for several unkind young ladies actually tittered behind their handkerchiefs and pointed them out to the gentlemen. Those who had subsequently scribbled their names in her dance card had been constrained, almost as if they were doing her some kind of huge kindness. Naturally, in the face of such condescension she had been defiant, though not actually rude, as Lady Winterton would have her mama believe.

Nevertheless, the whole sad matter was best forgotten. Fern had endured most of her first season in this excruciating manner, then returned shortly thereafter to the country, there to be buried in her beloved books and garden, with only the occasional scold to remind her of her folly.

Now, however, there seemed to be no way to forget the past as Mimsy hovered over her with a brush, easing out the classically cropped tangles with vigorous strokes that made her eyes sting but added incredible luster to the soft, shoulder-length lashings of spun gold. Unfortunately, of course, it was dead straight, sadly unmodish despite the new cropped style.

“I shall enhance this mass with a hairpiece and pile it high in a coiffure, just like Lady Winterton and Lady Ashleigh wear theirs in town. Now don’t you pout! You are too old to wear nothing but the odd ribbon; you don’t want Lord Warwick thinking you be naught but a country miss, or worse, a dowd!”

The dresser clapped her hands to her mouth in horror. Fern merely sat obediently, offering no comment of her own. So Mimsy continued. “I might be old, like, but I am up to the rig, don’t you fear! I have studied all of them London fashion plates, I have, and I know exactly what is required! You shall borrow Lady Reynolds’s amethyst combs, along with the tiara, and I shall pile your hair up in coils, with just a few ringlets dripping down. . . .”

“Mimsy, your head is in the clouds! I don’t have ringlets to drip down, remember? And if you think curling papers in my cropped hair will help, they shan’t! Remember how we tried last summer. . . .”

“Now, now, Miss Fern, don’t despair! We shall prevail! Try and try again is what Mimsy always says! And there is no saying wot we can’t find a hairpiece wot have curls, there isn’t! But not with the spectacles! Don’t want the marquis to run off in fright before he has ever even met you!”

“He has already met me! Five years ago, when I was a scrubby little brat with a toothless grin and nothing to recommend me but my barley sugar, which I gave to his horses.”

“Mistress Fern! Was he very angry? Gennelmen don’t like nobody fiddlin’ with their cattles’ feed! Most particular they are that way!”

“He threatened to spank me, I believe, then gave me a tweak upon my chin and confided that Rascal—that was the horse’s name, though I believe it applied equally to the owner—had an infernally sweet tooth and that was why his pockets were always sticky—from sugar lumps.”

“A whopper if ever I heard one, for Lord Warwick is the greatest nonpareil of our time! Fancy him saying such a thing, when all of London knows him to be fastidious in his dress! Which is why, Mistress Fern, you are to look like a fairy princess. Nothing short of that will hold his eye.”

Fern thought it would take more than the absence of spectacles to hold the famous marquis’s eye. And why anyone should think she could, a little mouse from the country who was more bookish than bold, just because her mama and his were bosom buddies ever so long ago—not to mention the fact that his land marched upon their own, Evensides—she could not fathom.

But the whole household seemed to expect it of her, and everyone was murmuring and muttering here and there about br. . .