A Bride for the Prizefighter - Alice Coldbreath Page 0,2
stay on until Mina was ready to leave.
To leave for where though? She had given up hoping for employment from the several schools in the area. She had applied to them for any teaching positions when their own pupils had trickled away, before Father had even grown sick. Since Father’s illness, she had sent dozens of letters asking after private governess posts but had yet to receive a single reply. The trouble was, she was still relatively inexperienced at four-and-twenty and the only school she had ever worked in was her own father’s.
Governess positions usually took a while to secure and realistically you needed a sponsor to work on your behalf who had the necessary connections. She had hoped that Lady Ralph who had been a sponsor of the school might help her, but that lady had been sadly uncommunicative of late. Mina’s family had kept very much to themselves. Although regular attendees at church, they had not mixed much with the congregation, for her parents had really only cared for one another’s company. They neither moved in society nor kept up any acquaintance in Bath. They also lacked family connection for, as Mina understood it, both her parents had been orphaned at a young age.
A rap at the front door startled her out of her bleak reverie. She hoped goodness it was no tradesman expecting payment for the coffers were now well and truly empty. She craned her ears and to her surprise heard a tread on the stair. Surely Hannah was not bringing any caller upstairs to her? She half-turned in her seat and widened her eyes when she heard a short knock on the door. Quickly touching hands to her head, she felt her nut-brown hair was still smooth and glossy in its arrangement of side-braids which looped below her ears and then swept up into a neat bun at the back.
“Presenting Lord Faris, miss,” Hannah said, bobbing a curtsey and withdrawing promptly.
Mina stared at the beautiful young man who sauntered into the room. He wore a most elegant outfit of evening wear complete with black opera cape, top hat, and a walking cane topped with a silver pommel. His hair was a bright, burnished gold and stood around his face like a halo and it was only after staring at him a moment, that Mina realized he had a rather cynical mouth and his eyes looked slightly glazed.
“Good evening, Lord Faris,” she said, rising from her chair and giving a graceful curtsey. It was easy to fall back on deeply ingrained manners when all else failed.
He was looking at her rather hard. “Dear me, you are not at all what I expected,” he drawled. “Are you indeed, she?” He extracted a letter from his pocket. “Miss Mina Walters?” He read the words as though they were slightly distasteful to him and Mina felt herself bristling. “You do not look,” he added thoughtfully. “Like I imagine a Mina.” He twirled a hand about indicating her appearance. “You look more like…” He pouted a moment in thought. “A Prudence.” He pronounced with displeasure.
“My parents always called me Mina,” she answered repressively. “Though my true name is Minerva, after the goddess of wisdom and strategy.”
“Minerva?” he repeated with a faint wince. “Ah yes.”
At that moment, Mina caught sight of the handwriting on the page he held between his elegant fingers. Surely that was her father’s writing? She felt her heart leap. It must be the infamous letter Hannah had posted. “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me. Are we acquainted?” she asked with a calm she did not feel.
He threw himself down onto a chair and then winced. “This chair,” he pronounced carefully. “Is damnably uncomfortable.”
“Perhaps you ought not to have hurled yourself down into it, in such a fashion,” Mina could not help suggesting. “It is hardly designed for such ill-treatment.”
He ignored her, his eye roaming over the room with a fascinated and leisurely sort of contempt. “Dear me, so this is what a young ladies boarding school looks like. How very disagreeable. I can scarcely credit she would have left my father for this.”
Mina looked back at him steadily. “I’m afraid you will have to be a good deal less cryptic,” she said frankly. “If you expect me to respond at all meaningfully.”
He frowned. “Do sit down. I can’t concentrate when you’re hovering above me like some kind of carrion.” He eyed her full mourning with disfavor. “That gown makes you look like a crow.”