Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) by Kasey Michaels

one
expressive eyebrow. “At first sight you seem tolerably presentable,
but is it necessary for you to gallop across the room, my
dear? I’ve seen shorter strides on a racehorse.”
    Cassandra felt as if he had slapped her.
“Gee, and I’m crazy about you, too, Marcus,” she said, looking him
up and down, searching in vain for some flaw in his appearance.
There wasn’t even one. She longed to hate him.
    “You’ve met Aunt Cornelia,” Marcus said,
slipping her arm through his and leisurely strolling in the
direction of the fireplace and the woman sitting so stiffly on the
settee, the woman looking as if she had the fireplace poker stuck
up her back, “She was quite the belle in her day, although she
never married. What was it, Aunt, true love gone sadly wrong?”
    “Impudent puppy,” Aunt Cornelia countered,
her tone severe, although Cassandra felt sure she saw a gleam of
affection in the woman’s eyes. “You know very well that I was—I
am—too independent ever to allow myself or my destiny to be placed
totally in the hands of any man. I came to live with you only
because you need someone sane about the place to ride herd on your
nonsense. Found any great chests of jewels and gold plate at the
Tower yet, Marcus, or are you going to have to dig into your own
coffers to placate Prinny now that you’ve got him all heated up
about buried treasure? You’ve done some harebrained things in the
past, Marcus, but this latest business is dangerous. It isn’t wise
to wave the prospect of fortune under the nose of that great
revenue-devouring ape we call our Regent.”
    Cassandra’s eyes slid sideways, to gauge
Marcus’s reaction to Aunt Cornelia’s scolding. He smiled
indulgently, inclining his head in the older woman’s direction. “I
cannot tell you how much easier my rest is, knowing that I have
succeeded in keeping you up nights, worrying about me. But, to
answer your question—yes, I believe I am making considerable
progress in my search. Only yesterday I discovered a diamond in the
White Tower.” The marquess looked down at Cassandra, who felt
herself blushing. “A rare blue diamond. It is rather rough, and
needs a bit of polish, but it shows great promise.”
    “We did?” Perry questioned, his brow
furrowed. “Oh—oh yes! Of course! Lovely creature—er—lovely thing! You ought to see it, Aunt Cornelia. Isn’t that right,
Marcus?”
    “No, Perry, that is not correct,” Marcus said
stiffly as his aunt sat forward, looking eager. “If you will
recall, I have already decided to keep the jewel hidden until such
time as I can present it in its best light. You do remember that,
don’t you, Perry?”
    As Perry stumbled about, trying to extricate
himself from his verbal misstep, and Cassandra bit her bottom lip
in the hope she wouldn’t burst into laughter, a footman entered the
room to declare: “My lord, ladies and sir. The Reverend Ignatius
Austin.”
    “Oh, Aunt, not again,” Cassandra heard the
marquess utter in noticeable exasperation before he turned to greet
the man now striding into the drawing room, “Ignatius! Grand to see
you!”
    “Liar,” Cassandra whispered before he left
her standing in the middle of the room to walk to the clergyman,
his hand outstretched in greeting. Taking up her seat beside Aunt
Cornelia once more, she took a moment to inspect this newest player
in what she could only look upon as a typical Regency Era drawing
room farce.
    It took her only a moment to place the man,
or at least the type of man the Reverend Ignatius Austin seemed to
represent. He looked almost exactly like a drawing she had once
seen of the character Ichabod Crane, from Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Tall, rail thin, and dressed
head to toe in a funereal black suit that showed entirely too much
of both his cuffs and his heavily patched stockings, the man had
the look of a lean and hungry ferret: his nose extended a full two
inches farther than his nearly nonexistent chin.