Free If You Give a Girl a Viscount by Kieran Kramer Page B

have a few repairs that need doing. He’ll feel he owes us something for assisting him in his time of need and will stay a solid month.”
    Daisy shrugged. “But he’s a viscount. He doesn’t do repairs.”
    The Furies exchanged alarmed glances.
    Nobody said anything for a few minutes while Mona drank, Cassandra jabbed at her needlework, Perdita yawned, and Daisy tossed aside her threaded needle and drew a picture of Jinx in her sketchpad.
    “You do know we’re short the hundred pounds we need for the feu duty,” she said out of the blue.
    “Pshaw,” said Mona. “As long as Mr. Beebs has his eye on Cassandra, we have no need to be concerned with that.”
    Mr. Beebs was their landlord. He was the overseer at the Keep, an enormous castle nearby.
    Cassandra got a smug gleam in her eye. “All it takes is a mere wave of my hand when he rides by for his jaw to drop and sweat to break out on his brow. He wouldn’t dare remove us.”
    Mona made a satisfied grunt. “Exactly. What money we have will continue going to purchasing the girls’ things.”
    Things meaning the fripperies, gowns, and boxes of chocolates Mona had sent over from Edinburgh each month, which she shared only with Perdita and Cassandra.
    Daisy restrained a sigh. “How long do you think Mr. Beebs will be pacified?” she asked Mona in a pointed manner. “Soon he’ll figure out that Cassandra is merely toying with him, especially if he gets word that she’s after the viscount. And then where will we be?”
    “You’re jealous,” her stepmother said, “you ungrateful girl.”
    Cassandra giggled.
    Perdita snorted.
    “I am not jealous,” Daisy said. “I simply don’t want us thrown out of our home.”
    “If your father had been a better provider, we wouldn’t be in this position,” Mona said.
    Her cold lack of respect for Daisy’s father’s memory, and her distortion of the facts, infuriated Daisy. “But it was you who spent all our savings,” she responded, heedless of the consequences.
    “Silence!” Mona stood up and swayed ever so slightly. “If you don’t stay out of Cassandra’s way with the viscount,” she told Daisy, “I’ll get rid of Hester and Joe.”
    Daisy felt a sickening pit in her middle. “You can’t do that. The only place they could go is the poorhouse.”
    “I know,” said Mona.
    Daisy blinked her eyes rapidly. “I’d go, too, and I’d get them out. We’d live in a cottage.”
    “Oh, really?” Cassandra laughed. “Not around here you wouldn’t. Not when everyone finds out you’re responsible for your father’s death.”
    Daisy felt all the blood drain from her face. “I’ve told you.” She was horrified to hear her voice tremble. “That was an accident.”
    Perdita snorted. “How do we know?”
    Cassandra tossed aside her stitching. “At the very least, you’ll be sorely embarrassed if we tell the viscount—and the world—the circumstances. Especially when they find out about you and Cousin Roman.”
    “Be quiet, Cassandra.” Daisy found herself half out of her chair, panicked at the thought that Hester or Joe might have overheard her.
    Cassandra laughed. Mona and Perdita chuckled.
    “Daisy’s not a virgin,” Perdita chanted.
    “I’m going to tell the viscount,” Cassandra said.
    “I did not have relations with your cousin Roman!” Daisy hissed. “I woke up with him. God knows how, but nothing happened. He might have been handsome, but he was an absolute boor and the last man I’d tumble into bed with—”
    “Don’t you say that!” Mona looked completely insulted, but she always did, so her expression didn’t even change.
    “You woke up betwixt his sheets,” Cassandra insisted. “And don’t blame the whisky. You were flirting with him all evening—”
    “Hush!” Daisy practically quivered. “It was a terrible time. Do you have no respect for my feelings?”
    There was a split-second silence.
    Daisy fell back in her seat, overwhelmed by shame—shame and grief—so