Free The Viscount Needs a Wife by Jo Beverley Page B

cruel.”
    â€œYou started it. I’ve met people like that. Quite tiresome. Don’t most country seats have traditional events when the lordly mingle with lesser people? Cateril Manor had some. Harvesttime, Christmas, Twelfth Night, May Day.”
    â€œNot while we’ve been here. Note that I’m low on woodruff. I’ll see if anyone has an abundance. I gather the dowager used to go to London for long periods when younger. She was a lady-in-waiting to the queen.”
    â€œMy goodness.”
    â€œExactly. Far above our touch. Now she’s troubled by an aging hip and doesn’t travel.”
    â€œDon’t highborn friends visit?”
    â€œRarely. That might be because of Lady Dauntry.”
    â€œShe’s haughty with them as well?” Kitty asked.
    â€œProbably, but I meant the fifth viscount’s wife. She ran off with an actor.”
    Kitty paused, pen in hand. “No!”
    â€œYes. Write what I said about fleabane before you forget. I shouldn’t gossip, but you need to know. It was long before I came here—Isabella was young and her brother an infant—but off she went. From servants’ stories, she was constantly squabbling with the dowager and raging at her husband for not taking her side.”
    â€œSo she ran away. Good for her.”
    â€œKitty! She ran off into adultery or bigamy and abandoned her children.”
    â€œShe probably had no other choice.”
    â€œNonsense. Bryony root.”
    Kitty wrote it down, considering the story. “Are you saying I’m going to face the same challenges?”
    â€œProbably, but I can assure you of one thing—Dauntry will take your side. He’d like the dowager out of there.”
    â€œThen why hasn’t he moved her?”
    â€œAnyone would hesitate to evict a grieving mother and grandmother from the place where she’s lived for forty years.”
    â€œShe expects to stay there forever?” Kitty asked in dismay.
    â€œSo it would seem. You knew part of his reason for marrying is to have someone to manage his female relatives.”
    â€œI hadn’t quite grasped the extent of it.” Kitty put down the pen. “Yet that’s not reason enough for this rush to the altar. I don’t understand him, Ruth. Our encounter in the lane has to have exploded any idea he had of my being a pillar of stability. It wasn’t my fault. . . .”
    â€œIt never is.”
    â€œRuth!”
    â€œI’m sorry, but you must confess you’ve never been the most conformable woman.”
    â€œSo why is Lord Dauntry continuing with his plan, and why the urgency?”
    Ruth leaned back against the shelves. “Perhaps he decided an unconformable woman would be a good match for the dowager.”
    â€œIs that possible?”
    â€œIf it came to skirmishes, I’d place my bet on you.”
    â€œGambling? Horrors!”
    â€œOh, you. I can see Dauntry thinking that way.”
    â€œSo can I. Choosing the piece to play. All life is a chessboard to him. I can see that already. And I can tolerate it, as long as I’m the queen.”
    â€œWith him the powerless king?”
    â€œOh no. As I said, he’s the chess player.”
    â€œHe’s simply a beleaguered man, Kitty.”
    They took up their work again, but it left time to think. Kitty had met beleaguered men, and Dauntry was beleaguered in much the same way as Wellington at Waterloo. He was planning for victory, no matter what the cost.
    She’d know better what that might cost her after a week of encounters.
    *   *   *
    The next day she received a note from Dauntry and rushed off to find Ruth, who was scattering seed for the chickens. “He’s gone to Town!”
    â€œWhat?” Ruth turned to her. “Why?”
    â€œHe doesn’t say. Of course. Merely that he’s obliged to go up to Town for a few days, but will return by Wednesday.”