Emily Hendrickson

Emily Hendrickson Read Free Page A

Book: Emily Hendrickson Read Free
Author: The Unexpected Wife
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Not that there was anything amiss with her mouth or nose, mind you. But her eyes were far and away her best feature, and Mr. Ogleby’s elderly heart was captured. Of course, when he’d caught a glimpse of her chestnut curls he’d been fair gone. But her eyes had finished him.
    “I cannot wait to tell Caroline Tackley that I have met Lady Hawkswood. She will be positively green,” Mrs. Ogleby said with a decided purr to her voice.
    * * * *
    Pansy found her mistress inspecting the upper floor by herself, having sent the housekeeper to prepare some sort of supper for her.
    “And are you to be carted off to Bedlam—my lady?” the maid said with a snap.
    “Can you think of a better situation than this?” Juliet replied softly. “We have a charming house in which to live. I certainly know what is expected of a viscountess—after all, my mama was one. And just think, Pansy—there is a harp for me to play. I was most sorry to leave my harp behind.”
    “There will be trouble,” Pansy predicted.
    “But for now we have a supper to come and good beds to rest upon, and I believe I saw a garden to the rear of the house. At least it will be a garden when I am done with it.”
    Knowing that besides her music her mistress liked nothing more than pottering about in a garden, Pansy admitted she had lost. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you there’d be trouble when it comes,” Pansy whispered in her parting shot as Juliet began her walk down the stairs to the ground floor.
    The housekeeper had introduced herself as Mrs. Bassett and informed Juliet that she had been a maid when Lord Hawkswood’s grandmother had been in residence.
    “You see,” Mrs. Bassett explained, “Lady Hawkswood lived here during the hot summers, preferring the cool of Wiltshire to the heat of the city.”
    “Is she still living?” Juliet thought to ask.
    “Indeed, madam, though she rarely leaves her London home nowadays from what I have heard.”
    Juliet thought it might take a bit of time before she would become accustomed to being addressed as madam, or for that matter as my lady or Lady Hawkswood. Yet, had she married the odious Lord Taunton, she’d have been Lady Taunton by now—a more horrific situation she could not imagine.
    So she quietly ate her modest supper, then discussed the hiring of servants with Mrs. Bassett.
    “A cook and two maids ye’ll be needing at once,” the housekeeper advised.
    “I wish to live simply, you understand,” Juliet replied, thinking of life at Winterton Hall. “But I should like to have a gardener, please.”
    If the housekeeper hadn’t been won over by Juliet’s modest manners and her sweet smile, the request for someone to take in hand the grounds of the house, which she had overseen these past years, completed the job.
    “The garden is sadly neglected. There never seemed to be the necessary funds to do more than scythe the lawn and trim a few trees,” Mrs. Bassett happily explained.
    Juliet went to her bed, feeling that her first day at Hawkswood Manor had been a success. It remained to be seen how the neighborhood would accept her. Perhaps her meeting with the Oglebys was fortuitous in more ways than one, for if she knew anything about women at all, it was that Mrs. Ogleby was a prattle-box of the first order. There most likely would be a goodly number of invitations to tea once the gossip had been avidly bandied about.
    Juliet was not unaccustomed to village gossip; she’d known such all her life, living in the country as she had. It remained for her to make sure that certain bits of information were spread about in the village.
    “I intend to let it be known that I expect to remain here alone and am content with my lot,” she told Pansy as she crawled into the lovely and large bed in the room that belonged to the Viscountess of Hawkswood. “The last thing I want is for my supposed husband to be summoned or informed of my presence!”
    “You do ask for trouble, miss.”
    “I expect you

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