The Viscount Needs a Wife Read Free

acquired who were keeping the vicarage completely clear of mice.
    At that point she invented a farewell and folded the letter. She longed to leave the room immediately to read the rest, but that could stir suspicion, so she used Ruth’s comment about the cats to introduce a subject she needed to discuss with her mother-in-law. The housekeeper had asked her to try to persuade Lady Cateril to allow some cats in the house.
    â€œMice are causing problems in the kitchen area, Mama. A cat or two would control them.”
    â€œI could tolerate cats
there
, Kathryn, but cats do not stay in their allotted space.” Kitty had no answer to that. “I’m pleased you see for once that I am right. It’s a pity that your dog doesn’t kill mice. Dogs do generally obey orders.”
    Sillikin half opened her eyes, as if commenting on that.
    â€œI’ve never known her to kill, Mama.”
    â€œIf she weren’t fed, perhaps she would.”
    Preferably kill you!
    Seething, Kitty called Sillikin and left the room without explanation. She retreated so she wouldn’t say something unforgivable, but she needed to read Ruth’s astonishing news.
    Perhaps Andrew Lulworth had been offered a grander parish, or even a place in a bishop’s establishment. Kitty had no idea how advancement in the church was achieved, but she was sure Ruth’s husband deserved it, if only because Ruth had chosen him. Perhaps they’d received an unexpected inheritance, or found buried treasure in the garden. Perhaps the Regent had dropped by for tea!
    Her flights of fancy were interrupted by the sight of the portrait of her husband hanging over the stairs in such a way that it always confronted her as she went up. It had been painted after Marcus’s death, but based on a miniature done in 1807, before his heroic maiming. It showed a young, dark-haired officer in his gold-braided regimentals, bright with vigor and life. It showed the Marcus Cateril she’d never known, for she’d met him after he’d lost a leg and an eye, been scarred in the face, and broken in other ways that caused him pain till his dying day.
    She fought tears, as she still often did, not of grief over his death, but of sadness for all he’d lived with. He’d often said he wished he’d died alongside others during that magnificent assault at Roleia, and she knew he’d meant it. The overdose of laudanum that had killed him had not been accidental, no matter what the inquest had said.
    She hurried on into the refuge of her room and wrapped herself in two extra shawls. Fires in bedrooms were left to die down in the morning and not lit again until close to bedtime. Then she unfolded the letter, hoping for truly diverting news.
    Now for the main impetus for writing, Kitty. The sickness carried off our local lion, Viscount Dauntry, and his only son, a lad of eleven. That was sad, to be sure, but it also produced an interregnum.There’s a daughter, but of course she can’t inherit, so no one knew who the heir was or, indeed, if there was one at all.
    Now the new Lord Dauntry has arrived. He’s a very distant relation of the fifth viscount, who had no notion of being in line and has never been here before. By blessed good fortune, he and Andrew both attended Westminster School only a few years apart, though he was plain Braydon then.
    Ah. A friendship with the new viscount might advance Reverend Lulworth’s career.
    Dauntry has joined us to dine quite frequently in the weeks he’s been here, and thus we have become familiar with his situation.
    At this point Ruth had run out of paper and begun the crosswise writing, so Kitty turned the page.
    He did not rejoice to find himself a lord. He didn’t need the wealth or want the running of estates. To make matters worse, the late Lord Dauntry’s will makes his successor guardian of his daughter and imposes a duty to care for his mother, who lives on in the