Read Online The Viscount Needs a Wife by Jo Beverley - Free Book Online

raised brow. “I might have concealed it from her, but indeed, I’m not. Are you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œExcellent. I also have all my teeth.”
    â€œSo do I.”
    â€œYet more harmony.”
    Oh, you wretch.
Now she understood his abrasive manner. He’d come here to end the arrangement, butwas going to avoid any hint of jilting her by making her do it. Well, he could work for his prize. She’d play his game, returning every shot, forcing him to produce the coup de grâce.
    Now he was using silence. She saw the small piano in the corner of the room. “Is there a pianoforte in . . . the Abbey, my lord?” Thank heavens she’d spotted the hazard and not attempted the full name. Ruth and Andrew spoke of his house as the Abbey, so she’d not yet heard anyone say “Beauchamp.” She still didn’t know how it was pronounced.
    â€œThere is,” he said, “though I’ve heard no one play it.”
    â€œHas the house in general been neglected, my lord?”
    â€œNot as far as I can tell, but I know little of such matters. I was in the army, and since leaving, my home has been rooms in London.”
    For a moment she envisioned rooms similar to the ones in Moor Street she’d lived in with Marcus, but she dismissed the notion. No one had such deep polish and surety without luxury and privilege from the day they were born.
    â€œI have no living family,” she said. “Is that the case with you, too, my lord?”
    â€œMy parents and three of four grandparents are dead. I have two much older sisters, both married. We’re not close. Some distant female cousins dangle on the family tree, but I don’t know ’em.”
    Solitary, but careless of it. Like a cat. A fine-blooded cat, sure of its position in the world and that all should do it reverence. The cat was playing with a mouse, but this mouse wouldn’t be trapped. She let silence settle.
    â€œOf course, I have my new family,” he said. “At the Abbey.”
    The reason for all this.
“The previous viscount’s motherand daughter, I understand. The situation must be difficult for them.”
    â€œAnd for me. Your husband was the son of a baron?”
    â€œMy father was a shopkeeper.”
There’s your exit, sir. Take it.
    â€œA bookseller, I understand, and a scholar of some repute.”
    Dammit.
Of course Ruth would have told him that.
    He continued. “Your husband was an officer gallantly injured at Roleia.”
    â€œHe was, my lord. You, too, were a soldier. You escaped without injury?”
    She didn’t mean it to be as insulting as it sounded. She would have apologized, but he seemed unmoved. “Superficial wounds only. I’m sound in wind and limb. Are you?”
    She deserved that riposte. “Yes.” She recognized an opening. “You will have noted that I have no children, my lord. That must be a concern to you.”
Another escape. Take it.
    â€œMust it? If the viscountcy dies with me, I won’t turn a hair.”
    â€œOf course not, being dead,” she said tartly. “But when living you will want to provide for the continuance of the title. Any man would.”
    â€œMa’am, until a few weeks ago, I’d never given a thought to the viscountcy of Dauntry, so its future is unlikely to disturb me now or in the hereafter.”
    â€œAre you
ever
disturbed?”
Oh, dear.
That shouldn’t have escaped.
    He stared, as well he might. “It rarely serves any purpose.”
    â€œYet you don’t seem idle.”
    â€œActivity is generally most effective when taken calmly. Do you have any other questions?”
    She’d won. He was going to end it. But she did have one question plaguing her. “You truly don’t consider yourself blessed to have so unexpectedly become a peer, my lord?”
    â€œRather more like one of the flies that the wanton gods amuse themselves with