Page 8 of The Viscount and the Vicar’s Daughter

Mr. Sinclair didn’t look very convinced. “Creditable,” he repeated. “The very girl who destroyed what you hold most precious in the world.”

Valentine stared down at what was left of her book of Bible verses. She’d almost managed to come to terms with the disastrous events that had driven her to the folly, but, at Mr. Sinclair’s words, she felt the full, oppressive weight of her servitude descend once more over her shoulders. Tears stung at the backs of her eyes. “What does it matter how she’s treated me? I’m only a companion. Not much better than a servant, really.”

“Miss March,” Mr. Sinclair said quietly, “I—”

“There you are!” a man’s voice called out. “Higgins said I might find you here.”

Valentine looked up with a start to see a florid-faced gentleman approach. She recognized him as Lord Quinton. An impeccably dressed, middle-aged libertine who bore on his reddened visage the marks of a life spent indulging in all manner of vices. He was a particular friend of Lady Brightwell, who’d grudgingly introduced him to Valentine earlier that morning in the front hall of Fairford House.

“And who’s that with you?” Lord Quinton briefly squinted in her direction, clearly not recognizing her without her spectacles. He grinned at Mr. Sinclair. “I say, St. Ashton. After all these years, you still don’t miss a trick. Not an hour in the place and already out in the woods with a willing female.”

Valentine shot up from her seat and straight out of Mr. Sinclair’s greatcoat. It fell from her shoulders, dropping to the debris-covered floor to pool around her feet. Mr. Sinclair rose just as rapidly. He reached out to her, but she instinctively backed away, her shoulders bumping into one of the splintered pillars of the folly. Her heart beat a rapid, panicked rhythm in her chest. It fairly stole her breath away. “Y-you are Lord St. Ashton?”

“If you’ll allow me to explain—”

“Oh no,” she said. “Oh, how could you.”

Mr. Sinclair looked stricken. But it was not Mr. Sinclair at all. It was the Viscount St. Ashton. She could see the truth plainly on his face. He held her gaze as he took a step toward her. “Miss March—”

She flattened herself against the pillar.

“What in blazes is going on, St. Ashton?” Quinton asked in a great booming voice. He climbed the steps to join them. “Don’t you know the earl’s here? Back at the house waiting for you? Come, man, the sooner you speak with him the sooner he’ll quit the place.” Quinton’s eyes came to rest on Valentine’s face. “And then the real fun can begin.”

Valentine lunged away from the pillar and ran down the steps, nearly falling over a broken board as she went. She thought she heard someone call out to her, “Miss March!” But she didn’t heed it. She clutched her heavy skirts and ran through the woods as fast as her legs could carry her. Tree branches with wet leaves whipped at her face and body. Droplets of rainwater and mud spattered her gown and her hair. But she didn’t stop. She kept running until she was within sight of the kitchen entrance to Fairford House.

Once there, she leaned against the wall outside the door, breathing heavily and clutching the stitch in her side with one trembling hand.

“You there!” someone shouted. “Ain’t you Lady Brightwell’s new companion?”

Valentine squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before answering. “Yes!”

“She’s been asking for you this last hour. Ringing that bell of hers ’til she damned near broke the bell-pull.”

Valentine looked at the young footman who addressed her. He was painfully thin with a self-important gleam in his small rat-like eyes.

“If I was you,” he advised, “I’d have a care about losing me place.”

“Yes, thank you. I shall go to Lady Brightwell at once.” She moved toward the kitchen door, but he stepped in front of her.

“Not so fast,” he said, eyeing her suspiciously. “You look different.”

Valentine was at the limits of her endurance. “I’m not at all interested in your opinion of my appearance, sir.”

The footman grinned, showing two chipped front teeth. “I know what it is. You’ve taken off them spectacles of yours.”

“My spectacles?” Valentine’s hand flew instinctively to her face. They were gone! She must have left them in the folly.

And suddenly, with a sickening sense of despair, she realized that her spectacles were not the only thing she’d left behind on her mad flight from the folly. The last remaining page of her book of Bible verses was there, too. She had dropped it when she leapt from her seat and forgotten it completely in her desperate dash back to the house.

Now it was as good as gone.

The last remnant of her mother’s legacy to her.

Out there somewhere in the woods. At the mercy of one of the worst rakes in England.

The library at Fairford House had seen better days. The carpets were worn, the chairs in desperate need of reupholstering, and the motley collection of books appeared not to have been dusted in an age. A newly made fire burned weakly in the grate, doing little to take the chill out of the room and even less to diminish the scent of damp, rotting wood.

“Fairford never was the bookish sort.” Richard Augustus Sinclair, 6th Earl of Lynden, lowered himself into a poorly sprung armchair. It sagged under his weight. “Nor was his father.”