Page 1 of Miss Ellis Unleashed

Chapter One

Daisy Ellis flinched as the front door of her Golden Square home slammed shut. She gritted her teeth as heavy male footsteps disturbed her peaceful morning yet again. Her guardian, Lord Throsby—an irritable viscount—rushed past the sitting room doorway before his steps faded away toward the rear of the house.

Another door slammed shut, and all fell silent again.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Lamb, quietly set aside her sewing and rose from her nearby chair. “Lord Throsby is back earlier than usual,” she murmured, eyes on the door to the hall. She primped her hair absently. “I’d best see if he needs anything.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. Her friend Gabby, the Duchess of Mamble, sighed softly as the housekeeper slipped from the room.

Even though the housekeeper was a decade and older than Throsby, Mrs. Lamb had developed a rather transparent soft spot for the surly viscount.

Daisy remained at the table, refusing to become interested in his activities. “No doubt he will think of something she can do for him. Throsby is nothing if not predictable,” she said to her esteemed guest.

Gabby smothered a laugh. “Indeed he is.”

“He will charge about, call for his valet, change his clothes but depart the house within twenty minutes, ten if we are extremely fortunate,” Daisy confessed in a whisper.

“That is how my Sebastian is. Rush, rush, all the time, but every now and then he stops to linger at my side.”

“I should hope so,” Daisy answered. “A wife is worth lingering over, especially when they are as lovely as you.”

Gabby’s cheeks turned pink with a blush. She and the duke were a passionate couple, madly in love, and the duke was not ashamed to prove his interest, no matter where the couple found themselves.

Daisy might have enjoyed a similar devotion, had the viscount gotten out of her way.

She wished her stuffy guardian would leave her side. She and Throsby had never gotten along. But everyone else, from the housekeeper down to the boot boy, seemed to tolerate his presence.

Daisy could not understand why.

The man was a menace to her peace.

Before he went out again today, he would poke his stern face through the sitting room doorway and look about the space for any signs of wickedness she might be involved in. He’d demand to know what she’d been doing all morning, as if she could not help but get into great mischief during his brief absences. It was hardly likely she’d have been properly seduced with her best friend in the room—a servant, too—or when he had been gone barely half an hour.

Daisy picked up the news sheet lying neglected on the table and shook it out. Though she was almost too excited to sit still, and certainly there was nothing of consequence in it to warrant a second perusal, she started to read the paper out loud to Gabby.

Daisy had spent the last half hour discussing the fun she would have tonight. But it was the promise of tomorrow that occupied her thoughts even more.

Tomorrow would be Daisy’s first day as an independent woman. The guardianship she’d chafed under for four years ended tonight at the stroke of midnight.

Daisy had nothing special planned to celebrate her twentieth birthday other than doing as she pleased at last. After tonight, Throsby would have no power to complain if she misbehaved anymore.

And by misbehaving, she meant simply laughing and having a jolly good time.

She poured another cup of tea for Gabby and topped up her own cup too, smiling to herself, and then continued to recite the paper as her guardian’s footsteps inevitably sounded through the house once more.

Throsby rushed everywhere. Inside the house—but never upstairs, thankfully—and out in society, too. Daisy’s head spun some nights at the speed in which he made her circle the ballrooms at the entertainments he decided she must attend.

Today, he must have paused only a few minutes to change into fresh clothing. He must be late for an appointment or something equally dull, not that she cared enough to inquire what he was up to.

She preferred to know little about her guardian, especially since he hardly expressed an interest in her opinion. The only kindness he’d ever shown her was allowing Daisy to mourn her father in private before finally bringing her out at nineteen years of age. A little later than most debutants perhaps, but she hadn’t been ready to make merry before that.

The season had been fun so far, making new friends, and, in the beginning, her interest in gentlemen and finding a husband had been genuine. But the gentlemen she admired were often not the marrying kind. She accepted that her smaller dowry made her less interesting as a potential bride, and her disinterest in men who valued money over love had grown in leaps and bounds.

Daisy still liked to look at handsome men, to admire them, and to imagine the advantages of choosing one man over the other for her husband.

Unfortunately, once many fellows opened their mouths, beyond pleasantries, she discovered only self-absorbed scoundrels who cared nothing for hearing her opinion, or any other woman’s, for that matter. The best men were often already married, like her friend Gabby’s husband, Sebastian, Duke of Mamble.

Now, there was a man who appreciated an intelligent woman.