Chapter 1
The woman was coming.
Valeria Walsham, the twenty-year-old sister of Richard Walsham, the Viscount of Midford.
She was coming to town. She was coming to stay.
The very thought of her made him feel as if his blood was boiling.
And her brother—why, he was a common criminal. A noble Viscount—but he had fallen from grace. He would never amount to anything in Society now. And his sister was disgraced right alongside him.
Well, if anything, that puts the power in my hands, doesn’t it? She’ll do whatever I say now. She won’t have any other choice.
Still, just the thought of that woman…
He wondered if he would ever be able to set aside the anger he felt toward her. He wondered if he would ever be able to live alongside her.
This may be a hopeless endeavor.
Chapter 2
“What will you do, Mrs. Paulson?” Valeria asked despondently.
She was seated on her bed, watching as her brother’s servants packed everything she owned into one large trunk. It felt strange to look around her room and see it stripped bare.
Just like my life. Everything I knew is gone.
She kept expecting to see her brother’s grinning face leaning around the doorframe. She knew he wouldn’t come, of course. After what had happened, she would never see him again—not unless she went to visit him in gaol, of course.
Right now, she felt as though she never would. Her anger with him was too great.
But she couldn’t help missing him a bit as well. It had been just the two of them for so long. Now she was on her own.
Mrs. Paulson carefully folded a gown and placed it in the trunk. “I’ll go to my eldest son until I can find work,” she said. “You’re not to worry, Lady Valeria. There’s always work for a housekeeper.”
“I wish you could come with me,” Valeria said, feeling disconsolate. “I won’t know anybody there. I’ll miss you. All of you.”
“And we’ll miss you, too,” Mrs. Paulson said. “But moving on is the right thing for you to do, Lady Valeria. You certainly can’t stay in this Manor all alone.”
“I would rather stay here,” Valeria said. “I would rather be alone than to have to face people and talk about what’s happened.”
“I’m sure your aunt won’t question you too much about it,” Mrs. Paulson said. “She’ll want to give you time to recover from everything. You did say she was a kind woman.”
“She’s always been kind to me,” Valeria said. “But it isn’t as if we’re close to one another. She didn’t get along with Richard, and she rarely visited us.” She sighed. “I’m sure she’ll tell me that she knew all along he would come to no good.”
“Don’t you listen to a word of that,” Mrs. Paulson said firmly. “Nobody knew, Lady Valeria. Nobody could have known what Lord Midford had gotten himself into.”
“But now all the money Father left us has gone to pay his debts,” Valeria said. “Oh, I should have knownsomethingwas wrong. A few years ago, he was the kind to spend money as soon as he got it. But in the past year, he became increasingly tightfisted. I should have suspected there was something behind it.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Mrs. Paulson repeated briskly. She was now gathering the assortment of items that lay scattered across Valeria’s vanity. “You’ll have a perfectly good life with your aunt, now. You’re very fortunate to have someone willing to take you in.”
“Oh, I know,” Valeria said. “I might have had nowhere to go at all.”
“And at least she’s a kind lady,” Mrs. Paulson said. “You might have ended up somewhere unpleasant.”
Valeria laughed. “You’re right, of course, Mrs. Paulson,” she said. “Just as you always are. I shouldn’t be complaining or worrying when I’ve been so lucky.”
“Now, Lady Valeria,” Mrs. Paulson said. “I certainly did not mean to suggest that it was wrong for you to feel distraught. After all you’ve been through! Anyone would be upset.”
