The Husband Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page B

investments."
    Olivia compressed her lips. Catriona had definitely been exposed to the darker elements of life. "Then someone needs to take him in hand."
    "Aye," Cat said in a heavy voice. "I've tried. Tis part of the reason I'm here, to help raise funds to pay off his mortgages before he squanders everything. A horrible man is hoping to buy up the land for bleach fields, and so many people would be put out of their homes if James weakens." What she needed, Catriona had decided, was a rich husband of her own choosing to take affairs in hand.
    Olivia had only a vague notion of what Catriona was talking about; she had been so immersed in her own sorrows in recent years that she had lost touch with the rest of the family. "I expect Knight would be able to offer you better advice than I can on the matter, but it does seem a rather ambitious goal for someone in your position to accomplish."
    Catriona gave her a level look. "There's little help to be expected from that quarter, then. Your brother did not like me."
    "Knight doesn't much like anyone these days," Olivia murmured, "sometimes not even himself."
    "And why not?"
    "Because—" Olivia started to laugh. "It's none of your business, you sly boots."
    "Am I not family?"
    "Of course you are. But it's well past midnight, and you look exhausted. We have endless days ahead to talk."
    She rose briskly and arranged the green silk coverlet over her charge like the loving mother she ached in her heart to be. The young Scotswoman was a far cry from Lionel's child. In fact, she wasn't a child at all, she was as cynical as she was sweet, and she didn't remind Olivia even remotely of her late husband except for those remarkable eyes, and what else was it? Lionel had possessed a certain gentleness and excitement for life that Catriona seemed to share. She wasn't a replacement for what Olivia had lost. Nothing could bring back the baby she had yearned to hold or the husband she had hoped to spend an entire life with.
    "But you are here," she said under her breath, "and I will gladly lay claim to any part of Lionel that I am given."
    Catriona half opened her eyes, drifting asleep and wondering what the woman's strange words could mean. "Be careful going down the stairs."
    "What?"
    Cat's eyes flew open in irritation. Thomas had warned her not to reveal her ability to foretell future events, and she was never sure herself when or how it would happen. But just as she'd begun to relax, she had seen an image of Olivia walking down the stairs and starting to fall.
    "Don't go back downstairs yet, Lady Deering. You'll fall if you do."
    Olivia's disbelieving look turned to one of delight. "Oh, my heavens. Do you have the Sight—that is what you call it in Scotland, isn't it?" She stepped closer to the bed, regarding Catriona in wonder. "I remember reading something about it in a book, but Lionel never mentioned that it ran in the family, although he always knew when it was going to rain. Do you have visions?"
    Catriona sighed and contemplated an evasive answer. Fatigue had made her careless, and now she had ruined her chances for making a decent impression by revealing her fatal flaw. Thomas was right. She had a mouth as big as a gully, and hadn't it gotten her into trouble in boarding school when she had predicted the headmistress would die, and the poor women had expired exactly one week later while reading
Hamlet
to the class?
    That unsettling vision had labeled her a social pariah among the few girls who had been willing to overlook Cat's unstable upbringing and inferior wardrobe to befriend her. Troublemaker, they called her. The Border girl with the witchy eyes and queer power. Years later, she was still the same, an outcast but only older.
    "It was nothing, Lady Deering. I talk in my sleep. Always have."
    Olivia looked unconvinced. "Then go back to sleep, and do stop calling me Lady Deering. I'm Olivia now, and we
are
family. We are also delighted that you have come to stay."
    Except for him,