Viscount Vagabond Read Online Free PDF Page B

wouldn’t. You wouldn’t either, if you knew Cousin Agatha. That’s who Louisa went to. That’s what you need, Miss Pettigrew—a Cousin Agatha to terrify your papa into submission.”
    “Well, all I had was Miss Fletcher and she doesn’t terrify anyone, and now she’s gone,” Catherine answered ruefully.
    “What, no old dragon ladies in the family to scorch your papa’s whiskers for him?”
    Catherine shook her head.
    “Then I think,” said Mr. Demowery, turning his blue gaze to the greasy window, “you had better meet Louisa.”
    ***
    “Bolted?” Lord Browdie exclaimed. “Well, if that don’t beat all.”
    He ran his thick fingers over the rough, reddish stubble on his chin. Probably should have shaved, he thought, though that seemed a deal of trouble to go to merely on Catherine’s account.
    Miss Deborah Pelliston left off snuffling into her black-bordered handkerchief long enough to offer a weak protest. “Oh, don’t say it,” she moaned. “I cannot believe Catherine would do such a thing. Surely there is a misunderstanding. She may have met with an accident or, heaven help us, foul play.”
    “And left a note? That don’t make sense.”
    The glass of Madeira at his elbow did, however, make sense to his lordship. Therefore, he turned his attention to that while nodding absently at his hostess’s stream of incoherent complaint.
    Should have married the little shrew right off, he thought sourly. She’d be broken to harness now. Instead there was going to be a deal of bother and no one but himself to deal with it.
    The whole business ought to have been simple enough. James Pelliston had decided to marry a handsome widow from Bath. The widow didn’t think a house required two mistresses and had dropped a hint to her future husband. Pelliston, as usual, had confided the problem to his crony: what was to be done with Catherine?
    The crony had considered the matter over a bottle of brandy. He considered the property Catherine’s great aunt had left her and found that agreeable. He considered Catherine’s appearance and decided he’d seen worse, especially now she was out of that hideous mourning. He considered that he himself had long been in need of an heir and therefore a wife, which in any other case would require a lot of tedious courtship. Catherine’s like or dislike of himself he considered not a jot.
    “I’ll take her off your hands,” he’d charitably offered.
    By the time the gentlemen emptied another bottle, the dowry had been settled and an agreement reached whereby the two households would take Aunt Deborah by turns, until such time as neither could put up any longer with her whimpering and she might be packed off to quarters in nearby Bath.
    The two men had toasted each other into a state of cheerful oblivion after settling matters to their satisfaction. Since that time, over two months ago, Lord Browdie had spoken to Catherine once, at her father’s wedding. Their conversation had consisted of Lord Browdie’s jovially informing his betrothed that she was too pale and skinny and should eat more. Like the other wedding guests, Lord Browdie then proceeded to drink himself into a stupor. He never noticed his fiancee’s disappearance. He had enough trouble remembering she existed at all.
    Yesterday, the engagement ring he’d ordered in a fit of magnanimity had arrived. He’d come this afternoon to present it to his affianced bride. The trouble was, she’d fled three days ago during the wedding celebration, and this sniffling, whining, moaning creature sitting on the other side of the room had been too busy having migraines and palpitations to report the matter to him immediately. By now Catherine might be anywhere, her trail so cold he doubted that even his well-trained hounds could track her down.
    “Wish you’d told me right off,” his lordship grumbled when there was a break in the snuffling and sobbing.
    “Oh, dear, I’m sure I meant to. That is, I wasn’t sure if I