Picky Viscount: A Modern Aristocracy Billionaire Romance (Endowed Book 3) Read online

  Picky Viscount

  Endowed, Vol. 3

  SARA FORBES

  ©Sara Forbes 2017

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be considered as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  www.saraforbes.com

  Acknowledgements

  As always, the CC folks, my wonderful editor Elayne, and Neptunian for always getting the cover right.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  1

  LIV

  AS I LISTEN TO MY MOTHER drone on, my gaze trails over the Grecian urn. How much is that piece of dried-up old clay worth anyway? Ninety-nine pounds? Ninety-nine thousand pounds? I used to stick my Barbie dolls in it when they were being ‘bad’ or when I got randomly angry with them, as kids do. The ‘naughty hole,’ I called it. I bet there’s a pair of tiny plastic shoes rattling down there somewhere.

  My mother gives a practiced shudder, and I re-tune into her monologue.

  “One minute we’re sailing in Montreux and the next, we’re dealing with staff shortages and Syrian refugees.”

  “Yes, I’m glad you brought that up, Mummy.” Having taken the urn in my hands, I sit straighter on the sofa, rotating the dusty vessel in my hands. “The Abdul family—I just talked to them after lunch. The eldest boy, Marwan, needs a special school. Fernborough local was just an experiment, but they can’t cope. He has special needs.”

  “Let the local authority worry about that,” she says with a tired voice.

  “They won’t do anything. The family will be forced to keep him at home and that’s just not good enough. We need to organize transport and school fees.”

  It’s only out of habit and courtesy I’m telling her this. She makes no decisions around here. That honor passed from father to daughter two months ago—the minute I got in the door, basically.

  “Oh Liv, why does your father have to be sick?” she wails, avoiding the word ‘cancer’ the same way she swerves around all unpleasantries in her life. But she won’t be able to avoid this for much longer. The doctor announced it was terminal. Not years, but months, he said. Maybe even weeks. I can’t seem to get my mind around the idea of poor Daddy not being with us forever.

  “Don’t worry, Mummy. I’ll get it sorted.”

  “You have other things to worry about, I should think,” she huffs and strides over to the bay window, showing off her still-youthful figure in a body-hugging Dior ensemble in burgundy. “I mean what’s your plan? You’re not the first young woman to have a failed marriage. It’s ever so common. You should be out there—” she flaps her manicured hand towards the luscious green pasture of our estate— “having fun, meeting people.”

  Fun. I roll the word in my brain, savoring it like one of Daddy’s Cuban cigars. I used to be the expert in fun. Back in the day, and yet it was only two years ago. But I can’t let myself think about that.

  About him. Ken. Ken Belgrave.

  My mother means well. She means for me to find a replacement for Peter, whom I finally found the guts to leave two months ago after a miserable marriage of nearly two years. But Mummy, while supportive once I convinced her of the details, believes in traditional roles. In her mind, I need to find another husband ASAP and let that hypothetical Mr. Reliable do the mentally taxing stuff while I engage my grey cells in creating adorable babies.

  But as heiress and future countess of the Strathcairn estate, half a million acres of prime Suffolk farming land, I see my prime duty lying elsewhere. I’m one of the rare women who can inherit a title—due to an exception in the laws of primogeniture—and I want to stick it to anyone who thinks I can’t do this.

  “Have you considered going back?”

  “I’m never going back to Peter,” I growl, hurt that my mother would even consider this an option.

  “I meant to university.”

  “No, Mummy. I’ll learn more here, dealing first-hand with our tenants.”

  “But you won’t meet a soul.” Her head nods dismissively towards the west-facing windows, in the direction of Belgrave Castle. The significance is not lost on me.

  “I mean, Sebastian and Mara have been a great help to us in running the estate since your father got ill, but you do need more stimulus than that.”

  She’s fishing for information on Ken. On whether we’ve met again since my divorce. We haven’t, but I’m not going to tell her that. Let her stew.

  My boarding-school upbringing and constant travels abroad during vacation periods meant I never got to know Ken, or any of the Belgraves in the castle next door, until that day two summers ago when I was invited to his brother Alex’s wedding.

  Even though my official date was with Sebastian, the serious, oldest Belgrave brother, I was attracted, like planet to star, to the youngest brother—the big blond hunk with the sparkling green eyes full of mischief. Ken was the joker, a spendthrift, a gambler. His motto was “live hard, play hard,” and we clicked at first sight. My whole world shifted into a higher gear. I loved that we could get a little crazy together and that he always brought out the fun side in me.

  We never got as far as having sex because—wait for it—he wanted to hold off until the right time. I was never sure whether this was just Ken being indecisive about me or just some weird remnant of morality from his strict schooling. But I told myself it didn’t matter because every encounter was fun and flirtatious, filling my cup to the brim with a wild first-love happiness.

  Maybe it’s because I was never quite in tune with Ken’s feelings that I was so taken aback at his fury when I announced my marriage to Peter some months later. Ken was speechless with rage. I’ll never forget the anger blazing in his eyes, turning them a shade of bright kryptonite. He didn’t touch me, just turned and walked away. And that, one year and eight months ago, was the last I saw of him.

  It’s surprisingly easy to avoid your next-door neighbor when his castle lies ten kilometers away as the crow flies.

  People say Ken threw himself into writing his book. I was too busy protecting myself from Peter’s mental torture to take notice, too busy pretending to the world that all was fine on my end.

  “Poor Ken,” my mother says on a sigh.

  My clutch on the vase tightens. “What?”

  “Didn’t you hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “About The Silmarillion?”

  My heart pounds. I’ve a feeling she’s not going to tell me he’s won at Ascot.

  “Someone tried to poison it last night. It’
s sick now or something.”

  Oh my God, Ken loves that racehorse more than life itself.

  My hands shake. The vase slips out of my hands and crashes to the floor, exploding in jagged white shards all over the place. I gape in horror at the mess.

  Just beside my toe, two tiny pink Barbie stilettoes are lying on the parquet tiles. I scoop them up and tuck them in my jeans pocket.

  Straightening, I ask my stunned-looking mother, “H-how much did that cost?”

  Her dazed face looks back at me. “I don’t know, dear. It’s been in your father’s family for two hundred years. That’s all I know.”

  I bend down again and start gathering the largest pieces.

  “I won’t tell him if you don’t,” she says and glides out of the room.

  2

  KEN

  I’M IN A NIGHTMARE. Someone broke in to the stable last night and poisoned Sill.

  The poor beast is now lying on the straw, sweating and groaning in pain, and there’s nothing I can do to help him. The vet, Dr. Conway, has been here since dawn, fretting over his analysis. I’ve been his humble assistant, running and fetching water, cloths, and various medications from his supplies in the back of his car.

  The poison—whichever one it is, but Conway’s betting on cyanide—has done its evil work and my gut tells me someone intended to kill my horse. Which is exactly what I’m going to do to the bastards who did this when I catch them. I don’t care if it’s an entire mafia, they are all going down.

  “Plant-based, probably cyanoid,” I growl at Jim, the head groomsman of our yard, when I come out for fresh air. “Diarrhea, shortness of breath, acute danger of liver and kidney failure. How the hell did they get in?”

  “Beats me, my lord.”

  As one of the very few people who know about the key, I don’t want Jim to feel I suspect him for a second, so I add, “You’ll help my investigation, won’t you, Jim? I’m going to question everyone who set foot on Belgrave Estate recently.”

  Jim nods, his gaunt, freckled forty-something face drawn in tragedy.

  One thing’s for sure. The Silmarillion is never going to race again.

  I keep and train Sill locally, which makes me unique among owners, but we Belgraves do have a two-hundred-year tradition of horse ownership, and I thought it would be a shame not to keep it up. I thought we were at least as secure as any of the big commercial yards.

  My brother Seb called me an idiot when I splashed out forty-eight thousand pounds on Sill three years ago. It didn’t stop him from wanting to name the horse, though. My sister Letty went on about my mid-life crisis—at age twenty-four. But I looked neither stupid nor middle-aged when The Silmarillion won the Welsh National the following year, bumping his value up to two hundred thousand pounds.

  My bother Alex, holder of the duke title, thought we should buy more horses as an investment, but even I drew the line there. Horseracing, I told him, is less the sport of kings these days, and more the poor man’s stock exchange.

  I was never going to make a fortune with my colt-turned-super-stallion, but I had to have him. These days putting Sill in races is as close as I get to gambling—that, and keeping up with the statistics. The actual flittering away of disposable income all stopped two years ago when I lost a ton of cash and the love of my life in the space of one terrible summer, or summer horribilis, as the queen would say.

  I’m flying down the steps again, after a double-quick shower, heading to the car park when I bump into our groundsman, Old George. I’m in an awful hurry to get over to Seb’s place for work. My brother hates when I’m late, and I hate when Seb’s ratty.

  “Come on, my lord, I just need one,” George implores, tracing a circle on the flagstones with his walking cane. He wants me to predict a winner for the races today as if this is going to somehow mitigate the risk of the gamble. The news about Sill hasn’t reached him yet.

  “Not today, George,” I snap, and swing around to glare at the old man whose weathered face is creased into an unapologetic smile. But at the bottom of the steps, I stop and accept my fate. How can you refuse a hard-working octogenarian who’s been in your family’s service since he was a boy? That’s right, you can’t. I’m not going to mention Sill or I’ll be here forever.

  “Did you miss the Radio4 tips this morning?” I ask.

  “They always get it wrong.”

  “Well, I don’t always get it right.”

  “More often than not.” He moves whatever he’s chewing over to his other cheek and keeps staring at me with those eyes, which are much too lively for somebody his age.

  I feel the millennia ticking by as he makes his glacial way down the steps after me.

  “All right. Which race? Race, singular, being the operative word.”

  He grins a tooth-deprived smile. “Two o’clock.”

  “Serenity. Won at Lingfield over the same distance. Beat Marraghorn, who went on to win it twice. Posted an excellent speed rating. Plus, Johnny Cooper’s ridden him the last three times so he knows this horse well. Big claims, nice price. Take it or leave it.”

  “Aye, it’s a great price at nine to one.” George has pulled today’s card out from among his layers of clothing.

  “Anything else?” I jiggle my car keys.

  “How much have you got on him?”

  “You know better than to ask that, George.”

  This gets a sly laugh.

  “Bye, George.” Then, leaning out the window of the Rover, I add, “You better go talk to Jim. He and the vet may need extra help over there.”

  ◊◊◊

  The Excel bar charts blur meaninglessly before me. A farmer’s report on livestock replenishment rates over the past decade. Even if I were motivated, it’s all just shades of gray to me. I can’t help thinking of Sill in his agony.

  “I can’t read this,” I mutter and forward it to Seb’s account.

  “I told them not to use colors,” he says from across the desks. “Never mind.”

  I have endless respect for Seb, but I find running a farm like a cut-throat business a little too calculated for my liking. It’s all about maximizing efficiency and identifying performance indicators. The daily grind with Excel and Word seems far removed from the hands-on work of a farmer. I’m just waiting for the robots to take over and put Seb out of his misery. Who am I kidding? He loves it.

  Seb, being the magnanimous big brother that he is, allowed me one hour’s reprieve out of respect for my horse when I got into the office. After that he pretty much told me to stop moping because it wouldn’t help anyone and there was too much to do. It’s a constant refrain with my saintly big brother. In his tidy world, hard work and measurable results cure all evils. But he’s wrong. Sometimes manure happens. And I need justice. I asked him on our coffee break how he’d like it if someone did that to one of his dogs.

  Yeah, that shut him up all right.

  Alex was more useful, in his way, which means he tried to be useful and looked like was being useful. He told me his famous friend Marty from MI6 might be able to “mobilize” people to help, then went off to call him. I told him to stuff his imaginary friend. I mean, come on—his best friend from school days can’t even show up at his wedding? Something weird’s going on there.

  Moments later, I reversed course, on the off chance that the imaginary friend might actually exist and be of some use. But personally, I don’t need some MI6 spook to do my dirty work for me. I have enough connections in the racing world to find out who did this without Her Majesty’s secret service getting their dainty little fingers dirty.

  At lunch time, Seb comes over. I’m having coffee and a sandwich at my desk instead of going over to the main house for a proper meal. I’m working through so I can leave early, whether he likes it or not.

  “I never thought a small one-horse yard like mine would ever be targeted. I’ll have to have someone keep watch over the stable at all times,” I tell him.

  “Round up the trusted staff. You’ve got
my complete blessing, and of course we’ll all take our turns too.”

  “Thanks, Seb.”

  “Don’t mention it, Ken. By the way, I just heard from a tenant that Angus MacKenzie’s on his last legs. Did you know?”

  “No.”

  I know what he’s doing—trying to distract me. And it’s kind of working. My mind fills with the memory of Liv MacKenzie sitting with her smooth warm hand clasped in mine under the dining table, looking across at her father, the formidable Angus MacKenzie, Earl Strathcairn. With his shocking eyebrows and fierce beard, the earl looks like a Hollywood Scottish Highlander. The mutual love and respect between them was palpable, even under those awkward circumstances. God, she’ll be devastated.

  Wherever she is.

  I can’t help the way my mind dwells on an image of her heart-shaped face, now in pain, her tender eyes filling with tears. People say her eyes are the same shade of green as mine.

  “I have to inform Mother how bad it is,” he says. “Countess Strathcairn has had her believing it’s something minor. Unless, of course, you want to do the honors?”

  “Are you kidding? She’ll only use it as an excuse to go on about how I threw that way.”

  Seb taps a finger against his chin and frowns into the mid-distance. “Why do the men always die before the women anyway? That’s another widow in her sixties who shouldn’t be left husbandless.”

  “Women have a 68% likelihood of outliving men.”

  “Something you’ve put money on at any stage?”

  “Just quoting statistics, Seb.”

  “Well, it’s good Lady Strathcairn’s not dealing with it on her own.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Liv’s back.”

  The coffee cup freezes against my mouth.

  His dark-eyed gaze trails over me. “And not just for a visit, it seems.”

  I cock my eyebrow in inquiry, not trusting my voice just yet.

  “They’ve divorced, apparently.”