Mistletoe and Mayhem - Cheryl Bolen Page 0,248

but the creditors wouldn’t wait. Lord Kington had been dead and buried some three months, and the letters of demand kept rolling in. The coffers were almost bone dry.

With a tired sigh, she picked up the latest pile of unopened correspondence on her desk and slowly thumbed through it. She could tell which letters were from the most frustrated creditors by the tight way they had been folded and sealed.

At the bottom of the pile she found one specifically addressed to herself. She set the other letters quickly aside. Slipping her letter opener under the seal, she muttered, “Please. Please. Please.” Wister scanned the first paragraph of the letter. “Damn.”

The wording was not exactly the same as all the other rejection letters, but the message was. Yet again, she had been unsuccessful in securing a new position as a lady’s companion.

As had been the case now for over a year, she was still stuck at Kington House, unable to move on with her life.

I am surely cursed to remain here forever. My ghost will haunt the halls of this place.

Rising from her desk, she ignored the rest of the mail. Like death and taxes, they would be here when she came back tomorrow. She stepped out from the dank, cold study and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

“Oh, that’s better,” she said, stepping into the warm and cozy space. A fire blazed in the hearth. Over the crackle of burning wood came the soft steady cadence of snoring. Polly the cook cum housemaid cum gardener was slumped over the kitchen table.

Poor love.

“Polly, I am going to go for a walk in the orchard. I shall keep an eye out for any old weathered apples that may be hiding in the trees. If I find one or two, we might be able to cobble together enough ingredients to make an apple pie,” she said.

She got a tired wave of the hand in response. Overworked Polly had been up long before the dawn and was taking a well-deserved nap.

Wister dropped a friendly kiss on the top of her head. “Why don’t you go and have a kip in one of his lordship’s beds? It’s not as if anyone is going to come and scold you for it.”

Polly shook her head. “No. This place is blighted enough. The last thing I want to do is to go and sleep anywhere that that horrible old codger might have laid his head.”

Wister softly laughed. It was either that or having a bloody good cry. Here she was, twenty-seven years old. No money. No prospects. And she was stuck as the de-facto, unpaid manager of a rundown estate in a far-flung corner of Herefordshire.

She grabbed her coat from a nearby hook and put it on, not bothering to remove her apron. Once outside in the overgrown orchard, she found some solace. At least the clean country air was better than living in smoke-filled London or grimy Manchester, and there was no landlord knocking on her door asking for this week’s rent. She should count her blessings.

Walking between what had once been neat rows of apple, plum, and walnut trees, she stopped every so often to search the treetops for signs of fruit. Wister sighed. There was not a scraggy apple to be seen.

“Oh, for goodness sake, stop being such a misery guts. Your luck has to change soon,” she muttered.

“Wister! Wister!”

She turned at the sound of her name being called and saw young Rupert Weld, the son of the local tavern owner, running toward her. A letter was held high in his hand. “This came with the mail coach this morning. Papa said I had to bring it over straight away.”

I expect George thinks that letter is someone writing to offer me a new position. One which will take me far away from here. Your father is more of an optimist than I am.

Wister took the letter, glanced at the back of it, and was about to tuck it into her apron pocket when she stopped. She rechecked the wax seal. It was a rampant lion on a shield. Under the seal, the name Morgan had been written.

“Oh,” she muttered.

Her mouth went dry. The only thing that could be worse than a rejection letter was a notice of dismissal from the new owner of Kington House before she had managed to secure another position. One that paid.

“Thank you. I shall read it later,” she said.

Rupert waved goodbye and scampered off toward the lane which led back into