Daisy’s heart sank. She’d been dreading such a showdown. “How can I? We’re engaged to be married.” Her voice was firm, and she finished threading her needle with steady hands.

“You know exactly what she means.” Mona dangled a glass of whisky from her hand. “It’s not as if we get any eligible men up here. He’s destined for Cassandra. You must show a disgust of him immediately, so he’s free to pursue her.”

Perdita lowered her bushy brows at Daisy. “I like his legs,” she said in warning tones.

Daisy felt their united threat but refused to be cowed, especially as outside the great mullioned window, even at this late hour, in the eerie light of the Scottish summer night, she could see Joe checking on the mother pig who’d had her litter of piglets two days ago.

She must stay firm for Joe. And Hester.

“I refuse to act unengaged,” she said.

Cassandra gave a huff. “Very well. Prepare to compete with me for his affections.”

“Engaged doesn’t mean married,” Mona reassured Cassandra.

Daisy wasn’t a bit surprised at their selfishness.

“He won’t stay long enough for you to win him,” she told Cassandra. “He’ll probably leave in the next several days.”

She knew very well he’d hang about longer than that, but it was a good opportunity to convince the Furies that they were responsible for his staying.

“We can’t let him leave.” Mona’s brow furrowed.

“No, we can’t.” Cassandra bit her plump lower lip.

“How do you plan on getting him to stay longer?” Daisy asked them.

Perdita chuckled. “I’ll tie him to his bed.”

“I make those decisions,” said Mona, pinching Perdita’s arm.

Perdita winced.

Daisy sent her awkward stepsister a sympathetic glance, which she returned with a glower.

“Cassandra will lure him,” Mona said.

“How so?” replied Daisy.

Cassandra shrugged. “I’ll tell him we haven’t had a healthy young man around the house for so long, we have a few repairs that need doing. He’ll feel he owes us something for assisting him in his time of need and will stay a solid month.”

Daisy shrugged. “But he’s a viscount. He doesn’t do repairs.”

The Furies exchanged alarmed glances.

Nobody said anything for a few minutes while Mona drank, Cassandra jabbed at her needlework, Perdita yawned, and Daisy tossed aside her threaded needle and drew a picture of Jinx in her sketchpad.

“You do know we’re short the hundred pounds we need for the feu duty,” she said out of the blue.

“Pshaw,” said Mona. “As long as Mr. Beebs has his eye on Cassandra, we have no need to be concerned with that.”

Mr. Beebs was their landlord. He was the overseer at the Keep, an enormous castle nearby.

Cassandra got a smug gleam in her eye. “All it takes is a mere wave of my hand when he rides by for his jaw to drop and sweat to break out on his brow. He wouldn’t dare remove us.”

Mona made a satisfied grunt. “Exactly. What money we have will continue going to purchasing the girls’ things.”

Things meaning the fripperies, gowns, and boxes of chocolates Mona had sent over from Edinburgh each month, which she shared only with Perdita and Cassandra.

Daisy restrained a sigh. “How long do you think Mr. Beebs will be pacified?” she asked Mona in a pointed manner. “Soon he’ll figure out that Cassandra is merely toying with him, especially if he gets word that she’s after the viscount. And then where will we be?”

“You’re jealous,” her stepmother said, “you ungrateful girl.”

Cassandra giggled.

Perdita snorted.

“I am not jealous,” Daisy said. “I simply don’t want us thrown out of our home.”

“If your father had been a better provider, we wouldn’t be in this position,” Mona said.

Her cold lack of respect for Daisy’s father’s memory, and her distortion of the facts, infuriated Daisy. “But it was you who spent all our savings,” she responded, heedless of the consequences.

“Silence!” Mona stood up and swayed ever so slightly. “If you don’t stay out of Cassandra’s way with the viscount,” she told Daisy, “I’ll get rid of Hester and Joe.”

Daisy felt a sickening pit in her middle. “You can’t do that. The only place they could go is the poorhouse.”

“I know,” said Mona.

Daisy blinked her eyes rapidly. “I’d go, too, and I’d get them out. We’d live in a cottage.”

“Oh, really?” Cassandra laughed. “Not around here you wouldn’t. Not when everyone finds out you’re responsible for your father’s death.”

Daisy felt all the blood drain from her face. “I’ve told you.” She was horrified to hear her voice tremble. “That was an accident.”

Perdita snorted. “How do we know?”

Cassandra tossed aside her stitching. “At the very least, you’ll be sorely embarrassed if we tell the viscount—and the world—the circumstances. Especially when they find out about you and Cousin Roman.”

“Be quiet, Cassandra.” Daisy found herself half out of her chair, panicked at the thought that Hester or Joe might have overheard her.

Cassandra laughed. Mona and Perdita chuckled.

“Daisy’s not a virgin,” Perdita chanted.

“I’m going to tell the viscount,” Cassandra said.

“I did not have relations with your cousin Roman!” Daisy hissed. “I woke up with him. God knows how, but nothing happened. He might have been handsome, but he was an absolute boor and the last man I’d tumble into bed with—”

“Don’t you say that!” Mona looked completely insulted, but she always did, so her expression didn’t even change.

“You woke up betwixt his sheets,” Cassandra insisted. “And don’t blame the whisky. You were flirting with him all evening—”

“Hush!” Daisy practically quivered. “It was a terrible time. Do you have no respect for my feelings?”

There was a split-second silence.

Daisy fell back in her seat, overwhelmed by shame—shame and grief—so much of both, she didn’t know what to say.

You’re human, Hester had told her over and over. Mistakes happen. Candles are left burning. You’re not the first to have set an accidental fire.

But even Hester didn’t know that when the fire had been detected and her father had come looking for her in her bedchamber and found her gone, Daisy had been in Cousin Roman’s bed, drunk and half clothed.

Only the Furies knew.

And so her father had thought her lost in the fire. He’d presumed she was in the bungalow, working on a sewing project. He’d been so stricken with grief standing before the conflagration that his heart—

It had given out not long afterward.

He’d had a history of weak spells, but Daisy knew—everyone knew—that when he mortally collapsed at dinner a week later, it was the trauma of that evening’s fire that had done him in.

Dear God.

She couldn’t think of that fateful night without shaking! She’d escaped Roman’s room with no one’s being the wiser. She’d even come up with a likely story for her absence from her bedchamber—she’d repaired to the kitchens for a late-night snack.

But when Cousin Roman left for Australia, Cassandra came to Daisy and told her she knew the shameful fact of her true whereabouts that evening, and that was all it took …

She was now the Furies’ fool.

Daisy sat up in her chair and kept her eyes on the floor, incapable of looking at the three women avidly staring at her. She could feel their scorn.

And then she released an audible sigh of despair, not caring that they heard her. Forgetting to blow out a candle was perhaps forgivable. But the rest?

Daisy would never forgive herself, and neither would anyone else, including Hester and the viscount, if they knew the extent of it. So she must cooperate with these three women she despised, at least until she found her four hundred pounds. After that, she’d work so hard to make the estate better, they’d either leave because their tauntings couldn’t bother such a busy person as herself, or they’d stay and she’d—

Well, she’d have to continue enduring them. Because there was no way she was ever going to leave her home.

If that turned out to be the case, at least she’d be distracted. Creating and maintaining a thriving sheep herd would occupy her time, and she’d take satisfaction in knowing that she’d be providing a comfortable life for her, Hester, and Joe.

“Ladies,” she said in a thin, calm voice, “I promise you I’ll have as little to do with Viscount Lumley as possible, although I won’t break off the engagement.”

“You’d better!” Cassandra cried. “Or I’ll tell him everything.”

Daisy held up a hand. “If I break it off or if you tell him, he’ll leave straightaway.”

“He won’t if he’s in love with me.” Cassandra arched a smug brow.

Daisy kept her patience. “Give yourself at least a week or two to allow that to happen,” she said, her tone perfectly serious.

“Oh, right.” Her vain stepsister nodded.

“He’s probably already halfway in love with you,” Mona assured her ebony-haired daughter, “but you’ll want to clinch it.”

“Yes,” Perdita said. “You must clinch it.” She made a giant fist.

At her mother’s and sister’s exhortations, Cassandra’s eyes brightened and her mouth became a big O. But when she looked at Daisy, her expression turned surly. “You’d just better lie low until I clinch things. And then all bets are off. I’ll tell him everything if you so much as blink in his direction.”

“Right,” Daisy replied dryly, ignoring the fact that all three women were nodding vigorously, pleased with their campaign to destroy Daisy’s chance at marital bliss.