Page 1 of A Suitable Countess (To All the Earls I’ve Loved Before #3)

Lady Viola Winspear counted out the coins in the lockbox before allowing them to trickle through her fingers onto the last banknote. The remaining money would not sustain her, her four sisters, and their younger brother, Frederick, through the next month, let alone the entire Season.

A feeling of hopelessness, a malaise usually unknown to Viola, gripped her as she picked up the letter which had arrived that afternoon, bearing news of the worst kind. News she had yet to break to her siblings.

Their archaeology-loving father and sweet-natured mother had disappeared in the desert sands during a storm while hunting for an ancient treasure in the Valley of the Kings.

She set her hand over the letter that conveyed the news.

Disappeared, not died, which offered a scintilla of hope, but Viola struggled to contain her fear for her parents’ safety.

It was the stuff of nightmares.

Once news got out about the disappearance of Lord Winspear, creditors would begin circling, and if Viola couldn’t find a way to stave them off, there would be nothing left for her parents to return home to.

And they would come home.

They had to.

Viola believed that with a ferocity born of love and desperation.

And if they succeeded in finding an ancient treasure, would that success restore the family fortune lost by her recently deceased grandfather?

With her parents having vanished, it seemed almost a moot point. But how to keep body and soul and her family together until then was the immediate problem.

Viola was good at many things, especially cards, at which she excelled. A shame that was not considered feminine. If only it was acceptable for a young woman to play for more than pennies against men whose pockets were deep, she would soon reverse her family’s fortune.

Without her father’s presence, it would be only a matter of a month, perhaps as little as two weeks, before she and her siblings found themselves dunned and destitute.

Before then, she would find a way to save them.

She had to.