Wife Wanted (All for Love #3)

Chapter One

If she has half a brain—and I certainly hope she does, or what is the point?—she will understand what is implied. How can the proprieties be adhered to if we are not married?

He was a single man living alone, after all—except for the servants.

He put the journal away and returned to his desk to complete the next chapter on his book, A Survey of Sussex Antiquities. Kester, his lolloping red Irish Setter, rearranged his long furry limbs under the desk with a flop and a sigh.

He glanced under the desk at the dog. “Your walk is not scheduled until ten o’clock, Kes. Have some patience,” he admonished gently. Kester raised his silky head with long floppy ears and rested it on Deo’s knee. Deo stroked the head and scratched the ears absently, contemplating his next sentence.

The prospect out the window from his desk showed the rolling green of the south lawn of his Sussex country estate, with a glimpse of blue ocean in the distance.

He always resided here for the summer months, when London became stiflingly hot.

Last summer he’d spent the entire time unearthing and cataloguing a new find right on his doorstep before it disappeared into the ocean: a small hoard of Saxon coins and church reliquaries.

He’d worked flat out for weeks to get it all done before the wind and weather destroyed the find.

It had underlined for him his need for an assistant.

Now he was itching to get started on the new project he had been assigned by the Society for Antiquaries, but for that he really needed his secretary-wife. The prospect of having a companion who shared his passion for antiquities, who understood—a woman he could talk to—set up an ache in his chest.

At the age of thirty-two he had despaired of finding a lady of suitable birth who shared his interests, whom he could, in short, contemplate living with for the rest of his life.

He was not an easy man to live with. He knew this.

Finding a lady who could tolerate him was a tall order.

Then his friend Emrys, Viscount Ashford, had suggested he advertise.

Deo had thought the idea was brilliant, but perhaps he was wrong, and he was destined to be alone as he dwindled into old age. The prospect was depressing.

He shook his head to dispel the thoughts, pushing his spectacles back up his hawklike nose, and focused on the page before him, reaching for his notes, with one large, freckled hand.