Miss Westlake's Windfall (13 page)

The sound of children’s high-pitched voices came to them, even through the layers of glass. “Your sons are not half grown, sir. Would you leave them to fend for themselves, then, along with your fatherless nieces?”

“Faith, they’d have trustees and stewards to guide them. How do you think I learned enough after my brother died? I was not trained to this life, don’t you know, the way he was. And the children would have their mothers, too, of course.”

“Heavens, you wouldn’t take your wife?”

Squire Hocking looked at Ada as if she were an aphid on his roses. “I said I was running away. What is the point of taking everything with you? That is moving, not escaping.”

Then he patted her hand again, which was beginning to worry Ada, and suddenly those children’s voices seemed to come from far away. She tried to make light of Squire’s fantasy. “Ah, but you would miss the conveniences we take for granted, like enclosed stoves and oil lamps. I daresay tropical isles have no newspaper deliveries, either. You would miss the companionship of your friends and family.” Ada knew she would, no matter how lovely the locale.

Hocking shook his head, limp strands of hair separating to reveal an even greater expanse of forehead. “You do not understand.” He stared ahead again, not seeing Ada, she assumed, except his fingers started to stroke her hand. She was doubly thankful for her gloves. “I would not be alone.”

No, Ada thought, not the scholarly squire! Never. She must have misunderstood, and he intended to take a servant or two on his purely hypothetical, she prayed, jaunt. Her new interpretation was comforting, except that Ada could feel the heat of Squire’s dirty hand even through the leather. She pulled harder.

“A courageous young woman who appreciates growing things, a lovely lady who sees the beauty in nature, that’s who I would take along, my dear Ada, if a fortune suddenly fell into my hands.”

He could
not
be suggesting what Ada thought he was suggesting, but she did not want to stay around to find out. Not by half. She reclaimed her hand, her feet, her muff, and, too late, her wits. While Cyrus Hocking was still begging his ladybird to take wing with him, the bird was flown.

* * * *

“Run, Lulu, run as fast as your old legs will carry you and the cart. Run, girl. I need a bath!”

She needed a keeper, Ada told herself, furious at her own idiocy. People laughed at Tess for her eccentricities, but Ada was the one who ought to be locked away for her own good. Addled Ada, indeed. How Chas would gloat at her latest contretemps—if she ever told him, which she never would. How many times had he warned her she could not keep traipsing blithely around the countryside without a chaperone, a companion, a groom, or a maid, without her reputation suffering? Country manners were not so exacting as those in London, he’d often reminded her, but she could expose herself to insults, even danger. Hah!

What about assault with a deadly watering can? Ada wished she’d taken Tess, or Mrs. Cobble. Confound it, she wished she’d taken her brother’s pistol!

Here she was, tooling around the countryside, granted not three miles away from her home, with a bag of money. What kind of fool was she anyway? The worst kind, the kind who deserved to have her hand fondled by a flower-fancying philanderer, and worse.

Men were known to kill for less coin than she carried in her muff, so Ada supposed she was lucky to have suffered no more than a horrid embarrassment on its account. It was evil, that money, overriding men’s principles. Since she’d found it, all the gentlemen of her acquaintance had gone queer as dick’s hatband, with their proposals and propositions and promised dances. Chas, who did not need the money, was the only one who had not made her some kind of offer, but he’d taken to kissing her instead. Evil indeed.

If that blasted bag had pillars of the community acting like mooncalves, Ada could not imagine what it would do to a common man.

There were none more common than Filbert Johnstone and his son Algernon.

Chapter Fourteen

Ada was glad to be home, even if Jane’s relations had returned before her. They were already in the library, discussing the money, her money. Well, if it was not hers, Ada believed, at least the treasure was hers to dispose of.

Jane leaned forward eagerly, showing more than her usual cleavage after refurbishing another gown by removing its lace insert. “So, did Squire Hocking say we could spend it? I am sure that old windbags agreed with me.”

That Ada would be better off on a deserted island with a bellows-to-mend botanist? Perhaps. “He did not say that in so many words. There are time constraints, you see, during which the original owner should be allowed to claim his property.” She would not tell them that one span Squire had set was nearly elapsed.

“Bosh, I say.”

Uncle Filbert was stuffed into a satin-striped waistcoat this afternoon, puce alternating with pea green, with yellow Cossack trousers. He looked like a balloon ready for ascension, to Ada’s weary eyes. “Whoosh,” she wished to say, wafting him back to his own rooms in Town, if the lease had not been broken for lack of payment.

“Bosh and botheration, what? Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Did not your county lumpkin lawyer tell you that, missy?” Having heard an hour of complaints from his teary-eyed, domino-desiring niece, Filbert was not in good curl. He was certain Jane would have wheedled at least a golden boy out of Ada while he was gone.

“Squire Hocking never read for the bar, and he did not have time to consult his legal encyclopedias, but he was very clear on the matter.” About as clear as the dirt under his fingernails, Ada thought to herself. She locked the leather sack in her father’s old desk.

“No one is going to claim misappropriated funds. That’s what it has to be, what? So there’s no reason to wait the whole time. How long did you say before the blunt is officially ours?”

Ours? Ada carefully tucked the key, on its ribbon cord, back under the high neck of her gown without answering, which did not stop Filbert from huffing, “Even a slim bit of the ready now could make life a lot easier all around, what?”

If he meant a sovereign would silence Jane’s grievances against Ada’s cheeseparing, he might be correct, for a time. If Filbert Johnstone thought Ada would spend a farthing on his foppish self, he was far wrong. Furthermore, Ada did not like the way the old coxcomb’s puffy eyes shifted from the locked drawer to Jane’s elaborate coiffure... to Jane’s hairpins, to be exact. She would have to move the leather pouch later, to a safer locale, like the pillow under her head. Not even Uncle Filbert would dare look there. Ada supposed she ought to be glad that he hadn’t offered for her.

Algernon, meanwhile, was all for searching the orchard for more treasure. Ada was perfectly willing to let the slowtop spend his days, and his nights, too, for all she cared, out of the house and out of her sight. Unfortunately, he meant to search with an ax.

Worst of all, in Ada’s view, Jane’s relatives were rude to Leo when he and Tess returned from their visit to his ship. Tess looked all windblown and excited, gaily describing the captain’s quarters and her plans for a new chapter, or scene, or song. Ada was losing track of the epic, but not of Tess’s happiness. Leo stood quietly at her side, as usual, looking like a rough-hewn god, but he too wore a wide grin.

Filbert would not leave, not with tea about to be served, but he dragged Algie to the other side of the room when the youngster’s mouth fell open at the sight of Leo’s broad shoulders and swarthy complexion. “But I wanted to ask him how many men he’s killed,” Algernon whined.

From the far end of the room, where he was pretending to be asking about his son’s studies, Filbert took out his quizzing glass to survey the impressively built smuggler in his elegant ensemble. He tugged at his own flamboyant waistcoat and said, loudly enough to reach those on the sofa, “Contrary to what you might hear, my lad, clothes do not make the man. Breeding will always tell.”

If so, Ada thought, it was telling her that a viscount’s by-blow was worth three of Filbert. She wanted to yell out that Leo was a hero, a patriot who was doing more for the country than Johnstone ever had, or would. Of course, she could not, not without betraying a confidence. She wanted to shout to the dastard that the bastard was making her sister happy at last, and Ada would love him for such kindness if he had horns and a tail. She could not say that either, of course, not without mortifying Tess and Leo both, so she did better: she invited Leo to dine with them. And made sure he was seated at the head of the table opposite Jane.

After dinner, Tess and Leo put their heads together at the pianoforte, going over the music for the opera. Tess played and sang, pausing whenever a new thought occurred to her. Leo turned the pages and made corrections on the score, when he could drag his eyes away from the auburn-haired beauty at his side. Ada was reading a book and Uncle Filbert was sleeping behind his newspaper until Jane tossed down her cards, declaring that she wouldn’t play with Algernon any longer for he cheated, which meant that Jane was losing. Petulant at being ignored by the only available man in the room, even if he was a baseborn freebooter, Jane started in on Ada again: the curtains were faded, the rugs were stained, the chairs were threadbare, to say nothing of the meager meals that were served. How, then, Jane demanded, was she expected to entertain Lady Ashmead’s lofty company?

Not with a card party, that was for sure. Luckily Ada was not expected to provide an answer.

“And why should I have to look like I am paddling up River Tick, in an outdated wardrobe?”

Perhaps because she’d helped sink the family’s ship, and the tide kept rising. Again, Ada had no chance to express her sentiments.

“Why, by all that’s holy, must we let the world think we are paupers when you have a fortune in coins locked away? Rodney never denied us anything”—which was a great deal of the problem—“so why must you?”

“Here, here, cuz. You tell her. You’re mistress here, ain’t you? Dowager Lady Westlake and all.”

Jane slapped Algernon’s hand away from the dish of comfits. She was not old enough to be dowager anything, and needed no reminder that Emery had left his sisters in charge of Westlake Hall, his younger sister in particular! “I am not a dowager until Emery returns and takes a bride, you dolt.” She turned back to the evening’s target: “Speaking of Emery, I am certain he will be furious to have Westlake Hall become known for its lack of hospitality, when we have the means at hand to throw a party to rival Ashmead’s. Or have you finally realized that you’ll never attract another eligible gentleman, so you don’t mean to try? Just because you are used to whistling fortunes down the wind, Miss True-Love-or-Nothing, is no reason for the rest of us to suffer.”

“She sold the pistols, too, cuz.”

“Will you stubble it, Algie? I am speaking to Ada.”

“Here now, no cause to rip up at the boy, I say, not when it’s Ada who is holding out on us.” Filbert couldn’t sleep, so he decided he might as well add his complaints. “She keeps the place so understaffed my valet is threatening to quit if he has to haul the hot water himself. That brass could hire an army of servants, I swear.”

“Hah! What is your lazy servant compared to my blue domino?”

“Or the pistols.”

“We ought to have a proper butler if those London swells are coming.”

“We ought to have a new chandelier.”

“And ammunition.”

Ada had heard enough. “Stop, all of you. Just listen to yourselves, bickering like children over a treat that no one promised you. Once and for all, the money is not ours! Not yours, not mine, and I would rather give it to those who are truly poor than listen to any more of your carping.”

* * * *

“What do you mean, she’s going to give it all away?”

Leo shook his head. “Miss Ada wouldn’t say where or when, but Tess swears she’ll do it, she was that mad at the fishwife and her kin.”

“Hell.” They were out in the stables again, and Chas was blowing his nose, again. Dragged out of bed to hear Leo’s message, he was half asleep, and half ready to go confess, again. Deuce take it, he couldn’t think, and there was his half-brother, leaning against an upright beam, merry as a grig at Chas’s discomfort. “And to hell with you, too.”

Leo laughed. “I came to tell you, didn’t I?”

“I thought you had information about Prelieu, dash it.”

“No, unfortunately. Only what Tess and I thought you ought to know.”

“Tess, is it?” Chas sank down onto a pile of clean straw, Tally at his side. “It seems the two of you have grown uncommonly close, doesn’t it?”

A moment passed before Leo quietly asked, “Are you asking my intentions, Charlie?”

“Tess is a lady. I am like a brother to her.”

“Aye, and to the sister, too, from what I gather. Until you can manage your own affairs, you have no call to be prying into mine.”

“We will leave my affairs out of this, thank you. Ada can look after herself. Tess is ... different.”

“Special, you mean.”

Chas nodded. “She is that. But what I meant was that Ada is used to taking care of things; Tess lives in her own world, by her own rules.”

“I intend to make it my world, if she’ll let me in. I mean to do the thing right, though, give her time to make sure that’s what she wants, then ask her brother if I can pay my addresses.” A moment went by before Leo added, “It is not an easy thing, asking a lady to step down.”

“Gammon. Show her the house you’re having built. It will be the finest in the area. Make sure you show Tess the indoor plumbing.”

“I am not talking about the financial aspects, and you know it. How can I ask her to marry a man with a soiled name?”

“Your name will be cleared, dash it. You won’t always be a smuggler.”

“No, but I will always be illegitimate.”

“You will always be the son of Rose and Sam Tobin, decent, God-fearing folk who loved you.”

Leo sighed. “The gossip will never go away, though, and you know it. How can it, when it is the truth? Tess ought to have a prince, not a
—
”