Miss Westlake's Windfall (18 page)

“No.”

That was Leo’s last word for another long while.

Chapter Nineteen

“Why do women sell themselves so cheaply?”

“What, have you been giving Molly a tumble over at Jake’s? I thought you were done with that now that you were courting Tess.”

“I don’t mean selling their bodies. I do mean Tess, and Ada too. What is wrong with the women of that family that they hold such little value of themselves?”

Viscount Ashmead and his half-brother were lying on their stomachs atop a cliff, watching Leo’s men unload the cargo from a skiff that had been rowed ashore. The larger boat waited just offshore, a shadow in the night. This was the last boatload to be hauled and no Frenchman had stepped onto dry land. The viscount watched through his spy glass and cursed.

Both men wore dark clothing tonight, no finery to glimmer in the moonlight, no stark white shirts and neckcloths to draw attention to their presence. Both were heavily armed, also, in case a renegade band of raiders tried to steal the booty. With a pistol in his hand, a knife in his boot, and a rifle at his side, the sight of Leo would have made Tess proud, Chas considered. Then again, if she had known about their activities, Tess would have wanted to come along. The danger was too great to consider giving her a hint of their night’s work.

They were not armed against the government men, since Chas had personally made sure Lieutenant Nye was busy this evening. His mother was holding a card party to entertain what guests had arrived at the Meadows, and Chas had dragooned the young lieutenant to take his place, claiming he had to stand watch over the orphanage in case the Kirkendals came back. He thought of Quintin partnering Lady Esther at whist and had to smile, white teeth flashing in the night after all. Lud, if those two made a match of it, their children would never learn to speak, between the officer’s nervous stammer and the lady’s affected lisp.

Chas wished for Quintin Nye’s sake—and for his own— that the china dolt would look the lieutenant’s way, but he doubted such a possibility. In fact, the chances of Prelieu swimming ashore were better than Ravenshaw recognizing the riding officer as a suitor for his daughter’s hand. With such a fortune as she would have, the earl would hold out for a barony at least. Which partly answered Leo’s question: “Women are commodities in this world, that’s why they lack confidence.”

Leo looked down at the barrels and boxes on the shore. “No one buys and sells females, not in this country anyway.”

“Hah. They might not call it bondage, but women are bartered constantly. They are sold for titles, for fortunes, land, even for votes or political influence. The difference is they become wives, not slaves, but their husbands and fathers reap the profits. They gloss it over by calling them advantageous marriages. My sisters were not encouraged to dally with the dustman. They barely saw a gentleman without a title to his name. Why should my father consider a man who could not keep a wife in style? And why should a rich man not grow richer? Their dowries, not their pretty faces and pretty manners, let my sisters select from the eligibles. Even among the lower orders a woman is pursued for what she can bring to the marriage, what coins her father might dower her with, when she might inherit a bit of land, how many cows.”

“A poor man cannot always afford to take a poor wife. And a woman would not give her hand to a man who could not feed her and her children. How would they live?”

“Precisely. In the Westlakes’ circles, the situation is worse. They have no great, hallowed name to bring, no lofty connections to better a gentleman’s place in life. Without the meager dowries Rodney gambled away, they have no bargaining position, and they know it. That is why they consider themselves inferior merchandise, of lesser value than the empty-headed Lady Esthers of the ton. A man with no fortune can marry a woman with one, but he can also go out and make something of himself, the way you did. A woman doesn’t have those options. Too many doors are closed to them, which likely makes them either give up, or dig their heels in.”

Leo shifted on the ground, considering. “Mayhaps things will get better once the brother comes home. Do you think he can turn their fortunes around?”

“I pray to God he can. He couldn’t do worse than Rodney, at any rate. If nothing else, Emery would see the need to accept a loan from a neighbor. That reminds me, here.” He handed over the well-traveled leather pouch. “It appears our friend Prelieu is not going to require this to live in London after all. You’ll need it for the trip to get Emery.”

Leo shoved the purse back. “Nay, I have more than enough of the ready. Asides, it is more my right to fund the cawker’s rescue than yours, this time. More a part of the family, like.”

Chas slapped his brother on the back. “I take it I am to wish you happy then? I suppose it was your silver tongue that talked Tess round. By Jupiter, I am pleased for you both, Leo.”

Leo grinned back. “Not official yet. Not till the brother gives his blessing. I wouldn’t come between the lady and her kin, not unless I had to.”

“How could Emery not welcome you to the family with open arms? You are good for Tess, and you have a bright future ahead of you.”

“But my past ...”

Chas tossed the pouch in the air. “Is outweighed by your purse. It’s the money, brother. It is always the money.”

* * * *

It was the money, Ada thought, always the money. Suddenly, with word of Emery’s imminent return, the merchants were willing to extend her credit. How they thought a wounded soldier was to make the fields and farms turn a profit when she could not was a mystery to Ada, but she accepted the reprieve from the bank and the shopkeepers. She did not wish to think about what would happen if Emery’s injuries proved worse, if he never made it back. Some American cousin, so far removed she could not count, would inherit the baronetcy and Westlake. He’d most likely petition the courts to break the entail, sell off the acreage and the house, and toss them all out in the snow. Tess and Ada would be living by their wits, which was not saying much, these days.

Looking on the brighter side, Ada’s sister had become acceptable to the villagers too, now that she and Mr. Tobin were an accepted item. Nothing had been formally announced as yet, also pending Sir Emery’s return, but local gossip had them hitched. The publisher in Dover was newly willing to consider Tess’s epic, and the manager of a traveling actors’ troupe asked if he could see a script. With the hint that the wealthy Mr. Tobin might finance his fiancée’s foray into the arts, Tess had talent. A few days ago she was crack-brained; now she was creative.

Even Jane was finding it politic to be polite to her sister-in-law. She did not go so far as to pose for the book illustrations—Tess still needed a picture of the evil stepmother—but Jane did label one of the songs “pretty” now that it might be performed with Leo’s backing, and might make a profit.

Only the viscount’s mother could not be swayed by the promise of money. Of course not, Ada thought; Lady Ash-mead was too fixed in her ways, and too wealthy.

“Your sister will never be welcomed in my home if she marries that person,” the viscountess warned.

Tess hadn’t been welcomed—only tolerated—since she’d staged a ballet in the water fountain at the Meadows a few years previously, while the bishop was visiting. Tess with her sheer, flowing gown immodestly plastered to her lithe body was a sight the bishop was not soon to forget, Ada supposed. Certainly Lady Ashmead hadn’t.

Ada did not know how to answer the viscountess. If her sister was not welcome at the Meadows, how could Ada accept invitations there? Loyalty to her family would keep her away from the house she’d run tame in most of her life. Then again, she wouldn’t have to untangle Lady Ashmead’s embroidery threads anymore either.

Chas would not let Tess be ostracized. He’d wheedled an invitation to the masquerade for Leo, hadn’t he? Anyway, Lady Ashmead promised to return to Bath when her son married. His wife could entertain whomever she pleased. Ada was not pleased to think of Chas’s wife.

Perhaps Tess and Leo would move to London, especially if her play was actually to be performed. The approval of Lady Ashmead and her ilk would matter less there, where Tess could establish her own coterie of artists and writers. Leo could find his own circle of smugglers—shippers, she amended. Ada saw no reason Leo could not conduct his legitimate business from London as easily as from Lillington. She meant to talk to Chas about seeing that the smuggling stopped, even if Tess was eager to run the blockade. Especially since Tess was eager to run the blockade. Instead of London, Tess might convince Leo to sail her around the globe, perhaps finding that tropical Eden Squire Hocking had described.

Then Ada would be alone. Emery would take a wife, she supposed, eyeing the young ladies Lady Ashmead had arranged like so many bonbons on a dish, for her son’s delectation. None were as beautiful as Lady Esther and none were as wealthy, but Emery might find a lesser heiress to wed. Many a gentleman had repaired his finances that way. Of course he’d have to like the girl. Ada was not about to permit her brother to sacrifice himself for the family with a girl who did not make him happy. Heavens, Ada could have been the sacrifice ages ago, wedding Chas for his money. Some sacrifice it would have been, she chided herself, admiring the fine furnishings in Lady Ashmead’s sitting room, the attentive servants, the lavish refreshments. Of course she still believed that Chas would have been the one paying the forfeit.

Lady Ashmead was going on while Ada was woolgathering, and woolwinding. “Money is not everything, you know.”

Which was precisely why she had not accepted Chas’s offer, the one she had made him swear not to repeat.

“No, there’s breeding. Breeding, do you hear?”

Two young ladies sitting nearby with their needlework started giggling; Ada did not think Lady Ashmead meant propagating the species.

“Fortunes can be won or lost; breeding never can. A man of distinction does not need gold to be a gentleman; conversely, no amount of wealth can make a man of low birth into one.”

Ada looked around the room at the gentlemen who had been invited to even the numbers, so Lady Ashmead’s house party did not resemble an auction of fillies at Tattersall’s. They were well bred, every one. Lord This, Sir That. They were all dressed by the finest London tailors in studied elegance, shod by the same London bootmakers and shined to a fare-thee-well. They all carried an air of boredom along with their quizzing glasses and snuffboxes. Ada would take Leo any day.

Not that she’d have a choice, of course. These fine gentlemen had barely glanced at her since the introductions, taking in her average looks and unfashionable frock, labeling her a country nobody, beneath their notice. If she’d had a fortune, no doubt they’d be at her feet as they were at Lady Esther’s, composing sonnets to her eyebrows.

Faugh. Ada’s eyebrows were plain brown. Such insincere flummery ought to disgust any sensible female, which obviously eliminated the little heiress, who was cooing like a dove. At least Ada did not have to watch Chas join the ranks of pigeon handlers, for he was out on estate business, likely giving a bunch of ragged orphans rides on his horse. These fine, blue-blooded gentlemen in Lady Ashmead’s parlor would do the same—when the River Styx froze over and the devil went ice skating.

How many of these fribbles would let an amateur sculptor make a cast of his face? And then not be able to remove the plaster? How many of them could admire art in eccentricity?

Then again, how many of them would give up their respectability to aid the war effort? No, money was not everything. Neither was parentage. A good heart was what mattered.

At least one of the Westlake sisters had made the right choice, for the right reasons.

Chapter Twenty

Ada liked Lady Esther. She had not expected to, not at all. The girl was too precious, too wealthy, and too obviously intended for Viscount Ashmead. And she was a widgeon. The earl’s daughter was sweet, though, and when she was not hanging on Chas’s sleeve, Ada could appreciate the female’s finer qualities. She was pleasant to the other, less favored ladies at the Meadows, and flirted with whichever gentlemen happened to be in her sphere at the time. Why, she’d even batted her fanlike golden eyelashes at Algernon. No, Lady Esther must have had something in her angelic blue eyes, Ada decided. No woman could be that corkbrained.

Algie had nearly fallen at the Diamond’s feet. He must have had something in his eye, too, for not even Algie could be idiot enough to think Lady Esther was interested in a spotty schoolboy with no title, fortune, or chin.

They were upstairs in Westlake’s attics, in Tess’s studios, to be exact, getting ready for Lady Ashmead’s masquerade. Many of the house party guests had arrived without costumes of any kind, and the Meadows’ storage trunks yielded only so many Queen Elizabeths and Diana the Huntresses. The local shops were no help, but Tess’s workroom was filled with sequins and beads and feathers. Granted they were goose feathers, not egret or ostrich, but Tess was willing to dye them, to help the young ladies with their masks.

Tess and Ada had decided on this as the way to repay Lady Ashmead’s hospitality, entertaining her ladyship’s young female guests while Chas took the gentlemen out shooting. He did not invite Algernon.

Jane was in the parlor, conversing with the mamas and aunties and paid companions who chaperoned the marriageable misses everywhere, lest they fall into the clutches of rakes, rogues, or fortune hunters. Jane was pouring endless tea and gnashing her teeth that there were no rakes, rogues, or fortune hunters among the company. Her sap-skulled sisters-in-law had devised a party with no partis. The still-youthful widow had her eye on those Town Bucks and Beaux brought out for the viscountess’s ball. At least she’d had her eye on their backs, as they rode off with Ashmead. Surely one of those gentlemen was in the market for a wife of wit and wisdom to share his wealth. The simpering little buds upstairs paled next to her mature bloom, or so Jane firmly believed. Now if only her chin and bosom were as firm.