Miss Westlake's Windfall (3 page)

Jane moaned and fumbled in her pocket for her vinaigrette. She gave up looking and grabbed the bottle of brandy out of her uncle’s nerveless fingers.

Ada glared at him. “I know better than to ask for the names of your confederates, but you can pass on my warning: if Westlake land is ever used for such a purpose again, I will go straight to the magistrate’s office, then the excisemen and the sheriff.” She took the bottle from Jane, opened the nearest window, and poured what little remained out onto the lawn. “And yours will be the first names I give them for questioning.”

Chapter Three

Charles, Viscount Ashmead, swore that he would never touch another drop of Blue Ruin as long as he lived—if he lived through the day. The way he felt at this moment, such an outcome was neither likely nor necessarily desirable. Moaning took too much effort. Breathing took too much effort. That was the ticket, Chas told himself, he could stop breathing and put himself out of his misery. No, dying took too much effort.

He whimpered. Either that or his damned dog was mourning him already. The sound kept pounding at his head, as if some barbaric blacksmith was shoeing every blessed horse that ever ran at Epsom Downs. “Blast you, Tally, shut up before I shut you up.”

Since his lordship could not possibly get
up, his threat was an empty one. Since he hadn’t actually opened his mouth, his threat came out more like a gurgle. It was enough for whomever was on the other side of the viscount’s door, for the door creaked open—or was that the inside of his skull?— and a voice shouted, “Here you go, milord. Drink this and you’ll feel right as a trivet in no time.”

If feeling like a stiff, lifeless trivet was the best he could do, Chas would decline. When he opened his mouth to do so, however, that same fiendish torturer poured down his throat a noxious brew that promptly returned. The fortunate placement of a basin reminded Chas as to why he usually avoided overindulgence, as if he needed such enlightenment while in his extremities.

“Begone, you ghoul,” the viscount groaned. “Let me die in peace.”

“Tsk, tsk, milord. We are in a sorry state, aren’t we?”

We? Chas hadn’t noticed Purvis casting up his accounts. In fact the deuced valet looked fresh as a damned daisy, from what Chas could see through bleary, bloodshot eyes. “You’re fired. Now get out.”

“Very well, milord. I’ll come back in an hour or so when you feel more the thing, shall I?”

“If you come back before dinnertime I’ll have your guts for garters, I swear.”

The valet wrinkled his long nose. “Dinner is in an hour, milord.”

“Dinner tomorrow. Go.”

Purvis bowed, unseen by Lord Ashmead, who had collapsed back onto his bed. “Very good, milord. But before I leave may I add my sympathies to those of the rest of the staff. We all regret that Miss Westlake has turned down your latest offer.”

Chas pulled a pillow over his head and groaned. Oh, Lord, he swore as his memory reluctantly returned, he would have been better off dead after all. At least his vow never to overindulge would be easy to keep, because he was never going to offer for Ada Westlake again. Once a month, for as long as he could recall, he’d made her a proposal in form. Once a month, she’d turned him down, for some fardling reason or other, and every month he’d had a few glasses to ease the disappointment. He must have had a few bottles this time instead, but damned if he could remember anything between slamming out of Ada’s house and waking up in his.

Never again, the viscount promised himself before he fell back asleep. Never again. No woman was worth this agony, not even Ada.

* * * *

When the viscount next awoke—in itself a miracle of the body’s will to survive—his memory was stronger, but so was his agony. Lud, no amount of drink could have made him this wretched. He ached not only with the hurt of Ada’s rejection, and the entire shire’s knowing of it, but also with more physical injuries. Chas tried to take stock by the faint glow of the fireplace embers, which meant he must have slept an entire day away, then. It wasn’t enough.

He had the devil’s own headache, for one, not surprising considering the quantities of cheap spirits he’d imbibed at Jake’s Mermaid Tavern. His right eye felt swollen and sore, likely from the brief melee at the same venue. One of the dive’s denizens had accused another of cheating at cards, at which fists and furniture had gone flying. Chas had ducked, but obviously not fast enough.

His left cheek burned as though he’d been shaved with a butcher’s knife—by a blind barber. He tried to feel under the bandage there, but his left hand would not move, strapped as it was between two boards. Zeus, was his wrist broken, then? Perhaps he’d been concussed by the airborne bar stool after all, before Jake settled the argument with a belaying pin, and that was why Chas could not recall being knocked out, half scalped, and trampled. For sure at least one of his ribs must be broken, his lordship reasoned, since he was having so much trouble breathing.

No, that was Tally. The blasted bitch was lying smack on top of the viscount’s chest. At least one female held him in affection. Nevertheless, Chas shoved the mixed-breed hound off the bed with his good hand, complaining, “Lud, you stink.”

No, that was him. He recognized the odor from the last time his groom had doctored a bruised pastern—on a horse. What the deuce had happened to him?

He started to review the previous evening in his mind, skipping the argument at Westlake Hall, which was far more painful than the other aches and far more lasting, Chas feared. He began instead with his arrival at Jake’s Mermaid Tavern, on the seaward outskirts of Lillington village.

Chas had gone to meet an old friend and sometime business partner, Leo Tobin. Both natives of Lillington, they’d been acquainted since boyhood, although they were from far different classes and circumstances. Chas had been born to wealth and privilege, while Leo had been raised by hardworking fishing folk. The heir to the viscountcy was educated at the finest institutions; the heir to his father’s ketch was taught by the local vicar and schooled by experience.

Still, they dealt well together, from days of cricket on the village green, and rowing races near the shore. They even resembled each other in looks, each being tall and dark and broad-shouldered, although Leo had a swarthier complexion from his days sailing, and a few more years in his dish. Now that his new shipping business was so successful, it was Leo who dressed in the first stare, a diamond winking from his cravat, while Chas had donned his oldest riding coat and a spotted cloth tied loosely at his neck. In the murky light of the Mermaid Tavern, a stranger would be hard-pressed to name which was the aristocrat, which the smuggler.

Sitting quietly in a secluded corner, they’d been awaiting the arrival of a third man, but Prelieu had never arrived. According to Tobin, the rest of the expected shipment of goods had been delivered ashore earlier that evening, but not the Frenchman. Disturbed by the hitch in his plans, to say nothing of the wound to his heart, Chas had stayed on at the tavern, drinking the swill that passed for ale, then switching to the stomach-corroding Blue Ruin.

“Said no again, did she?” Leo had taunted with the unmerciful callousness of an old boyhood chum. With his sources, Leo likely knew of Ada’s answer before Chas did. Then again, Chas and Ada had been yelling like fishwives, so it was no wonder the turning down of his tenderly tendered troth was so quickly common knowledge. But the viscount wasn’t going to think about that now.

Leo had gone on to tease about monthly curses, and how Ashmead had found the only female in the kingdom who was not fickle. “Damned if your Miss Westlake isn’t the steadfast sort.”

He’d ignored the viscount’s muttered, “She’s not my anything.”

Leo’d grinned. “Didn’t want you last month. Doesn’t want you this month. Won’t want you next month. I admire a woman who knows her own opinion and sticks to it, don’t you?”

Chas hadn’t bothered mentioning that there would be no next month, that addlepated Ada had made him swear not to ask again. He’d just gritted his teeth and called for another bottle, trying to distract his now-former friend with speculation as to the Frenchman’s whereabouts. Had he missed the boat? Found another way across the Channel? Changed his mind about selling his information to the Crown?

Trying to find a more comfortable spot against his pillows, Chas tried to make a mental note to ask his valet about the sack of coins that was to be Prelieu’s payment. He knew he’d had it at the alehouse, because he’d made sure the purse was tucked away when the fight had broken out.

Nursing what he was sure would become a lurid black eye, Viscount Ashmead had started riding for home on his young chestnut gelding, Thunderbolt. Try as he might, his lordship could not recall meeting up with the Frenchman or being set upon by thieves. If Purvis hadn’t taken the pouch of coins from Chas’s pocket, then the small fortune must still be in his saddlebag. Leo was the only one who’d known of the planned payment, besides Prelieu, of course, and Chas trusted the smuggler with his life, if not with his pride.

On his way home, Ashmead’s whiskey-riddled mind had chosen to trot through the orchard that separated Westlake Hall from the Meadows, where he knew Ada would be picking apples the next day. She’d told him so before the argument, promising to save one of Cook’s apple tarts for him if she found enough fruit. Before she’d sent him to the rightabout.

Chas had thought of surprising Ada there, perhaps stealing a kiss or two in the privacy of the empty orchard.

Chas remembered Thunderbolt being spooked by an owl, but he hadn’t fallen, not then. He’d played the mooncalf instead, mourning those lost kisses, regretting that he would not get to admire the sun on Ada’s face, her gown stretched taut as she reached for a branch, her skirts showing a hint of ankle—No, he would not think about the heartless jade. Or her orchard. Or standing up on the back of a nervous, high-strung horse. Oh, God.

No, his lordship assured himself, he would never try such a totty-headed stunt, not even in his cups.

He next remembered arriving at his stables, where his head man, Coggs, was waiting up to put Thunderbolt to bed, no matter how many times the viscount had told the old man he was perfectly competent to rub down his own mount.

“Aye, I can see how competent you are tonight, lad.” Coggs took the chestnut’s reins, muttering, “The fumes on your breath be enough to set the stables on fire. Turned you down again, did she?”

Then Coggs had noticed how awkwardly the viscount dismounted, and how he had his left arm tucked between the buttons of his coat.

“What’s this, then, lad? Here, let’s take a look.” Coggs had let the tired horse stand while he led the viscount toward the hanging lantern and an upended barrel. He whistled through his teeth when he saw the raw scrape on the viscount’s cheek. “B’gad, looks like a peeled tomato.” He gently reached for Ashmead’s arm, starting to feel for swelling. When the viscount winced, the old man made clucking sounds, as he would to soothe a restless horse. “There now, lad, what the devil happened to you?”

Chas had shrugged, a painful mistake. On an indrawn breath, he gasped, “Must have been a rabbit hole.”

“A rabbit hole, you say?” Old Coggs, who had put Chas on his first pony, dropped the viscount’s aching arm like a hot iron to rush to the horse’s side, checking for injuries. Lord Ashmead’s injured wrist bounced against the barrel.

Somehow he’d reached the kitchens, where his valet and his butler, Epps, another old family retainer, had clucked their tongues. “Don’t say it,” Chas had ground out while they searched the housekeeper’s stores for salve to spread on his cheek and the cook’s pantry for a beefsteak to lay on his discolored eye. The dog was pressing herself close to his side for comfort, or for the beefsteak.

When Coggs came in from the stables, he pronounced the viscount’s wrist badly sprained but not broken, as far as he could tell. He decided they’d ought to put it in a splint anyway, to keep the arm from being jostled. “Else the gudgeon’s liable to damage it worse, don’t you know.” Since the old horseman had done more doctoring of man and beast than any sawbones, the others nodded in agreement. By now half the staff was in the kitchen, watching their jug-bitten master being trussed up like a plucked goose, but Lord Ashmead was beyond caring.

“Odd kind of rabbit hole it must of been,” Coggs noted as he spread some foul-smelting substance on the viscount’s fingers to take down the swelling. “Didn’t leave a mark on a single one of the gelding’s legs, not even a smidgen of dirt.”

Lord Ashmead hadn’t commented. He’d passed out ten minutes earlier when Purvis started pulling tree bark splinters out of his cheek.

* * * *

Where was that blessed oblivion when he needed it? Chas wondered, there in the dark. In his houseful of servants, he was alone and aching. His cheek was burning, his wrist was throbbing, and his blasted dog was back on the bed, snoring. The fire was nearly out, and the bellpull might have been on the moon for all the good it was doing him across the room. His throat was too parched to call for help, not that any of his lordship’s loyal retainers would bring him a cup of hemlock. And he stank.

Besides, Viscount Ashmead’s pride was battered worse than his body. His mission for the War Office was a failure, to say nothing of his intended engagement. He’d lost Prelieu’s reward, the respect of his associates, and Ada’s friendship. No one loved him except his dog ... and his mother.

Bloody hell.

Chapter Four

“Turned you down again, did she?”

Chas winced, and not just from the bright light in the morning room. His darling mother’s voice grated on his raw nerves like an unoiled wheel. He felt like stable sweepings, and knew he looked worse, there being only so much damage even Purvis’s hare’s foot could cover. He also knew he had to attend the viscountess this morning or she’d be rapping on his bedroom door. Purvis did not have the spine to deny her. Lud knew, the scarecrow in Cook’s kitchen garden, with a broom for a backbone, couldn’t have stopped Lady Ashmead on a mission. Chas’s diminutive, elegant, well-dressed mother was like a force of nature, going where she wished, shoving aside everything in her way, meanwhile looking like the sweetest, most genteel of ladies, busy about her embroidery.