A Worthy Wife by Bárbara Metzger Read Free Book Online Page B

of friends in Bath to visit with and none here, but why don’t you go have calling cards made up, for the time when you do meet some proper people?”
    Dash it, she was just shaking her head no. “Confound it, Aurora, do what any other well-off woman does—go spend your blunt. Purchase a new wardrobe or practice good deeds. I shall return by dinner.”
    He was halfway out the door of her sitting room when a small voice stopped him in his tracks. “But I have no money to spend.”
    Damn, damn, damn! Any other female would have had his purse in her hands hours ago. He’d forgotten Aurora’s innocence and inexperience, again. How could he be so insensitive as to make her ask, nay, nearly beg him for funds? Kenyon pulled a leather pouch out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. “This is for incidentals only, gratuities to servants and the like. For anything else you wish to purchase, merely direct the bills to me. Later we’ll establish an allowance so you don’t have to come asking for pin money.”
    The purse weighed as much as a Sciurus vulgaris, a red squirrel. “It’s too much.”
    “It’s nothing. I’ll fetch more from the town house when I instruct the servants to clean the place from top to bottom, pending their new mistress’s arrival.” All traces of feminine apparel, exotic scents, or inebriated soldiers would have to go. “Don’t worry, I can stand the nonsense.”
    “But I can’t take your money.”
    The earl took her by the shoulders, trying to decide whether to kiss her or shake her. Instead, he merely said, “You are my lady, Aurora, my wife. You will never want for anything as long as I live, or after, according to the marriage settlements I am having drawn up. What I have is yours.”
    So she purchased a horse that was too old to pull its master’s wagon, a cart full of wilted flowers from a girl who was coughing too badly to hawk them to passersby, a tray of meat pastries for the one-legged veteran and his ragged friends on the corner, and a boy.
    She didn’t mean to purchase the boy, not precisely, just hire the street urchin for the afternoon, but he declared he was hers now, not belonging to anyone else, which meant he was Windham’s too, Aurora supposed. She was sure Kenyon wouldn’t mind, for Ned Needles was such a handy sort of boy to have around. Ned had approached her when she and Baggins left the hotel, offering to find her a hackney or direct her to the best bargains in lace, the nearest glove-maker, or the prettiest selection of gowns, sewn by two sisters who were supporting their ailing parents and nine younger siblings. That’s why they called him Needles, he’d explained, to Baggins’s severe disapproval, ’cause he could find anything. Anything she needed in all of London, Ned was her man for locating it.
    Smiling, Aurora had handed the ragamuffin a coin for his recommendation of a lending library, and in no time at all she was being bowed into Hatchard’s, where her husband’s name placed a world of books at her disposal. Despite her new friend’s promise that he could show her all the sights, Aurora selected a few London guidebooks for now, which Ned was waiting outside to carry for her. And to tell her about Gunther’s ices, which they then had to sample, to Baggins’s disgust. But it was Ned Needles who bargained with the drayman over his decrepit horse, and who hired the one-armed soldier to lead it back to the Grand Hotel. He even knew a deaf printer who’d have her calling cards delivered before she could say Jack Rabbit. Ned also set a fair price for the flower girl, else Aurora would have emptied her purse.
    “No, m’lady, you can’t go givin’ all that blunt in one swoop. There be lots of folks what need a share. I’ll find ’em for you. The ones what be honest beggars, don’t you know. Coo, you need me, lady, else you’d get diddled proper.”
    And Ned needed a bath and a pair of shoes and a place to stay and reading lessons, he was such a