Miss Westlake's Windfall by Bárbara Metzger Read Free Book Online Page B

narrow-chested grays. The flashy cattle looked fine as fivepence, but Chas’s expert eye told him they’d be winded before they reached Lillington. At least Leo had had the sense to park them out of sight of the house. Chas could not imagine what his mother would think about the gaudy equipage, but he well knew what she’d say about the ill effects of associating with the lower classes. In her estimation, none came lower than Leo Tobin.
    The viscount hurried into the stables, where Leo was throwing dice with the head groom, Coggs, by the day’s last light. Chas looked around, knowing only something of import would have led Leo to visit where he’d never been invited, and never would be invited in this Lady Ashmead’s lifetime. “Did our friend arrive then?” he asked, peering into the shadows but spotting nothing except immaculate stalls and his own highbred horses.
    “No such luck.” Leo put the dice back in his pocket and came closer to the entry while Coggs went off to the tack room, giving the two men privacy. Leo’s brows raised when he caught sight of the viscount’s battered visage, that had been barely nicked just two nights ago. “Good grief, man, what the devil happened to you?”
    “Fell off my horse.” No one believed him about the rabbit hole, so why bother? Leo would not swallow the bar-fight fustian, not when he’d been in the same brawl.
    “You? The best rider in the county? With the best trained nags?”
    Chas shrugged. “Yes, well, mishaps happen. I suppose that’s why they call them accidents.”
    Leo shook his head, but took the money pouch out of his coat. “I suppose this must have fallen out of your pocket when you parted company with your horse, then.”
    “By Jove, I am happy to see the deuced thing! I’ve been searching half the afternoon, dash it. And, yes, I’d wager that was precisely what happened. I lost the purse when I fell. Too dark to see it at the time, of course.”
    “It would be dark as Hades, I’d guess, in Miss Westlake’s orchard. That’s where the brass was found.”
    “What were you doing—? That is, yes, it was quite dark. Foolish of me to take the shortcut through the orchard, I know. But as long as the blunt’s recovered, no harm done.” Chas motioned toward his injured wrist. “Well, no permanent harm, at any rate.”
    “In an apple tree.”
    Chas didn’t know whether to pray for quick death, or for strength enough to wipe that knowing grin off Leo’s face. He went on the offensive. “What the deuce were you doing in Ada’s orchard?”
    “I? Whoever said I was ambling about the apples? No, your little lady found it.”
    “She’s not my anything.”
    “And brought it to me. At Jake’s.”
    Now Chas knew what to pray for this Sunday, at any rate: patience not to murder the both of them, the smirking smuggler and his once would-have-been wife. If he ground his teeth any harder, they’d be down to nubs. “No lady goes into Jake’s.”
    “This one did.” Leo tossed the purse from hand to hand. “She seemed to think the brass belonged to me, ill-gotten gain from the French trade.”
    The viscount snatched for the pouch with his one good hand, and missed. “Well, it doesn’t and it isn’t.”
    “Aye, but who does it belong to, then? You? The little angel?”
    “To Prelieu, if he gets here. The man will need it to make a new life for himself. And don’t call Ada an angel.”
    “Why not? You did it t’other night while in your cups.”
    “Dash it, can’t you forget that night? I said and did a great many remarkably idiotic things I do not wish to discuss, Miss Westlake being the foremost topic I do not wish to address.”
    “I might be convinced to lose the evening from my memory, my friend, if you’d explain how you came to lose both a fortune and a bout of fisticuffs to an apple tree, on the same day you lost your bid for the angel—for Miss Ada’s hand.”
    Chas knew there was no putting his friend off, not when such a tasty