Miss Westlake's Windfall by Barbara Metzger

Author:Barbara Metzger [Metzger, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 2001-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

The first of Lady Ashmead’s guests arrived the next day, early by design. The design was lovely. Lady Esther Wrentham, daughter of the Earl of Ravenshaw, was a regular china doll of a young miss, petite and perfect with blond ringlets, wide blue eyes, and nary a blemish. There was nary an ounce of intelligence in that pretty package, either.

“Mother, she lisps!”

Lady Esther was resting after her arduous journey into Kent, a journey made longer and more tedious by the frequent stops. The delays were necessitated by rain, the lady’s travel sickness, her duenna’s dyspepsia, and a damaged wheel on the baggage coach. This cumbersome carriage contained the lady’s wardrobe, abigail, and assorted knickknacks without which, the lady lisped, she would feel too, too homethick.

One of those knickknacks happened to be a cat. Not a china cat to match Lady Esther’s porcelain beauty, but an ugly old striped tom that was spoiled, surly, and sprayed the front step to mark his territory. Thweet William, it was announced, had to have free reign of the house, for he would shred the bedroom upholstery if confined. Since Lady Ashmead had directed the servants to give her prospective replacement the best guest chamber, the one with the family shield elaborately pieced and appliquéd on the bed-hangings by Lady Ashmead herself, Thweety was not confined.

Tally, Chas’s dog that he’d rescued from a watery grave as a pup, who followed him everywhere, whose comfort and contentment consisted of sleeping with her head resting on Chas’s foot. Tally was consigned to the stables. The grooms all made much of her, handing her tidbits so she would not throw her head back in her lonely baying howl. Chas sneaked her into his bedroom at night, of course, and his office when he could shut the door, and took her along in his curricle when he drove around the estate. His own pet’s banishment for a curmudgeonly cat still rankled, though not as much as the scratch marks on the back of Chas’s hand rankled, from when he’d tried to make friends with the beast.

“You said you would be polite to my company,” was all the sympathy he got from his mother.

“I did not say I would toss my dog out in the cold for her.”

Lady Ashmead did not bother looking up from her needlework. “Dogs do not belong in the house.”

“Cats do? Wait until Thweety plays havoc with your yarns.”

Lady Ashmead closed the lid on her workbasket, and on the topic. “Lady Esther seems a prettily behaved chit.”

Good behavior did not involve turning one’s host’s household upside down. Chas did concede that she made a pretty curtsy.

“Nor can you find anything to complain of in her looks, I would wager.”

Of course he could; she did not have freckles. Out loud, Chas said, “She is short.”

“They called her a Pocket Venus in Bath.”

“Who wants a woman in his pocket? The chit barely comes to my shoulder. Why, helping her down from the carriage, I was afraid I might break her bones, she appears so fragile.

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