Miss Westlake's Windfall

by Barbara Metzger

  “Very well, Miss Sarah. You can come to Westlake Hall.”

  “And my brother Robin? He’s nobbut eleven, but he’s big and strong. The governor would of sent him off to the mines, but I made Robby cough so they thought he was sickly. He’s not, ma’am, I swear. He can fetch and carry, or help your old man. I saw how Mr. Garden couldn’t carry all the logs.”

  “That’s George, dear, and I do suppose he could use some help.” Ada also supposed another retainer might stop Jane’s family from carping about the lack of service at Westlake Hull. “Are you sure Robin would not mind running errands or carrying cans of hot water for baths?”

  Sarah was incredulous. “Instead of toting coal in a cold, dark tunnel? Why, Robby’d pay you to let him, iffen we had the money.”

  In the end. four children went home with Ada, three of them red-haired. Two of the hoys were to be trained up as footmen so they might find positions later and another, sturdier lad was to help George in the gardens. They all promised to study hard at their books, work hard at their chores, respect the elderly servants, and admire Tess’s artwork. Ada would find the food to feed all the extra mouths somewhere.

  The children and their meager belongings would not all fit in Lulu’s cart with Ada and George, naturally. Ada waited until Chas had helped unload the wagons and carriages full of servants in Ashmead livery, then she asked him for help transporting her new recruits. As he watched his staff take competent control, Chas grinned at her, half joking and half in relief that she’d been able to accomplish so much before he got there. The children seemed happier, and certainly cleaner. Nor were they as heart-wrenchingly fearful. “I did wonder about leaving you here with the orphans. I am merely amazed that you are only taking four.”

  “I had to leave some for you, of course,” she teased back.

  He was smiling still. “I thought about it, naturally, taking the whole bunch of them back to the Meadows.”

  “I think I would have traded my place in heaven for a look at your mother’s face if you had.”

  “She might even have returned to her house in Bath.”

  They both said “Too bad,” at once, and laughed together like the good companions they used to be.

  “Lud knows there is enough room at the old barracks of a place,” Chas went on before he ruined this moment of understanding between them with his maudlin thoughts. “But they’ll do better here, for now. I found a better solution, too. Do you remember the Holmdale family?”

  “Weren’t they one of your tenants, the ones with the enormous family?”

  “Yes, but the children have all married and moved away, or joined the Army. Tom was finding it hard farming his acres without the boys, and Margaret misses having a full house, so they were thinking of opening an inn. I was able to convince them to stay, so Mr. and Mrs. Holmdale will move in here tomorrow to look after the children. One of their daughters and her husband might come teach. I said I would double their salary, so the place will be a merry one for the tykes.”

  “That sounds perfect!” Ada put it to her charges, but they all decided they’d rather go with her, earn their keep, prepare for their futures, so Chas sent them off in one of his carriages.

  “You see, Miss Ada,” Sarah said as she was handed into the elegant equipage by a liveried groom, “we’re doing better already.” George drove Lulu home, carrying the children’s sacks of belongings.

  As soon as they left, Chas helped Ada into his curricle, then took his seat beside her and sighed. “It’s been a long day.”

  Ada added her own weary sigh, and she’d only had to cope with eighteen orphans and an opium addict. Chas had to deal with a hen-hearted heiress. “Did Lady Esther recover once you reached the Meadows?”

  The viscount took his eyes off the horses long enough to take a good look at Ada. She was adorable to him, even more so than usual, unkempt and unconscious of her appearance, messy and bright, glowing with happiness at the changes they’d brought to children no one else cared about. He would have fallen in love with her at that minute, if he hadn’t before.

  “Chas?”

  “What—? Oh, Lady Esther. She’ll get over it.”

  “Of course she will, for an eligible gentleman like yourself.” Seeing the viscount help unload boxes and barrels, bend down to child-level to promise to come again, no woman could resist Chas. Ada couldn’t, for sure. She admired him more than ever after this afternoon ... when he was escorting his prospective bride. From what she’d heard, from what Jane had heard, the earl’s heiress sounded the perfect wife for Chas, being beautiful, wealthy, and well-bred, with a delicate lady’s sensitive, caring nature. Lady Esther was not caring enough to stay and help the children, but caring for all that. Ada was beside him now, though, and did not want to ruin her time with Chas in thoughts of the eminently marriageable miss.

  “What about Kirkendal?” she asked instead. “What will happen to him? I doubt he will get very far.”

  “I had the magistrate send the constables after Kirkendal’s wife and her lover, since they were the ones who absconded with the bulk of the foundling home’s funds. That way we might recover some of the blunt. I couldn’t see any use prosecuting Kirkendal himself, that sorry excuse for a man, as long as he stays away from the orphanage. I doubt if Hocking will do anything at all, though.”

  “The squire is full of surprises,” Ada said, remembering the botanist’s sudden mindstorm.

  “Oh? I always thought him a prosy old bore, more interested in his plants than the parish. I called on him while the grooms were loading the wagons, and Hocking seemed afraid of me, for some reason. Odd, don’t you think, after I had a perfectly normal discussion with him just a few days ago?”

  So did Ada, and look where it had nearly led, to a tropical tryst. “What did you two discuss?”

  Chas waved his hand, not about to tell her that she and that star-crossed sack of silver were the topic. “Just legal business, boundaries and such. Then he went on about his orchids, as usual.”

  Ada knew the reason for Hocking’s new horror, that she might have gone to Chas with the tale of Squire’s far-flung fantasy. She bit her lip.

  “Ineffectual old goat,” Chas was going on. “I doubt he’d roust himself out of his hothouses enough to find his bed, much less embezzlers. At first I thought he was afraid I’d hold him to account for the mess at the orphanage since he is another of the trustees, but he had no idea what I was speaking about. He said he hadn’t been next or nigh the place in months, and I believe him, or there would have been a flower or two around the gate. He never did put down that cactus though, as if I meant to run him through with his own pitchfork.”

  “Squire thought he could defend himself with a cactus?” She should have thought of that.

  “I told you he was a clunch. I mean to call on the vicar tomorrow, at any rate, speaking of clunches. He ought to have kept tabs on the children, wouldn’t you think?”

  “At least he should have noticed if they’d been to Sunday services. What about your mother? She is on the board of directors also, isn’t she?”

  “I never held her blameless for thinking that a check was the end of her responsibilities. When she began to reproach me for returning her pet heiress as a watering pot and berating me for subjecting a lady to such a scene, I reminded her that someone had subjected those innocent children to worse. She had nothing to say, for once.”

  “Good for you.” Ada always felt that Chas’s mother did not respect him enough. Ada doubted that Lady Ashmead respected Lord Wellington enough.

  “She was quiet for a good five minutes, until I commandeered her servants and confiscated half the pantry. Once she’d had recourse to her vinaigrette she did mention that you should begin anew on hats and mufflers. But you don’t need to, Ada, truly. I put word out in the village that I would pay for knitted goods. Let the local women make some money too with their weaving and spinning.”

  “Oh, that reminds me, the money. We really need to talk about the mo
ney from the orchard, Chas.”

  “I won’t take it, if that’s what you are thinking. Do not insult me by offering it again.”

  “No, I was only going to ask if you would take it back—”

  “Take it back? Then you know—?”

  “To the Meadows, to keep it safe and out of harm’s way.” Out of temptation’s way too, but she didn’t say that. “If you have it, no strangers will be battering on my door for loans. Why, my own tenant farmers are looking at me accusingly when I won’t give them new roofs. As for Jane ... Well, you can imagine.”

  “The devil. I never intended—That is, are you sure you won’t take it, spend it, save it for your dowry?”

  What use had she for a man who would only marry her for her money? “I am sure. You can give out that it was meant for that missing Frenchman of yours. Proulous, was it, but I found it by mistake when he did not arrive.”

  “It’s Prelieu, and he is a blasted spy, not a squirrel. No one would believe we put an informer’s payment in a tree.”

  “That’s the best I have been able to come up with. You think of some other excuse for the pouch being in my orchard, then.”

  He couldn’t, of course. “Very well, I will keep it safe, but only until you change your mind.”

  Which mind? Ada wondered. He couldn’t be speaking about her rejection of his suit, not when he was squiring a buffle-headed little beauty. Chas had to mean the money. She was no charity case. “I will never change my mind.”

  “Never say never, love, for I’ll keep trying to change it for you.”

  “The money?”

  “To hell with the money.”

  Chas pulled the horses to a halt, and pulled Ada into his arms. He kissed her, right there in his curricle.

  Ada wasn’t chilled anymore, at least. Shaken, breathless, and brainless, but not cold, oh, no. “What was that for?” she asked when he finally set the horses back in motion and her heart resumed its own functioning.

  “For being such a Trojan with the children. For not throwing spasms. For being the most beautiful woman I know.”

  Ada sighed. He was right. To hell with the money.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Don’t expect my maid to share a room with any flea-ridden foundling,” Jane predictably squawked. “Hapgood will give her notice and I will he alone in this lunatic asylum, right when I need to look my best.” She waved the invitation to Lady Ashmead’s masquerade under Ada’s nose, as if Ada did not recognize her own handwriting. “Who knows who might be attending?”

  Ada and Chas both had a fairly good idea of the guest list, but neither bothered answering, trying to reassure the children that, yes, they were welcome here and, no, the mean lady could not turn them into toads.

  Tess and Leo returned from her studio then, and Ada could not convince herself that Tess’s reddened lips must have paint on them. The sooner she established little Sarah as Tess’s watchdog the better. When she explained about the conditions at the orphanage, and her plans to train these children for respectable careers in service, Tess was thrilled, especially with Sarah and her brother Robin and their bright red hair. “Sea sprites! That’s just what the illustrations have been missing! Can any of you darlings sing?”

  All four of the children hesitantly raised their hands, and Tess clapped hers. “This is the best, the very best birthday present you could have brought me, Ada.” She kissed Ada and Chas, then Leo, then all four of the children in turn, then Leo again.

  Chas cleared his throat, but it was Ada who said, “Your birthday is not until April, Tess.”

  Tess fluttered a paint-smeared cloth. “You really must endeavor to nurture your spirit of creativity, dearest. We’ll work on that another time. For now, let us get these cherubs settled. Sarah can have the pallet in my dressing room, where she won’t have to put up with hoity-toity Hapgood.”

  The children were smiling again, already adoring the whimsical Miss Westlake. Miss Tess could not compare in their estimation to Miss Ada, of course, but she seemed a right ‘un, putting the shrill-voiced lady in her place.

  Robin and one of the other boys were to have a room together below stairs near the kitchen, where Cobble and his wife could keep an eye on them. The room was not very large, but the boys considered it a stroke of good fortune that only two of them had to share the bed.

  The third boy wanted to share the unused groom’s quarters above the stables with George, if he could henceforth be known as Garden Martin, since he’d never had two names before. Martin liked horses, he liked yard work, mostly he liked Garden George’s stories and his prowess with an ax.

  “That’s settled then,” Ada was happy to note as the children followed Mrs. Cobble to the kitchens for a tour and a snack. Jane was already resigned to the new additions, since she would not have to deal with them, and they were not taking money out of the Westlake coffers. She did wonder aloud if pageboys were still in fashion, and if she could get nip-farthing Ada to purchase livery for them. “No,” Ada told her. “and no to you too, Algernon.” She could not like the way Algie had been eyeing young Sarah, licking his thin lips. “If you so much as look at her sideways, I will have you gelded like a bull calf, see if I don’t.”

  His eyes widened, but he instantly took them off Sarah. “You cannot do that, Ada. Tell her she can’t, Cousin Jane. Pater?”

  His father harumphed. Filbert wouldn’t put anything past the farouche female. “Nonsense, my boy. Come along, I promised you a game of billiards, didn’t I? Care to join us, Ashmead?”

  Chas noted that Johnstone hadn’t invited Leo Tobin to play. “No, I still have much to do this day, between the foundling home and the house party and the usual estate business.” And the scheduled smuggling run. If Prelieu was ever going to make it to England, tonight was the night. “I’ll be taking my leave, then. Did you still want me to take that parcel for you, Ada?”

  Chas directed the hint toward Jane, who would have the whereabouts of Ada’s windfall broadcast throughout the neighborhood by morning. No one would be battening on her after that, no one but her own usual dirty dish connections.

  Ada, however, made sure she passed the money pouch over to Chas while Filbert Johnstone and his son were still in the room. She did not trust those two as far as she could throw them. Since she could not throw them out of Westlake Hall, the money was safer in the vault at the Meadows.

  It was Filbert’s turn to lick his lips while he watched the fortune change hands, and Jane pounded at the pillow on the sofa in her disappointment, dislodging the all-important invitation and some other papers in her lap.

  “Oh, by the way, something came for you in the post this morning, Ada. I didn’t recognize the hand. Likely another dunning letter.”

  Ada supposed she should be pleased Jane hadn’t tossed her correspondence away. As she took the folded sheet and noted the quality of the paper, the unknown handwriting, the unfamiliar seal, she agreed it could only have come from another gambling associate of Rodney’s, demanding payment on her brother’s vowels. Ada almost wished Jane had thrown the infernal thing out.

  “It’s from Lieutenant Brookstone, Emery’s friend. Oh, dear Lord, no!”

  Chas was at her side in an instant, guiding her to a chair. “It cannot be that bad, Ada, for the letter would have come from his commanding officer, by messenger.”

  “No, you are right,” Ada said, reading on. “Emery was wounded, the lieutenant writes. He is in the field hospital, and he may lose his arm.” She was only vaguely aware that Tess had gasped and leaned into Leo’s embrace for comfort, or that Chas had his arm around her own shoulders. With streaming eyes, she turned to him and cried, “Good heavens, those Army surgeons are butchers! And the conditions are so bad, an injured soldier is more likely to die of fever than of the wound.”

  “If Emery dies and we have to go into mourning again, I will never, ever forgive him,” Jane declared, waving Lady Ashmead’s invitation in the air. Everyone ignored her.

  Chas took
the letter out of Ada’s hands and continued reading. “See here, the lieutenant says that Emery has not developed any undue fevers or swellings, so he remains hopeful. In fact, he writes, they are putting Emery on a troop ship for home.”

  “Thank God.” Ada found a handkerchief in her hands, a beautifully embroidered one. “And thank you, Chas. I don’t think I could have borne it if...”

  Chas was reading the closing paragraph. “Unless there is a change in plans, he will be aboard the Speculation, arriving at Portsmouth in”—he checked the date at the top of the lieutenant’s letter—“in less than a week from tomorrow.”

  “Portsmouth? That’s at the opposite end of the kingdom!”

  “Yes, but it is the naval station. Likely they are using a damaged ship to transport the wounded troops, so they put in at Portsmouth for repairs.”

  “But it is so far away.” Ada was thinking of the carriages she would have to hire, all the nights at inns, the days before she reached her brother’s side and could bring him home. The expense. She took the leather purse back from the viscount.

  “Not so far,” he said, calculating. “I will have Emery home before my mother’s masquerade.”

  “You?”

  “Of course. I can ride cross country, much faster than you could manage, even traveling post. I can hire coaches when I get there, and bring him back in comfort, in company of a physician, if needed.”

  “But ... but your guests. You cannot leave when you are expected to play host to your mother’s house party. Lady Esther ...”

  “Might be the reason he is so eager to leave.” Tess took the letter from Chas to see if she could read more about Emery’s condition from his friend’s wording.

  Ada nearly blushed for her sister’s outspokenness, although secretly agreeing. “Your mother will have conniptions. Besides, you are needed here to set up the trust for the orphanage we discussed, and to deal with the Kirkendals if they are found.”