Read Miss Westlake's Windfall for Free Online Page B

muscle in his body protested this new jarring. The blasted dog kept circling back to him, looking up accusingly with those big, brown hound eyes, wondering why he wasn’t keeping up. Chas fed her the bread and cheese.
    When he hobbled off the carriage drive and onto the lane that led to Westlake Hall, the Viscount couldn’t help thinking of all the times he had walked or ridden this way, to Ada. He sighed loudly enough that Tally came back from whatever scent she was investigating to rub against his leg. Or to look for more bread and cheese. Chas sighed again. Those times were past.
    Perhaps he should let his mother fill the house with her friends, as she’d been threatening, complaining of loneliness for female companionship. It went without saying that all those friends would have marriageable daughters in tow. The chits would all be pretty, and presentable to polite company. Knowing his mother, they’d all come from exalted families and have extensive dowries. Any one of them would satisfy his mother.
    None of them would satisfy Lord Ashmead. He didn’t want any well-bred London miss, a pattern card of demure behavior. He couldn’t bear a blushing bud, with neither confidence nor conversation, nor a dasher like Sir Rodney’s widow, more interested in fashion and flirting than family. Charles Harrison Ashmead was not about to worry over cuckoo birds landing in his nest. He did not want an acknowledged belle, either, a woman who’d demand attention and adoration, and would never be content in the country.
    No, what Chas wanted in a bride was a woman who was intelligent and loyal, who could share the simple country pursuits he enjoyed, who accepted him for what he was. When he tallied those qualities, he realized he’d just described ... Tally.
    If his mother was lonely—a loneliness he was certain could only be assuaged by a daughter-in-law—he would encourage her intentions to hire a companion instead of turning the Meadows into a Marriage Market. He could also try once more to convince his single-minded mother to return to her cronies in Bath, although Lady Ashmead had insisted that she would not leave the Meadows until Chas was wed, which made taking a stranger to wife a tad more appealing.
    If his mother managed to keep a companion longer than the first quarter day, unlike the previous poor relations or unfortunates in her employ, she’d have someone else to commiserate with over a son’s failures. A gentlewoman could also take on chatelaine duties her ladyship found onerous, although to Chas’s certain knowledge, the only bits of household chores his mother managed were seat cushions and menus, both of which she changed constantly, to the staff’s distress.
    Having another gently born female in the house was not without complications of its own, since the poor lady was always about, not quite family, never a servant. Still, Chas had offered to pay the woman’s wages, as the cost of the coffee stain on the infant cap, a stain, incidentally, which only Lady Ashmead could see. He’d vowed to be polite to the companion and do the pretty, and not even complain when his mother held a few small entertainments for the female, dinners and such, to introduce her to the neighborhood. For what that stain was going to cost Chas, he could have bought a coffee plantation.
    By now he had reached the abandoned Westlake orchards, where withered apple trees loomed ahead of him, row upon row of identical, indistinguishable trees. “Come on, Tally,” he called to the dog, “there are only a hundred or so.” There were only a thousand or so niches where a pouch could be stashed by a drunken dunderhead who could barely recall the orchard, much less the chosen branch.
    He held a duplicate leather purse out to the hound for sniffing, then had to hide the thing back in his pocket before the delighted dog ate it or buried it. “It’s not a present, dash it, you useless mutt, it’s something to go find.”
    Without high