Free Newport: A Novel by Jill Morrow Page A

Delano’s face.
    “Hey!” he protested, sputtering from his horizontal position on the ground. Remaining flat on his back, he wiped his face with one hand as he tried to recall exactly where he was. Outside. Definitely outside. That was terra firma beneath him, frozen and hard, dusted with snow. The air was so cold that each breath drawn into his lungs hurt. Stray facts hammered at his foggy brain. He remembered disembarking from the S.S. New York in New York City hours earlier, just returned from the European tour he’d begun after last year’s graduation from Harvard Law School. That meant it must be February (although he wouldn’t even try to fathom the date).
    The information was dull, but at least it made sense. He still needed to determine where he was and why he was wet.
    He propped himself up on his elbows and struggled to open his eyes. An angel’s face floated across his blurred vision, its eyebrows lowered, lips pursed.
    “I couldn’t sleep,” the angel said. “I saw you fall and thought that someone ought to bring you into the house before you froze to death. Now that I’m here, though, it appears you’ve swallowed enough alcohol to prevent that. Can you stand?”
    Everything came together with a sobering thud. He was back at his family’s estate outside Poughkeepsie—sprawled in the front yard, to be precise. The angel dropped her bucket with an exaggerated clang and Adrian winced, finally understanding exactly what had happened.
    The young woman—she was too unforgiving to be an angel—extended a hand. He grasped it and allowed her to help him to his feet. He was too cold to even entertain the notion that he should be mortified by his condition.
    “A fine mess you are, Adrian Delano,” the woman said and, shocked into cognizance by the frigid early morning wind, his whirling mind placed her as well.
    “Cassie? Cassie Walsh?”
    “Very good. And now you’ll want a medal, I suppose.”
    “You’ve grown up.” His voice grumbled through his shivers.
    Cassie gave a weary sigh. “Between university and Europe, you’ve been away for a very long time.”
    Cassie was the cook’s daughter, an amusing little spitfire who’d spent her childhood turning up for games of chess or backgammon in the Delano family quarters when she was supposed to be peelingpotatoes in the kitchen. She was five years younger than Adrian, and he’d actually enjoyed shielding her from her mother’s wrath, claiming he had no idea where she might be as she pressed her small self against the back of the parlor door in hiding. She’d written him once at school, an oddly solemn letter about how dull the place was without him. He’d responded with a brotherly letter or two, but nothing since November of freshman year.
    He caught a glimmer of his disorderly self through her eyes and wished he were still drunk enough that it didn’t matter. “So,” he started weakly, hoping to remind her of the friends they’d once been, “who’s been saving you from scrapes since I’ve been gone?”
    Her dark eyes were relentless. “Nobody,” she said. “And it doesn’t look like you’re up to the task anymore, either.”
    He gave up. “Not at the moment, anyway,” he said. “Might I have a cup of tea? And would your mother have a slice of her splendid Madeira cake laid away?”
    Cassie Walsh studied him for a moment. Then she turned on her heel and led him toward the servants’ entrance. He remained upright by concentrating on the swing of her thick, dark braid as she walked. A hem of vanilla-colored lace peeked from beneath her pink chenille bathrobe. Her bedroom slippers left shallow footprints in the light snow as they rounded the side of the house. The poor thing would probably catch her death of cold, and it would be his fault—one more casualty of his reckless, stupid decisions.
    A dull headache started at his temple. “Damn it, Cassie. I’ve botched everything up, haven’t I.”
    Her hand hovered above the