Free Barbara Metzger by Miss Lockharte's Letters Page B

to have it lying around, but I liked to have the note near me."
    Wynn realized the elderly earl was speaking of his blasted hat. “Couldn't you have kept it in your pocket?"
    "M'valet goes through the pockets, don't you know. Couldn't trust the chap not to pocket it, like he does with m'loose change, or toss it in the trash."
    "Then a safe? Wouldn't that have been the better place for such an incriminating, ah, important document?"
    "Likely it would, but I thought it brought me luck all these years. You know what they say about unlucky in love, lucky at cards, or something like that. I felt like I had an angel on m'shoulder, don't you know."
    Wynn thought he did. Old Humidor had never wed, not even with a title to pass down, although Wynn thought there were nephews in line for the earldom. But he'd been wearing the willow for all these years and a billet-doux next to his heart. Or next to his balding pate. The idea that this tobacco-stained knight of the baize table had loved a female all these years was so sweet, it was making the viscount ill. No, that was the cigar smoke.
    "Thing is, the note would embarrass your dear mama."
    "She wrote the letter, I suppose?” Wynn asked, resigned to the worst.
    Hume spit out a mouthful of wet tobacco. “Said she loved me. I was honored."
    "And I gather she signed the letter? And addressed it to you?"
    The earl nodded.
    "Well, I can't see what all the fuss is about. The ton knows you dote on my mother. Everyone is used to seeing you together, here and in Bath."
    "She dated it."
    Whoever thought women should be educated to read and write ought to be shot. Between that dreadful dying woman in Worthing and his own dear, dunderheaded mother, Wynn felt like tearing his hair out. Except then he might look like Theo Hume, combing his hair across his forehead, all six strands of it The viscount had a more horrifying thought: Perhaps he was destined to look like the earl anyway. How did one ask one's own mother's paramour such a question? Pardon, Earl, but are you my papa? Hell and damnation. “I take it the date preceded my father's death?"
    Hume blew a smoke ring, so he'd have something to stare at, rather than his host. “Loved her forever, it seems. But her father wanted Stanford's blunt for his gel. Arranged marriage, don't you know."
    Wynn knew he wasn't getting an answer. He supposed it wasn't any of his business, except he might not be his father's heir. “Why the deuce don't you marry her now, then? You wouldn't have to worry about any gossip."
    "I've asked once a month since your mother put off her blacks. First of the month, like clockwork. That way I won't forget. She won't have me till you and Susan are settled respectably. Then you can't be touched by any scandals from the past. Says it's her duty to Stanford."
    No wonder she wanted to see him wed, and Susan, too, Wynn thought
    The earl was going on, talking around the stump of a cigar in his mouth. “She'll never have me, now that I've gone and put her family in danger of being ostracized from Polite Society. Susan most of all."
    Wynn thought he knew the date on the letter now. “Perhaps it will never come to that. I still think someone took the hat in error. It could be returned any day."
    The earl shook his head, his jowls flapping. “Lost my letter, lost my lady, lost my love.” A tear wended its slow way down his ruddy cheek.
    Wynn knew he had to do something to keep the family skeletons in the closet, where they belonged. He wasn't a careless care-for-naught, despite Miss Lockharte's opinion of his character. “I have a few leads to pursue,” he told Lord Hume now, “gentlemen I haven't been able to question because they've gone out of Town. With you and Stubbing to keep an eye on things here, I might as well follow them all south."
    That way, his library might have aired out by the time he got back, and he could hunt for his missing soldiers. And while he was in the vicinity, Wynn reluctantly conceded, he might as