Free The Diamond Key by Barbara Metzger

soft, soon as you had ‘er rolled up.”
    “The cents-per-centers would have made me an advance against expectations, if I could have announced a betrothal. Instead your blundering had her running right into another man’s arms, blister it!”
    “So you want I should disappear the flash cove what drug the gentry mort out of the ken?”
    “Huh? Oh, no, Ingall is not worth killing. He’s no danger to my plans. Not accepted in polite circles, don’t you know.”
    The only polite circle Scarecrow knew was at Ma Johnstone’s nunnery, where he could never afford the girls. He never would, if he didn’t get paid. He growled.
    “No, Ingall is no threat. The earl will toss him a purse, then toss him out on his ear. He’s not fit to touch the lady’s hem, and her loving father will be well aware of that fact. I’ll make sure of it.”
    “So what then?”
    “So we need a better plan, that is all. I have to have Victoria Keyes, the key to her father’s fortune! I’ll have to think about it.”
    And Scarecrow could think about the whores at Sukey Johnstone’s. They were neither one nearer their goals. Scarecrow spit on the floor again, giving his opinion of his employer’s mental agility. “Meanwhile I’ll be thinking how much to charge when I go sell your cold body to the surgeons’ school, iffen I don’t get paid.”
    * * * *
    Torrie’s mother had been right, as usual: one should not simply plight one’s troth to the first chance-met stranger on the street. A woman had to be discerning where she bestowed her hand, for she would also be giving the gentleman the rights to her fortune, her body, and perhaps her heart, for all time. She had to know his character, his moral fiber, his attitude toward children if he was to father her unborn babies. After all, she would be married for life—the same life Wynn Ingram had granted her.
    On further reflection, Torrie had decided not to give up on Viscount Ingall as a marriage prospect. No matter what he thought of her vow to wed, she was still committed to finding a husband, if not just any husband, before much longer. She had promised herself, and promised her father, too. Both of them wanted to be done with this courtship business before much longer, so they could be reunited with Lady Duchamp. The viscount was still Torrie’s favorite contender for her hand, despite the fact that Lord Ingall did not consider himself in the running.
    Her father liked him, which was an excellent indicator of his mettle—or Papa’s desperation to return to Yorkshire.
    Aunt Ann did not dislike him, which was an even bigger factor in the viscount’s favor.
    And Torrie thought she could come to like him very well indeed.
    Lord Ingall was different from all the other men she knew, and not just because he was well traveled. He was a successful businessman, for one thing. He actually did something with himself besides gambling and drinking, the apparent occupations of most tonnish gentlemen. Further, the viscount was not interested in making a name for himself in the upper echelons of society, he was not interested in Torrie’s money, and he was barely interested in Torrie herself. No, she thought, he was not like any other man of her acquaintance.
    She hoped she was not shallow enough to be piqued by his lack of attraction to her, nor challenged to chase the unattainable. Those would be hen-witted reasons for settling on any gentleman, and bound for disappointment. No, she really believed her rescuer might make a good husband, if he could be convinced that he wanted a wife.
    Foolish fancy or what he called superstition aside, Torrie supposed she was naturally predisposed toward the man who had saved her. Ingall had been the one, not Boyce or the other preening pea-geese who wrote paeans to her lips. What was a poem in her honor compared to being hauled from a burning building? Torrie was not going to be taking a quatrain to bed, was she? She wanted a strong, brave ... virile