Free Barbara Metzger by An Affair of Interest Page B

vice he’d pick. Of course, he’d never met a woman like Mischief before. She was an exasperating little chit, he recalled with a smile, but pluck to the backbone and loyal to a fault. And a beauty. He’d like to get a look at the sister, Forrest mused. Maybe he would, if Scoville dropped the handkerchief. Forrest didn’t travel in the same circles as the baron, but sooner or later he would meet the peer’s bride.
    He doubted he would ever meet Miss Sydney again. She’d move heaven and earth to get the money back to Mainwaring House, he was sure, but he wouldn’t be there. And he never went to debutante balls or such, so that was that.
    He shut the book on Miss Sydney Lattimore and he shut his eyes, but he couldn’t get those silly coppery curls out of his mind, or her quicksilver dimples or the way she nibbled on her lip before saying something outrageous. Zeus, she was always saying something outrageous. Forrest poured out another glass of wine and spilled some in a dish for Nelson. The viscount didn’t like to drink alone.
    What was going to happen to the widgeon? he pondered. She’d make micefeet of her Season for certain, landing in some scandalbroth or other. It would be a miracle, in fact, if Sydney’s rackety ways didn’t scare off that fop Scoville. On the other hand, maybe there was an intelligent parti not looking to rivet himself to a milk-and-water miss. He’d snap up Sydney Lattimore before she could say “I have a plan,” debts and dowry or not.
    What a dance she’d lead the poor sod. Forrest took another sip. Nelson belched. “You’re right. We’re a lot better off out of it,” he told the hound. “We’ll never see her after this anyway.”
    Wrong again.
     

Chapter 8

 

By-blows and Blackmail
     
    Viscount Mayne had also been wrong when he called the Ottos bastards. Only one was. The other was his legitimate half-brother. Otto Chester, the ivory tuner, was actually the natural son of one Lord Winchester Whitlaw and his cook at the time, Mrs. Bella Boggs. No one knew the whereabouts of Mr. Boggs. Lady Whitlaw was less than pleased. Since his wife held both the reins and the purse-strings in that marriage, Lord Whitlaw watched as Bella was tossed out in the cold on her enceinte ear. Before she got too cold, though, Lord Whitlaw sent her to his Irish estate, where Lady Whitelaw never visited. Before Bella grew too big with child, Whitlaw married her off to Padraic O’Toole, his Irish estate manager.
    The infant was named Chester O’Toole. He took after his father, being pale and thin and feckless. He also inherited his father’s left-handedness, to Paddy O’Toole’s bile at the continual reminder. The boy was sent to England at his father’s expense, to receive an education befitting the son of a lord. Being weak and puny and a bastard, he quickly learned cowardice and subterfuge.
    Randy O’Toole was Chester’s legitimate half-brother, born on the right side of the blanket. Presently using the name of Otto Randall, financial consultant, Randy was also presently bound and gagged in his side office, next to Chester.
    The younger O’Toole resembled his father, with the same red hair, stocky stature, and vile temper. (The Duchess of Mayne would have been pleased with this true breeding of bloodlines.) Randy was also well educated at Lord Whitlaw’s—unwitting—expense, thanks to Paddy’s fancy work with the estate books. Randy turned out to have his sire’s flair for figures. The crookeder the better.
    Bella never had life so good, there in Ireland. For the first time in her life she did not have to work. Indeed, as the manager’s wife, she could lord it over the lesser employees and socialize far above her station. She had two sons with futures, a husband who provided well, a cozy kitchen all her own. And she owed everything to Lord Whitlaw.
    So grateful was Bella, in fact, that she bore his lordship another child, another colorless, stringy left-hander. This child was a girl,