Free Miss Westlake's Windfall by Bárbara Metzger Page A

“Ma’am?”
    “I need you for the painting. You will return, won’t you, sir?”
    “Aye,” Leo said with a smile, a bow to the ladies, and a wink toward his lordship.
    Ada walked him out while Tess hunted for her drawing pad and Chas assured Jane that he looked worse than he felt.
    “You know, Mr. Tobin,” Ada began softly as they reached the door, where Cobble waited to see the caller on his way, “my sister is not like other women.”
    “Aye, she’s an artist. Never known a real painter before, nor a poet.”
    “And I daresay she has never known a smuggler before. Still, her emotions and enthusiasms ...”
    “Be you warning me off, ma’am?”
    Ada blushed. “I am not my sister’s keeper, Mr. Tobin. It’s just that her reputation is already so ... so...”
    “Squirrelly?”
    She nodded. “Nuttier than a whole forest full of squirrels. I should not want to see her laughed at or belittled.”
    “I wouldn’t do that, Miss Ada, though your protectiveness does you credit. I’d never hurt the lady.”
    Ada looked into his eyes and saw honesty there. The smuggler had brought back the money, too, so perhaps he could be trusted with her sensitive sister. She was almost confident of his motives, morals, and mental state, until he added, “Besides, no one will laugh at Miss Westlake when our opera is a success.”
    * * * *
    “Leo Tobin is not a proper person for you to be entertaining, dash it.”
    “How dare you act rudely lo a guest in my house, sirrah. You have absolutely no right to be telling me who or who not to see. Besides, who are you to be criticizing me for the company I keep, Lord Lowlife? I’m not the one who was mauled about in an alehouse brawl with a bunch of foxed sailors and out-of-work fishermen.”
    Jane fled the room. Tess was already gone, mixing colors in her attic studio. Ada and Chas were alone in the parlor, squared off like prizefighters at opposite corners. She had her hands on her hips, he had a glass in his good hand.
    “I was not in any tavern fight. I fell off my horse, confound it.”
    “Hah, a likely tale. You’d have to have been tossed off down the side of a mountain, then been rolled on by the horse, to look the way you do. Besides, you have not fallen off a horse since you were twelve and took out your father’s stallion without permission. Even then you were hurt worse by the beating you got than by the fall. Moreover, the egg man’s sister’s husband was there that night and he saw you in the rowdy melee. At least you don’t have a missing tooth, like he does.” Ada took a step or two closer to look at his poor face. “Does it hurt?”
    “Not at all,” Chas lied.
    She came closer still. “And your arm?”
    Chas had done without the sling today so he could drive his curricle, but he was holding the tightly wrapped wrist stiffly. Now he wriggled his still swollen fingers. “Not broken.”
    “Well, if you expect me to feel guilty about your injuries,” Ada said with a sniff, “you can just think again.”
    Chas took a sip of his wine. “Why the deuce should you feel guilty when I was the gudgeon?”
    “Jane says that I drove you to drink, and her uncle says that you started the fight to restore your manly pride.”
    “Since when do you hold credit with anything Jane and her uncle say? They utter a great many remarkably foolish things, as you well know. Where is the pride in getting beaten bloody? Furthermore, I did not start any fight. I fell off my horse, which was no more your fault than the man in the moon’s. In fact, had the moon been brighter, I might not have lost my footing, er, seat.”
    “You are just saying that to make me feel better.”
    “What, first I am trying to make you feel guilty and now I am trying to make you feel better? I take it all back, Ada; trying to follow your reasoning is enough to make any man take up the bottle.”
    “Then you are blaming me!” Her eyes were suspiciously damp.
    Chas almost poured himself another glass