Free Miss Westlake's Windfall by Bárbara Metzger Page B

of wine, but thought better of it. “No, I am my own man. No one drives me to do anything I don’t want,” he lied again. This woman drove him to distraction, constantly. Like now, when she flashed him a sudden smile, going from storm clouds to sunny day in an instant.
    “Then you aren’t angry at me anymore, either?”
    He had to smile back. “Not if you aren’t still mad at me.”
    “I am too glad you came to remember why I was so furious. I was going to write you a note if you hadn’t called soon, apologizing for calling you a jackass.”
    “I came to apologize for calling you a turnip-head.”
    “I like donkeys.”
    “I like turnips.”
    “Friends?” Ada held her hand out.
    Chas sighed inside, but he took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Friends.” It was something, anyway. “I missed you.” More than he missed using his left hand, or his right eye.
    Comfortable with each other once more, they sat down to share the last apple tarts. Between bites, Chas said, “I do have to warn you, Ada, just as a friend, mind, that Leo Tobin really is not the kind of person you should encourage. I realize some women might be attracted by his reputation, excited by the threat of danger, and they might even find him good-looking, in a rugged, weathered kind of way. I suppose he dresses well, and his manners are passable, but, dash it, he is a smuggler!”
    “But a very pleasant smuggler.”
    “There is no such thing as a pleasant smuggler, by Jupiter, for he would not last long at the trade. I saw the liberties Tobin was taking. No honorable man would have behaved in so ... so warm a manner.”
    “Mr. Tobin was only trying to humor Tess. You know how intractable she can be when an inspiration strikes her.”
    “Petting the calf,” he muttered.
    “Excuse me?”
    “He was playacting for Tess so he could impress you. Everyone knows how you dote on your sister.”
    “Why, Charles Harrison Ashford, I do believe you are jealous!”
    “Of an outlaw? Do not be absurd.” If he were any more jealous, Chas feared, his already discolored skin would turn green, so green that he felt no qualms whatsoever in blackening Leo’s already shady reputation. “You and I are supposed to be friends, are we not? Well, friends look out for each other. I simply do not want to see you taken in by such a scurvy knave.”
    “Mr. Tobin seemed everything decent to me, and I did not feel that his kindness to Tess was a sham at all. He seemed quite gentle, almost shy, in fact.”
    Chas set his earthenware plate down with a force that would have shattered the fragile porcelain tea set, if it hadn’t been sold months ago. “The man is a blasted free trader! Think of your brother, for heaven’s sake.”
    “I am thinking of my sister, for her own sake. You know, it is odd how you have taken Mr. Tobin in such dislike. He speaks quite fondly of you, as if you were as close as brothers.”
    “We are brothers, dash it! Unacknowledged, of course, as Leo was born on the wrong side of the blanket. I thought everyone knew.”
    “My parents might have known, but no one tells young girls things like that.” Ada paused to take in this new revelation. The idea of the starched-up Viscountess Ashmead having an illicit relationship was too farfetched to consider, so Leo must be a product of the notoriously profligate Geoffrey Ashford, Chas’s father. Now that she thought about it, the similarities in appearance of the two men to each other and to the late viscount’s portrait were even more striking. She should have seen the relation for herself. Anyone could. If anyone could, then Lady Ashmead must. “Good heavens, does your mother know Leo is your father’s ... child?” Ada could not bring herself to call Tess’s new friend a bastard, or even a by-blow.
    “Of course, Mother knows. She has always known. That’s why she won’t let Leo in the house, and won’t visit any home he’s welcomed at. She shut every door she could to him, and I’ve