Carla Kelly Read Online Free

are times when she would try a saint.”
    “Of which I am not one,” Lord Ragsdale said with no regret, grateful down to his boots to be so easily out of that mess. He crossed his legs and settled back in the chair. “Tell me, cousin, how did you get a servant from Ireland?”
    Robert opened his eyes. “I was fourteen or fifteen when Papa bought her in the Norfolk sales.”
    “Bought her?” Lord Ragsdale sat up straight again. “Surely you don't mean that.”
    “I do, cousin. She's indentured. I was with him at the wharf when the ship's master led the lot of them into the sale shed.”
    Lord Ragsdale closed his eyes. He had heard of things like that, but the reality was never closer than a column in The Times . “Were they … were they chained together?” he asked.
    “Heavens, no,” Robert said. He sat up in bed, wide-awake now. “You've never seen a more harmless lot of lice-ridden, scraggly men and women. Everyone was so thin.” He paused. “My lord, that's the way things are in America. We buy, sell, and indenture, and don't ask too many questions.” He reflected a moment, as though groping about in his memory. “There was something about a rising in Dublin. Papa could tell you.”
    If that's the way things are, good riddance to the colonies , Lord Ragsdale thought. He was spared any comment on the hypocrisies of American government, because Robert was warming to his subject.
    “Papa was looking for a clerk who could cipher. He stood there with the other buyers, calling out what he wanted. You know, someone was yelling ‘Seamstress,’ and someone else, ‘Blacksmith,’ and another, ‘Cordwainer.’ Quite a racket in that barn,” Robert explained. “Anyway, they must have been an ignorant lot of bogtrotters, because no one responded to any trades.”
    “Were they all Irish?”
    “Yes, my lord.”
    “Then that explains it,” Lord Ragsdale said. “You've never seen a more illiterate bunch of popish bead rubbers then the Irish. The only exertion they are capable of is breeding like rabbits.”
    “Well, I wouldn't know that,” Robert said. “Anyway, Papa called out ‘clerk,’ one more time, hoping for a miracle, and Emma stepped forward.” Robert smiled at the memory. “I thought she was daft, and Papa even more daft for considering her.” He sighed and lay back down again.
    “Well?” John prompted.
    “She wasn't wearing much more than a shift, her hair was nasty-looking, and her feet were bare, but Papa snapped off a string of figures, and she added it all in her head.” His cousin's eyes closed again. “Papa wouldn't let her ride in the carriage because she had lice, so she walked behind the carriage all the way home.”
    Lord Ragsdale shook his head. The Emma in his best sitting room this afternoon was a woman with an unmistakable air of elegance, no matter how shabby her clothes. What a strange day this was. “She was your father's clerk, then?” he prompted.
    Robert was a moment replying, and Lord Ragsdale resisted the urge to give his shoulder a shake. “No. Mama wouldn't hear of it. Said it was indecent for any female, servant included, to tote up figures and do bookkeeping in the tobacco barn, and besides, she wanted a maid for Sally. So there you are. She's been with us five years. I could check her papers, but I think she has two years to run on her indenture.”
    Lord Ragsdale chewed on those facts for only a few moments, but it was long enough for Robert to begin the steady, even breathing of sleep. His questions would have to wait. “How odd,” he murmured out loud as he watched his cousin another moment and then snuffed the candle with his fingers. He sat there another moment and then left the room quietly.
    Lasker, keys in hand, met him in the hall. He bowed. “Good night, my lord. Is there anything else you will be needing?”
    Lord Ragsdale shook his head. He almost asked the butler where they had found room for Emma but changed his mind. Such a question would