Country Flirt Read Online Free Page A

answered curtly, often with no more than a nod or shake of his head. When he had cleaned two plates, he sat back, patted his stomach, and said to Lady Monteith, “That’s more like it! Your sircar sets a very decent table, Sis.”
    “Thank you,” she said, in icy accents,
    The man was impossible. She would not submit her guests to the sight of him gobbling his food again. He must be hinted away at once. “That fellow you left in London handling your business, Lord Howard —”
    “Call me Howard, Sis. Now that I am home in the bosom of my family, we may leave off with titles. I may be a burra sahib, but plain Howard is good enough for me. That would be Rangi you’re talking about. My dubash.”
    The words “bosom of my family” smote her with grim forebodings. “He’s arranging your pension with the East India Company, is he?” she asked.
    “Oh, I have no pension. I left John Company eons ago.”
    “No pension! But —”
    “Nay, I’ve been working for the nawabs. Rangi will be spending some time at the hoppo, getting my goods through customs, but we should see him within the week.”
    She ignored the annoying and unnecessary use of foreign words and tried to ignore that “within the week.” “Would it not have gone more quickly if you had done it yourself?” she asked tartly.
    “A burra sahib must learn to delegate authority, or he’d spend his days looking over piddling invoices and bills. Rangi is a sharp lad. I trained him up myself.”
    “But still,” she persisted, “I think you ought to go back to London, at once.”
    Lord Monteith looked from mother to uncle and smiled a languid smile. “Why, Mama, you will be giving Howard the notion he isn’t welcome in the bosom of his family.”
    She glared down the table at her son and said nothing. Monteith accepted a piece of fruit from the footman and turned his attention once again to his uncle. “We would be most interested to hear something of your sojourn in India, Uncle,” he said.
    Looking at Monty, Samantha saw the glitter of mischief in his dark eyes. What an obstinate man he was, encouraging this farouche relative, when it was as clear as water his mother disapproved.
    Lord Howard said, “It was hot and crowded and dirty.” Then he accepted a piece of melon and attacked it with his knife. “You couldn’t get a decent melon in India. They were all watery and tasteless —like this one, Sis,” he added, and pushed it away. He beckoned to the footman and took up an orange to try his luck with it.
    “Mind you,” he ran on, “they have a fruit there called mangosteen that beats anything here in England all hollow. The most exquisite thing I ever tasted. The table fare was tolerable, once I taught my lads not to douse everything in oil. The fish and poultry were excellent.”
    “How did you find the ladies, Uncle?” Monteith asked leadingly.
    Lord Howard frowned, for he took this subject even more seriously than his food, and that is saying a good deal. “A trifle dusky, of course,” he said. His glance slid to Samantha and rested a moment on her blond curls. “They were well enough. The color of a hen is irrelevant, so long as she produces eggs. My woman —”
    Lady Monteith paled visibly, and when she spoke, her voice was hollow. “You didn’t marry one of them! You didn’t bring her home!”
    “I didn’t marry Jemdanee,” he said sadly. “I gave some thought to it. She was as gentle and affectionate a girl as ever lived. I might have married her, but then when our son died, she went off on her looks.”
    The vicar’s fork fell to the table with a clatter, which helped to cover the sound of strangled gasps from the Sutton ladies.
    Lord Howard threw up his shoulders and sighed. “I set Jemdanee and her family up in a house before I left. Not a cutcha either, but a proper chunam, built with mortar in place of mud. I had a rattan veranda thrown up to block the sun and all. I had an eye for her little sister, but her papa was