Miss Westlake's Windfall Read Online Free

over their doorways like bootmakers or booksellers, advertising their trades. Nor will they step forward if you place a notice in the daily Journal. So do try to return the purse, if that’s what it takes to satisfy your so-sincere scruples. Then we can spend the money.”
    Ada snatched the scarf away. “We will never spend it. It is soiled money; don’t you see? Besides, everyone knows smugglers kill people who interfere with their business. Do you want us all to be murdered in our beds? I will donate it to charity before spending one shilling . ”
    Jane moaned and fumbled in her pocket for her vinaigrette. She gave up looking and grabbed the bottle of brandy out of her uncle’s nerveless fingers.
    Ada glared at him. “I know better than to ask for the names of your confederates, but you can pass on my warning: if Westlake land is ever used for such a purpose again, I will go straight to the magistrate’s office, then the excisemen and the sheriff.” She took the bottle from Jane, opened the nearest window, and poured what little remained out onto the lawn. “And yours will be the first names I give them for questioning.”
     

Chapter Three
     
    Charles, Viscount Ashmead, swore that he would never touch another drop of Blue Ruin as long as he lived—if he lived through the day. The way he felt at this moment, such an outcome was neither likely nor necessarily desirable. Moaning took too much effort. Breathing took too much effort. That was the ticket, Chas told himself, he could stop breathing and put himself out of his misery. No, dying took too much effort.
    He whimpered. Either that or his damned dog was mourning him already. The sound kept pounding at his head, as if some barbaric blacksmith was shoeing every blessed horse that ever ran at Epsom Downs. “Blast you, Tally, shut up before I shut you up.”
    Since his lordship could not possibly getup, his threat was an empty one. Since he hadn’t actually opened his mouth, his threat came out more like a gurgle. It was enough for whomever was on the other side of the viscount’s door, for the door creaked open—or was that the inside of his skull?— and a voice shouted, “Here you go, milord. Drink this and you’ll feel right as a trivet in no time.”
    If feeling like a stiff, lifeless trivet was the best he could do, Chas would decline. When he opened his mouth to do so, however, that same fiendish torturer poured down his throat a noxious brew that promptly returned. The fortunate placement of a basin reminded Chas as to why he usually avoided overindulgence, as if he needed such enlightenment while in his extremities.
    “Begone, you ghoul,” the viscount groaned. “Let me die in peace.”
    “Tsk, tsk, milord. We are in a sorry state, aren’t we?”
    We? Chas hadn’t noticed Purvis casting up his accounts. In fact the deuced valet looked fresh as a damned daisy, from what Chas could see through bleary, bloodshot eyes. “You’re fired. Now get out.”
    “Very well, milord. I’ll come back in an hour or so when you feel more the thing, shall I?”
    “If you come back before dinnertime I’ll have your guts for garters, I swear.”
    The valet wrinkled his long nose. “Dinner is in an hour, milord.”
    “Dinner tomorrow. Go.”
    Purvis bowed, unseen by Lord Ashmead, who had collapsed back onto his bed. “Very good, milord. But before I leave may I add my sympathies to those of the rest of the staff. We all regret that Miss Westlake has turned down your latest offer.”
    Chas pulled a pillow over his head and groaned. Oh, Lord, he swore as his memory reluctantly returned, he would have been better off dead after all. At least his vow never to overindulge would be easy to keep, because he was never going to offer for Ada Westlake again. Once a month, for as long as he could recall, he’d made her a proposal in form. Once a month, she’d turned him down, for some fardling reason or other, and every month he’d had a few glasses to ease the