Miss Westlake's Windfall (16 page)

Esther was not crying for the children; she was crying because she’d seen that tender passage between Ada and the viscount. Her father would have her wed to that German prince before the cat could shred another pair of Lord Ashmead’s boots. She sobbed louder.

Chapter Seventeen

When you run out of firewood, it is acceptable to burn the fence posts. That rule must have been written somewhere, Ada hoped as she set Garden George to work with an ax he found near the empty log box. She was not going to leave those children out in the cold, which was warmer than the interior of the home.

Ada also discovered that there was food in the larder, only it was locked away for the Kirkendals’ private use. George’s ax was called for again.

With the help of Sarah, one of the older girls, Ada prepared a meal. It was an odd meal, to be sure, consisting of nuts, raisins, and fruit preserves spread on slices of cold ham, with a few dried kippers on the side. The children did not complain. Ada put the rest of the ham in a pot with whatever vegetables she could find, for soup for later. As soon as George got the kitchen fire going, there was steaming tea, and hot water for washing. Ada used Kirkendal’s laundered shirts as face cloths and towels, since they appeared to be the only clean fabrics in the house. As she scrubbed ears and wiped hands, Ada tried to get a count of the orphans. Eighteen, she thought, although she might have counted a few twice, as they dragged pallets and pillows into the kitchen, to stay together in the warmth, and to watch her prepare biscuits.

When she asked why there were no babies, red-haired Sarah busied herself scrubbing a baking sheet for Ada to use. Babies died, she finally admitted, even when Mrs. Kirkendal had been around. They never had a wet nurse for them, or enough heat, and no medicine when they caught the contagions the other children managed to survive.

If those biscuits were leavened with tears, the children did not notice. The last of the jam was spread on top, and one gap-toothed towhead declared it the finest meal he’d had since his mum left him at the gates.

While they were cleaning up, and the contented children were gathered around George to hear his entirely fictitious accounts of Sir Emery’s exploits on the Peninsula, Sarah asked Ada for a position at Westlake Hall. Studying Ada from under her lowered lashes, the girl proposed herself as an apprentice ladies’ maid.

Ada had to laugh around the lump in her throat. “That bad, am I?” She knew she must look as bedraggled as the orphans, with her hair all undone and her gown covered with her culinary efforts and still damp in spots from the face-washings.

Blushing furiously, Sarah denied any implied criticism of her newfound idol. She had simply always wanted to learn to be a ladies’ maid like her mother had been, before losing her virtue to her employer’s husband and being tossed out like yesterday’s trash to die in the poorhouse. Sarah would not make the same mistake, she swore.

“Of course you won’t, dear, but I fear I am not the one to teach you about becoming an abigail.”

“You could show me how a real lady goes on, though,” Sarah persisted.

“That’s very sweet, Sarah, but, you see, I am at
point non plus
myself.” At the girl’s confused look, Ada explained, “We are as poor as church mice ourselves at Westlake Hall. We can barely afford to pay the servants we have now.”

Sarah’s expression went from worshipful to woebegone in a flash. “We heard himself say you found a pot of money.”

“Not a pot, and not mine to keep. I am truly sorry, Sarah, but I couldn’t offer you more than a bed and board.”

“That’s better than what I been getting here. I accept.”

Ada hadn’t thought she’d offered, but how could she destroy the child’s hopes? Sarah was fourteen and would have to leave the orphanage soon anyway, to go heaven knew where, without references. While here, she would be nothing but a caretaker for the younger children, with no chance to learn skills that might improve her lot in life. At least Ada could make sure the girl learned her letters. Tess could help with that.

Thinking of her sister reminded Ada of how much time Tess was spending with Leo, with nary a chaperone in sight, not even a maid. Then, too, with the parties sure to be held in the neighborhood for Lady Ashmead’s guests, Tess and Ada could use some help with their clothes and hair.

“Very well, Miss Sarah. You can come to Westlake Hall.”

“And my brother Robin? He’s nobbut eleven, but he’s big and strong. The governor would of sent him off to the mines, but I made Robby cough so they thought he was sickly. He’s not, ma’am, I swear. He can fetch and carry, or help your old man. I saw how Mr. Garden couldn’t carry all the logs.”

“That’s George, dear, and I do suppose he could use some help.” Ada also supposed another retainer might stop Jane’s family from carping about the lack of service at Westlake Hull. “Are you sure Robin would not mind running errands or carrying cans of hot water for baths?”

Sarah was incredulous. “Instead of toting coal in a cold, dark tunnel? Why, Robby’d pay you to let him, iffen we had the money.”

In the end. four children went home with Ada, three of them red-haired. Two of the hoys were to be trained up as footmen so they might find positions later and another, sturdier lad was to help George in the gardens. They all promised to study hard at their books, work hard at their chores, respect the elderly servants, and admire Tess’s artwork. Ada would find the food to feed all the extra mouths somewhere.

The children and their meager belongings would not all fit in Lulu’s cart with Ada and George, naturally. Ada waited until Chas had helped unload the wagons and carriages full of servants in Ashmead livery, then she asked him for help transporting her new recruits. As he watched his staff take competent control, Chas grinned at her, half joking and half in relief that she’d been able to accomplish so much before he got there. The children seemed happier, and certainly cleaner. Nor were they as heart-wrenchingly fearful. “I did wonder about leaving you here with the orphans. I am merely amazed that you are only taking four.”

“I had to leave some for you, of course,” she teased back.

He was smiling still. “I thought about it, naturally, taking the whole bunch of them back to the Meadows.”

“I think I would have traded my place in heaven for a look at your mother’s face if you had.”

“She might even have returned to her house in Bath.”

They both said “Too bad,” at once, and laughed together like the good companions they used to be.

“Lud knows there is enough room at the old barracks of a place,” Chas went on before he ruined this moment of understanding between them with his maudlin thoughts. “But they’ll do better here, for now. I found a better solution, too. Do you remember the Holmdale family?”

“Weren’t they one of your tenants, the ones with the enormous family?”

“Yes, but the children have all married and moved away, or joined the Army. Tom was finding it hard farming his acres without the boys, and Margaret misses having a full house, so they were thinking of opening an inn. I was able to convince them to stay, so Mr. and Mrs. Holmdale will move in here tomorrow to look after the children. One of their daughters and her husband might come teach. I said I would double their salary, so the place will be a merry one for the tykes.”

“That sounds perfect!” Ada put it to her charges, but they all decided they’d rather go with her, earn their keep, prepare for their futures, so Chas sent them off in one of his carriages.

“You see, Miss Ada,” Sarah said as she was handed into the elegant equipage by a liveried groom, “we’re doing better already.” George drove Lulu home, carrying the children’s sacks of belongings.

As soon as they left, Chas helped Ada into his curricle, then took his seat beside her and sighed. “It’s been a long day.”

Ada added her own weary sigh, and she’d only had to cope with eighteen orphans and an opium addict. Chas had to deal with a hen-hearted heiress. “Did Lady Esther recover once you reached the Meadows?”

The viscount took his eyes off the horses long enough to take a good look at Ada. She was adorable to him, even more so than usual, unkempt and unconscious of her appearance, messy and bright, glowing with happiness at the changes they’d brought to children no one else cared about. He would have fallen in love with her at that minute, if he hadn’t before.

“Chas?”

“What—? Oh, Lady Esther. She’ll get over it.”

“Of course she will, for an eligible gentleman like yourself.” Seeing the viscount help unload boxes and barrels, bend down to child-level to promise to come again, no woman could resist Chas. Ada couldn’t, for sure. She admired him more than ever after this afternoon ... when he was escorting his prospective bride. From what she’d heard, from what Jane had heard, the earl’s heiress sounded the perfect wife for Chas, being beautiful, wealthy, and well-bred, with a delicate lady’s sensitive, caring nature. Lady Esther was not caring enough to stay and help the children, but caring for all that. Ada was beside him now, though, and did not want to ruin her time with Chas in thoughts of the eminently marriageable miss.

“What about Kirkendal?” she asked instead. “What will happen to him? I doubt he will get very far.”

“I had the magistrate send the constables after Kirkendal’s wife and her lover, since they were the ones who absconded with the bulk of the foundling home’s funds. That way we might recover some of the blunt. I couldn’t see any use prosecuting Kirkendal himself, that sorry excuse for a man, as long as he stays away from the orphanage. I doubt if Hocking will do anything at all, though.”

“The squire is full of surprises,” Ada said, remembering the botanist’s sudden mindstorm.

“Oh? I always thought him a prosy old bore, more interested in his plants than the parish. I called on him while the grooms were loading the wagons, and Hocking seemed afraid of me, for some reason. Odd, don’t you think, after I had a perfectly normal discussion with him just a few days ago?”

So did Ada, and look where it had nearly led, to a tropical tryst. “What did you two discuss?”

Chas waved his hand, not about to tell her that she and that star-crossed sack of silver were the topic. “Just legal business, boundaries and such. Then he went on about his orchids, as usual.”

Ada knew the reason for Hocking’s new horror, that she might have gone to Chas with the tale of Squire’s far-flung fantasy. She bit her lip.

“Ineffectual old goat,” Chas was going on. “I doubt he’d roust himself out of his hothouses enough to find his bed, much less embezzlers. At first I thought he was afraid I’d hold him to account for the mess at the orphanage since he is another of the trustees, but he had no idea what I was speaking about. He said he hadn’t been next or nigh the place in months, and I believe him, or there would have been a flower or two around the gate. He never did put down that cactus though, as if I meant to run him through with his own pitchfork.”

“Squire thought he could defend himself with a cactus?” She should have thought of that.

“I told you he was a clunch. I mean to call on the vicar tomorrow, at any rate, speaking of clunches. He ought to have kept tabs on the children, wouldn’t you think?”

“At least he should have noticed if they’d been to Sunday services. What about your mother? She is on the board of directors also, isn’t she?”

“I never held her blameless for thinking that a check was the end of her responsibilities. When she began to reproach me for returning her pet heiress as a watering pot and berating me for subjecting a lady to such a scene, I reminded her that someone had subjected those innocent children to worse. She had nothing to say, for once.”

“Good for you.” Ada always felt that Chas’s mother did not respect him enough. Ada doubted that Lady Ashmead respected Lord Wellington enough.

“She was quiet for a good five minutes, until I commandeered her servants and confiscated half the pantry. Once she’d had recourse to her vinaigrette she did mention that you should begin anew on hats and mufflers. But you don’t need to, Ada, truly. I put word out in the village that I would pay for knitted goods. Let the local women make some money too with their weaving and spinning.”

“Oh, that reminds me, the money. We really need to talk about the money from the orchard, Chas.”

“I won’t take it, if that’s what you are thinking. Do not insult me by offering it again.”

“No, I was only going to ask if you would take it back
—”

“Take it back? Then you know
—?”

“To the Meadows, to keep it safe and out of harm’s way.” Out of temptation’s way too, but she didn’t say that. “If you have it, no strangers will be battering on my door for loans. Why, my own tenant farmers are looking at me accusingly when I won’t give them new roofs. As for Jane ... Well, you can imagine.”

“The devil. I never intended—That is, are you sure you won’t take it, spend it, save it for your dowry?”

What use had she for a man who would only marry her for her money? “I am sure. You can give out that it was meant
for that missing Frenchman of yours. Proulous, was it, but I found it by mistake when he did not arrive.”

“It’s Prelieu, and he is a blasted spy, not a squirrel. No one would believe we put an informer’s payment in a tree.”

“That’s the best I have been able to come up with. You think of some other excuse for the pouch being in my orchard, then.”

He couldn’t, of course. “Very well, I will keep it safe, but only until you change your mind.”

Which mind? Ada wondered. He couldn’t be speaking about her rejection of his suit, not when he was squiring a buffle-headed little beauty. Chas had to mean the money. She was no charity case. “I will never change my mind.”

“Never say never, love, for I’ll keep trying to change it for you.”

“The money?”

“To hell with the money.”

Chas pulled the horses to a halt, and pulled Ada into his arms. He kissed her, right there in his curricle.

Ada wasn’t chilled anymore, at least. Shaken, breathless, and brainless, but not cold, oh, no. “What was that for?” she asked when he finally set the horses back in motion and her heart resumed its own functioning.