Miss Westlake's Windfall Read Online Free PDF

family had moved to Boston just to avoid the next maternal stay. His other sister Beth had convinced her diplomat husband to take a posting in India. Chas considered them both traitors, deserters, and lucky.
    Chas preferred to meet his mother’s attacks from a position of advantage, by mail being his first choice, but at least standing up, barring that. Hence his appearance in the morning room, where the smell of bacon was roiling his stomach, and the sight of kippers was enough to make both eyes shut, not just the empurpled one.
    Having broken her own fast some hours ago, of which fact she reminded Chas by pointedly consulting the watch pinned to her lavender gown, Lady Ashmead was seated on a chintz-covered chair next to the window, her ever-present needlework in hand.
    Pouring out a cup of coffee, Chas carried the steaming brew over to the seat beside his mother’s, instead of sitting at the breakfast table, where he would have to view the piles of muffins and eggs.
    “Is that all you are having?” Lady Ashmead demanded.
    It was all he could carry, with his other arm in a sling, and Chas preferred not having servants about to hear his mother’s diatribe, which was not long in coming.
    “When are you going to come to your senses, you muttonhead?” his loving mother snapped. “When are you going to give up this caper-witted nonsense?”
    “Good morning to you, too, Mother. Which nonsense might that be? Coffee for breakfast? I know you prefer chocolate, but I cannot think — ”
    “Obviously,” she said with an inelegant snort. “I meant, as you very well know, when are you going to stop making a cake of yourself over that bacon-brained chit?”
    The viscount’s stomach really wished his mother would not keep mentioning food. “Oh, that nonsense. You will undoubtedly be pleased to note, ma’am, that henceforth I shall no longer be courting Miss Ada Westlake.” There, he’d said it without the words trying to strangle him in sorrow. He might even chance a sip of coffee, past the lump in his throat, once the steam dissipated.
    “Courtship?” She snorted again, jabbing her needle into the fabric on her lap. “Is that what you call slamming doors and throwing jewelry at each other’s heads?”
    Chas had almost forgotten the tiny cut near his eye, a drop in the ocean of agony. His mother had immediately noticed it, of course.
    “I never thought a child of mine could be so cow-handed.”
    Since that comment seemed to require no reply, Chas look another small sip of the hot liquid, praying the coffee would stay where it belonged. Disgracing himself on her favorite Aubusson carpet would find Chas in even less favor with his formidable mother, if such were possible.
    “Why, we are the laughingstock of the neighborhood. I cannot hold my head up at the Ladies’ Guild meetings.”
    Chas rested his own aching head on the back of his chair, hoping she’d run out of complaints before he ran out of patience. No such luck. When she got down to the vicar’s wife’s sister’s mother-in-law’s opinions of young people’s morals, marriages, and manners, he gave up the effort. “Mother, do you know how old I am, that you address me as you would a child?”
    Lady Ashmead put down her sewing and bestowed one comprehensive, entirely unsympathetic, glance upon her son’s sorry state. “Perhaps when you act your age and your station, you will be afforded the dignity they deserve. Tavern brawls, indeed.”
    Leaving his midnight mishaps misunderstood seemed a wiser course than trying to explain. He tried wiggling the swollen fingers of his left hand.
    “And of course I know how old you are, Charles, to the minute. But do you know how many hours I labored to bring you into this world? Days, I swear, days of agony your piddling injuries cannot come close to duplicating. Your sisters at least recognize the cost, having gone through childbirth themselves. But a son? A son feels he owes his mother no respect, no recompense