Page 25 of The Spinster's Secret Scoundrel
“You owe me more than that, Monsieur,” she teased. “But I’ll take you up on a visit to Caden’s tavern, if you pass this way again.”
They were interrupted by a knock at her door. She exchanged a glance with Thierry before moving to open it. A letter. She dropped a coin into the boy’s palm and broke the seal.
“What is it?” her guest asked.
“A message from my father. I wrote to him the day my uncle arrived. I didn’t expect him to reply so soon.” Absently, with a quickening pulse, she unfolded the paper and scanned her father’s looping script.
Dear Adeline,
Enclosed, please find your dowry, what little you are worth. Do not write to us again. You are a poor influence and therefore unwelcome at home. Find other lodgings—if you can.
Ada’s heart raced, reading the stinging insult. Tears sprung to her eyes. Here she was with twinges in her low belly from Thierry’s lovemaking, the shame that had haunted her all these years resurgent. She’d known him for all of three days, and spent the night in his arms with no expectation of a future together. Her judgment hadn’t changed in all these years.
Her father was right. Why would any man value her when her own father calculated her worth at a paltry five pounds?
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“Yes.” Ada crumpled the letter and stuck it into the pocket of her loose-fitting dress. “Everything is perfect. My father—” She broke off. She didn’t want to have to explain her humiliating past. “He’s—Thierry, I’m afraid I must ask you to leave. Immediately.”
A flat look crossed Thierry’s handsome features like a candle winking out. No matter. She had to try and work out an agreement to purchase the cottage from Viscount Prescott. Ada knew she didn’t have enough savings to buy it outright, but she could not lose her home. She must try, before anyone else had a chance to make an offer.
She needed to make this trip before she lost her nerve.
Ada bustled Thierry out the back of her house with a kiss and a reminder that he still owed her money—which she suddenly, desperately needed. “Leave now. Come back later. Bring the rest of my money.”
“Where are you going with such haste?”
“Nowhere. Or, rather, it’s not your affair. I’ll tell you once I have news, Thierry.” She tied her shawl on. “Leave. Now. My uncle might return, wanting dinner, and it would be bad for both of us if you were caught here.”
Perhaps, they could be together again. She had a few weeks before she must vacate the cottage.
That possibility was all that kept her courage up as she trudged the long path to see Viscount Prescott. Perhaps he would let her pay in installments. She could expand her garden and sell produce by the roadside. Find new ways to conceal lace and tea. Devote herself to smuggling full-time…
Betray Uncle Patrick, the only person who’d helped her when her father’s anger proved volcanic and Biblical forgiveness merely theoretical. Her mother had stood aside. Her siblings scorned her. No one else gave her a modicum of grace, apart from her mother’s brother.
He also used you.
The uncharitable little voice piped up in the back of her mind, emboldened by her time with Thierry. For three years, she’d provided free lodgings and housekeeping for Uncle Patrick and his men. Perhaps it was a fair exchange, and one she would have agreed to if he’d offered it without duplicity, but he hadn’t. He made her feel beholden to him.
She fed them, and supplied clean clothing and fresh bedding out of her own pocket. She paid for firewood and soap.
The fact was, her uncle had taken advantage of her situation to obtain better lodgings than any of them would otherwise have. The Ram’s Head and the Cock and Bull both took in travelers, but they refused service to the Excise Officers.
Now that she was no longer useful to him, he was throwing her out. Yes, he was losing his employment, but he would find another position, and likely a better one. He’d made the halfhearted suggestion that she marry one of his Riders, but the Riders were poorly paid and universally despised. What kind of life would that be?
When she looked at it from this perspective, his treatment spoke volumes about his low opinion of her. Ada, desperate for any affection or approval, hadn’t wanted to face facts until they were impossible to ignore.
Now, she was facing the devastating consequences alone. She had to sip air for a few minutes before knocking.
The footman who let her into the servant’s entrance was too well-trained to react to a visit from a lone woman.
I should have sent a request for an audience, she thought, twisting her handkerchief nervously. But she was ushered into a parlor far grander than anything she’d ever before seen, where the viscount himself stood beside the unlit fireplace. He did not sit, so neither did she.
“Miss Naughton. What brings you here?”
“I wish—”
Her throat closed. Anxiety choked her.
