Page 26 of The Spinster's Secret Scoundrel
“Yes?” Prescott prompted.
“I—I—hoped to…” Still, the words did not come. Ada had practiced them many times, whispered her fondest wish to no one while bent over her eggs, inhaling paint and lacquer, yet here, when it mattered, she couldn’t make her lips form them.
“Well? I haven’t all day, Miss Naughton. I am preparing to depart for London.”
“I wish to buy the cottage,” she blurted. Her cheeks heated. That wasn’t how she meant to approach the issue. As usual, she was making a hash of this.
“Oh? The one you live in presently?”
“Yes. My uncle rented it for me. He stays with me sometimes.”
“Rounding up smugglers.” The viscount nodded. “Aye, ’tis a terrible business, smuggling.”
“Agreed,” Ada choked out. Unlike Thierry, she was not a glib liar. She couldn’t even speak the truth of her heart without stumbling over each syllable. “My uncle informs me that he doesn’t intend to renew the lease, and that y-you wish to sell the property this summer,” she managed.
“It’s true. I trust it won’t inconvenience you unduly.”
“I hope not, sir, for as I said, I wish to purchase the property. Or have my uncle do it for me, if the deed cannot be secured by a woman.” There. That was a bit smoother. Three entire sentences.
The viscount pushed away from the fireplace and strode toward her. “I am afraid, Miss Naughton, that you are too late.”
“Too late?” she echoed, her stomach sinking. What could he possibly mean?
“I agreed to sell it yesterday afternoon to a man who came to inquire about it. Saves me the agent’s fees, and he offered me a fair price for the property.”
Ada felt like the time her brother had pushed her off a fence she’d been balancing on, and she’d landed flat on her stomach. All the air knocked right out of her. Tasting dirt.
“Is it…is it someone from town?”
“An outsider. Says he wants to settle here. I suppose it would have been sporting of me to offer you the opportunity first. I had no inkling you might desire to do so.”
Ada fought the tears that made her vision swim. Three years of hoping, scrimping, saving, hoarding every penny, of betraying her uncle’s trust to earn a few extra shillings—it was all for nothing.
Her dreams, dashed as surely as Thierry’s precious cognac would have been, had she not helped him save his cargo.
“May I ask the name of your buyer?” she whispered.
“His name, Miss Naughton, is Thomas Davies.”
11
THIERRY
A TERRIBLE REVELATION
Thierry could not, for the life of him, imagine what possessed Miss Naughton to toss him unceremoniously out of her house so quickly after that letter had arrived.
He mulled the scene over a pint at the Cock and Bull. Ada hadn’t seemed upset, exactly, though for a moment there’d been a stricken expression on her pretty features. But a moment later, she’d steeled and bustled about getting ready in what must be her finest clothes, a violet linen dress with a cheerful yellow spencer, and a straw bonnet with a faded green ribbon.
Said bonnet with its distinctive ribbon and the equally distinctive jacket passed by the window of the tavern. Thierry hopped off his chair and hurried out to catch her, only to nearly run Ada down as she came into the vestibule.
“You,” she declared, pointing one gloved finger at his face. There was a hole in the tip.
“Yes?” Thierry was taken aback by her ire.
“You. Double-crossing. No-good. Cheating. Liar.” With each syllable, she advanced, backing him up a step.
“—had no idea the Naughton girl could even talk—” someone behind him said. Thierry winced.
