Carola Dunn Read Free

watched him go, tall, broad-shouldered, jaunty despite his limp, dressed in the pink of fashion. At twenty-seven, he still had the dark hair inherited from her sister, without a touch of the early greying which ran in the family. Picking up the embroidery she had been working on when he came down after changing from his travelling clothes, she sighed. Horace had taken some notion into his head and was not going to be easily placated.
    Matthew paused in the vestibule for a last check on his appearance. His uncle, Viscount Stone, was a stickler and there was no point setting up the old fellow’s back for nothing.
    Not without satisfaction, he stared at himself in the looking glass. The swallowtail coat of dark blue superfine, a new one from Scott, fitted without a wrinkle though it was not so tight as to impede his movements. His neckcloth was elegant without ostentation, moderately starched and neatly creased. He gazed thoughtfully at the sapphire pin which nestled in its snowy folds. Would Uncle Horace consider it extravagant? Surely not; the viscount gave him an allowance sufficient to purchase occasional baubles of the kind.
    He continued the inventory: modest waistcoat of pale blue satin; skin-tight fawn inexpressibles; boots spotless, glossy yet not so shining as to suggest the expense of champagne in the blacking. While far from being a pinchpenny. Lord Stone regarded wasting money with an attitude not unlike that of a Methodist towards sin.
    As he crossed the wide, high Tudor hall, Matthew realized that driving his curricle the ninety miles from London along the busy Bath road had tired him more than he thought. Fatigue always made the wound he had received in the Peninsula ache like the very devil. To limp into his uncle’s presence, however, would be too much like a plea for sympathy.
    Knocking on the library door, he entered the book-lined room and strode with steady steps towards the small, white-haired man behind the large mahogany desk.
    “How are you. Uncle?” he asked cheerfully.
    “None the better for the news I had t’other day from half a dozen busybodies in Town,” snorted Lord Stone, scowling. “Don’t stand there towering over me, Walsingham. I can’t abide it.”
    Matthew was glad to pull up a chair, but his uncle’s unusual use of his surname worried him. “I came as fast as I could on receiving your letter.”
    “Wearing out that high-stepping pair o’ bays you’re so proud of, I daresay.”
    “No, sir, I left them at the first stage with Hanson to bring them on slowly.”
    “And wasted the blunt on hired horses! You might as well have told him to take them back to Town, for you’ll not be staying here long. I’ve had enough of your care-for-nobody ways. Pushing your chère-amie in a wheelbarrow down St. James’s Street in her petticoats! Disgraceful!”
    Matthew tried to repress a grin at the memory of Lulu kicking up her heels and squealing with delight. “It was a race, sir, for a wager.”
    “Aye, so I’ve heard. Two hundred guineas!”
    “But, Uncle, I...”
    “Two hundred guineas!” the viscount repeated, purpling at the thought. “Your trouble, my boy, is that you have no comprehension of the value of money. You’ll learn it soon enough when you have to manage on the pittance your father left you. My lawyer’s coming tomorrow to change my will in favour of your cousin Archibald. Not another penny will you get from me.” A thump of fist on desk punctuated this declaration.
    Matthew was aghast. To lose his income now and Stone Gables in the future, all for a harmless prank that, in a more sanguine humour, the viscount would have laughed at as a very good joke! And to lose it to his sanctimonious cousin Archibald Biggin—it didn’t bear thinking of. Yet the lawyer was already sent for. Once Lord Stone had made up his mind, argument only hardened his determination, and Matthew was not prepared to crawl, not even in such dire straits.
    All the same, there were others to