Carola Dunn Read Free Page A

penniless rake.
    Not that he had the slightest intention of losing his freedom in wedlock, even for the sake of repairing his fortunes.
    Either her ladyship had forgotten that she wanted to know what brought him here so early, or she feared his business with Thorpe was not proper for a young lady’s ears. She chatted about the coming entertainments of the Little Season while he attacked a large beefsteak with fried potatoes.
    He was half way through it when Bristow reappeared and said discreetly in his ear, “Lord Thorpe’s man says his lordship did not retire until daybreak, sir, and he won’t take it upon himself to wake him.”
    Miles nodded. “Never mind, I’ll do my own dirty work,” he said, and rapidly finishing his breakfast, he made his excuses and ran upstairs to his friend’s chamber.
    It took a wet sponge to rouse Thorpe and a pint of strong coffee to bring him to something approaching coherence. “Wanna borrow my curricle?” he asked incredulously. “At dawn?”
    “It’s not dawn, Gerald, and I have a hundred and thirty miles to go by nine tomorrow morning.”
    “Hunnerd thirty! Wha’ the devil?”
    “My godfather is dead...”
    “Didn’ know y’ad one.”
    “Sir Barnabas Philpott, Baronet, of Addlescombe in Dorset. If I’m not there at the reading of the Will, I’ll inherit nothing.”
    That caught Thorpe’s attention. “Will, eh? Plump in the pocket, this Philpott fellow?”
    “Plump enough.”
    “My dear chap, of course you can borrow the curricle. Tell you what, I’ll drive my greys the first couple of stages, see you well on your way.” He swung his legs out of bed and bellowed for his valet. “Or shall I come all the way with you?”
    “Lord, no. I wouldn’t for the world subject you to the swarm of spongers the old man kept hanging on his sleeve. He deplored my behaviour, you know, and probably summoned me down posthumously in order to cut me off with a shilling. I wouldn’t be surprised if he regarded his last Will and Testament as a final opportunity to read me a sermon.”
    “I can’t believe he’d have demanded your presence if he hasn’t left you something worth having.”
    “You didn’t know my godfather,” Miles pointed out dryly. “Dyspeptic, straitlaced, mean-spirited, and utterly determined to be proved right. He said I’d go to the dogs and nothing is less likely than that he’d lift a finger to prevent it. All the same, I’ll have to gamble on his relenting at the last and leaving me a fortune. I’m going to get there in time even if hiring post-horses takes my last penny.”
     

Chapter 2
     
    “But I can’t ride. There must be some other way to get there!” said Nerissa in desperation.
    “Shank’s mare, miss,” said the tapster indifferently, returning to polishing a pewter tankard, “leastways till Thad comes back wi’ the gig which’ll be around noon.”
    “I have to be at Addlescombe by nine.”
    She had clambered down from the roof of the stagecoach in Riddlebourne, in a dank, grey dawn with rain threatening. After a night squeezed between the iron rail and a stout farmer, in constant fear of falling into the road, she was stiff and chilled through. The bread and butter she had snatched at the brief supper stop last night seemed an age ago. All she wanted was a hot meal and a warm bed.
    The Stickleback Inn, a small hostelry of grey Portland stone, could doubtless supply both. What it could not supply, having no pretensions to being a posting house, was a vehicle to carry her on to her grandfather’s house.
    Shank’s mare? Nerissa was a townswoman, accustomed to walking no farther than from one side of the City of York to the other, with an occasional stroll along the river or the city walls of a Sunday. Her cheap jean halfboots were far from adequate for a lengthy tramp. Still, she was not quite ready to give in.
    “How far is Addlescombe?” she asked.
    “A matter o’ six or eight mile, miss. Ye c’n leave your box an’ send