Fortune's fools Read Free

sir"
    Whistling, Tristram left the office and made his way to the door. Drawing all those broadsides the spring before had been profitable, but hardly enough to repair the family fortunes. This book, however, if it did as well as Mr. Rider thought it would, should make it possible for him and his brothers to live a little more comfortably. It wouldn't pay off his father's debts to the Marquess of Cravenwell, but it would be a start.
    And perhaps, if this one was popular, he could write another one, and another...
    Tristram grinned, tipping his hat to a passing matron. His step jaunty, he proceeded to the coffee house across the street to celebrate the sale of his first novel. He would not tell Max, not yet. He would wait until the book was printed and see how it sold. Perhaps ... careful, he cautioned himself. He did not want to live on daydreams the way his father always had. The next turn of the card was always going to be the big winner for his father. No, Tristram had no desire to be like him. He would keep his feet firmly planted on the ground.
    "Mary Katherine O'Connor! Come here this instant! And don't think ye kin be hidin' from me, me fine girl!"

    The still handsome Kieran O'Connor bounded up the stairs like a man of twenty and threw open his daughter's door.
    Feigning surprise, Kate O'Connor exclaimed, "Papa! You should knock before entering a lady's chamber!"
    "None of your fine airs wi' me, Mary Kate," he said.
    Kate smiled. Things were not so bad if her father was already calling her Mary Kate. Soon, it would be only Kate again, and his temper would be cooled completely.
    "Papa, what has happened? It is not Mama, is it?"
    "Not... o' course not. Your dear mother is fine, like I told you she would be. A mere case of the sniffles. She'll be right as rain in no time and ready to take you to all the balls and such you can handle."
    He scowled at the glimmer of amusement in her green eyes and wagged a finger at her, scolding, "None o' your tricks, do you hear? I came up here to tell you what's what. I know you've been out on that stallion, tearing through the streets, making a spectacle o' yourself. You'll send your sainted mother back to her sickbed, you will, if you don't leave behind your hoydenish ways."
    "But, Papa, Thunderlight has to have exercise."
    "And what do you think I pay Bobby O'Hara for, if not to ride the horses? And not like some sort of banshee."
    "Papa, I do not ride like a banshee, though how you could know how they ride, I'm certain I don't know. Have you ever seen a banshee?" She calculated that this last question was enough to make her father forget everything else, and she smiled inwardly when he took the bait.
    "A man doesn't have to have seen something, to know that it exists. And don't think they don't exist, because they do. Your mother..."
    "Kieran, dearest, what is all this clamor about?"

    "Mama," said Kate, hurrying to the doorway where her invalid mother was swaying delicately. She led her into the room and saw her seated in front of the fire before ringing for tea.
    "Anne, you shouldn't be up and about yet," said her husband, kneeling by her side and patting her hand.
    "Nonsense. I am fine, Kieran, and so the doctor told you this morning. Now, what is all this noise about?"
    "Nothing, my love, nothing at all."
    "You know me and Papa, Mama. We love to squabble, but we did not mean to disturb you," said Kate, bringing a shawl and placing it around her mother's narrow shoulders. She then sat down on the footstool, folding her long legs beneath her. Her mother smiled at her and patted her daughter's red curls.
    "What have you been doing this morning, my love, that has your father in such a state?"
    "Nothing." Kate blushed and grimaced. "Well, not much. I just went for a ride in the park."
    "On that black devil," muttered her father.
    "He is not a devil," said Kate, her green eyes sparking with defiance and indignation.
    "Kieran, can Kate handle him?"
    "You know she can," said Kieran