The Royal Scamp

The Royal Scamp Read Free Page A

Book: The Royal Scamp Read Free
Author: Joan Smith
Tags: Regency Romance
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then. One would think that would nudge them out of their cowardice if anything would, to see their women being mauled by a criminal.”Before Joshua could think of a setdown, she turned to Buck and inquired about her guests.
    Joshua disliked being left out of the discussion, or perhaps it was the subject matter that displeased him. “If we are sunk to discussing housekeeping, I shall run along. Are you coming, Buck?”
    “I haven’t finished my wine,”Buck told him.
    “Drink it up. You won’t want to remain alone with an unchaperoned lady.”
    “That is true, Buck,”Esther agreed. “You wouldn’t want to sink so low as your cousin. The fact that you are alone with me every other night of the week is no excuse to do it now, when Joshua is afraid to go home alone. He fears Captain Johnnie may abandon the heath and go after to him.”
    “I would be very happy to tangle with the rogue, alone or otherwise," Joshua boasted.
    Esther rolled her eyes ceilingward and sighed. “Ah, so would I! Preferably alone.”
    “Come along, Buck,”Joshua repeated irritably.
    Buck drank up his wine, and they left. Esther sat on alone, mulling over their conversation. Joshua’s visits always upset her. She felt it her duty to love him and marry him. Her father had expected it, and Lady Brown still pushed the idea forward. But how could you love a man with no sense of humor? Joshua hadn’t used to be so dour. It was her turning her home into an inn that had robbed him of his former spirits.
    How could anyone envisage being Mrs. Joshua Ramsay, hanging on the Abbey wall with all those dull grenadiers? No, she couldn’t possibly marry him, but if others of his class shared his opinion, then turning Lowden Hall into the Lowden Arms had made her ineligible.
    That was what bothered her. Twenty-three years old. Her looks, such as they were, wouldn’t last forever, and despite her proud boast, she didn’t want to grow old living in the dower house with her aunt. She wanted much more from life than that. She sighed, blew out the lamps, and went upstairs to bed.
     

Chapter Two
     
    There were periods when Esther didn’t darken the door of the Lowden Arms from head to toe of the week. Spring was not one of those times. When the fashionable people were on the road traveling to London for the season, going to each other’s country homes, or just out enjoying a drive in the country, often stopping for lunch or dinner at her hostelry, she was tempted to slip over and take a meal in her old dining room, which she did not call the common room. The public dining room was so elegant, her paying guests could sit down without fear of rubbing shoulders with undesirables. Her prices ensured keeping such clients at the Black Knight, a few miles down the road.
    She had an additional excuse for going to the inn, as she kept the family nags at the inn stable. A footboy could bring Flame to her, but on a fine day in April, with the sun beckoning overhead, with a view of the inn from her bedroom window above the intervening row of stately poplars showing bright gowns and dashing blue jackets, she decided to stroll over to the inn herself and have Flame saddled up. She was always careful to have the escort of a groom to lend her dignity. A canter into the village to visit the modiste was her outing.
    Esther went down to breakfast in her riding habit, to see her aunt, Lady Brown, fiddling with her poached eggs. Lady Brown was as elegant as a hundred pounds a year could make her. Her husband—a knight, not a baronet—had left her nearly penniless, but Esther gave her a pension as well as room and board. The chaperon was a plump matron of sixty years, with a round pink face that belied her astringent nature. She looked like one of those jolly old ladies, but she was, in fact, a complainer.
    “I hear Joshua Ramsay dropped in last night, Esther,”was Lady Brown’s first speech. The chaperon’s main goal in life was to awaken her niece to the many

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