The Waltzing Widow/Smith Read Free Page A

on being one of the more liberal Whigs. He didn’t know just what Sal expected him to do, but her visit was certainly for the purpose of making him do something. She mentioned a dozen times a day that he should “put in a word,” as though his being an earl made him automatically a power in the church.
    Lady Beatrice and Lady Sara were only petty annoyances. The real mischief was Tony. The boy was hopeless. Sally hoped to wed him and his estates to her eldest girl, Prissy, but that was a vain hope. A pity he couldn’t get Tony married off to someone, but the boy always succumbed to the most ineligible women in the parish.
    He’d have to make sure Rose Cottage didn’t fall into the hands of some jaded fortune hunter. How would he word the advertisement to weed out that sort? “Secluded country cottage, suitable for retired couple.” He jotted down the rent and other details and requested a box number to avoid the use of any name or title. When he was satisfied that he had described a cottage that would suit no one but nuns and octogenarians, he sealed the letter up and directed it to the London Observer.
    * * * *
    “Here is one that sounds just the thing,” Mrs. Percy pointed out to her niece. “ ‘Secluded country cottage, suitable for retired couple.’ It is so difficult to find just what we require. It is in beautiful Kent, quiet location, all conveniences. Servants not provided. That is interesting, for I shall want to take at least some of my servants with me. It is quiet and out of the way, just as we want, love.”
    “Yes, I’ll answer it,” Lucy said with no great interest.
    As her heart mended over the passing days, she was beginning to wonder if such total retirement would suit her. On the other hand the solicitude of her friends was wearying. Perhaps she would find someone who loved her for herself in Kent. And the best way to insure that was to go as someone other than an heiress. If she met the right man, he would not be too disconcerted to learn she was unmarried and wealthy.
    Several other replies to the advertisement were received by Avedon as well. He consulted with his sister regarding which to accept. “Here is one from an officer’s wife, Avedon,” she said, picking up Lucy’s letter. “She is suffering from a lung complaint, poor thing. She would come with her husband’s sister— that sounds very respectable. We ought to do what we can for an officer’s wife, don’t you think?”
    Avedon cast a wary glance at his sister. He always suspected any pious utterance from Sally. They were her stock in trade, but at bottom she was moved only by self-interest. Her sweetly smiling face could revert to an expression of sly cunning or mulish obstinacy in the blink of an eye. It had taken him years to figure her out, for she was nearly a decade older than Avedon. She was ostensibly here “to bear him company during his rustication,” but he actually saw little of her and would not have complained had he seen even less.
    Lady Sally had once passed for a beauty, but as she advanced into motherhood, whatever physical charms she had once possessed had been larded over by weight. She disliked physical activity nearly as much as she disliked to spend a penny or waste one.
    The pleasure of her life was to advance the welfare of her family. Her two goals that summer were the promotion for her husband and a rich husband for her eldest daughter. Both could be achieved better at her ancestral home than with her husband, so she had torn herself away, to give him peace and quiet for preparing his sermons, while she endured weeks of grinding leisure at Chenely.
    “I don’t like the sound of a soldier’s wife. She might get Tony after her,” Avedon objected.
    “No, no. She comes with her husband’s sister. That precludes any sort of flirtatious behavior, and if she has a lung complaint, she will want the ass’s milk that is going to waste every day. Such a shame. When I was at home, Papa always gave