Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand by Carla Kelly Page A

invitations to anything. He propped his boots on the grating and considered the remaining letter.
    It was from Marshall Drew, Lord Whitcomb of Whitcomb Manor. He slit the envelope and spread the closely written pages on his lap, keeping his fingers pulled up into his overcoat as much as he could. He vaguely remembered Lord Whitcomb from his first and only visit to Moreland after the death of a distant cousin twelve years ago, but could form no opinion as he sat and shivered in a drafty manor in Northumberland. He recalled that their North Riding lands marched together across the eastern property line, and that was all.
    Fletcher Rand sighed and leaned back in his chair, thinking dully of property lines, entailments, mortgages, summary leases, and quitclaims. His brain was crammed to overflowing with de donis conditionalibus, and today's unbankable entailment—or was that a quia emptorisi —on High Point. He longed to leap on his horse, still nameless, gallop to the nearest port, and take a ship to Spain. He seemed to recollect a seaside town on the Mediterranean side of Gibraltar where the food was good and the women more than willing. He could leave all his dratted property in the hands of capable bailiffs and never look a remainder and fee tail in the face again.
    But the letter in his lap wouldn't blow away, despite the steady breeze from the closed and bolted windows, so he picked it up and read it. When he finished, he looked into the flames. "My dear Lord Whitcomb," he murmured, "what the hell do I care if a widow is living in my dower house, as long as she pays rent?" He glanced at the letter again, wondering at Whitcomb's obvious bitterness, directed so acutely at Tibbie Winslow and this poor widow and her two daughters. Probably old maid daughters, without a groat between them for a dowry. Too bad.
    Winslow had sent him a short note a month ago, describing the results of September's harvest on the North Riding estates, and mentioning at the end that he had leased Moreland's dower house to a vicar's widow, after making a few necessary repairs. And did Lord Winn mind if he took some furniture from the estate to put in the dower house? The widow was bereft of almost any benefit from her former vicarage. Lord Winn did not mind. Lord Winn could not even recall what furniture reposed in Moreland in the first place, so how could he possibly mind?
    He sighed, crumbled the letter into a ball, and pitched it into the flames. He would go see Lord Whitcomb in two weeks, drink tea in his sitting room, and maybe offer Moreland for sale to him. He held that property fee simple, thank the Lord, and could dispose of it as he wished. Then he can do what he wants with that wretched widow, Rand thought. Lord knows I do not give a rat's ass for Moreland, or any of these northern estates. I wonder if I give a rat's ass about anything?
    He picked up Amabel's letter when he could no longer avoid it. "And what scheme have you hatched for me, dear sister?" he said, addressing the envelope.
    The first page contained a breathless description of the activities of her children, none of whom he could remember. The next page made him frown and mouth obscenities even before he reached her "ever yours in sisterly affection," at the bottom. "Damn you, Amabel," was the most polite thing he muttered as he sent the letter into the flames after Lord Whitcomb's tirade. At least she had not asked for money this time, he had to admit. She had informed him that Louisa Duggett and her parents, Lord and Lady Etheringham, would be spending the Christmas holidays at Winnfteld. "I will be pleased to act as your hostess and present you to this diamond of the first water," she wrote.
    Lord deliver me from the Etheringhams, he thought. Their son had bought a colonelcy and managed to kill himself and most of his regiment at Waterloo, and the only daughter he remembered was rising thirty by now, and gap-toothed. He smiled unpleasantly into the flames, thinking of the