Читать книгу The Wolfe's Mate - Paula Marshall - Страница 8

Susanna started to scream—and then changed her mind. She only knew that she was inside a carriage and had been snatched off the street by two men. Best, perhaps, not to provoke them. She was about to try to remove the restraining blanket from her head when one of the men removed it for her.

She found herself inside a luxuriously appointed chaise whose window blinds were down so that she had no notion of where she was, or where she might be going. Facing her, on the opposite seat, were two large men, both well dressed, not at all like the kind of persons one might think went about kidnapping young women.

She said, trying not to let her voice betray her fear, ‘Let me out, at once! At once, do you hear me! I cannot imagine why you should wish to kidnap me. There must be some mistake.’

The larger of the two men shook his head. ‘No mistake, Miss Western. We had express orders to kidnap you and no one else. And there is no need to be frightened. No harm will come to you. I do assure you.’

Somehow the fact that he was well dressed and decently spoken made the whole business worse. And what did he mean by calling her Miss Western?

Her fright as well as her anger now plain in her voice Susanna exclaimed, ‘You are quite mistaken. I am not Miss Western, so you may let me out at once. In any case, why should you wish to kidnap Miss Western?’

‘Come, come, missy,’ said the second man, whose speech was coarser and more familiar than that of the first, ‘Don’t waste your time trying to flummox us. Sit back and enjoy the ride. This ’ere carriage ’as the finest springs on the market.’

Susanna’s voice soared. ‘Enjoy the ride, indeed! I can’t see a thing, and I have urgent business to attend to this afternoon. You have made a dreadful mistake, but if you let me go at once I shall not inform the Runners of what you have done, which I promise you I surely will once I am free again.’

Number One drawled, ‘That’s enough. You’re a lively piece and no mistake, but we have a job to do and no tricks of yours will prevent us from doing it, so my advice to you is to behave yourself.’

‘Indeed I won’t!’ Susanna leaned forward and began to tug at the window blind with one hand whilst trying to open the carriage door with the other. ‘I have no intention of behaving myself,’ she shouted at him as he caught her round the waist and pulled her back into her seat.

He laughed and said, rueful admiration written on his face, ‘Oh, my employer is going to enjoy taming your spirit, I’m sure, but I haven’t time to argue with you. I shall have to tie your hands if you continue to try to escape. Sit quiet and do as you’re bid without any more nonsense, or I’ll tie your ankles together and gag you as well. Even if I was ordered to handle you gently, you’re leaving me no choice.’

He spoke quietly, even deferentially to her, but Susanna had no doubt that he would carry out his threats. She sank sullenly back into her seat and tried to put a brave face on things.

They thought that she was Amelia—if so, the reason why they would want to kidnap her was plain. Amelia Western was a noted heiress and it would not be the first time that a man wanting money had carried off an heiress and married her. It was a risky business since the penalty for such an act was death or transportation if the parents or guardians of the girl pursued the matter. Some did not, preferring to accept the forced marriage, if the man were reasonably respectable, rather than have the girl’s reputation destroyed.

Equally plainly they had mistaken her for Amelia—and how they had come to do so was a mystery. A further mystery was who could Amelia have possibly met in the recent past who was capable of carrying out such a criminal act? None of the men who had surrounded her since her entrance into society seemed likely candidates—or had Amelia been privately meeting an unknown lover and they had arranged this between them?

If so, why had she been snatched off the street? For, if Amelia had been conspiring with someone, it would have been simpler for her to have manufactured some excuse to meet him in secret to save him from risking exposure by kidnapping her in broad daylight.

Not that any of this speculation was of the slightest use when each yard the chaise travelled was carrying her further away from Oxford Street, Piccadilly and her temporary home there, and into the unknown.

And what in the world would be awaiting her at her journey’s end?

She was not to know for some time. They changed horses at a posthouse on the edge of London where Number One put a hand over her mouth to prevent her from calling for help while Number Two made all the necessary arrangements at their stop—which included taking on board a hamper of food.

Number One unpacked the hamper and offered her a cooked chicken leg, which she refused indignantly.

‘Don’t like chicken, eh? How about this, then?’ and he held out a ham sandwich. She shook her head so he gifted Number Two with the chicken and the sandwich before rummaging around in the hamper and fishing out of it a roll filled with cold roast beef, saying, ‘Beef, perhaps?’

She waved it away with as much hauteur as she could summon, announcing rebelliously, ‘I don’t want to eat. Under the circumstances it would choke me.’

‘Suit yourself, my dear. No skin off my nose. More for us, eh, Tozzy? My employer will be most disappointed. He particularly wanted you to be properly fed on the way home.’

‘How very gracious of him,’ Susanna snapped back. ‘Even more gracious of you if you turned the chaise round and took me back to Oxford Street.’

‘Can’t do that, I’m afraid,’ said Number One indistinctly since his mouth was full of the beef sandwich which she had rejected. ‘How about some pound cake? No?’

It might be childish of her, but Susanna found that the only way to demonstrate her displeasure at what was happening to her was to turn her back on him and sniff loudly, like the cook in the Westerns’ kitchen when something had happened to cause her aggravation—an event which occurred at least five times a day.

Eating over, silence fell.

Susanna resumed a more normal position, folded her arms, leaned back against the cushions and closed her eyes. She felt as exhausted as though she were a child again and had been running and jumping all afternoon with her cousin William—and whatever had happened to him? He had disappeared from her life when her mother had married again. And what a time to think of him!

The lack of light and the swaying of the chaise lulled her so that she was on the verge of dozing.

Number Two said softly to Number One, ‘She’s a good plucked ’un and no mistake. She’ll be a match for ’im, that’s for sure.’

‘Oh, I doubt that very much,’ yawned Number One. ‘Never met anyone who was a match for him in all the years I’ve been with him. Pass a bottle of wine over, Tozzy, kidnapping’s thirsty work.’

Even through her half-sleep Susanna heard what he said and was fired with indignation. Just let this journey be over so that she could tell their employer—whoever he might be—exactly what she thought of him for arranging a kidnapping at all, let alone one in which the wrong woman had been carried off!

Ben Wolfe was looking out of the window in the library of his great house in Buckinghamshire which had been known as The Den ever since six generations of Wolfes had lived there. Before that it had simply been called the Hall. It had been left derelict when his father had died and he had gone to India, but since his return he had spared no expense in returning it to its former glory.

He looked at his fob watch. If everything had gone as he had ordered—and he assumed that it had since Jess Fitzroy had never botched a job for him yet—it should not be long before the chaise turned into the sweep before the front of the house. He could then begin to take his revenge for the wrongs which had destroyed not only his family’s wealth, but had driven his father into an early grave.

It was a pity that the girl was not particularly beautiful, but then, one could not have everything. He smiled as he thought of Babbacombe’s anger when the splendid match for his son fell through and he was left penniless, ruin staring him in the face. He was absolutely sure that, even though he had carried their daughter off in order to marry her, the Westerns would find him an even more suitable husband for her than Darlington—once they had discovered the astonishing extent of his wealth and the Wychwood family’s lack of it, that was, for he would take good care to let them know of it.

Even acquiring an Earl’s title would not make up for that lack. Especially since someone as rich as Ben was—and with an old name into the bargain—would almost certainly be a candidate for a title of his own before very long.

Not that Ben cared about titles and all that flimflam, but the Westerns did.

He had just reached this point in his musings when the chaise turned into the sweep. As he had hoped, Jess had successfully carried out yet another task for him—and would be suitably rewarded. He had given orders for Miss Western, soon to be Mrs Ben Wolfe, to be taken initially to her suite of rooms on the first floor so that she might refresh herself after the journey.

After that she would be conducted to the Turkish drawing room—a salon designed and furnished by a seventeenth-century Wolfe who had been an Ambassador to that country—where the teaboard would be ready and where he would at last introduce himself to her.

As was his usual habit, he had planned everything carefully to the last detail so that nothing would go wrong and all would go right. Even the clothes he was wearing had been chosen with great care to give off the right aura of effortless self-command and good taste. They were neither careless nor were they dandified, but somewhere in between. His boots, whilst black and shiny, bore no gold tassels. His clothes had been cut for him by a tailor whose taste was impeccable—there were to be no wasp-waisted jackets or garish waistcoats for Mr Ben Wolfe.

He sat himself down to wait for Jess to report to him, after which he would visit the drawing room where Miss Western would be waiting for him.

Susanna stared numbly at the beautiful façade of The Den when a footman opened the chaise door and Number One helped her out. When she had first been kidnapped she had supposed that she might be taken off to some low nighthouse either in the Haymarket or London’s East End. When, instead, they had obviously been driving into the country, she could form no idea of what her ultimate destination might be like.

Such splendour as Susanna saw all about her in the house and gardens awed her, and for the life of her she could not imagine why it had been necessary to carry Amelia off and bring her here. Surely the owner of such magnificence would be able to court Amelia in proper form, with no need to treat her so cavalierly? And surely, also, the owner of it would be shocked to learn that he had merely acquired a plain and poverty-stricken duenna and not the wealthy heiress she had been guarding for the past half-year.

When she walked up the steps to the double doors held open by splendidly liveried footmen she found herself shuddering slightly, not from cold or fright, but for some reason which passed her understanding. It was as though, once she walked through them, she knew that, somehow, she would find herself in a totally new world, where nothing that had happened to her in the past mattered, only what would happen in the future.

And then this sensation disappeared as though it had never been and she was plain-spoken, downright, sane and sensible Miss Susanna Beverly again, who never suffered from whim-whams or premonitions and was about to give a piece of her mind to the fool or knave who had caused her to be kidnapped.

But not yet. She had to endure a fluttering little maid and a pleasant middle-aged woman who led her upstairs to a suite of rooms so beautiful and grand that she was overset all over again. Indeed, the splendours she saw all about her temporarily silenced her so that she did not complain of her mistreatment to the women even when they called her Miss Western and tried to persuade her to change into the beautiful garments laid out on the bed.

She shook her head in refusal dazedly, but she did use the other facilities offered her—to put it delicately—and finally washed herself and allowed her hair to be ordered a little by the maid.

Then she was taken downstairs by the motherly body into a drawing room which was even grander than the upstairs rooms, where she was offered a seat and tea, which she also refused. When the motherly body, shaking her head a little at her silence, retreated, she sat down at last—to stare at a wall full of beautiful paintings and prints of a foreign civilisation such as she had never seen before.

Outside the sun was shining. In the distance a fountain was playing. Standing in the window through which she was looking was a new pianoforte. Objects of great beauty and vertu surrounded her. It would almost be like living in a rare and well-arranged museum to take up residence here, she thought in confusion.

And then the double doors were thrown open, and a man walked in.

A man who was her captor—and he was, of all people, Mr Ben Wolfe looking his most wolfish.

Mr Ben Wolfe, who had nodded and smiled at her at Lady Leominster’s ball.

This must, Susanna decided, be a nightmare. She would shortly wake up to find herself safely back in bed in the Westerns’ Piccadilly home. Except that everything about her seemed as sharp and well defined as objects are in real life, not at all cloudy and shifting like those in a dream. Only Mr Ben Wolfe’s presence partook of the dream.

And if he were truly here, in this disturbing and unreal present, then she would give him as short shrift as she was capable of offering in her unfortunate position. She could form no notion at all of why he had had her kidnapped or why he was bowing and smiling at her in a manner he doubtless considered ingratiating.

Well, she would not be ingratiated, not she! He could go straight to the devil and ingratiate himself with him if he could. She would demand to be sent straight back home, at once, on the instant…

Except, except…it was already late afternoon. There was no way in which she could be returned before nightfall and offer any reasonable explanation of where she had been and what she had been doing. Indeed, by now, her absence would already have been discovered.

If anything, this dreadful thought inflamed her the further. So she said nothing, merely stared at Mr Ben Wolfe, who was bowing low to her. That over, he motioned her to a seat before a low table on which a teaboard was set out, saying, ‘Pray be seated, Miss Western. You are doubtless wondering why you are here. May I say that I intend you no harm. Quite the contrary.’

It was the first time she had heard him speak. He had a deep gravel voice, eminently suited to his harsh features. Susanna’s first impulse was to inform him immediately that he was much mistaken: she was not Miss Western, his hired villains having carried off the wrong woman.

She wondered briefly why Amelia was the right woman. For what purpose would she have been brought here? She made an instant and daring decision: she would not tell him straight away that she was not Amelia, and then only after she had discovered what his wicked game was. It would be a pleasure to wrongfoot him.

Aloud she said, ‘No, I will not be seated. And I do so hope, Mr Ben Wolfe—you are Mr Ben Wolfe, are you not?—that you have a satisfactory explanation for my forced presence here.’

He smiled at her, displaying strong white teeth—all the better to eat you with, my dear, being Susanna’s inward response to that for was he not behaving exactly like the wolf whose name he bore in the fairy tale Red Riding Hood?

Mr Ben Wolfe, on the other hand, evidently thought that he was the good fairy in Cinderella, murmuring in a kind voice, ‘Do not be frightened. Miss Western. My intentions towards you are strictly honourable, I do assure you. As for my reasons for bringing you here thus abruptly, you will forgive me if I leave any necessary explanation for them until later.’

‘No, indeed, I do not forgive you at all. I don’t believe in your so-called honourable intentions; I have no notion of whether you intend to wed me or bed me. Or neither. I do so hope it’s neither. I should like very much to return home untouched—and as soon as possible.’

His smile this time was rueful. ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t allow that, Miss Western. You see, I wish to marry you, to make you the wife of one of the richest men in England instead of one of the poorest. I’m sure, on mature and rational consideration, you—and your family—would prefer that.’

Susanna stared at all six foot one of masculine bravura, superbly turned out from the top of his glossy black head to the tips of his glossy black boots.

‘Then, in the name of wonder, Mr Benjamin Wolfe, why did you not approach my parents in proper form and make an honourable offer in an honourable fashion instead of having me carried off, hugger-mugger, like a parcel from the post office?’

She was beginning to enjoy herself, hugging gleefully to her bosom the knowledge that he was not talking to his proposed forced bride at all but to her unconsidered and poverty-stricken governess. He evidently believed her to be Amelia and had no suspicion that he was mistaken. The longer she continued to deceive him, the more her pleasure grew.

On the other hand, by the looks of him he had a fine and wilful temper, which offered her the problem of how he would react when she finally enlightened him as to her true identity. But that could wait. Susanna had endured her disastrous fall into penury by living only for the moment and ignoring the future. What will come, would come, being her motto.

Mr Ben Wolfe bowed to her again. ‘My dear girl, I have already informed you that I have my reasons and will reveal them to you on a suitable occasion. That occasion is not now. Now is the time for us to come to know one another better. To that end, pray pour us some tea before it grows cold. We shall both feel better for it.’

‘There are only two things wrong with your last remark, Mr Ben Wolfe,’ returned Susanna, all sweetness and light. ‘The first is that I have no wish to know you any better—quite the contrary. The second is that I have no wish either to pour you tea, or drink it myself—I should certainly not feel any better for it. A fast post-chaise and an immediate return to London are the only requests I have to make of you.’

They were standing at some distance apart, for Mr Ben Wolfe had entered with no immediate desire to frighten his captive. On the other hand, he had expected to meet a young girl whom he could easily control by the gentlest of means. Instead, he was confronted with a talkative, self-possessed creature, older than her eighteen years in her command of language, who was evidently going to take a deal of coaxing before she agreed to become Mrs. Ben Wolfe without making overmuch fuss.

He decided to continue being agreeable and charming, praying that his patience would not run out. ‘I regret,’ he told her, bowing, ‘that is one of the few requests which you might make of me which I must refuse. My plans for you involve you remaining here for the time being. Later, perhaps.’

‘Later will not do at all!’ said Susanna, who wished most heartily that he would stop bowing at her. Most unsuitable when all he did was contradict her. ‘I have my reputation to consider.’

Mr Ben Wolfe suddenly overwhelmed her with what she could only consider was the most inappropriate gallantry, all things considered. ‘No need to trouble yourself about that. I shall take the greatest care of you.’

‘Indeed? I am pleased to hear it—but I am a little at a loss to grasp the finer details of that statement. I ask you again do you intend to wed me—or to bed me?’

This unbecoming frankness from a single female of gentle nurture almost overset Ben Wolfe. Nothing had prepared him for it. Might it not, he momentarily considered, have been more useful for him to have been equally as frank with her from the beginning of this interview?

No matter. He smiled, and if the smile was a trifle strained, which it was, then damn him, thought Susanna uncharitably, it is all he deserves.

‘Oh, my intentions are quite honourable. I mean to marry you and to that end I have already procured a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury himself.’

Marriage! He proposed to marry her—or rather Amelia. In the cat-and-mouse game she was playing with him Susanna had almost forgotten that she was not the target of Mr Ben Wolfe’s plans. For a moment she considered enlightening him immediately, but he deserved to live in his fool’s paradise a little longer, for was there not an interesting reply which she could make to his last confident declaration?

‘You do surprise me, sir. First of all, you seem to forget that you have not yet asked me whether I wish to marry you and, all things considered, I’m sure that I don’t; secondly, aren’t you forgetting that I am already betrothed to George Darlington?’

‘No, indeed—for that is precisely why you are here.’

His eyes gleamed as he came out with this, and the look he gave her was so predatory that Susanna shuddered. She was playing with a tiger. A tiger who had intended to kidnap an innocent young girl and force her to marry him in order, apparently, to prevent her from marrying George, Viscount Darlington.

Now Susanna did not like George Darlington and, by the look on his face when he had uttered his name, neither, for some reason, did Ben Wolfe, but she didn’t think that he deserved to be treated quite so scurvily as to lose his proposed bride, and when she had finally confessed who she truly was she would so inform her captor.

If he was prepared to let her get a word in edgeways, that was—for she was beginning to understand that Mr Ben Wolfe in a thwarted rage might be a very formidable creature, indeed.

Unconsciously they had moved closer and closer together so that, when Susanna echoed him again by murmuring ‘By saying “Precisely why you are here”, you mean—I take it—that you have kidnapped me in order to thwart George Darlington by depriving him of his bride—and her money,’ he bent down to take her hand, saying,

‘Yes—and you are a clever child to have worked that out so quickly. I think that I may be gaining a real prize in marrying you, Miss Western.’

Susanna smiled up into his inclined face. ‘Oh, I think not, Mr Ben Wolfe. All of this would be very fine if I were Amelia Western but, seeing that I am not, you have given yourself a great deal of trouble for exactly nothing.

‘Your hirelings have only succeeded in kidnapping not Miss Western, but her poverty-stricken nothing of a governess, Susanna Beverly, who possesses no fortune and no reputation, either. By carrying me off by mistake you have destroyed the last remnants of that for good—and gained only frustration for yourself.’

His response to this bold and truthful declaration was to smile down at her and say gently, ‘Well tried, my dear. You surely don’t expect me to believe that Banbury tale!’

Really! He was being as impossibly stupid as his two hired bravos—which was not his reputation at all.

‘Of course I do—for that is the truth. I told those two bruisers of yours that they had snatched the wrong woman—but would they listen to me? Oh, no, not they!—and now you are as bad as they were.’

His face proclaimed his disbelief. She had carried being Amelia off so well that she risked being stuck with her false identity, if not for life, for the time being at least. So much for his immediately exploding into anger when she made her belated revelation!

Instead it was she who stamped her foot. ‘Of course I’m not Amelia. Do I look like a simple-minded eighteen-year-old? Do I speak like one? Come to your senses, sir, if you have any, which I beg leave to doubt on the evidence of what I have seen of you so far. It is time that you recognised that you have organised the kidnapping of the wrong woman and are now unlikely to carry off the right one, for once I am free again I shall proclaim your villainy to the world. The punishment for kidnapping an heiress is either death or transportation. I have no notion what the penalty is for a mistaken kidnapping, but it ought to be pretty severe, don’t you think? Unless, of course, you could manage to get it lessened on the grounds of your insanity.’

Susanna’s transformation from a reasonably spoken young woman of good birth into a flaming virago was a complete one—inspired by the fear that, will she, nil she, having been kidnapped by mistake she was going to find herself married by mistake as well!

Ben Wolfe’s face changed, became thunderous. He controlled himself with difficulty, and murmured through his teeth, ‘Tell me, madam, were you playing with me then—or now? Was Amelia Western the pretence, or Susanna Beverly? Answer me.’

‘I have already answered you. I am Susanna Beverly and therefore nothing to your purpose at all.’

The look he gave her would have stopped the late Emperor of France in his tracks it was so inimical, so truly wolf-like as he barked out, ‘And how do I know that that is the truth? I assure you that you look and sound like no duenna I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. You are far too young to begin with. No, I fear that this is but a clever ploy to persuade me to let you go.’

‘Well, I assure you that I don’t find you clever at all. Quite the contrary,’ exclaimed Susanna, exasperation plain in her voice. ‘Call in that big man of yours and he will inform you that from the moment he threw me into your carriage I never stopped trying to tell him that he had carried off the wrong woman.’

Ben Wolfe knew at once that, whoever she was, there was no intimidating her—short of silencing her by throttling her—and he was not quite ready to do that, although heaven knew, if she taunted him much more, he might lose his self-control and have at her.

Choosing his words carefully, he said, ‘Let us sit down, enjoy a cup of tea and talk this matter over quietly and rationally.’

Biting each word out as coldly as she could, Susanna said, ‘If you offer me a cup of tea again, Mr Ben Wolfe, I shall scream!’

His answer was, oddly enough, to throw his head back and laugh. ‘Well, I don’t fancy tea, either. Would a glass of Madeira tempt you at all?’

‘It might tempt me, but I shan’t fall. A wise friend of mine once said that an offer of a glass of Madeira from a gentleman when you were alone with him was the first step on the road to ruin, so thank you, no.’

‘Very prudent of you, I’m sure. Although, if you are Miss Western, you may be certain that I shall not attempt to ruin you. As I said earlier, my intentions towards you—or her—are strictly honourable. I intend to marry you—or her.’

‘But since I am Miss Beverly, what will be your intentions towards me? Seeing that, by your reckless act, I shall have been irrevocably ruined?’

Before he could answer, Susanna added quickly, ‘What I am at a loss to understand, Mr Wolfe, is how you came to mistake me for her. We are not at all alike. How did you discover who I was—or rather, who you thought I was?’

‘Oh, that is not difficult to explain,’ he returned, although for the first time an element of doubt had crept into his voice. ‘At my express wish you were pointed out to me by Lady Leominster herself on the occasion of her grand ball the other evening. You were standing next to George Darlington at the time.’

‘Was I, indeed? On the other side of the room? With another woman on his other hand?’

‘Does that matter? But, yes—or so I seem to remember.’

Susanna began to laugh. ‘Oh, it matters very much. One thing I know of Lady Leominster, but not many do, is that she cannot distinguish between her right or her left. Be certain, Mr Wolfe, that you have indeed carried off the duenna and not her charge. You should have asked to be introduced to Miss Western—but you had no wish to do that, did you? It would have saved you a deal of trouble and no mistake.’

Ben Wolfe, his mind whirling, tried to remember the exact circumstances in which he had seen the supposed Miss Western. Yes, it had been as she said. George Darlington had been standing between two women, and Lady Leominster had pointed out the wrong one—if the woman before him was telling the truth.

He smothered an oath. Her proud defiance was beginning to work on him—and had she not earlier told him to ask his ‘big man’ whom she had claimed to be when they had first captured her?

‘For heaven’s sake, woman,’ he exclaimed, being coarse and abrupt with her for the first time now that it began to appear that she really might be only the duenna of his intended prey, ‘sit down, do, don’t stand there like Nemesis in person, and I’ll send for Jess Fitzroy and question him. But that doesn’t mean that I accept your changed story.’

‘Pray do,’ replied Susanna, whose legs were beginning to fail her and who badly needed the relief and comfort of one of the room’s many comfortable chairs, ‘and I will do as you ask. As a great concession, I might even drink some of the tea which you keep offering me.’

‘Oh, damn the tea,’ half-snarled Ben Wolfe before going to the door, summoning a footman and bidding him to bring Fitzroy and Tozzy to him at the double.

‘By the way, before the footman leaves,’ carolled Susanna, who was beginning to enjoy herself in a manic kind of way, very like someone embracing ruin because it was inevitable rather than trying to repel it, ‘tell him to bring the reticule which flew from my hand on to the floor after I was dragged into the chaise. There is something in it which might help you to make up your mind about me.’

‘Oh, I’ve already done that,’ ground out Ben Wolfe through gritted teeth as he handed her a cup of tea. ‘A more noisy and talkative shrew it has seldom been my misfortune to meet.’

‘Twice,’ riposted Susanna, drinking tea with an air, ‘you’ve already said that twice now—you earlier announced that you had a similar misfortune with duennas. When I was a little girl, my tutor told me to avoid such repetition in speech or writing. It is the mark of a careless mind he said.’

She drank a little more tea before assuring the smouldering man before her, ‘Not surprising, though, seeing that your careless mind has secured you the wrong young woman. You would do well to be a little more careful in future.’

This was teasing the wolf whom Ben so greatly resembled with a vengeance but, seeing that she had so little to lose, Susanna thought that she might as well enjoy herself before the heavens fell in.

Afterwards! Well, afterwards was afterwards—and to the devil with it.

Ben Wolfe, leaning against the wall as though he needed its support, looked as though he were ready to send her to the devil on the instant. He did not deign to answer her because he was beginning to believe that she wasn’t Amelia Western, and that, for once, he had made an unholy botch of things.

No, not for once—for the very first time. He had always prided himself on his ability to plan matters so meticulously that events always went exactly as he had intended them to and he had built a massive fortune for himself on that very basis.

The glare he gave Miss Who-ever-she-was was baleful in the extreme, but appeared to worry her not one whit. There was a plate of macaroons on the teaboard and Susanna began to devour them with a will. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and all this untoward excitement was making her hungry.

It was thus Ben Wolfe who greeted the arrival of his henchman with relief. Tozzy, the junior of the two, was carrying a woman’s reticule, a grin on his stupid face. Fitzroy, more acute, knew at once that his employer was in one of his rare, but legendary, tempers and assumed the most serious expression he could.

‘Is that your reticule?’ demanded Ben of Susanna, who was busy pouring herself another cup of tea. ‘I thought that you didn’t care for tea,’ he added accusingly, mindful of her former refusals.

‘Oh, it wasn’t the tea I didn’t care for,’ Susanna told him smugly, ‘it was the company and the occasion on which I was drinking it which incurred my dislike. I’m much happier now,’ she added untruthfully, ‘and, yes, that is my reticule.’

‘Then hand it to her, man,’ roared Ben who, being gentleman enough, just, not to shout at Susanna, shouted at Tozzy instead.

Tozzy, having handed the reticule back to Susanna, opened his mouth to speak, but was forestalled by the beleaguered Ben saying to Fitzroy, ‘Look here, Jess, Miss Who-ever-she-is says that when you picked her up in Oxford Street—’

‘Kidnapped me,’ corrected Susanna, who was now inspecting the contents of her little bag and smiling at them as she did so.

‘You picked her up in Oxford Street,’ repeated Ben through his excellent teeth, ‘and she told you that she was not Miss Western. Is that true?’

Jess looked away from his employer before saying, ‘Yes. I called her Miss Western and she immediately informed me that she was not.’

‘And who did she say that she was?’

‘She claimed to be Miss Western’s duenna, Miss Beverly. But you had pointed her out to me as Miss Western yesterday in Hyde Park so I knew that she was only saying that in order to try to make me let her go. So I took no notice of her.’

‘You took no notice of her,’ said Ben, who found that he had recently acquired the distressing habit of repeating not only what he had said, but everything said to him. ‘Didn’t it occur to you to tell me that she had made such a claim?’

‘Not exactly, no. You’ve never, to my knowledge, ever made such a mistake before—indeed, I can’t remember you ever making a mistake of any kind in any enterprise we’ve been engaged on, it’s not your way, not your way at all…’

‘Jess!’ said Ben awefully. ‘Shut up, will you? Just tell me this. Which do you think she is? She has, in the last half-hour, claimed to be both Miss Western and Miss Beverly.’

Jess was too fascinated to be tactful. ‘Both? How could she do that?’

‘Easily,’ said Ben. ‘Damme, man. Answer the question.’

Jess looked Susanna up and down as though she were a prize horse. ‘Well,’ he said doubtfully, ‘she’s only supposed to be eighteen. I’d put her as a little older than that. On the other hand, she claimed to be a duenna and, in my experience, duennas are usually middle-aged; she certainly doesn’t resemble or behave like any duenna I’ve ever met and—’

‘Jess! Stop it. You’re blithering. I know what duennas look like. Give me a straight answer.’

‘Wouldn’t it be simpler if you listened to me?’ Susanna was all helpfulness. ‘Perhaps you could explain why, if I’m Miss Western, heiress, I should be kidnapped outside an office for the placement of young gentlewomen needing employment, i.e. Miss Shanks’s Employment Bureau, and carry its card in my reticule. Look,’ and she handed it to Ben Wolfe who stared at it as though it were a grenade about to go off at any moment.

‘She has a point,’ observed Jess gloomily.

‘Does that mean, yes, she’s Miss Western or, no, she’s Miss Beverly?’ snapped Ben, tossing Jess the card.

‘No, she’s Miss Beverly.’

‘God help me, I think so, too. You picked up the wrong woman.’

‘Kidnapped her, on your orders, which he faithfully carried out,’ interrupted Susanna, her mouth full of the last macaroon. ‘You really can’t pretend that you’re not the one responsible for me being here.’

Master and man stared at one another.

‘Apart from gagging her to stop her everlasting nagging, what the hell do we do now?’ asked Mr Ben Wolfe of Mr Jess Fitzroy, who slowly shook his head.