The Wolfe's Mate Part 2

Outside the sun was s.h.i.+ning. 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 s.h.i.+fting 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 a.s.sure 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 ident.i.ty. 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 d.a.m.n 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 ident.i.ty, 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 a.s.sure 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 a.s.sure 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 coa.r.s.e 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, d.a.m.n 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 repet.i.tion in speech or writing. It is the mark of a careless mind he said.'

She drank a little more tea before a.s.suring 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 ma.s.sive 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 a.s.sumed 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.'

'G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l do we do now?' asked Mr Ben Wolfe of Mr Jess Fitzroy, who slowly shook his head.