The Wolfe's Mate. Paula Marshall
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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,