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
