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—’
