Cousins of a Kind

by Sheila Walsh

‘Did you really imagine for one moment that I would let you walk out of my life?’ he murmured, his breath warm against her skin.

  ‘I haven’t known quite what to think for a long time now,’ she sighed. ‘On Midsummer Eve I was almost sure, but then it seemed that I had mistaken a temporary madness for something more, and there was Aubrey and everything …’

  He stopped her mouth with kisses. ‘I have been a fool! I vowed that I would let you have your visit to London without any ties, and then I was as jealous as hell of every man who looked at you, scared out of my wits that you might succumb to one or other of them!’

  Later, when they had told Aunt Minta and Aubrey and received their wholehearted congratulations, they ate a quiet dinner together and then walked in the garden until the pink of the sunset faded from the sky, and made plans for the future.

  ‘About Shallowford,’ Theo said dreamily.

  Benedict smiled down at her in gentle mockery. ‘You don’t really want to sell it, do you?’

  ‘It would be rather silly,’ she admitted. ‘Though I wish there were something one could do about Beau. Grandpa does seem to have been rather hard on him.’

  His eyebrow lifted. ‘Don’t waste too much sympathy on Beau, my love. He wouldn’t do as much for you, believe me.’

  ‘No, but it must be dreadful to expect so much and then get practically nothing!’

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly call what Beau has ended up with nothing! The house in Warwickshire has about nine hundred acres of prime farming land. The tenants’ rents from that alone would keep any reasonable man in comfort.’

  ‘Oh, well, I shan’t worry about him any more.’ She looked aslant at him. ‘Would you really have bought Shallowford?’

  ‘I might. But I’d as lief be kept by a rich wife!’

  ‘Indeed?’ she said, laughing.

  The next few days were sheer bliss for Theo; even the loss of her grandfather could not dim her happiness. Aunt Minta had taken a slight cold and kept to her room (though Theo did wonder if she was being tactful), and with Aubrey mending nicely and sitting up for longer each day, so that they had no need to worry about him, she and Benedict spent long hours out of doors, riding over the estate so that Theo could familiarise herself with all that had now become her responsibility.

  Maddie quite obviously approved, and said bluntly that she had more colour in her cheeks now than she’d had in all the time she’d been here.

  ‘I’ve certainly never slept so well,’ Theo said.

  So what it was that woke her that night she couldn’t at first decide. Then, with a slight shiver of apprehension, she heard a noise. Someone was in the room. She was suddenly wide awake, nerves tingling.

  ‘Maddie?’ she called sharply. ‘Is that you?’

  The darkness was less black now as her eyes grew accustomed to it, and in the silence she was sure that someone other than herself was breathing.

  And then a shadow loomed in front of her, and before she could cry out it seemed to rear up. There was a blinding flash of pain ‒ and then oblivion.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Maddie was a woman not given to hysterical outbursts, but she came as close as she was ever likely to on that morning when she went in to wake her mistress and found her gone and all in disarray.

  ‘Lawks-a-mercy!’ she cried, and without further thought lifted up her skirts and rushed along to Mr Benedict’s room, to hammer on the door until he opened it.

  She had never seen anyone move so fast. He had his dressing-gown on and was striding down the corridor before she had drawn her first breath, and she was left half-running in his wake.

  ‘She didn’t go of her own accord, sir, that I’ll swear to … though some of her clothes have gone from the closet. Well, you’ll see for yourself!’

  Benedict stood, one hand supporting him against the doorpost, surveying the tumbled bedclothes, the general disorder, with an expression that made even Purley hesitate before approaching him.

  He had been summoned by one of the servants, several of whom had collected, drawn by the general air of something amiss. He watched Mr Benedict move quite unhurriedly, but rather as if he were in a dream, to the side of the bed and then reach out to run a reluctant finger along an ominous dark streak that stained the sheet.

  ‘Dry,’ he said tonelessly. ‘It must have happened some time ago. In the early hours, I’d guess.’

  ‘But … how, sir?’ Purley’s distress showed in the shakiness of his voice. ‘No one could have got in, let alone taken Miss Theo out, without someone hearing!’

  ‘They got in and out once before,’ Benedict said. He brought his hand down with sudden force on the bed rail. ‘Dammit! Of course!’ He rounded on the butler, and it was as though he had come out of a trance. ‘Purley, do you recall anything about a concealed passage? Miss Theo’s father told her about one they used to use.’

  ‘Lord save us, sir! I had clean forgot about that! Yes, indeed, the boys used it often … only I’m blessed if I can remember how they operated it.’

  Benedict brushed aside his agonised indecision with an impatient movement. ‘That doesn’t matter. What I want to know is, who else knew about it?’

  ‘Well, most of the family would, I reckon.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘No, well, you never came here much as a boy, sir, as I recall. But your father, now … he would have known, and Mr John and Mr Geoffrey, of course, and …’ He stopped, his eyes growing wide.

  ‘And Beau,’ Benedict supplied softly.

  ‘Oh, sir! You’ll never be thinking …’ He seemed unable to voice the thought.

  ‘We shall see.’ Benedict was suddenly brisk. ‘Purley, send to the stables at once. I want to know exactly where our newly-fledged Viscount was taken when he left here the other day.’

  ‘I say, what’s going on?’ Aubrey had wandered in sleepily in his nightgown in the middle of the excitement and was now wide awake.

  Benedict berated him soundly for being out of bed. ‘I have enough on my mind just now without you threatening a relapse!’ he snapped.

  Aubrey was undismayed. ‘Lord, I shan’t do anything so ninny-hammered as that! But you can’t expect me to go meekly back to bed without knowing.’ He added with sudden truculence, ‘Is it true that Cousin Theo has been kidnapped?’

  ‘So it would seem,’ Benedict said without emotion.

  ‘Well, you don’t seem very concerned,’ the boy charged him accusingly, and then rather wished he had kept silent, for he surprised a momentary look of such naked agony in Benedict’s eyes that it pained him to see. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.

  Benedict brushed his apology aside. ‘Go back to bed, there’s a good fellow.’

  ‘Very well.’ Aubrey’s eyes brightened. ‘But as soon as I feel more the thing, can I look for that secret passage? It’s the most famous thing ever! Fancy it having been here all this time!’

  Long before Maddie had first made her discovery, Theo was facing Beau across a small breakfast table in a pretty parlour, she knew not where. Her head still throbbed abominably, though the first blinding pain, the sickness, and the feeling that the top of her skull was pulsating on and off had thankfully diminished.

  Beau sipped tea and regretted that she had no appetite. ‘My apologies, Theodora,’ he said in that polite, languid fashion she now knew so well. ‘I fear my man hit you rather harder than I had intended.’

  With tentative fingers she probed the area on the side of her head where her hair was matted with fast-caking blood, and immediately wished that she had not. Beau lifted his quizzing-glass as she winced.

  ‘A nasty contusion,’ he admitted, his heavy-lidded eyes quite pitiless. ‘It will, of course, be attended to the moment our business is completed.’

  Such generosity! Theo’s mind, though clearing slowly, was still refusing to function with any degree of alertness. How she had come and why she was here at all (wherever here might be) were questions that required a greater degree of concentration than
she could, for the present, summon.

  More than anything else she wanted to lie down in a cool darkened room ‒ and sleep. But since that luxury was clearly not to be granted to her, she must at least be grateful to find herself in agreeable surroundings and with a change of clothes. It would not be fanciful in the circumstances to imagine a far worse fate.

  She said wearily, ‘I am probably being very stupid, but I am not aware that we have any business to conclude.’

  His smile was a travesty, and as such was anything but comforting. ‘That is probably because you have been too complacent in your good fortune to give the matter serious thought. Had it been otherwise, my dear Theodora, you surely must have realised that I would not permit you and Benedict to deprive me of my rightful inheritance!’

  Not for the first time she found something curiously menacing about his rather posturing dandyism. He was probably a little mad, she decided, and wished desperately that she felt less befuddled and more up to the task of dealing with him. If only Benedict were here!

  ‘Well, I am truly sorry if you feel cheated, Cousin Beau,’ she said placatingly. ‘It must seem a little hard, I’m sure; though to be fair, your rightful inheritance is exactly what you did get ‒ and since it isn’t so little as I had at first thought, I suppose Grandpa had a perfect right to leave Shallowford as he pleased.’

  Beau had turned a rather unpleasant shade of red, and she had the distinct feeling that what she had intended as reasonable comment had fallen some way short of its mark. His mouth tightened.

  ‘I do not concern myself with legal quibbles, nor do I intend to let the matter go unrectified.’

  ‘But …’

  He cut her short. ‘Pray, let me finish, Theodora. We do not have a great deal of time, and I wish to explain to you exactly what you are going to do.’

  Theo’s inclination to argue was not matched by a corresponding effort of will. The early sunlight slanting low through the window hurt her eyes, and she frowned and closed them, putting up a hand to shield them from the glare.

  ‘You had better attend me, my dear,’ said the petulant voice. ‘It would not please either of us if I were obliged to summon my man to persuade you!’

  ‘I am listening,’ she muttered.

  ‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘Well then, to business. I have had a document drawn up in which you voluntarily decline the terms stipulated by my uncle’s Will, and thereby request formally that Shallowford be sold. Furthermore, with commendable generosity, you relinquish your portion of the monies thus obtaining in my favour.’

  Dimly Theo recollected how close she had come to implementing at least a part of what he now demanded, and wondered that she should have considered him worthy of so much consideration.

  ‘Fustian!’ she said faintly.

  He continued as though she had not spoken. ‘When you have signed this document, and it has been properly checked over and witnessed by my lawyer, you will write to Cousin Benedict, explaining that you have experienced a crisis of conscience and could not rest until all was made right.’ He ignored Theo’s sharp intake of breath, and concluded blandly, ‘And that you intend to return to America at once. You will then be conveyed with all speed to Falmouth, where there is a ship due to sail tomorrow on the morning tide. Your passage is booked.’

  A slow anger had begun to burn in her as she listened to him calmly arranging to rob her of all she held most dear. The sheer effrontery of his assumption that she would meekly submit to his evil machinations brought with it an added indignation which made her head throb unbearably.

  She opened her eyes and stared at him across the table.

  ‘You are quite mad,’ she said distinctly. ‘I have no intention of doing what you suggested.’

  For some reason this seemed to amuse rather than annoy him, and for the first time fear crawled insidiously along Theo’s spine. He was too confident. She began to pray desperately that Benedict would come.

  ‘Perhaps you would care to read this.’ He slid a sheet of paper across the table towards her. She dragged her eyes away from his heavy-lidded smile that seemed already to reveal a hint of triumph, and looked down at the closely written page, without at first focusing on the actual words.

  And then Aubrey’s name leaped out at her, and she narrowed her eyes against the agony of focusing and began to read what was in effect a succinct and damningly accurate indictment against Aubrey, giving the most precise details of his part in the recent hold-up of Lord Shadley’s coach on the road to Richmond. It farther informed the reader exactly where Aubrey could be found, still nursing the injury which would most surely clinch the matter of his guilt.

  The letter was addressed to Sir William Roach, presiding magistrate at Long Winton. Theo’s heart stopped beating for a long moment, and then began again with a painful thud. She looked up, reluctant to meet Beau’s eyes, which seemed to gloat.

  ‘Did you imagine I hadn’t guessed the cause of Aubrey’s little indisposition?’ he said, his voice like silk. She shut her eyes, but the voice went on remorselessly. ‘So you do see, don’t you, my dear Theodora? Unless you co-operate at once, this letter will go straight away to Sir William ‒ who is, incidentally, a friend of Shadley’s ‒ and within the hour young Fane will be in custody. And you do know the penalty for highway robbery?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be so cruel,’ she whispered, knowing full well that he would.

  ‘If I had managed to get my hands on that accursed necklace, I might have been more disposed to be generous,’ he said with sudden venom. ‘But you had to do the right thing, did you not? Just as I feel that I should do likewise in Aubrey’s case and deliver him up to the law ‒ unless you can persuade me to change my mind!’

  Benedict was in his curricle and his horses eager to be off when Theo’s letter arrived. He swiftly secured the reins and sprang down with orders to the groom, ‘Hold ’em ready.’

  The hapless messenger was then marched indoors to be left standing nervously twisting his hat while the decidedly grim-visaged gent read his letter. It must have been bad news, for when the said gent looked up at last, it was like staring into the pits of hell!

  Then came a regular inquisition, and the man had ample cause to regret his own impetuosity, for ‘not until after nine o’clock’ had been his instructions, which if he’d stuck to ’em instead of wanting to get an hour ahead of himself, he wouldn’t have fallen foul of this flash cove whose piercing grey eyes dared you to speak less than the truth.

  No, he hadn’t known the man who paid him to deliver the letter, but yes, he had seen him the odd time coming out of a perticler house in Long Winton recently bought by a rich merchant ‒ name of Brady …

  It was all Benedict needed to know. The house was the one that Beau had been taken to when he left Shallowford. He tried not to think as he drove there what pressure must have been put upon Theo to make her write such a letter.

  At the house in Long Winton the servants were at first uncooperative, but the butler, sizing Benedict up at a glance, informed him reluctantly that, yes, Lord Radlett had been staying there for the past three days. Mr Brady had gone north more than a week ago, but was in the habit of allowing carte blanche to his friends. The practice did not appear to please him.

  ‘Is there a young lady with his lordship?’ Benedict demanded.

  The butler was clearly embarrassed. A young lady had arrived very late on the previous evening ‒ so late, in fact, that he had not known of it himself until this morning. ‘A very genteel young lady, sir ‒ rich brown hair ‒ but sickly-looking on account of having suffered a fall … nasty contusion on the head.’ He misliked the look in the eye of his interrogator. ‘Not fit to travel, in my opinion,’ he concluded.

  ‘They’ve left already, then?’ Benedict said sharply.

  ‘More than an hour since, sir, in a post-chaise, and his lordship’s man riding with them. I believe Falmouth was mentioned,’ he added by way of being helpful, and not having taken overmuch to Lord Radlett.
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br />   Benedict waited to hear no more. If he was to overtake them, every moment was vital. At every posting station along the way he asked questions ‒ Beau was not, after all, an inconspicuous figure ‒ and it was not long before he began to get answers, and reckoned that very gradually he was gaining on them.

  At Chicklade he was informed that a couple answering his description had stopped for refreshment and had left again less than a half hour ago. The landlord’s impression of the young lady, as being passive and uninterested in anything, almost inclined him to wonder if he had mistaken his quarry, but Beau was described too accurately for there to be any mistake, and the thought of Theo reduced to such uncharacteristic behaviour drove him on with renewed fervour. He stopped only to down a pint of ale, and the landlord’s wife obligingly put a thick slice of beef between two rounds of bread so that he could eat it as he travelled.

  He drove through the night and into a watery dawn, and five miles short of Falmouth he was almost following in the dust of their wheels. He went straight to the harbour to seek out the American packet Delaware, where all was bustle, in order to reassure himself that no one answering Theo’s description had yet gone aboard. She hadn’t, but with little more than one hour to sailing time if the wind held, he knew he must find her quickly.

  Fortunately Falmouth was no great size, the harbour set in a small basin surrounded by a circle of gentle hills, and many of the houses huddled on the water’s edge with seaweed-encrusted steps leading straight up to their doors. Benedict sought out the most likely hotel and to his immense relief learned that a couple such as he described were at that moment resting in a small private parlour. Further discreet questioning elicited the information that the gentleman’s servant was refreshing himself in the taproom.

  When a short time later he opened the parlour door, he did so with infinite care, so that at first neither occupant of the room heard him, and he was able to observe how despondently Theo lay back with closed eyes in a wing chair, her bonnet removed so that he could clearly see the matted patch of hair ‒ no doubt concealing a lump that would be hurting like the devil.