The Wolfe's Mate

by Paula Marshall

  ‘Am I to believe a word that you are saying?’ was all she could manage.

  Francis, shocked by her pallor, said, ‘I swear to you, by all I hold holy, that I am telling you the truth. I loved you then, and I love you now. I fled because I could not condemn you to a marriage with a man who would shortly enter a debtors’ prison, or to a narrow life in Calais never to revisit your home again. Forgive me for deceiving you so vilely four years ago, but, seeing how much I loved you, I thought that it was for the best.’

  He might, perhaps, be telling her the truth, but Susanna dared not trust him. Her common sense, which rarely deserted her, had her asking him, ‘If that is so, why are you able to return now?’

  ‘Because an old aunt, whom I scarcely knew, died, leaving everything to me. Enough to pay my debts and enable me to live a decent life again in England. I have forsworn gambling and the wild life which went with it. I am a reformed character, and I wish to make a new start—with you, if you will accept me.’

  He made a move to take her hand, but she pushed him away. She could not bear to be touched by him.

  ‘Accept you!’ she exclaimed bitterly. ‘You do not know what you are asking, nor what my life has been since you left me at the altar. As for forgiveness, you may have that, but only because I must not forget the Christian faith by which I live and which bids us to forgive sinners. But marry you! Never, not if you were the last man in the world.’

  To her horror, for horror it was, he went down on his knees before her, half-moaning, ‘You cannot mean that.’ This time he clutched at her hands and would not let them go. Susanna sought to release herself, but he was obdurate. He was not yet trying to force her as George had done, but she feared that he might.

  ‘Listen to me—’ he began.

  Attempting to pull away, she exclaimed, ‘No, I will not…’

  At which point the door opened and it was Ben Wolfe again who strode in saying, ‘For a short talk, you said, and you promised not to detain her, but, damme, I find you at it after all.’

  His expression was so ugly that Susanna, freeing herself from a startled Francis Sylvester, caught him by the arm, exclaiming, ‘No, Mr Wolfe, do not attack him, I was only trying to prevent him from proposing to me and from holding my hand while he was about it.’

  ‘What! And give himself the pleasure of jilting you twice, I suppose,’ was all the answer she got, but he made no further attempt to assault Francis, simply adding, ‘If you dislike his advances, then I offer you my arm to escort you out of his unwanted presence.’

  Francis, his face white now, said angrily, ‘I was merely trying to make Miss Beverly an honourable proposal. Can you claim to wish to do as much?’

  ‘Certainly,’ almost shouted Ben, coming out with something which he had never thought to hear himself say. ‘Miss Beverly, if you will only consent to marry me, I shall apply for a special licence tomorrow.’

  The look which he threw Francis was a triumphant one.

  But he did not triumph with Susanna.

  She jumped back from the pair of them, exclaiming, ‘Oh, you are impossible, both of you—and for quite different reasons. You are only alike in wishing to make my life miserable, and I certainly don’t want to marry either of you.’

  Which, she later dismally acknowledged, was not a true statement at all so far as one of them was concerned, but she wasn’t going to allow anyone—even someone she was beginning to love—to bully her into doing anything.

  And as the two men turned to her, both speaking at once, she said as coldly as she could, ‘As you claim to be gentlemen, pray allow me to depart without troubling me further.’

  Her head high, she walked past them to the door, pacing slowly along the corridor, delaying her return to the Grand Salon, for after what she had just passed through she did not know whether to laugh or to cry.

  After that, the evening resumed the normal course of such evenings. Francis Sylvester disappeared, not to reappear again. Susanna could only imagine what Ben had said to him before he returned to talk to her and Madame as though nothing untoward had occurred. She could not help wondering of what he was thinking—and all the time she spoke and laughed and danced without an apparent care in the world, although not again with Ben, who stood silent behind Madame’s chair.

  Was he regretting his rash proposal—or her rejection of it? At the end of the evening when Madame rose to take her leave, Ben bent over Susanna’s hand in farewell, murmuring in a voice doubtless meant to be reassuring, ‘I do not think that that fellow will trouble you again, Miss Beverly. If he does, pray inform me immediately.’

  Miss Beverly! So they had returned to their previous relationship with one another as though his proposal of marriage had never been made. In theory, this should have pleased Susanna but, in practice, made her feel cold and desolate.

  He had only proposed to her in order to annoy Francis and to put him off—and he had succeeded. It was simply one more of Mr Wolfe’s many deceits performed to allow him to remain in control of his life—and the lives of others.

  She took this sad and lonely thought to bed with her.

  As for Ben Wolfe, his night was spent in wondering at himself. In the name of all that was holy, how had he come to propose marriage to Miss Susanna Beverly when he had always told himself that—other than for revenge on the Babbacombe—he would never marry? In retrospect, his rashness appalled him. She might have accepted him on the spot, then where would he have been?

  Properly caught—but she had not accepted him. Instead of being pleased, he was feeling glum—which was ridiculous, for he had had no real desire to marry her, had he? He had merely been putting down that ass Francis Sylvester, hadn’t he?

  So why was it that he couldn’t sleep, and was behaving like a moonstruck boy whose love had turned him down flat? Yes, he must be moonstruck, fit for Bedlam: hard Ben Wolfe, who was slowly being overcome by a pair of fine eyes and a brave spirit such as he had never met in a woman before.

  And, when sleep came at last, his dreams were filled with visions of Susanna.

  ‘A letter for you, my dear,’ said Madame, passing it across the breakfast table to her several days later when the Exfords’ ball and its many incidents was becoming a memory.

  ‘For me?’ Susanna looked up in surprise. She could not remember when she had last received a letter. The invitations to the many social events which she was attending were made to Madame: and she had lost all her friends from her old life after Francis had jilted her.

  The letter looked official. It was addressed to her in a clerk’s copperplate script and it invited her to attend the offices of Messrs Herriott and Bracewell as soon as possible, where she might learn something to her advantage. She passed it over to Madame, saying, ‘Whatever can it mean? Do you know anything of this?’

  Madame shook her head. ‘No, my dear. I am as surprised as you are. Do you know of the firm?’

  ‘Only that it was Papa’s. I never had dealings with them after he died. Everything was done by Mr Mitchell even before he married Mama.’

  ‘Indeed,’ remarked Madame drily, thinking of a conversation which she had had with Ben Wolfe. ‘I think that you ought to visit them as soon as possible. You may take the carriage this afternoon.’

  ‘But you were going to the Park…’

  ‘Oh, that can wait,’ said Madame airily. ‘This is more important.’

  It was a somewhat puzzled Susanna who was shown into Mr Herriott’s office later that day. He rose to meet her, offering her a chair and a glass of Madeira in that order.

  ‘Thank you, no,’ she said to the Madeira. She saw that Mr Herriott had another portly middle-aged gentleman with him and assumed that it was his partner, Mr Bracewell. Stranger and stranger, she thought, surely my business cannot be so important that it needs the two senior partners to conduct it.

  ‘First of all,’ began Mr Herriott, whose face looked as though he had drunk more than his share of Madeira in his time, ‘we are here to offer you an apo
logy for what is a dereliction of duty on our part. It has recently come to our notice that you have been under the misapprehension that your father left you a pauper. That the money set out in his will was non-existent and had been lost by him before he died.

  ‘Regrettably we were unaware of this but, once it was brought to our notice that your stepfather, Mr Samuel Mitchell, had misappropriated a sum upwards of one hundred thousand pounds, it was our duty to remedy the matter, in so far as we could.’

  Susanna was not so innocent that she did not grasp that Mr Herriott was using grand language to obscure his own share of guilt in the matter. It had been his duty to protect her interests—something which he had singularly failed to do.

  ‘Immediately we became aware of the true situation, we set matters in train. Mr Mitchell has been compelled to make over to you the balance of your fortune left after his depredations had reduced it. You will immediately receive the sum of some sixty thousand pounds—or, rather, the yearly interest of that sum. As for Mr Mitchell, he will escape conviction and transportation only because he has cooperated with us in restoring your fortune to you, and because we believe that you would not wish your mother and your half-sisters to be left in penury and without a husband and a father. He has sufficient capital left to enable them to live in modest comfort.

  ‘If, of course, you felt that this punishment was not enough, then we would inform the proper authorities, but we believed that you would not wish your mother to be punished as well.’

  Susanna hardly knew what to say. Mr Herriott rose and poured her a glass of water. ‘Drink this, Miss Beverly, I am sure that this news has come as a great shock to you.’

  She drank the water greedily down before saying, ‘So, when my stepfather virtually turned me out of the house in order to earn my own living, he was actually using my money to improve his own circumstances?’

  ‘Yes. It appeared that, shortly before he married your mother, he had lost a great deal of money in speculation and he used part of your inheritance to overcome that. Later, after your marriage with Lord Sylvester was arranged, he had another run of bad luck, he said, and embezzled most of the rest of it to make up his losses.’

  Susanna thought of what Francis had told her at the Exfords’ ball—and knew that he had been speaking the truth.

  Her distress was patent. Not so much because of the loss of the money itself, but because of the hard life she had led until Ben Wolfe had had her kidnapped. The only good thing in the whole vile business was that it had prevented her from marrying Francis Sylvester.

  ‘Does my mother know?’ she asked at last.

  ‘I fear so.’

  ‘I ought to help them…’ she began.

  ‘Indeed not,’ said Mr Herriott vigorously. ‘He has caused you a great deal of misery and I understand that neither he nor your mother ever offered you any help during your last few difficult years. They are not in penury and must learn to live on what is theirs and not on what was stolen from you.’

  ‘But surely my mother had no notion of Mr Mitchell’s wickedness?’

  ‘Possibly not.’

  Susanna stared at the breakfront bookcase opposite to her, filled with law books.

  ‘How did you come to know of this?’

  ‘Oh, only recently—and our sources must remain secret. Legal etiquette, you understand.’

  Susanna didn’t; it all seemed most odd to her. Since Madeira had not served its purpose in preparing her for such good news, Mr Bracewell joined in the discussion by ringing for tea instead and offering Miss Beverly both congratulations and condolences.

  ‘I understand that you are comfortably placed at the moment,’ he said kindly.

  ‘Yes, I am the companion of a very gracious French noblewoman, Madame la Comtesse de Saulx.’

  ‘So we understand. You realise that the house in which Mr and Mrs Mitchell have been living is yours, part of the estate which your father left you. They quitted it today.’

  So Mr Mitchell had turned her out of her own home.

  ‘Time’s whirligig,’ she said aloud.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Mr Bracewell gently.

  ‘Shakespeare,’ answered Susanna numbly. ‘“Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.”’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he answered her, smiling. ‘The ancients’ Wheel of Fortune. First we are down and then we are up.’

  ‘Or the reverse in Mr Mitchell’s case,’ put in Mr Herriott, who appeared to be enjoying the Mitchells’ downfall.

  ‘May I assure you, Miss Beverly,’ he continued, ‘that the interest on your fortune will be paid to you quarterly, and that you may return to your home as soon as it is convenient to you. You may call on us for any assistance you may require when you take up your new life. Before you leave, I must ask you to sign some necessary documents to enable us to do so.’

  What a difference a fortune makes to the manner in which you are treated, thought Susanna sardonically. Yesterday I was an unconsidered nobody, grateful for Madame’s kindness, and today, all is changed. The world is bowing and scraping to me and my lightest wish is law.

  This was not the sort of comment she cared to make to the Messrs Herriott and Bracewell, however.

  She drank her tea and signed the necessary documents, both gentlemen assuring her of their good wishes and their desire to help her at all times. Mr Herriott, as the senior partner, escorted her to her carriage, returning to his office to find that Mr Bracewell had been joined by a third party, Mr Ben Wolfe, who had slipped in from another room.

  ‘Your partner assures me,’ he said to Mr Herriott, ‘that all went swimmingly this afternoon, and that Miss Beverly is now in command of her fortune again.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mr Herriott, bowing slightly. ‘I wish that you had allowed Mr Samuel Mitchell to be prosecuted for his misdeeds—even if you did compel him to make restitution. It is a bad principle, I fear, to allow the wicked to go unpunished.’

  ‘Not exactly unpunished,’ drawled Ben comfortably, drinking the Madeira which Susanna had refused, ‘seeing that he was compelled to disgorge himself of virtually everything he possessed. Furthermore, I wished, as I am sure you do, to spare Miss Beverly as much public pain as possible, as well as ensuring that she remains unaware that it was I who uncovered Mr Mitchell’s wrong doing. I have no wish to profit from that.’

  ‘Very noble of you,’ returned Mr Herriott insincerely, for he thought that Mr Ben Wolfe was as devious a schemer as he had ever encountered. ‘It does you nothing but credit, sir.’

  ‘It does, doesn’t it,’ agreed Mr Wolfe amiably, ‘which was probably why I did it, don’t you think?’ He threw his head back and laughed. ‘But of course, you do. Who knows how it may yet profit me? At the moment, though, I must thank you both for your co-operation in this matter, especially insofar as it relates to keeping my intervention a secret.’

  He refrained from pointing out that, despite their dereliction of duty in allowing Mr Mitchell to deceive them, he was allowing them to take the credit for unmasking him.

  Allies were always useful, especially in the game he was about to play—and now he had two powerful ones.

  Chapter Eight

  Susanna was seated in Madame’s small drawing room, trying to come to terms with the sudden recovery of her fortune, when the butler announced that Mrs Mitchell had arrived and wished to speak to Miss Beverly.

  She put her canvaswork down and composed herself. Ever since she had told Madame of her good news she had felt that she was living in a dream. Madame had begged her to remain with her as a friend, rather than as a companion, ‘Although,’ she had added, ‘I shall quite understand if you wish to return to your old home immediately.’

  ‘I don’t know what I wish,’ Susanna had told her. ‘If I am honest, I would like to accept your kind invitation, if only because it will give me time to consider my future arrangements.’

  She was not sure that she wanted to return to her old home: it held too many unhappy memories—and
she certainly didn’t want to live there on her own. She was contemplating a number of possibilities when her mother was announced.

  Mrs Mitchell scarcely waited for the butler to depart before she rounded on Susanna—Madame had already tactfully left the room so that mother and daughter might be alone together.

  ‘Was it you who ruined poor Mr Mitchell and banished us to a back street in Islington? Someone must have told a pack of lies to condemn us to poverty so that you might live in splendour. We were given an hour to leave our own home and were not allowed to take anything with us except the clothes we stood up in. Your poor sisters were even compelled to leave their little treasures behind. Such unkindness! I would never have thought a daughter of mine would treat me so cruelly.’

  She paused to draw breath before continuing her tirade, looking around the room and exclaiming, ‘You seem to be comfortable enough here without needing to vent your spite on us in order to make yourself more comfortable still.’

  After hurling this dart at Susanna, Mrs Mitchell threw herself on to the nearest sofa and began to howl into one of the cushions on it in the most abandoned fashion, before throwing it on one side and preparing to reproach her daughter again.

  Susanna, her face white, had retreated a couple of paces backwards, fearful that her mother might attack her physically. She said, as gently as she could, before Mrs Mitchell could speak again, ‘I had no knowledge of Mr Mitchell’s theft of my inheritance until three days ago, nor was I aware that you had already had to leave your home. But aren’t you forgetting something, Mother?’

  ‘Forgetting! I!’ screamed her mother. ‘No, I am forgetting nothing. Oh, the humiliation! The pain!’

  ‘You are forgetting,’ said Susanna steadily, ‘that your husband, Mr Samuel Mitchell, not only stole my inheritance, he also made sure that my marriage with Francis Sylvester would fail, and after that he turned me out of my home—not yours or his—to earn my own living. My father left you a fortune of your own which passed to Mr Mitchell when you married him, but, not content with that, he made sure that he enjoyed mine. I lost everything—my inheritance, my good name, and my home—through his machinations. It is you who should apologise to me for the wrongs I have suffered, not me apologise to you.’