‘I take note that your son, having insulted me, is neither ready to take the consequences, nor to speak for himself. I wondered where the courage—which he so recently lacked—came from when he taunted me a moment ago, but I see that it was because he had no intention of proving either his courage or his honour. I don’t find that surprising since he apparently possesses neither virtue.’
He swung round on George, who had stepped back to allow his father to fight his battles for him.
‘Do you intend to allow me to insult you at will? I shall certainly do so if you don’t remove yourself from my sight.’
His whole appearance was so threatening that George retreated even further backwards, his face paling, proving, if proof were needed, that Ben’s impugning of his courage was no less than true.
Tom Wilson put a hand on Ben’s arm. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘you have made your point. If the young fellow won’t fight, we all know what to think of him.’
Captain Gronow, who had abandoned his card game, came over to them. ‘What’s to do?’ he asked, being very much a man who was sought after to pass judgement when such quarrels had reached point non plus.
Before Ben could answer Gronow’s question, Tom Wilson put his oar in again. ‘I am a third party here, albeit I am Mr Wolfe’s friend. The matter lies so,’ and he gave a brief and accurate account of what had passed.
‘Hmm,’ said Gronow, managing to make that mild exclamation sound magisterial. ‘A serious business, I see. My own feeling is that Lord Darlington should not have gone as far as he did unless he intended to back his accusation with the force of arms. On the other hand, Lord Babbacombe has some right on his side when he argues that the accusation, if true, relieves his son of defending himself against someone whose own honour is dubious. The matter is at a stand-off until Mr Wolfe’s claim to be who he is has been proven beyond doubt.’
Tom Wilson said indignantly, ‘I have known Ben Wolfe since he was eighteen and he has borne no other name.’
‘Which proves nothing, Tom,’ said Ben savagely. ‘You are but an India merchant, and who I claimed to be at eighteen is neither here nor there—as you well know. I thank you for your defence, but…’ and he shrugged his shoulders.
Captain Gronow’s reply was mild. ‘Until matters are settled, all parties must agree to let them rest. No unproven accusations and insults should be exchanged, and consequently there should be no duelling, either provoked inside these walls or outside of them. I think that is clear, you will agree.’
He was one of society’s arbiters, and most of the men who had clustered around Ben and his two accusers would consider what he had said to be fair and reasonable. Both parties could do nothing but accept what he had said.
‘This is not the end of the affair,’ exclaimed Lord Babbacombe. ‘You heard what I said. I shall pursue you until I have broken you, as you are breaking me. I believe you to be the person behind the collapse of my son’s marriage to Miss Western.’
‘Come, come, m’lord,’ said Gronow, the only person brave enough to say such a thing to a peer of the realm, ‘you have no proof of that. No proof at all. Let us, as I advised, leave the matter where it stands.’
Even Babbacombe could not refuse to agree with him, especially when he was surrounded by nodding heads all agreeing with Gronow. There were those who hastened to put their name in White’s famous betting book, wagering good money that Ben Wolfe and either Babbacombe or Darlington would meet one dawn at Putney to put the matter to the final test of a duel, even though they dare say nothing aloud.
His face furious, Lord Babbacombe walked away with his son, exclaiming vigorously that he had no mind to remain at White’s while it was polluted by Ben Wolfe’s presence. Ben himself made no effort to leave. He picked up his glass of port and coolly continued his conversation with Tom Wilson as though he had never been interrupted.
Tom heard him out before saying bluffly, ‘Well, at least one thing that m’lord said was true. You are, I am reliably informed, responsible for his financial ruin.’
‘Now where did you hear that?’ Ben’s reply was almost indifferent.
‘Oh, you can’t keep such matters secret.’
‘I know. Every camp has its traitor. Be sure I shall find mine.’
Tom clapped him on the back. ‘I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes. If you leave him the wherewithal to buy any, that is.’
‘Are you referring to the traitor—or Lord Babbacombe?’
‘Either or both,’ said Tom with a grin. ‘Take your pick.’
‘Oh, I will. Another thing you may be sure of.’
His friend nodded. One thing he was sure of was that he would not like to have Ben Wolfe for an enemy.
‘You would do well not to underrate Babbacombe, though. He has powerful friends, and it would be advisable to take his threats seriously.’
‘Oh, Tom, I always take everything seriously. As you should know.’
They had been friends since Ben had left the Army in India and had used his savings and his winnings at cards to start up his own small business. By chance he had done Tom Wilson so great a favour that Tom had rewarded him not only with money, but with help and advice in his new career.
Later Tom was to think, a trifle ruefully, that the help and advice had been scarcely necessary, for Ben had soon carved out for himself an empire even greater and more prosperous than his own. But being Ben’s friend, he had discovered, brought its own rewards. Jess Fitzroy had not lied when he had told Susanna that Ben looked after people. When ill luck overtook Tom, it was Ben who had bailed him out, and helped him to recover most of what he had lost and enabled him to make an even greater fortune.
And now they were both in London, enjoying their success, and building a new life in the land which they had left behind as very young men.
‘Did you ever think, Ben, when you were a penniless private soldier, that one day you would be drinking with the nobs in the best gentleman’s club in London?’
It was a question which invited ‘no’ for an answer, but Ben lifted his refilled glass and grinned at his old friend. ‘Oh, yes. Even then I dreamed of a day like this. And what I should do when I achieved my dream.’
‘You mean—about Babbacombe?’ asked Tom shrewdly.
‘Among other things, yes.’
His face when he came out with this was so grim that Tom shuddered. Ben had served under the Duke of Wellington when he had been what Napoleon had sneeringly called ‘a mere Sepoy general’, and he thought that, like Wellington, Ben had steel in his soul.
He pitied Babbacombe and his cowardly cub of a son from the bottom of his heart, but he also knew that if Ben Wolfe was pursuing them they deserved to be pursued.
‘So,’ said Susanna prettily to her host, ‘you didn’t name your home in London “The Lair” as I thought that you might. Croft House seems a pretty innocent place for a Wolfe to live in.’
Ben smiled at her. They were in the drawing room, waiting to go into dinner. ‘I might have known,’ he told her, ‘that I would suffer the edge of your tongue. My London home is called Croft House because the Croft family lived here until they died out some fifty years ago. But now that you have mentioned it I shall probably change it to The Lair—it might frighten off housebreakers and scapegallows.’
‘Scapegallows?’ exclaimed Madame de Saulx. ‘That is a new word for me. Pray, what does it mean?’
‘Oh, you must ask Mr Fitzroy that—it is he who collects thieves’ slang for me.’
Jess smiled and bowed to Madame before saying, ‘A scapegallows is a criminal who has done exactly that. He has escaped hanging by some artful means and returns to prey on us again. At the moment, there is a new and violent crew of them—their word for gang—stopping honest citizens in the street at night and relieving them of their valuables. The watch seems unable to protect us from their depredations.’
‘Best not to go out alone at night,’ said Tom Wilson practically. ‘I never do.’
‘Wise advice
,’ drawled Lord Lowborough. ‘Coming back to it, I find that London is a paradise for rogues of all degrees. There are nearly as many swindlers in the City in the day as there are pickpockets in the streets at night.’
‘Oh, come, Lowborough,’ exclaimed Tom. ‘That’s stretching it a little, ain’t it?’
‘Hardly,’ murmured Ben, smiling.
‘And you should know.’
Lowborough smiled back at him. He had been young Henry Forster, a poor lieutenant in Wellington’s Indian army, three lives from a title, when Ben had been his sergeant. As an almost penniless boy, he had been helped by Ben Wolfe after Ben’s rise to fortune nearly as much as Jess Fitzroy, except that his unexpected accession to his title had suddenly transformed him into a rich magnate who needed no man’s help.
Unlike many, he had been as grateful to Ben when he was rich as he had been when he was poor, and their friendship had continued unabated. He had married into the Milner family and his pretty wife, Jane, was sitting next to Susanna, listening in some astonishment to the lively conversation going on around her. The Milners were devout Christians and discussions about swindling and thieves and thief-taking were not the staple of their normal conversation.
She whispered to Susanna, ‘Are Mr Wolfe’s dinners always like this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Susanna whispered back. ‘This is the first of his which I have attended.’
‘Henry swears that Mr Wolfe is the cleverest man he knows, and he always says and does the unexpected. Looking at him, I find that I can quite believe that to be true. He frightens me a little. Doesn’t he frighten you? If you will forgive me saying so, you didn’t seem frightened when you quizzed him about the name of his house.’
Does he frighten me? thought Susanna. I can’t honestly say that he does. He didn’t frighten me when we first met because I was too angry with him to be frightened of him, and he doesn’t frighten me now. On the other hand, he does disturb me in the oddest way. If I were a character in a novel, I should probably believe that I was falling in love with him—although I can’t imagine him falling in love with me.
‘No,’ she told Jane honestly. ‘He doesn’t frighten me, he intrigues me.’
She was watching him laughing at something Lord Lowborough had said, his head flung back, his strong white teeth gleaming, his eyes shining, looking for all the world like the wolf he was named after. She was surer than ever that he was her unknown saviour—and by what devious means he had saved her she did not yet care to know.
‘You have heard, I suppose,’ Jane said, ‘that Lord Babbacombe, who is a distant relative of the Wolfes, swears that he is not a Wolfe at all and has no right to the name or to the house and the remnants of the Wolfe lands which he claimed when he returned from India. He says that he will go to law to prove it.’
Susanna swung her head around to stare at Jane. ‘No, I had not heard that. Is it true—or is it idle gossip?’
‘Oh, I overheard Henry telling a friend that Lord Babbacombe and Mr Wolfe had a set-to at White’s the other night. He said that Mr Wolfe challenged Lord Darlington to a duel for insulting him and Lord Darlington refused on the grounds that he did not fight men who had no right to the name they bore. Even if that name was tarnished by the scandals around the late Mr Wolfe.’
‘He would,’ said Susanna curtly. ‘He is too cowardly to face Mr Wolfe—or any other man in a duel.’
‘Well, I’m glad that Henry is Mr Wolfe’s friend,’ said Jane, ‘for I can’t imagine anyone wishing to face him in a duel. Henry says…’ and she began to describe her husband’s account of Ben’s prowess as a swordsman, marksman and pugilist.
One thing was plain to Susanna—beside the proof of Ben Wolfe’s many-sided talents—Jane Lowborough was so besotted with her husband that ‘Henry says’ prefaced most of her conversation.
What worried her, though, was Lord Babbacombe’s reported attack on Ben. If Ben hated Lord Babbacombe—and her memory of what he had said of him at the time of his kidnapping told her that he did—then, equally, for whatever reason, Lord Babbacombe hated Ben. And what were the scandals which surrounded the late Mr Wolfe? They must be old ones, for she understood that Ben Wolfe’s father had died when he was little more than a boy.
‘Did your husband tell you, or have you any notion, why Lord Babbacombe dislikes Mr Wolfe so much?’
‘Oh, the rumour is that it was Mr Wolfe who ruined him financially—which was why Lord Darlington’s marriage with Miss Western was called off, and possibly why Lord Babbacombe is accusing him of impersonation now.’
She paused reflectively. ‘I had no notion when I married Henry that life would be so exciting. Papa was a country Rector, you know, and the most excitement we ever had were the disputes among the men about who was the best shot and among the ladies about who should organise the flowers in church, or go first into dinner. One can scarcely imagine Mr Wolfe and Mr Wilson troubling themselves about such innocent matters.’
‘Ah, Lady Lowborough,’ said Madame on overhearing this, ‘you intrigue me.’
She had been conversing with Mrs Wilson and Mrs Dickson. Mrs Dickson was the wife of another of Ben Wolfe’s financial allies. She had been, before their respective marriages, the companion and friend of Lady Devereux, famous for her wit and her eccentricity.
‘If you are discussing innocent matters with Miss Beverly, then I fear that you may be the only pair in the room who are. Mrs Dickson and I have discovered a common admiration for the late M. de la Rochefoucauld, who cannot in any circumstances be described as innocent. We have been shocking Mrs Wilson with his cynicism.
‘As for the gentlemen of the party, their conversation is never innocent, and we must hope that dinner will be soon announced so that it becomes trivial again when they decide that they must spare the ladies’ delicate feelings.’
Jane Lowborough gave a little gasp on hearing such frank heresy. Susanna, on the other hand, was as entertained as she always was when Madame spoke her mind.
Mrs Dickson remarked approvingly, ‘Well said. I am sure that they will deal only with crinkum crankum in our presence.’
‘Crinkum crankum?’ queried Madame. ‘Pray, what does that mean? My command of English does not extend to understanding that.’
‘Women’s nothings,’ returned Mrs Dickson. ‘Most of the men are not very good at it. Real crinkum crankum is dress and gossip and the latest Gothic novel—about which none of them know anything.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on Mr Ben Wolfe being ignorant of such matters,’ offered Susanna, ‘he seems to know everything.’
Privately she was amused at the turn the evening’s conversation had taken with earnest discussion on thieves and society slang being intermingled with lofty discussions on French philosophers.
Dinner being announced had them all parading into the dining room. Susanna was led in by Jess Fitzroy; Madame was Ben’s partner. Dinner-table conversation, as prophesied, was light in the extreme.
The only serious remark came from Tom Wilson, who told Ben to watch his back and earned in response, a light-hearted, ‘Don’t worry, Tom, I always take more notice of my enemies than my friends.’
How typical of him, was Susanna’s immediate reaction. He was sure to say the very opposite of what one might have expected! She said so to Jess. ‘I shall take a deal of notice of your judgements in future, Mr Fitzroy, particularly to those concerning your employer.’
‘Oh, all my judgements are worth heeding, Miss Beverly,’ he told her, giving her his most dazzling smile. He really was the most handsome man, so why his golden beauty and regular features were unable to excite her in the same way that Ben Wolfe’s harsh and craggy face did was a puzzle which Susanna was unable to solve.
In fact, she seemed to be surrounded by puzzles. Why had Madame been so eager to borrow Lord Exford’s copy of La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes? Did the inscription in it have any significance? What were the scandals about his father to which Jane Lowborough had referred? Was Ben Wolfe truly entit
led to his name? Why did he wish to ruin Lord Babbacombe and his family? And why had he wanted to kidnap Amelia?
Were all these things connected in some way? It was difficult to see how her new friend and patroness Madame de Saulx was involved, other than that she was also the most unlikely friend and patron of Ben Wolfe.
‘You are quiet tonight, Miss Beverly,’ remarked Jess as they were served the next course. Ben Wolfe’s dinners were organised after the Russian, not the English, fashion with footmen handing the food around rather than all the courses being put in the centre of the table.
Susanna’s eyes were alight with mischief as she answered him. ‘Does that mean that you usually find me noisy?’
‘On the contrary, you have a low voice, which I assure you is what pleases men most in women, but you commonly use it well and wittily. Tonight, though, you are a trifle subdued. I trust that you are not feeling low.’
‘Oh, no, I am in rude health, but…’ For a moment Susanna considered asking Jess the nature of the scandal about Ben’s father, but decided against it.
‘But?’ he prompted her.
‘But I have been reading M. de la Rochefoucauld’s Maximes and his cynicism has left me feeling a little melancholy.’
There was a certain amount of truth in that statement, but not much, Susanna reflected, but it was the best explanation which she could offer to satisfy Jess at such short notice.
‘Then allow me to dispel your melancholy by regaling you with some of the more amusing rumours circulating about town at the moment.’
The greatest rumours, thought Susanna, as Jess was as good as his word, telling her of the Prince Regent’s latest efforts to rid himself of his unwanted wife, were those concerning their host, which were hardly the subject for wit at his own dinner table! However, she laughed obligingly at Jess’s spirited delivery, so much so, indeed that Ben leaned forward and remarked, ‘You seem to be enjoying yourselves a great deal at your end of the table, Jess. May we all be allowed to share your jokes?’
The Wolfe's Mate Page 13
