‘I should have introduced you when you came in,’ said Dickie apologetically. ‘Allow me to present to you my friend and patron, m’lord Devereux, here on one of his rare visits to town.’
Earl Devereux stood up and extended his hand. ‘Jack, please. I was Jack long before I became Earl Devereux and I still think people are referring to my father when the name Lord Devereux is mentioned. And as to a bodyguard for you, I would have offered myself, only I am too busy these days to find the time, but Jem Walters is a good fellow, as we both have reason to know, eh, Dickie—I mean, George!’
Dickie nodded soberly. ‘Oh, we are all respectable, these days, so I suppose that you must call me George. But speaking of the attack on you, Mr Wolfe, I have had some of my men on the qui vive for any information they can gather, and one of them says that the word is out that a deal of money awaits anyone who can do you an injury, preferably a mortal one. Where the money is coming from is unknown—but the other rumour is that a gentleman is behind it.’
Ben nodded. This was similar to information that Jess had gathered for him, and which had made him grudgingly agree to a bodyguard, since an attack might come at any time, and always from persons unknown to him.
What he did not know was that Jess Fitzroy had already carelessly let slip to Susanna and Madame that someone was out to injure him. Or had he been careless, Susanna thought afterwards? Had his slip been intentional?
In any case the information started her busy brain working. Someone must hate Ben very much to want to do such a thing. She knew that a man in his way of business must make enemies, but that someone should wish to kill him seemed an excessive reaction.
On the other hand, supposing he had virtually ruined someone? Would not they want revenge?
An icy hand clutched her heart, for she knew what Ben must have done to Sam Mitchell to make him disgorge her fortune. Was Sam his mysterious assailant? And if he were, was she not in some measure responsible?
The thought was unendurable. She sprang to her feet and went to the little study where Madame was writing letters and said, ‘May I borrow the carriage this afternoon? I should like to visit my mother.’
Like to visit her mother, indeed! She had not the slightest wish to see her, or her stepfather, but if she visited them she might learn something which would either bolster her sudden suspicion—or dismiss it.
‘Of course, my dear. You share in the expense of living here, so you have only to ask.’ Susanna, indeed, had made it plain from the moment that she recovered her fortune that now she was no longer a paid attendant she was as responsible as Madame for the upkeep of the house in which they resided.
She knew where the Mitchells were living; her mother had sent her a bitter letter giving her the address in Islington where they were renting a house, ending with the words, ‘You see to what straits you have reduced us.’
They were, indeed, settled in the wrong end of Islington when she reached there in her modest carriage, grateful that Madame’s taste did not lend itself to a chariot emblazoned with a lozenge showing the arms to which she was entitled. Such an equipage might have caused commotion in the humble street.
A woman’s face appeared—and then hastily disappeared—at the tiny bow window when the footman travelling behind handed her down and followed her to knock on the door before he returned to the carriage.
The face belonged to a slatternly servant girl who drawled, ‘Yus?’ at her after she opened the door just enough to show Susanna a tiny hallway with a steep flight of stairs facing the door. There was another door to her right, and a half-open one at the end of the hall. There was no carpeting on the worn boards of the hall or staircase.
Susanna swallowed. Her mother had not exaggerated the depths to which she and her family had sunk. She clutched at her reticule and offered the sullen girl—little more than a child—a watery smile.
‘Please inform Mrs Mitchell that her daughter is here to see her.’
Before the girl could as much as move the door to the front room opened and her mother appeared.
‘I thought when I saw the carriage that it might be you. What do you want?’
Her voice was as cold as she could make it, and she did not invite Susanna into the house.
‘I would like to speak to you, Mother—if you will invite me in, that is.’
‘Certainly not. Say what you have to say to me now—and go.’
‘Very well, but I think that you would prefer to hear me out in private, rather than in the street.’
‘Go to the kitchen, Polly,’ was all that that earned her.
‘Yessum,’ drawled Polly.
‘Yes?’ said her mother to Susanna, motioning her just inside the front door after the girl had left them, exactly as she might have asked a disobedient servant to explain herself.
‘Mother, I want you to know that I had no notion of what was being done for me when my inheritance was being recovered. I am certainly not happy to see you and the girls in such reduced circumstances. I only ask you to remember that it was Mr Mitchell’s actions which have brought you here, not mine.’
‘Oh, yes?’ sneered her mother. ‘You expect me to believe such a Banbury tale as that when it was that man with whom you and that Frenchwoman are so friendly who brought this upon us? If that is all you have to say to me, you may leave at once.’
So it had been Ben Wolfe who had found out the truth about her fortune and had returned it to her.
‘You must believe me, for I would not lie to you.’
‘And did you also tell him to make sure that Mr Mitchell can find no employment after being branded an embezzler by him, and that we live on the edge of starvation?’
‘If that is so, I am sorry—although I do not believe Ben Wolfe to be as vindictive as that.’
‘Oh, it’s Ben Wolfe, is it? What did you pay him with? Your money—or your person?’
She walked to the street door to fling it open, saying, ‘Please leave, I have nothing more to say to you.’
Susanna stood in the open doorway, her face agonised, but determined to say what she had to, whatever her mother might think or do.
‘But I have something to say to you, Mother, and in saying it I mean to help you. Please tell Mr Mitchell that if it is he who is employing men to injure or kill Mr Wolfe he is risking death or transportation, for Mr Wolfe is not only determined to track him down but he also has powerful friends who will see that he is suitably punished.’
She had barely finished speaking when the door at the far end of the little hall opened and Sam Mitchell stood there. He was so changed from the man she had once known that he was barely recognisable. He had not shaved for some days, his linen was filthy, his clothes dishevelled and he was clutching a bottle in his hand. He must have been listening to their conversation through the half-open door.
‘What the devil’s that you’re threatening me with, girl? Do I look as though I’ve the dibs to pay a crew to nobble the swine who nobbled me? If I had, I would, but I haven’t, and that’s flat. You’ve brought me nothing but bad luck and now you promise to hand me over to the Runners.’
He took another swig at the bottle. ‘Tell your bully boy that. And if I did know who was after him, I wouldn’t peach on him, that I wouldn’t, but I don’t—and if I did, I’d help him if I’d so much as tuppence.’
A final swig and he was staggering back into the room. Mrs Mitchell finally gave way and began to cry bitterly.
Her bravado had not moved Susanna, but her despair did. She stepped forward and took the sobbing woman in her arms. Her mother made no effort to throw her off.
‘Oh, Mama, don’t. It’s not your fault. Oh, this is terrible. Here.’ She pulled her handkerchief from her reticule and began to wipe her mother’s eyes with it. Her mother lay unresisting against her so Susanna walked her gently into the small front room and sat her on a greasy sofa.
After a time her mother subsided into weak snuffles, finally wailing, ‘You see how he is. Nothing which I can
say or do will move him.’
How to comfort her? Susanna opened her reticule and pulled out the handful of guineas which she had put there before she had left Madame’s.
‘Oh, Mama,’ and it was the childish name for her mother which was wrenched from her again. ‘There is so little I can do to help you. The trustees who administer my money are firm with me because of their previous breach of trust. They don’t want to make another mistake. I can settle nothing on you, but take this.’
She thrust the guineas into her mother’s lax hands. ‘Use it to make life for yourself easier. Don’t let him know you have it or it will go on drink. I will try to send you a little when I can—but I fear it won’t be very much.’
All her mother’s defiance had leached out of her. She clutched the guineas to her bosom before putting them into the deep pocket of the apron which she was wearing.
‘I can’t forgive you,’ she said pathetically, ‘but I can’t forgive him, either. Which leaves me with nothing. Go now, before he comes out again. He hasn’t mistreated me or the girls yet, but I fear that one day he might when the drink is in him. I hope you believe him when he says he knows nothing of any wrong doing.’
Susanna thought that she did believe Samuel Mitchell’s denials. ‘When the drink’s in, the truth comes out’, was a saying she had heard as a child and she thought that in this case it might be true.
She kissed her mother on her withered cheek—for she seemed to have aged twenty years since she had last seen her—and took her sad way home to Stanhope Street.
Ben Wolfe’s carriage with its silver trimmings was outside. A large man was standing beside it, talking to the driver who was holding the horses. Susanna hoped that he was the bodyguard of whom Jess had spoken. Inside she found Ben talking to Madame. His face lit up when he saw her.
His greeting of her was, however, prosaic. ‘I thought that I might have missed you. Madame tells me that you have been visiting your mother.’
Susanna thought for a moment before she answered him, considering whether or not to tell him the truth about her errand. She concluded that truth might be the best.
‘Yes. She is living in poverty in a back street in Islington. I had an important question to ask of her and my stepfather.’
She concluded that Ben Wolfe must possess some sort of ability to divine what it was that those around him were truly thinking of or doing before they had told him, for he said immediately after she paused for breath, ‘Why do I believe that your question had something to do with me?’
A little gasp of surprise was forced from her. ‘Now, how did you know that? It is precisely why I went.’
‘Nothing, something,’ he said softly, aware that Madame’s shrewd eyes were on them both. ‘Something in your expression, or your posture, I must suppose. It’s an odd gift I possess which has sometimes proved useful, not only with men, but with animals. I can always tell a wicked horse from a good one.’
‘And which do I qualify as,’ Susanna could not help retorting, ‘a wicked one? Or a good one?’
‘Mixed a little, I should say,’ he told her, keeping his face straight.
Susanna began to laugh. ‘I asked for that,’ she admitted.
And then, growing sober again, she continued with, ‘It was not an amusing question I had to ask her, nor was her behaviour to me amusing, either. On the contrary.’
She hesitated, for now she must tell him that she had guessed of his intervention over the matter of her fortune.
‘You see,’ she said, as quietly and calmly as she could, ‘I guessed that it was you who had pursued Mr Mitchell in order to recover my inheritance, and since it must be supposed that you are being attacked by someone who considered that you had wronged him, it occurred to me that your unknown enemy might be him.’
Fascinated, Ben stared at her. ‘May I ask how long you have known about my part in your recovered inheritance?’
‘Almost from the day it was restored to me,’ she confessed, ‘for who else did I know who was powerful enough to right my wrongs?’
‘And you said nothing,’ he marvelled. ‘Most women would have been chattering about it for evermore.’
‘Well,’ said Susanna, ‘I supposed that had you wished me to know, you would have told me. Only the notion that Mr Mitchell might be your enemy caused me to use my knowledge and then to tell you what I think I may have learned.’
Both Madame and Ben were staring at her in astonishment.
Ben said at last, ‘Never tell me you went there and asked him point-blank?’
‘Not quite.’ Susanna was a trifle uncomfortable over admitting what she had done when they were both looking at her as though she were an odd specimen in a case in a museum. ‘But when my mother was so unkind to me and blamed me for her penury, I felt free to warn her what Mr Mitchell’s fate might be if he were your attacker…Why are you both looking at me like that?’
Ben answered before Madame could. ‘Well, if you must know, I was thinking of how you behaved when we first met, which should have told me that little was beyond you in terms of daring. But do go on. I am sure, again by your expression, that you have not concluded this remarkable narrative.’
‘Nor I have,’ said Susanna, smiling at him now she understood that his surprise at her forward conduct was laced with admiration. ‘The moment I finished warning her, Mr Mitchell suddenly appeared from the back room. He was most unlike himself,’ she finished thoughtfully.
‘May one ask in what way?’ intoned Ben sweetly.
‘He was dirty, badly dressed and quite drunk. Not falling down drunk, you understand, just tipsy and still able to converse—’
‘We both thank you for the definition, most helpful,’ interrupted Ben. ‘Do go on. What next?’
‘Well, between swigs from the bottle he was carrying, he said that he had had nothing to do with the attack on you because he couldn’t afford it, but he applauded it all the same. He said that I had brought him bad luck. I am inclined to think that he was telling the truth.’
‘He’s right about the bad-luck bit,’ offered Ben, grinning. ‘What makes you think that he wasn’t lying about the attack on me?’
‘They are most desperately poor,’ said Susanna earnestly. ‘I’m sure that he couldn’t afford to hire bully boys, although he might like to.’
Ben thought for a moment. ‘I’m almost certain that you are right. But, Susanna, I want you to promise me something. That you’ll never do such a thing on your own again. It might be dangerous. You should have told me, and I would have gone to interview him.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t have done that. You see, if I hadn’t received any kind of assurance, I didn’t want you to know that I had guessed that you were my benefactor. Surely you can understand that?’
His eyes on her were assessing. ‘Yes, we are more alike than anyone might think. It gave you a kind of power over me, didn’t it?’
Susanna flushed scarlet. ‘I suppose so, yes. I have to keep my end up you see, and you are such a superior creature in so many ways. Being a man to begin with…It doesn’t leave a poor girl much in the way of feeling that she is in control of her life. Keeping from you the knowledge that I was aware that you were my benefactor was a small victory.’
Silence fell. Ben said at last, ‘I see.’
He couldn’t say, Thank God you’re not a man because I want to take you in my arms and do with you all those exciting things which men and women can do together—particularly because you are such a gallant creature. I have a feeling you’d be gallant in bed, too.
So he said nothing.
Mistaking his silence—and the slightly strained expression on his face—for disapproval, Susanna said earnestly. ‘It was also a way of thanking you for your kindness—to be able to find out whether or not Mr Mitchell was guilty. The only sad thing is my poor mother. She is being punished, too. I know you won’t approve, but I gave her some ready money and I intend to give her more. On condition that she doesn’t give it to him to buy d
rink.’
‘Dear girl,’ said Ben fondly, ‘if she loves the wretch, and from everything you tell me she does, of course, she’ll give it to him to buy drink. But if it makes you happy to throw your money away on them, don’t let me dissuade you.’
Madame spoke at last. ‘Everything you have told us does you credit, my dear, and I’m sure that Ben knows that. He’s only worried about your safety.’
‘Well, I’m worried about his, so that makes us quits,’ said Susanna cheerfully. ‘May we talk about something else?’
‘Not before I have thanked you,’ Ben said. ‘You understand that I must ask Jess to try to confirm what you have told me—but that is merely a precaution. A wise man always checks any information which he is given, he never merely takes it on trust.’
Susanna nodded. ‘I can see that,’ she told him, her face so earnest and confiding that it nearly unmanned him.
‘But if Mr Mitchell proves not to be your enemy, then it narrows your search, does it not?’
‘Exactly,’ said Ben. ‘You would be a most useful addition to my staff, Miss Beverly, if you can understand that without me telling you.’
‘Susanna,’ she said. ‘I insist that you call me Susanna. We are friends now, are we not?’
‘Friends!’ Ben almost snorted. ‘Yes, I suppose you may say so.’
Judging by their expressions during this interchange, Madame thought that friendship was far too mild a word to describe what existed between Ben and Susanna. The only problem was why it was taking so long for them to understand that. On second thoughts, though, it was possible that their difficult past lives had made it impossible for them to trust another completely. It was easy to detect how powerfully Ben was attracted to Susanna, but Susanna, for all her charming artlessness, was a far more difficult person to read.
That she liked Ben was plain—but was liking all that she felt for him? If so, it was a pity, for they were so well suited to one another that, for a moment, Madame was tempted to play matchmaker. Only for a moment, though. Ben and Susanna were both so strong-minded that they would strongly resent feeling that she might be manipulating them, and she liked and respected them both too much to risk losing their friendship.
The Wolfe's Mate Page 16
