Kitty

That he would opt to send her back was all too likely, Kitty reflected a little despondently. He showed no sign of being attracted to her. He clearly did not wish to marry his cousin. And since Kitty evidently resembled her, she could not suppose he would wish to marry her either. A pity, for she desperately wanted to marry a lord! Still, it might not be comfortable to be wed to a stranger, and it was apparent that it would be difficult to bring this Claud up to scratch.

Besides, he was a brute! She recalled the rough treatment she had received at his hands—and the recent threat—with a resurgence of outrage. Oh, but she would serve him out for it! Only wait until he discovered his mistake. For discover it he must, sooner or later. However much she resembled his cousin—

The thought died. Kitty’s pulse did a rapid tattoo and shot into a wild thumping that echoed in her ears. Why had she not thought of it at once? If she was this alike to an unknown female, there could be only one explanation. She had stumbled inadvertently upon a member of her lost family.

Buried in his own thoughts, Claud, Viscount Devenick, paid scant heed to his cousin beside him, although she came within the scope of his ruminations. His temper had cooled, but he was at a loss to account for Kate’s freakish conduct. Not that he would question her again. If she meant to persist with this ridiculous masquerade, it would only drive him up into the boughs. Thank the Lord she had ceased her nonsensical arguing. Did she think he truly would have gagged her? Should have known him better. Clearly she did not, as this escapade proved. Silly chit hadn’t trusted him!

He reminded himself that she was only eighteen and just out this season. From the vantage point of five and twenty, it was clear how readily this escapade could put the cat among the pigeons. Faced with a niece who ran away rather than marry her cousin, ten to one his mother would force him to the altar on the pretext that Kate had blasted her reputation.

Not that he was such a nodcock as not to realise why Lady Blakemere had taken this notion into her head. If it hadn’t been for Grandmama’s promised legacy to the girl to give her a decent dowry, the scheme would not have occurred to the Countess. As if he hadn’t enough money of his own! And all his mother would keep saying was that the Dowager Duchess’s money ought to be kept in the family. A pity he had no brother instead of three sisters. It would have made sense for a younger son to dangle after the loot. But not for Claud to tie himself up in matrimony to Kate, of all girls under the sun!

She was comely enough, but what man wanted to wed his cousin? Besides, she was a thought too much of a milk-and-water miss for his taste. Which made her conduct today all the more incomprehensible. He’d never known the chit to be so flighty, nor to face him down as she had. A faint stirring of interest rose up. Perhaps there was more to young Kate than he had thought. He turned to glance at her, and found her studying him, her dark brows lowering. Claud shot instantly to the attack.

‘What are you scowling for? You should be grateful to me.’

She continued to stare at him, a pout forming on her lips.

‘Lost your tongue?’ demanded Claud crossly. ‘Answer me, can’t you?’

It was too much. Kitty lost her temper.

‘Answer me, can’t you!’ she echoed, in almost exact imitation of his tone. ‘Why should I answer you, when you can think of nothing better to do than to threaten me? Is it not enough that you have dragged me by force into your carriage?’

‘That was your own fault, Kate. Why couldn’t you come quietly? Fought like a wildcat!’

‘And I would do so again!’

But to his utter bewilderment, the chit abruptly burst into tears. Claud was thrown into instant disorder. He hadn’t meant to make her cry.

‘Hey, no need to turn into a watering pot!’

‘Yes, there is,’ sobbed Kitty, hunting frantically for her pocket-handkerchief. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done, and I can’t tell you. Except that it is terrible!’

Unable to find the handkerchief, Kitty recalled that she’d had it in her hand when this infamous Claud had come upon her. It must have been lost in the struggle. She sniffed, turning on her abductor.

‘And you made me lose my handkerchief!’

He transferred the reins to his left hand and dug the right into a pocket of his frock coat. ‘Here.’

Kitty snatched the snowy white pocket-handkerchief he presented to her and defiantly blew her nose, wiping away her tears. The desire to weep was receding, but she did not return the handkerchief, instead jerking it between her fingers in a nervous fashion. The wind had begun to make her feel chilled, reminding her of the woeful lack in her costume. She looked round at the author of her plight.

‘Do you realise that you have brought me away without a stitch to wear besides this gown?’

The blue gaze travelled briefly down her person and returned to the road. ‘Beats me why you’d want the thing! Where did you get it? You look like the farmer’s daughter in her Sunday best.’

‘How hateful of you to say so! I know it is not fashionable, but—’

‘If you take my advice, you’ll burn it.’

‘Burn it!’ shrieked Kitty, outraged. ‘It cost me three whole shillings!’

He looked round again, a critical frown between his fair brows. ‘You were robbed. Mind you, I can’t think why you didn’t provide yourself at least with a cloak. Featherbrained, that’s what you are, young Kate.’

Kitty glared at him. ‘Why should I take a cloak merely for a trip to the shops on the Green on a day like this?’

But Claud was not attending. It had been borne in upon him that his idiotic cousin was shivering. Why she must need escape without proper preparation, he was at a loss to understand. Silly chit hadn’t a brain in her head. Thank the Lord he had held steadfast against marrying the wench!

He slowed the carriage, and called over his shoulder to the groom. ‘Docking, is there a blanket in this thing?’

‘Under the seat, me lord.’

Kitty, who had been lost in the realisation that everything she owned was at the Seminary, came to herself as the carriage was pulled up. Her abductor was rummaging under the seat, and Kitty briefly thought of taking a chance and jumping down. Only he would be bound to come after her, and would have no difficulty in catching her. Besides, how in the world would she manage, left in the middle of the highway, with no notion where she was and no means of getting herself back to Paddington?

Claud straightened, and shaking out the blanket he had found, slung it carelessly around Kitty’s shoulders.

‘Wrap yourself in this.’

Regretfully abandoning the opportunity for escape, Kitty huddled herself into the new warmth. Gratitude swept through her, and without thinking, she smiled at Claud for the first time in this nightmare journey.

‘Thank you.’

For a moment, Claud stared at his cousin’s features, oddly troubled by the look that accompanied the smile. It vanished abruptly.

‘Oh, Lord! What in the world will the Duck say when she finds me gone?’

‘Duck? What duck?’ demanded Claud, bewildered. ‘What the devil has a duck to say to anything?’

But Kitty, reminded by the idea of Paddington, had realised that in all the horror of her capture, she had forgotten Mrs Duxford. She was supposed in the afternoon to mind the pupils who were practising the pianoforte. When it was found that she had been missing throughout, the Duck was bound to think she was up to mischief. What if it was discovered that she had left the village in company with a strange man? Suppose someone had seen him forcing her into his curricle? She would be utterly ruined.

Almost the thought of Mrs Duxford’s inevitable rage made her wish she might never go back. Only the apprehension of what might be awaiting her in the immediate future was worse. If indeed, this abominable Claud’s cousin Kate was so very much her image. It must be her family! She had longed to find out the truth of her background—believing all these years that it had been kept from her deliberately. But now that the opportunity had arisen, she was more afraid than she had thought possible. They had not wanted her. How would they react if she were thrust upon them?

The curricle had been on the move again for some while, and Kitty sat silent, from time to time contemplating the profile of the perpetrator of the evils that were gathering about her. What would he say and do when he discovered his mistake? Worse, what would these unknown relatives say?

Time began to have no meaning, and Kitty could not have said how long she had been travelling when she noticed that the passing scenery had begun to change, the rural aspect of the country giving way to an urban feel. The traffic became steadily heavier, with more people shifting on the roadside. They must be approaching the capital.

‘Where are we?’

‘Coming up to Tyburn Gate.’

‘Then we are almost in London!’

Despite the invidious nature of her situation and the horrid uncertainty of her future, Kitty was conscious of a burgeoning excitement. How she had longed to come here! What dreams she’d had of the soirées and balls she would attend; the masquerades and theatres; and the fashionable Bond Street shops!

She gazed about her with new interest, drinking in the sight of persons of all description trotting to and fro. Here a liveried servant, hastening with a message perhaps. There a female in clogs with a yoke about her neck, crying wares which Kitty could not identify. Red-coated soldiers stood about a tavern at the roadside, and several official-looking men were to be seen hurrying into a building, while a fellow in rough garments, with a straw in his mouth, leaned against a wall.

The noise grew to a din. Rumbling wheels, cries from the street, and the yapping of dogs mingled with a clattering and hammering that came at Kitty from all directions. She almost put her hands over her ears. But she was distracted by a series of emanating aromas that assailed her nostrils one after the other. Strongest amongst these was the ordure from the many horses, swept to one side by an industrious boy. But through that, Kitty identified the smell of manly sweat here, and there that of fresh baked bread. Confusion swamped her.

Huddling in her blanket, she felt altogether inadequate, and ill equipped for this great city. Without realising what she did, she drew nearer to the man at her side. Despite his horrid conduct, he was her only hope of succour. She had no clothes, no money, and no prospect of remedy. And at any minute, she would be facing the consequences of her abductor’s rash actions.

At last, the curricle entered a less noisome part of the town, coming into a tree-lined avenue that ran beside a large park. She pointed.

‘What is that, please?’

Claud started out of a reverie. ‘Eh?’

‘Is it Hyde Park, perhaps?’

Irritation shook him once again. ‘Thank the Lord we’re almost there! If I had to take much more, young Kate, I couldn’t answer for the consequences.’

He found himself under scrutiny from his cousin’s brown eyes, a disconcerting expression in them.

‘Where are you taking me?’

Claud sighed. ‘To the Haymarket, of course. Where else should I take you but to your own home? Unless my aunt has already gone to the Countess in Grosvenor Square. In which case, we’ll have to concoct some tale to account for your absence. Though I’m hanged if I can think what!’

He glanced at her again as he spoke, and the oddest sensation came to him. For a flicker of time, he wondered if the chit was indeed someone else. Then he shook off the moment. It was just what she wanted him to think, he dared say. And the moment he admitted he had a doubt, Kate would laugh him out of court.

‘Still beats me why you did this, young Kate. What did you hope to gain?’

Kitty had no answer. Since he would not accept the truth—and showed an alarming tendency to brutishness in anger!—she judged it prudent to evade the question.

‘I know you will come to regret your actions this day, sir,’ she said instead. ‘Only I hope you will be gentleman enough not to blame me for it in the end.’

‘Still at it, eh? Well, I’ve done. We’ll see how you persist when my aunt has an attack of the vapours!’

If anyone deserved to have the vapours, it was herself, Kitty decided. For as they drew nearer and nearer to the destination he had outlined, the thought of what she might discover at the other end all but crushed her.

The house at which the curricle drew up at length was very fine. A tall building of grey stone, with a narrow porticoed entrance, one of a row that had been built in much the same design.

Kitty’s heartbeat became flurried again as the groom leaped from his perch and ran first to the great front door, where he tugged on a bell hanging to one side. As he returned to go to the horses’ heads, she was impelled to make one last appeal before Claud could alight.

‘Sir, pray listen to me!’

His head turned, but his manner was impatient. ‘What’s to do, Kate? Let’s get in and get this over with.’

He was still holding the reins and his whip, and Kitty reached out an unconscious hand to grasp his arm.

‘You are making a grave mistake,’ she said tensely. ‘I very much fear that you may be opening a closet in which I will be found to be the skeleton.’

Claud cast up his eyes. ‘Will you have done?’

He turned away without waiting for her answer. Next moment, he had leaped down and was handing both reins and whip to the groom, who left the horses to take them. Vaguely Kitty was aware that the groom was swinging himself up into the driving seat. But her eyes were upon Claud as he came around the back of the carriage to her side. He held up his hands to her.

‘Come on, I’ll lift you down.’

There was no help for it. Kitty let the blanket fall away and half-rose, moving to find the step. But two strong hands seized her by the waist. There was an instant of helplessness, and she grasped at his convenient shoulders. Then she was set upon her feet, the hands shifting to her arms to steady her. Kitty felt strangely light-headed, and was conscious of warmth where his gloved hands touched her.

She looked up into his face, and found the blue eyes had softened.

‘You’re a confounded nuisance, young Kate. But I’ll stand buff, never fear. I won’t let Aunt Silvia bully you!’

This from one who had bullied her unmercifully! Kitty had no words left for protest, for the unpleasant behaviour of her heart was giving her enough to contend with. An imposing individual of great girth and age had opened the door of the Haymarket house. Kitty allowed herself to be shepherded up the short flight of steps and meekly followed the gentleman inside.

The hall into which she stepped was long and somewhat narrow, with a staircase towards the back. There was space only for a table to one side with a gilded mirror above, together with a hat stand and a porter’s chair.

Claud stripped off his gloves and handed them, together with his hat, to his aunt’s butler. The fellow was fortunately too discreet to say anything, he thought, as he briefly checked his image in the mirror and passed a hand across the cropped blond locks to straighten them. One could not blame the butler for the look he had cast upon Kate, following in his wake. Not that Tufton gave himself away by so much as a flicker. But the fellow could scarcely fail to have been astonished.

‘Is my aunt in, Tufton?’

‘To you, m’lord, yes.’

‘In the yellow saloon, is she?’

The butler bowed. ‘As is her custom, m’lord. She is with—’

But Claud was already ascending the staircase, turning to ensure that Kate was following. There was not a dog’s chance of keeping this escapade from his aunt, so there was nothing for it but to beard her at once. At least she had not run to his mother. One might entertain some hope of brushing through this with the minimum of fuss. He turned to his cousin as he reached the first floor.

‘Looks as if your mama ain’t blown the whistle, in which case you may escape with a scold.’ Her eyes were as round as saucers. The wench looked scared to death! ‘It’s all right, silly chit. She can’t bite you.’

Kitty swallowed on the choking feeling occasioned by the frantic beating at her bosom. Her hands were trembling, and she was obliged to clasp them together. Her legs felt like jelly, but she trod resolutely behind Claud, her eyes on the back of his fair head, as he strode purposefully for a little way down a corridor and stopped outside one of a series of doors of dark wood. He gave her an encouraging wink.

‘Here goes!’

And then the door was open, and there was nothing to do but to square her shoulders and walk into the unknown.

Claud let his cousin precede him, and then strolled into the well-known yellow saloon. It was aptly named, with walls covered in a paper of dull mustard, striped in gilt that was rubbed away in places. The Hepplewhite chairs of mahogany were cushioned at the seat in faded yellow brocade, and cracked gilding enhanced the mantel as well as the stain-spotted mirror above. That it was a family room was evidenced by the general air of dilapidation, the plethora of knick-knacks and ornaments placed upon every surface, and the wear in the brown patterned rug.

His aunt Silvia, a matron with a tendency to corpulence, and attired most unsuitably in a gown fashionably waisted below her ample bosom, was seated in a striped sofa of yellow and brown set close to the fireside—although there were no coals burning there today. The small table to one side held a jumble of the impedimenta required by a knitter. And on the sofa beside her, holding up between her hands a skein of wool in order to enable his aunt to wind it into a ball, sat a young female whom Claud knew almost as well as he knew himself.

In the blankest amazement, he stood staring at his cousin. The deuce! If Kate was sitting there, then who in the name of all the gods was the girl by his side? And why was she the living spit of the Honourable Katherine Rothley?

Chapter Two

At the back of Claud’s mind hovered a realisation that both aunt and cousin, having caught sight of the girl, were staring in a species of shock. But the recognition that he had made a colossal blunder—had not the chit said so over and over?—made him address his immediate feelings to the stranger herself.

‘Hang it all, I’ve made a mistake! Deuced sorry for it—er—’ what in the world was he to call her? ‘—ma’am, only you look so alike! Don’t know who you may be, but I’ve obviously dragged you off to no purpose.’

The girl made no reply. He could not be sure she had heard him. She was in the devil of a tremble, that he could see. Not surprising. He was a thought shaken himself!

A faint moan turned his attention back to the sofa. To his deep dismay, his aunt Silvia had turned ashen. The ball of wool she had been holding had fallen from her grasp and was rolling unchecked across the carpet, unwinding as it went. At any other time, Claud would have leaped to retrieve it, but the sight of his aunt’s pallid features, accompanied by a series of palpitating moans that began to issue from her mouth, had thoroughly unnerved him. An attack of the vapours! That was all he needed!

The matron toppled backwards, falling against the upholstered back of the sofa, her eyes rolling alarmingly in their sockets and showing white. Claud darted forward and checked again, irresolute.

But his cousin, whose own rapt attention had been all upon the unknown female, had started at her mother’s collapse and jumped up, her skein of wool discarded. She seized her mother by the shoulders.

‘Mama! What is the matter? Mama, pray!’

Claud took a hand, moving to the sofa. ‘No use shaking her like that, silly chit! Here, let me. Haven’t you any smelling salts? Give me another cushion!’

In a moment, he had arranged his aunt more comfortably upon the sofa, her head resting upon two cushions. His cousin had darted to an escritoire and was rummaging in a drawer. Claud stood back, looking down at the stricken matron in no small degree of perturbation.

Her breathing was shallow, shown by the rapid rise and fall of her overlarge bosom, and her eyes, sinking into the plump folds of flesh, were closed. But she had not quite fainted away, Claud decided, for a series of protesting groans were escaping from her lips. She had no colour, and it was clear to the meanest intelligence that she had sustained a severe shock.

Claud glanced at the cause of it, and found the girl standing just where he had left her, staring round-eyed at the appalling result of her sudden appearance in the yellow saloon. And all because she looked like his cousin. Not that the girl was in the least to blame. It was his fault, and he must presently face the consequences—which loomed horribly ugly, if Aunt Silvia’s reaction was any measure. He brushed this aside for the present. At this juncture, it was of more moment to revive his ailing aunt.

To his relief, Kate came dashing back, armed with a small bottle. ‘I have it. Stand aside, Claud!’

Claud stepped hastily out of the way, allowing his cousin to move into the sofa. But it was with mixed feelings that he heard her soothing words.

‘Poor Mama. You will be better directly, I promise you.’

He was not at all sure that he wanted to be present when his aunt should feel recovered. It was rapidly being borne in upon him that his arrival with an unknown female who all too closely resembled Kate was a faux pas of the first order. He tugged at the short green spencer that had shifted with his exertions, unconsciously smoothing its fit across his chest. What in Hades was there in the stranger to cause this reaction?

Wholly absorbed, and forgetful of the unknown female herself, he watched as his cousin opened the bottle and waved its contents under her mother’s nose.

Kitty, standing all the while in a state of petrified shock, could almost envy the large woman lying on the sofa. She could herself have done with a dose of sal volatile. Had she not guessed it? There could be no doubt. She must belong somehow in this family. Else why should the woman become subject to a dramatic collapse? She must know something.

Her heart hammered painfully, and her gaze turned upon the girl Kate, for whom her abductor had taken her. The resemblance was uncanny. The female had hair as dark and perhaps as long as Kitty’s own, though since it was dressed in a chignon high upon her head, it was difficult to tell. Her figure was masked by a demure gown of white muslin, the fashionable folds of which sent a thrill of envy through Kitty. Was the bosom—which was all the curve visible—as full as her own? Hard to tell. And equally difficult to see at this moment whether Kate had a thought the advantage of her in height. Yet there could be no doubt that in face she looked all too familiar. It was not quite like a mirror, but Kitty could not find it in her to blame Claud for his error.

The reflections left her as she saw that the afflicted matron was recovering. Kitty unconsciously shifted backwards as she saw the woman’s eyes flutter open. Finding herself stopped by a chair against the wall, Kitty froze again, wishing she might become invisible.

‘There, Mama, that is better, is it not?’

The woman gazed up at her daughter. A frantic look came into her features, and a wavering hand rose up to catch at Kate’s fingers.

‘Where is she? Did I truly see it? Oh, what a nightmare!’

Kitty shrank away. If only the floor might open and swallow her up! She heard the voice of the girl Kate, but did not take in the words as with a resurgence of dread she saw the woman threshing to get up.

‘Pray don’t distress yourself, Mama! No, no, don’t try to sit up. Stay there, I beg of you!’

The matron’s efforts to raise herself ceased, but her eyes, casting about the room, fastened upon Kitty, whose heart jerked as the creature pointed, horror in her face.