Kidnap Confusion Read online

  "If this isn't just like Giles!" Gillian complained. "And besides—'' He turned toward Peter and regarded him with a slightly furrowed brow. "What are you all doing at Willowdale, anyway? I thought you'd be in London for the season!"

  "Not me!" The thought of a season in society appalled shy Peter, and Gillian nodded.

  "Well, no, not you. I knew you'd be here. But I knew you wouldn't carry tales about my—ah—Little Misunder­standing—" Peter, who had a whimsical turn of mind, wondered if Little Misunderstanding was the pig's name, but said nothing, gratified by his brother's left-handed compliment to his loyalty.

  "But it never occurred to me that Giles would be here," Gillian continued, turning over the question that still puz­zled him. "Now if you were sick I'd expect it—" He broke off to peer closely at his brother. "You aren't sick, are you?"

  Peter shook his head and said that he felt he was improv­ing every day. Relieved of that worry, Gillian nodded and continued his cogitations.

  "That's why I didn't repair to the London house, you know," he said conversationally. "There's nothing I would have liked better than to take a toddle on the town, but I was sure that was where Giles would be. And John! Of all people, I most wanted to avoid John. . ." He chewed on his lower lip as he tried to understand where his plans went astray.

  "What are they doing here, anyway?" he demanded plaintively.

  Peter shook his head, disclaiming hesitantly that he did not know. Immediately Gillian was alert, demanding to be told what his younger brother was hiding. Peter fired up instantly to say that he was not hiding anything, and it was several moments before he could be induced to tell Gillian anything at all, his disclosures coming only after Gillian begged pardon for even suggesting it, and assured his young brother that he knew he was a right 'un to be depended upon in all circumstances.

  "Well. . ." Peter's brow wrinkled as he seriously consid­ered whether he should proceed. "I'm not sure I should tell you, because it's something I overheard, and I don't perfect­ly understand it. . ."

  His voice trailed off and Gillian, trying to forebear, could not contain his impatience. "Well?"

  "I don't know if I should tell a confidence. . ."

  "Now, Peter." It was Gillian's man-of-the-world voice, the one that ranged from avuncular to downright grandfa- therly, and Peter grinned again. "It's not a confidence when it's not told to you as such. It would be one thing if someone confided in you and asked you not to tell; but when it's just something you overheard in passing . . . Dear boy, that's not a confidence. Really!"

  "Are you sure?" Peter cocked his head to one side, and Gillian applied himself energetically to the task of convinc­ing him. At last Peter conceded, reiterating that he wasn't sure what it was all about. He didn't understand it completely, but several days earlier he had overheard John telling Giles that no woman was worth being blue-deviled over forever.

  "Giles said it was no such thing," Peter continued, conscientiously. "In fact, he seemed quite amused that John could think it was. He said he had planned to return to Willowdale to see about some matters and to visit me long before Vanessa left his protection. But John seemed skepti­cal, and when I later asked John who Vanessa was, he got very red in the face, and told me that listening in where I wasn't invited was much more in your line than mine, so. . ."

  The full import of his words hit Peter and he stopped, red-faced, to look at his brother, but Gillian hadn't heard the last part of his artless speech. Instead, that young man of fashion was sitting bolt upright, one hand clasped to his forehead and rumpling his hair with the other.

  "Vanessa!" he exploded. "Of all the—well, well, well!" Peter was regarding him inquiringly, and Gillian leaped from the bench to stride back and forth before the younger boy, his arms gesturing wildly in the air. "Do you mean that Giles is so up in the bows because his latest ladybird found herself another nest? Because if you do—"

  Trying gravely to sort out the implications, Peter was moved to interrupt. "No," he said slowly, "I think Giles is punishing you because he thinks you shouldn't put pigs in a nob's bed. I don't think it really has anything to do with this lady. . ."

  "Lady!" Gillian snorted the word, amused by Peter's naïveté. "Ha! You wouldn't call her that if you'd heard some of the tales I have. . ." He stopped suddenly as he became aware of Peter's inquiring gaze, and coughed. "Well, no, that's of no moment now. . ."

  He threw himself down on the bench beside Peter and continued to think out loud. "But I wonder. . . You don't really think. . ." He found those inquiring eyes upon him once more, and since Gillian did not want to explain the entire situation in order to garner his younger brother's opinion, he rose and took another hasty turn before planting himself before Peter again. Gillian could not understand why as rapacious a light-o'-love as the fair Vanessa would leave the protection of as generous a benefactor as his brother, but if she had, and if, as John suggested, that was what was making Giles so testy, and it would—and indeed, it appeared that it very much would—complicate Gillian's life, he saw only one thing to do.

  "We shall have to get her back," Gillian decided, and Peter stared at him in surprise.

  "Get who back?"

  "Vanessa, of course!" Gillian was quite as surprised as his brother.

  "But—" Peter's mouth opened and closed several times. "She's not ours to get!" The protest ended almost on a squeak, and Gillian waved it aside.

  "You can bet she's already regretting leaving Giles's protection," Gillian predicted confidently, and he was right. The lady deeply regretted it; but as Gillian's eldest brother could have told him, the leaving was not of Vanessa's choosing. The Earl of Manseford, usually the most easygo­ing and generous of benefactors, had a marked disinclina­tion for sharing his mistress's favors, and when that lady's greed led her to cross the line to favor another gentleman also, Giles bade her a generous but quite final adieu. That he had no intention of explaining this, or any of his other affairs, to his brothers was also final—and to be regretted later.

  Peter, far from seeing the brilliance of Gillian's pro­nouncement, seemed much inclined to argue, even going so far as to say that if Giles did appear a trifle distracted, Peter would lay it down to boredom much more than the missing Vanessa. Gillian stared aghast at his dubious brother.

  "No, really, Peter!" Gillian protested. "You can't have considered! Giles always used to be the best of brothers—"

  "He still is!" Peter interjected hotly; Gillian tactfully paid him no mind.

  "—so if he suddenly cuts up stiff over a Trifling Prank" —here Peter was heard to murmur he thought the pig's name was Little Misunderstanding; Gillian ignored that, too—"there must be something bothering him. We know it's not money; he's as rich as a nabob. And it isn't you or John—you're too good and John is too stuffy to get into trouble. And Giles didn't know about me until today, so that's not the reason he left London in the middle of the season. Don't you see? It must be a woman. And if it is life without his actress that is making Giles as sulky as a bear, we have to get her back for him. To make his life happier. To make our lives easier. Don't you agree?"

  Peter did not, and said so. Gillian ignored him as he continued, "It shouldn't really be so hard. Giles isn't a bad-looking man—for his age. And he is rich."

  It occurred to neither of them that Giles, who one month earlier had celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday amidst the conviviality of friends who wished him many more by downing a great many glasses of Blue Ruin in his honor, and suggesting a round of boxing the watch just for old time's sake, would appreciate the "for his age" rider. Not even a whisper of the thought troubled them. Giles had stood as father to his brothers for so many years that they quite thought of him in that role; in truth, since Peter was three, Giles was the only guardian he had known.

  Gillian had a better memory of their real father, but he, too, had long ago transferred his filial affection to the sibling left in charge by the late earl's untimely demise.

  "I don't know. .
." Peter continued to voice his objec­tions, his head moving from side to side in expression of his doubts. "From what Giles said, and the way he said it, I don't think it's the actress he is missing. I still think he's bored, and that's why he's here."

  "Bored!" Astonishment gave way to disgust as Gillian stared at his younger brother. Gradually he drew himself up, and with all the worldly sophistication inherent in one who has seen twenty summers, gazed down his nose at Peter. "You silly gudgeon! That's how much you know! Bored? A man who is a member of the Four Horse Club, shoots at Manton's, boxes at Jackson's, and is a member of Brooks's? A man anxious mamas look for at Almack's, a man posi­tively courted by hostesses who beseech him to come to their musicales or card parties or drums?" The picture he was drawing so appealed to Gillian that his eyes lighted, and his arms began to wave as he continued, almost to himself. "Oh, I admit, the latter might wear on a man after a time—who wants to be sitting in someone's drawing room when you could be out at a really good mill?—but still—" His eyes seemed to focus on Peter again, and he shook a finger at him admonishingly. "I'll tell you what it is, Peter! You're burying your head too much in those musty old books about the past! You don't understand us men-about- town today, let me tell you!"

  A more hotheaded young man might have informed Gillian at that point that his self-promotion to "man-about- town" would be debated in many quarters—particularly those of their brother John—but Peter's sweetness of temper was inherited from the mother he did not know, and he forebore, only sighing as Gillian, who had long ago con­vinced himself, if not his listener, continued.

  "No," Gillian said, "if Giles is at Willowdale in the middle of the season, there has to be another reason, and the reason has to be Vanessa. But it's not like Giles to nurse a broken heart over such a lightskirt, is it?"

  He turned anxiously to Peter and that young man, unable to imagine Giles nursing a broken heart over any lightskirt at all, shook his head. Vigorously.

  "So perhaps he really cared for her," Gillian continued, thinking out loud. His romantic nature flamed at the thought of his eldest brother in the throes of unrequited and quite ineligible love. "But that's absurd! Isn't that absurd, Peter?"

  A goggling Peter agreed that it was absurd.

  "So maybe his pride was pricked a bit," Gillian contin­ued as he took another turn around the bench. His recent treatment at his brother's hands made him say with feeling that he really wouldn't consider that such a bad thing, but upon reflection he added that it couldn't go on. "After all," he said, "a stern Giles is hard enough to live with, but a blue-deviled Giles is impossible! I don't see anything for it, Peter! We'll have to find the actress and bring her here. From what I know of Giles and the ladies, once they're face-to-face, all will be forgiven."

  "It will?" Peter fairly gasped the words and Gillian, looking down at him, could see the doubt written in his eyes.

  "Of course!" Completely convinced himself, Gillian had no trouble making a case for his brother. "They probably just had a quarrel—one of those lover's things—and she flounced out. Giles, of course, is too proud to go after her. Well, we can fix that!"

  "We can?" Peter's weak echo captured his foreboding.

  "Oh, yes!" The seeds of a plan took root in Gillian's brain, and his eyes sparkled. "We'll just have to go get her and bring her here!"

  "We will!" The last word was a squeak, and Gillian looked at Peter in surprise. "I mean—" Peter floundered, playing neivously with the frayed edges of his book as he stared at the brother in front of him. "I mean—if they had a quarrel—I mean, Giles might not want her in his ancestral home—I mean—I mean—-what if she doesn't want to come?"

  Neither the question of whether Giles might like his brothers driving his lost lightskirt up to the family mansion, nor whether she might not wish to be reunited with the earl had occurred to Gillian, and since he had no answer for either, he waved them both aside. "Don't worry," he said in a tone meant to be reassuring, but which conveyed a little of his own apprehension at the unwelcome thought, "she'll want to come. And if she doesn't—why—we'll just have to kidnap her!"

  "Kidnap her?" Peter gasped, sitting bolt upright as he stared at his brother in horror. "Well, really, Gilly!"

  The use of his childhood nickname at that particular moment damped Gillian's plans slightly, but he made a quick recovery. "It will be romantic, once she is reunited with Giles," Gillian said, waving one hand in his best negligent man-of-the-world manner. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if she thanks us for it later."

  "You wouldn't?" Peter wondered if his voice would ever lower again as, with eyes wide, he tried desperately to recall if there was any history of mental instability in the family.

  "No." Gillian waved the negligent hand again. "Females love that sort of thing."

  The number of females in Peter's acquaintance was ad­mittedly small, but as he reviewed them in his mind, he could not discover one who would love it at all. In fact, those who did occur to him seemed much more likely to box a would-be kidnapper's ears. He tried to make some of that clear to Gillian, but his brother only dropped a reassuring hand on Peter's shoulders and gave the thin form he found there a squeeze.

  "Your problem, Peter my boy, is that you have a great deal yet to learn about women," Gillian said.

  Peter sighed, knowing it was true. But he couldn't help wondering if there might not yet be a thing or two still missing from Gillian's education, as well.

  Chapter 3

  Peter had great hopes that something would soon divert Gillian's thoughts, but in such hopes he indulged his opti­mism too far. No word of a mill reached Gillian's ears, and no idea of taking out a gun or pole for an afternoon of hunting or fishing occurred in Gillian's mind, so that young man was left at his leisure to weave plans for what he was coming to think of as his Grand Scheme.

  Few Grand Schemes are simple, and how he was to accomplish his goal occupied Gillian's mind for the rest of the day and into the evening. He was lost in a brown study when he joined his brothers for supper, sitting so silently through the meal and ignoring both his plate and his brother John's homily on the folly of Gillian's youth so thoroughly that Giles's mobile eyebrows rose, and he stared intently at his second youngest brother. A glance at Peter, fidgeting slightly as he looked from Giles to Gillian and back again, confirmed Giles's suspicions that it was more than the enforced retreat from Oxford that troubled Gillian's mind, and he was moved at last to call his brother to book, inquiring mildly if Gillian had anything to say to John's forceful description of his character and manners.

  "What?" Suddenly aware that Giles had repeated his name several times, Gillian noticed that all his brothers were staring at him, and he dropped the fork he'd held suspended in air for the past several minutes as he looked wildly around. "What?" he repeated.

  "I was wondering if you'd care to respond to what John has been saying," Giles prompted.

  "Should I?" Both tone and glance were cautious as Gillian looked from one elder brother to the other.

  John frowned heavily. "One would almost think you hadn't been attending to a word I said, Gillian."

  Giles gave a slight smile. "One could almost be certain of it."

  "Well. . ." Gillian looked hopefully toward Peter, seek­ing enlightenment. "What do you think of what John has been saying, Peter?" he asked.

  Peter shook his head and answered in his soft voice, "I think he has been saying some terrible things about you."

  "Oh!" Gillian straightened and stared in surprise at John. "Well, I must say.. . I think that's terribly shabby of you! And I'm glad I wasn't attending. Because it's certainly no concern of yours what I do, Johnny.''''

  The use of his nursery name was certain provocation and John, whose face grew more austere with each of Gillian's words, stiffened alarmingly at the end, remarking in his most repressive tones that it must always be the concern of one family member when another runs amok.

  "Not amok," Peter protested, distressed.

  J
ohn shook his head and corrected him. "Amok," he said firmly. "And I will thank you—" his full glance, and a very quelling glance it was, was directed toward Gillian— "to refrain from childish retaliation, and to have some respect for your elders and your betters."

  "Well!" Gillian's abstraction was completely gone and he girded for battle, his eyes sparkling with anger, his color heightened. "Of all the arrogant, pompous, stiff-necked. . . You may be older than me, Johnny, but you really can't take credit for that; it was up to mother and father; but when it comes to my betters, you certainly aren't—"

  Both men were leaning forward, and the lapels of Gillian's coat seemed in imminent peril of taking a bath in the gravy on his plate when Giles's voice interrupted them.

  "I wonder," the earl said softly, "if I am the only one here who is conscious of the difference between conduct befitting a gentleman's dining room and that found in the city's back alleys."

  Peter gulped, and watched in fascination as Gillian's and John's heads swiveled toward their eldest brother. John, whose color was almost as high as Gillian's, clamped his lips together and picked up his wineglass, tossing off the burgundy found there before stiffly begging pardon, and adding as if he could not stop himself, "But that young jackanapes makes me so angry—"

  "Well, he started it!" Gillian fired up.

  Giles interrupted both, addressing himself to Peter. "I wonder," he said in the deceptively mild tone that sent chills down his youngest two brothers' backs and made John shift slightly in his chair, "what on earth possesses them to think I am in any way interested in self-justifications?"

  Gillian and John had no answer to make, and Giles seemed to expect none. He smiled encouragingly at Peter and picked up his fork to continue his meal. When the momentary silence had lengthened into minutes, Giles asked what Peter and the vicar were studying at present, and Peter's stammered reply that it was the works of Homer made Giles cast back in his mind for some of the nuggets gleaned in his own readings of the poet. This encourage­ment soon had Peter pelting him with questions, and at length John, who could not resist adding his own weighty wisdom to any scholarly discussion, forgot his stiffness and was drawn into the conversation. Gillian, listening resentfully to what might as well have been a foreign tongue, ate sulkily and entertained himself with visions of the day when both Giles and John would find themselves on the sharp end of Gillian's tongue, with no ready comebacks or sarcastic repartee. He told himself that if he were Giles, he would take a very dim view of a second oldest brother prosing on forever to a third oldest brother, and he—if he were the earl—would tell John to mind his own business and be quick about it.