Kidnap Confusion Page 5

  This time her glance, more doubtful still, turned toward Jem. It took him several moments to assimilate its meaning, but when he did so he informed her so earnestly and with such force that not only was he not a brother, he also wouldn't have an actress, no ma'am, no way, no matter what anybody—including Mr. Gillian, who he'd lay down his life for—said. Now completely mystified, Miss Tolliver's glance returned to Peter's face.

  "For my eldest brother!" Peter said desperately. "The Earl of Manseford."

  Miss Tolliver started, and her perplexity grew. Although not acquainted with the earl, she knew of him, and what she knew did not correspond with what was being told her. "Your eldest brother—the Earl of Manseford—sends you out to kidnap actresses?" Try as she might, she could not keep her voice from rising on the last word, and Peter shook his head hopelessly.

  "No," he said. "No, he doesn't. He doesn't even know— and I think he'll be most angry when he finds out. I can't explain it all now. But please, Miss Tolliver—my brother, Gillian. Is he going to be—I mean, he's not going to—"

  Her bandaging now completed, Miss Tolliver turned her­self to what she considered the next most important task, that of soothing the worried brow before her. "I take it the poor unfortunate now lying at our feet is your brother Gillian," she said as she rose, and Peter's mute nod con­firmed her suspicion.

  "Well, no," she said, smiling down at him, "he most assuredly is not going to die. At least, not if we stop chitchatting here and get him out of this drizzly damp and into someplace warm where he can be seen by a doctor. I've bound the wound for now, which will considerably slow his loss of blood, but the ball in his shoulder must come out, and the bleeding must be stopped completely. Tell me, is your home near here?"

  Peter's headshake was mournful. "Almost twenty miles," he whispered, and Miss Tolliver suffered a slight check. She had hoped for better but, after frowning over the informa­tion, she said with great composure that that was too far to carry the injured Gillian in his condition, so they must find a closer shelter. Jem and Peter gazed toward her expectantly, and she realized with a rueful shake of her head that in the last several minutes she had become not their victim but their hope. With a wry inward smile she thought of how only an hour earlier she had been bored, and thinking of her dinner.

  Well, this was a bit more than she had hoped for when she wished for something to ease her boredom, she thought. Aloud she said, "I believe we passed a small inn several miles back; I think it would be best if we took him there, and had the doctor sent for immediately. Johns, you must help us get this young man in the carriage, and—"

  She got no further for Coachman Johns, who had been regarding her with a fulminating eye, was outraged by the very suggestion. "Miss Tolliver!" he cried. "You cannot mean that you are going to help these—these—"

  Inwardly she wondered why her brother hired servants as tiresome as he was himself, but outwardly she produced her best smile. "Now Johns," she said. "It was all a mistake!"

  But that, Johns told her, he would not and could not allow it to be. He informed them all that he didn't care what anyone said of earls or such, it was a mighty havey cavey business when earls sent their brothers out to hold up honest coaches—or to abduct actresses, for that matter—not that he believed it for a minute, not he. . .

  Miss Tolliver let him talk on as she directed Jem to take Gillian's shoulders, and she and Peter each held an arm.

  Johns, still scolding, reached for the unconscious man's feet, and carried him to the coach.

  "And another thing," the coachman said as he watched Miss Tolliver arrange Gillian's head more comfortably on the coach seat, "Don't be thinking I'm going to take you to that tavern we passed several miles back because it ain't seemly, nor no fit place for a lady, and if you think I'm going to do what Sir Charles wouldn't like, you're wrong!"

  There was a dangerous gleam in the lady's eye as she said, "I have told you once, Johns, that I wish you would rid yourself of this notion that I am ruled by my brother. I do not wish to tell you again."

  Johns's shoulders went back and his jaw clamped tight, and Miss Tolliver, moved by the small moan issuing from Gillian's lips as he shifted slightly on the carriage seat, tried to forestall the coming argument by taking the offensive. "And if you have a better idea of where we might take this poor young man, I would be happy to hear it," she said with some asperity. "If not—"

  To her surprise, Johns did have a better idea, and he was only too happy to say so. He did, he told her austerely, have a cousin who ran a small inn about two miles off the main road only a mile north of them. And although it wasn't the type of place she was used to, he said with a sniff, it was at least clean, and not filled to overflowing with the cutthroats he was sure inhabited the tavern she had suggested they apply to for help.

  Miss Tolliver told him at once that his was a fine idea, and they were all in his debt, which he so heartily agreed with that he grew quite mollified, and when she suggested he climb back onto the coachbox and drive them to said inn immediately, he did so with only a minimum amount of grumbling and dark predictions. Quickly she adjured Peter to climb into the coach and prop his brother up as best he could; she told Jem to follow the carriage with the boys' horses; then she herself stepped into the carriage and col­lapsed back against the cushions to contemplate what the evening had brought her.

  Chapter 5

  To the nervous Peter, half-kneeling beside his brother in an attempt to keep Gillian from sliding off the seat, the trip to the inn was interminable. Even after Miss Tolliver put her head out to order the coachman to "spring 'em," they continued to move at a far from clipping rate, the coachman having his own very precise idea of what speed it was proper for Sir Charles's sister to travel the King's roads.

  Miss Tolliver, biting her lip in vexation, smiled at Peter and apologized. "I really am sorry," she told him. "Usual­ly I travel with my own servants, but while in London my coachman fell ill, and since it was important that I return home immediately, my brother made me the loan of his. The groom is his, too. Johns is a good man, basically, but he is totally deaf to anything I say that he doesn't want to hear. Please don't worry. We'll be at the inn shortly, for all his lack of cooperation."

  Peter forced a smile and nodded, his eyes traveling to Gillian's face as the unconscious brother moaned. Peter looked back at Miss Tolliver for confirmation.

  "You're sure that Gillian w-w-will. . ." The words betrayed a shiver in his voice, and Miss Tolliver peered sharply through the dusky interior of the coach in an effort to see his face. When she reached out a hand to feel his forehead she found it hot and dry, despite his soaked raiment, and she whisked up the lap rug at her feet and threw it around his shoulders, saying half-scoldingly, but with real concern, "My dear, you're ill yourself! Why didn't you tell me?"

  Peter gave a shivery shrug, trying to disclaim. "It's nothing," he said, wondering why Gillian seemed blurry. "The merest cold. . . I've had the influenza. . ."

  There was a buzzing in his head, and he tried to think around it. "But you, ma'am," he continued, "you said you have to go home immediately, and we are detaining you. Perhaps after you have taken us to the inn you can continue your journey. We don't wish to be a burden to you. . ."

  Concentrating on the words and not his voice, Peter was unaware of the muffled accents in which his speech emerged. Miss Tolliver heard them, and her concern increased. Once again she stuck her head out the window and ordered Coachman Johns to "spring 'em!"

  This time there was an added note in her voice that made him increase the pace—albeit slightly—and she settled back against the cushions, telling Peter soothingly that there was really nothing that required her immediate attention at home; in fact, the only thing that had made her wish to leave London immediately was being in her brother's company several days while Sir Charles sat grumpily home with the gout.

  That drew a muffled chuckle from Peter, interrupted by a sharp cough, and as he leaned his head onto the cushion,
he told her drowsily that his eldest brother was a great gun, not at all given to gout, and . . . and . . .

  His voice drifted off, and Miss Tolliver reached out to feel his forehead again, frowning heavily as she did so.

  Her brother had darkly predicted that her precipitous behavior would end her in a bumblebath. That was not unusual; Sir Charles regularly predicted that her actions would lead her into trouble. But this time—through no fault of her own, Miss Tolliver told herself, if you ignored Johns's grumblings that a wise lady would have driven on—it appeared that Charles might be right. At least, a little bit right.

  If she wasn't to be troubled actually, she foresaw several days of inconvenience and sighed. Miss Tolliver felt she had been more than a little inconvenienced lately.

  At twenty-eight, Margaret Tolliver was a soft-spoken, quick-witted woman who knew that in the eyes of her family and London society, she long ago had been consigned to the shelf. It was not a thought that troubled her unduly, and for most of the year she resided near York with her vague Aunt Henrietta, who kept a pet rooster named Laz. His true name was Lazaurus, because, as Aunt Henrietta was want to tell anyone who would listen, she had, if not raised him from the dead, brought him back from as near to it as a rooster can get without crossing over when, as a young chick, he had followed a string of ducklings bravely into a pond only to discover, too late, that chickens do not swim.

  Henrietta, who saw it happen and liked his style, saved him from his watery grave and called him Lazaurus until her sister Delphinia enlisted the rector's aid in declaring the naming of the rooster sacrilege. The ensuing battle—which Miss Tolliver liked to think of fondly as the Sisters' Holy War—ended only when Margaret, tired of the claims and counterclaims to her attention made on behalf of the chick­en, suggested that in public he be called Laz, and in private Henrietta could call him whatever she wished—perhaps even adding an extra vowel in the rooster's name so that no one would think his christening a biblical reference. Her Aunt Delphinia had not thought it enough of a compromise— Aunt Delphinia's idea of a compromise being that everyone agreed with her and did things her way—while her Aunt Henrietta had acquiesced with a sniff and a murmured "If I remember, dear; you know how absentminded I am. . .," and Miss Tolliver knew without a doubt that all bursts of absentmindedness would come in Aunt Delphinia's pres­ence. She also knew her Aunt Delphinia knew it too, and was relieved when that dame gathered up her belongings and went to live with her long-suffering son and his equally long-suffering family.

  Miss Tolliver's recent trip to London and the reason she was on the road when these absurd children stopped her carriage was the result of one of her rare bouts with boredom and one of her equally rare whims to update her wardrobe and visit those few friends she still enjoyed among the ton—people with whom she could laugh and talk freely without being asked "Whatever do you mean, Margaret?" or censured as a bluestocking. That, plus the information that her brother was to be from town, visiting friends in the country, had made her pack her trunks, kiss her aunt good-bye, and head south.

  It was with real dismay that she found Charles ensconced in his library upon her arrival in London, and the discovery that it was gout that had canceled his plans to visit friends filled her with foreboding. Yet she was already there, and she reasoned optimistically that they might contrive to rub along pretty well together for a week or two if she were out a great deal and Charles amused himself with his favorite sickroom pastime of running his staff from one floor to the next in search of an item he could not do without until it was presented to him, at which time he had no further need of it, and sent them off looking for another.

  Such was not to be. Although Charles encouraged her with great fortitude not to think of him at all, but to go on her own merry way, enjoying herself while he stayed home and suffered, he made it apparent that each time she walked through the front door she stabbed him in the heart with the knowledge that his sister—his only sister, too—was immune to his hour of pain.

  The evening she stayed home with the noble hope of taking his mind off his troubles had done Charles no good, either, for not only did Margaret have the temerity to best him in a game of chess, but also her suggestion that they play piquet for a pound a point truly shocked him. His shock was increased when, to show her a lesson, he agreed to the bet and lost heavily.

  His censorious comment that cardplaying was not a skill befitting a lady made her laugh, and when he inquired stiffly who had taught her to play, she laughed again and told him it was their father "oh, years ago, when he was convalesc­ing, and needed a partner."

  "Father was not always a good influence on you, I fear," Charles began in the austere tone that would have made their late father itch to box his ears. Then another thought occurred to him. "Do you mean," he demanded, "that you haven't—that you haven't played since Father died—"

  Usually quick-witted, Miss Tolliver was slow this time to catch his meaning, and said reflectively that it had been several years before their father's death that they had played their last hand. Charles fairly goggled at her, mentally computing that their father was dead three years, and several years before that would mean they had last played. . .

  "And you beat me?" he demanded.

  Miss Tolliver always forgot that one of her besetting sins—as many of her older relations were quick to tell her, the females baldly and the gentlemen in more indirect ways—was that she never learned to pander to the male ego, whether that of her relations or other men. Her Aunt Delphinia said it was a much worse sin than being dowryless on the marriage mart.

  So when Charles, who considered himself a fair cardplayer, sat staring at her with his eyes wide and his usually ruddy color heightened, Miss Tolliver did not even consider telling him it was luck. She smiled quite engagingly and said, "But dear Charles, you know you cannot play!"

  Charles, who knew nothing of the sort, stiffened and glared at her. "I beg your pardon?"

  Miss Tolliver's eyes twinkled, inviting him to share the joke. "Charles, really—it was Father who taught me, and you know you never could beat Father—"

  "Father was a man, adept at the game," Charles said huffily. "You, on the other hand, are a woman—and the luckiest woman I ever met."

  Miss Tolliver rose, slightly bumping the stool on which Sir Charles's afflicted foot was resting. Neither brother nor sister could swear it was an accident.

  "My dear Charles," she said, bending to kiss his cheek before retiring for the night, "if I were the luckiest woman you ever met, surely I wouldn't have been blessed with a brother as chuckleheaded as you!"

  "Chuckleheaded!" He was sputtering the word as she moved softly across the floor. "A fine way to talk to the head of the family! Do you know what your trouble is, Margaret Marie? I'll tell you what your trouble is—"

  The soft click of the door behind her made it impossible for Miss Tolliver to hear what Charles considered her trouble as she moved down the hall, and she smiled softly as she walked up the stairs to her room. That she had seriously irked him was apparent by his use of her full name. Yet she was fairly confident that he would have forgotten it tomor­row because Charles, although trying in the extreme, had too good an opinion of himself to permit his carrying a grudge against someone blessed only with a female mind— and a sister's female mind, at that. He was always only too happy to tell anyone who would listen his ponderous and detailed opinions on the natural superiority of men.

  Charles had been like that since they were children, and Margaret had no doubts that his view of her as his little sister had not changed drastically since he was nine and she three. She wondered why he clung to such shadows of who they had been so obstinately, when their father had set quite another example by encouraging her to go her own way— "within the bounds of what's allowed, Maggie; always within the bounds," he used to tell her—and had helped her find the bounds when she was likely to stray over them. Upon her father's death three years earlier, she had felt as if she'd lost her best frien
d, and having never met a man she considered his equal, she had left off looking after a time.

  None of this was known to anyone but herself, of course, and certainly not to Charles. So when she met him at the breakfast table the next morning it was with the expectation of finding him somewhat sulky, but recovered from the worst of his anger. In that expectation she reckoned without his gout.

  Charles had, as he told her with much sighing and heroically almost-stifled groans, spent a terrible night. The gout that confined him to bed and chair had kept him awake half the night, and when Charles, usually the heaviest of sleepers, was awake, he also was inclined to brood. Her recent victory at the card table gave him plenty to brood about, and dwelling darkly on that incident led him to many others in which he felt his sister had played a less than admirable role. Although he might, as he told his Aunt Delphinia, as a good Christian forgive, Charles was never one to forget, and he kept a very long list of grievances ready in his head to pull out whenever he was ready. And he was ready now.

  Thus it was that over the teacups Charles proposed another game of piquet. He pointed out that the morning was damp and Margaret would not care to go out, never minding that it was her custom in the country to walk each day, rain or shine. He also told her that it would give him a chance to redeem his money and his reputation.

  Her light, "But Charles, you have no reputation with me!" did not make him laugh as it would have their father; instead, his heavy frown appeared. Miss Tolliver considered telling Charles that she had another engagement, but a thoughtful study of his face told her she would be postpon­ing, not ending, the issue. So with a sigh and a "You really shouldn't tempt fate so, Charles," she assented, and they were soon ensconced in the library.