Kidnap Confusion Page 6

  In the first hand, the cards fell heavily to Sir Charles's favor, and Miss Tolliver indulged the hope that her brother would play better than usual. She knew it would greatly improve his temper to rise a winner.

  But in the second hand, the cards fell evenly, and it was superior skill that took the trick. Charles went down the loser, with each hand putting him deeper in the hole, and his brow growing blacker with each tally. When luncheon was announced, he waved it away, and Miss Tolliver's protest that all their activity had made her hungry was met with a muttered "In a moment, in a moment," as he shuffled the cards to deal.

  By three o'clock, Margaret absolutely refused to play one moment more, and he huffily bowed, declaring that he would deliver her winnings to her forthwith.

  "Oh, don't be ridiculous, Charles!" Miss Tolliver cried. "I don't want your money!"

  He was torn between relief at her last words, for Sir Charles was seriously fond of his cash and had problems parting with it, and offense at her first words, which labeled him "ridiculous." Knowing that a gentleman always pays his debts—even if only to a sister—he hobbled painfully toward the desk where he kept his strongbox (the pain made more exquisite by the purpose of his trip), and after much fumbling about and fuming, extracted a roll of ready. He tossed it to Miss Tolliver who caught it without thinking, and, with real loathing, he shouted, "There! I hope you're satisfied!"

  "Oh, really, Charles—" Caught between amusement at his indignation and consternation that he should take what she considered a mere game so seriously, Miss Tolliver put the money on the small table at which they had both so recently sat. Her brother hauled himself up and, with the aid of his cane, lunged forward until he held the notes again, and pushed them into her resisting hands.

  "No," he said, knowing he acted unfairly and glad no one but his sister was there to see it. "No, take it. You know a gentleman always pays his debts, even to someone who shouldn't have won his money in the first place—"

  "Now, Charles," she said soothingly, "I tried not to win your money. I told you we shouldn't play."

  The fact that she was right exacerbated him further. "Oh, yes," he shouted, glaring across at her, for although Sir Charles far outweighed his sister, he had never surpassed her in height—another point which, now that he thought about it, tried him sorely—"Take the high tone. Pretend that you won because of superior skill and not confounded luck. Pretend that this—this—this debacle—is not to be laid at your door. Pretend—"

  "Debacle?" Miss Tolliver interrupted, one eyebrow raised. "Oh, really, Charles!"

  "Don't you 'oh, really, Charles,' me, Margaret Marie!" he started. "I say debacle and I mean debacle—"

  She yawned, incensing him further. "Really, Charles," she said in a voice often used with children, "you are being foolish beyond permission! The only debacle here is the one you're making by acting like a complete idiot, turning what should be a pleasant little card game into a major battle!"

  "Idiot!" Charles's body stiffened, and he banged his cane on the floor. It felt so good that he banged it again. "A pleasant little card game! Indeed! As if it could be pleasant for a man of my caliber to be bested by a female—and not just any female, my sister—"

  He stabbed the cane toward the floor again for emphasis, but his aim was not good, and in a moment he was collapsed into a chair, holding his wrapped foot and swear­ing heartily.

  "Oh, Charles!" Miss Tolliver laughed—regrettably, she laughed—even as she started forward to help him.

  "Keep away from me," he snarled, hugging his foot with one hand as, with the other, he tried to break the offending cane on the table next to him. The table, unused to such treatment, turned over, sending cards and books skittering in all directions. This only frustrated Sir Charles further, and one glance at his sister's laughing face was enough to set the seal on this ignominious day.

  "It's all your fault," he charged, pointing the still unbro­ken cane at her. "My life was ordered—-tranquil—until you arrived, and now look at it. Look at it!" For emphasis he reached toward another of the small tables that littered the library, and sent the papers lying there flying, too. One of them landed at Miss Tolliver's feet and she bent to retrieve it, smiling as she did so.

  "Really, Charles," she said, "your tantrums haven't changed much since you were twelve; it's just that now you have more things to throw! Do be reasonable. I know your foot troubles you, but that is no reason to take it out on your poor library. Or on me, for that matter."

  They were, perhaps, not the best choices of words for a man so far gone down the tantrum path, with little chance of graceful return, and at them Sir Charles stiffened again.

  "It is not my foot that troubles me, Margaret Marie," he said with a glare. "It is you. You and your refusal to learn your place and to curb that too-free tongue—"

  Margaret rose from collecting papers on the floor, and for once the good humor was gone from her face. "I believe, Charles," she said, her voice low, her back straight, "that you owe me an apology."

  Later he might think so, too, but for now Sir Charles was too wrought up to back down. "Apology!" he sputtered. "Well, I never!"

  "I know you've never, Charles," she said in that same low voice, "but you should. And since it is my presence that you say so troubles you here, I shall remove it immedi­ately. Good day."

  Without another word she turned and walked from the library, pausing at the door only long enough to sneer coldly at him when he told her she'd forgotten her winnings. Entering the hall in a cold rage, she commanded the butler to have her coach sent round immediately, and upon being reminded that her coachman was indisposed, she had no compunction in saying that her brother had very kindly offered her the use of his coachman, since a matter of some urgency required her to leave for home immediately.

  The butler, harboring his own doubts as to whether Sir Charles would wish to see his sister set off for home at such a late hour, volunteered to just step into the library and confer with him on the matter. Miss Tolliver said affably that she thought it a very good idea, adding as he set off that he should, of course, be ready to duck at a moment's notice, Sir Charles being in one of his rare takings where he was likely to hurl at least his snuffbox and very probably something larger at anyone who interrupted his solitude.

  "Or," she added reflectively, watching the struggle on the face in front of her, "had the temerity to doubt his sister's word. . ."

  Digesting both the first and second warnings, the butler paused in midstep and with a grace usually reserved for the ballet, turned to execute a bow that made clear the depth of his understanding. Wooden-faced, he suggested that she might like to step into the morning room to write her brother a note while the carriage was brought round and the maid assigned to her in London—Miss Tolliver having thought­fully given her own abigail a holiday—flew round to pack.

  Miss Tolliver assented, telling him to tell the maid that all she required was her nightclothes and two changes; her other clothing could be sent later. Not by so much as a quiver did the butler betray his understanding of how unusu­al was the situation; he merely bowed again and ushered her into the morning room, where he withdrew after making sure she had pen and paper.

  Her note was brief and to the point.

  "Dear Charles," she wrote, "since, with the best will in the world, we cannot seem to rub along tolerably well together, I have gone home, telling your servants that you offered me the use of your coachman. I shall return the good fellow to you shortly, so don't bite anyone's nose off for doing what I assured them were your orders.

  Your loving (although not particularly

  at the moment) sister,

  Margaret

  Had she known it at the time, Miss Tolliver's brother's coachman would return to Sir Charles much sooner than she liked.

  Chapter 6

  Pandemonium was the word that thereafter came to Miss Tolliver's mind when asked to describe the first hours at the small inn to which Johns drove his employer's si
ster and her ill charges.

  At the first sound of the coach the innkeeper emerged from his establishment, bowing and scraping, only to be brought up short by the sight of a woman descending from the coach, ignoring the groom's proffered arm as she turned to half-support a youngster who seemed inclined to faint as he looked hazily about him. And if that were not peculiar enough, she informed the landlord briskly that he must immediately carry a wounded and unconscious young man, still in the carriage, into his inn and summon a doctor.

  It wasn't, as he guiltily pointed out to his spouse later, that he didn't believe the lady was a lady, exactly—it was just that, when he asked himself what sort of a lady arrives unescorted and unattended by an abigail, with two sick young men in her carriage and another looby trailing along behind, leading two horses and talking wildly of kidnap­pings that he knew they never should have started upon, no they shouldn't, while the innkeeper's wife's cousin Johns sat huffing and puffing on the coachbox, exhorting the woman to get back into the carriage, adun do, while he summoned the constable—well, he said, it had fair thrown him for a ringer, it had, and he hadn't known what to think. His wife, shaking her head and pursing her lips in that look

  that always made him bethink himself of something to do in the taproom, said sadly that his problem was he had nought to think with, nought at all, and it was a good thing he had her to do his thinking for him. Which she did, and which she had when Miss Tolliver first arrived.

  Which was a good thing, for Miss Tolliver had found herself nonplussed when her pleasant "How do you do? I take it you are Johns's cousin" to the landlord was met with every evidence of loathing, both men bitterly denying kin­ship as the landlord made it clear that although one might love a woman, he was in no way required to love her rela­tions, no way at all.

  Luckily at that moment the woman the landlord did love appeared on the scene and, being as quick as her husband was slow, understood at, a glance what was needed. She dropped Miss Tolliver a curtsey, then began at once to bully her husband and cousin into carrying the injured Gillian up the stairs and into bed. Peter trailed feverishly behind.

  Miss Tolliver was left to instruct her brother's groom to stable the horses, and to send the open-mouthed Jem to the village in search of a doctor. In impressing the urgency of his mission upon Jem, Miss Tolliver suggested that he might like to make use of her name in leaving a message for the doctor. It was on his frantic ride into the village that he decided if one name was good, two would be better, and of his own volition upon finding the doctor away from home left the message that the Earl of Manseford and a Miss Tolliver required the doctor's services at the inn.

  The doctor's housekeeper blessed herself and promised to deliver the message immediately upon the doctor's return, inquiring delicately if the lord's and lady's servants might be able to attend to their needs until the doctor arrived. Jem's innocent reply that he was the only one of my lord's servants present, while the lady had only a borrowed coach­man and groom made her bless herself again, and upon his departure grab up her cloak and hurry next door to discuss with her neighbor, Mrs. Rackett, the strange ways of the quality. Such strange ways were the talk of the village by morning.

  Meanwhile, Jem, pleased with his success in impressing the housekeeper by the dropping of "my Ior's" name, returned to the inn to find an anxious Miss Tolliver awaiting his return. She fell back in dismay at his news, her eyes opening wide as she stared at him.

  "But—" she began, as he stood before her wet and dripping in the small private parlor to which John's cousin had escorted her after seeing Peter and Gillian disposed of in two bedrooms upstairs. "But—he has to come! We can't wait several hours! That bullet must come out of your Mr. Gillian's shoulder immediately, while I very much fear the younger Mr. Manfield has taken a terrible chill!"

  Jem, never a hand in a crisis, goggled at her, and said fervently that he wished Mr. Gillian was awake to advise them, since he was alert to every trick, was Mr. Gillian.

  Miss Tolliver's dry comment that he had not been alert to them all sailed over Jem's head, leaving the young groom inclined to argue.

  "Now Mr. Gillian could take a ball out of Mr. Peter's shoulder, if it were Mr. Peter who was shot," Jem informed her, "because Mr. Gillian once took a ball out of my leg—"

  Momentarily diverted in spite of herself, Miss Tolliver asked how he had gotten a ball in his leg, her eyes twinkling as she wondered aloud if it had been in another kidnapping try.

  A blushing Jem assured her hurriedly that it was no such thing. Mr. Gillian had put the ball there when they were hunting—quite by accident, of course—and so had thought it only right that he take it out again, posthaste. And he had done it, too, Jem told her proudly—not that it had done much more than broken the skin, but still. ..

  Miss Tolliver was regarding him in astonishment, and his words trailed off as he looked first at her, and then nervous­ly around to see what could be making her stare so. "But—" Miss Tolliver started, "didn't you—mind?"

  Oh, no, Jem assured her, he had not. At least, not much. That is to say, he had not liked it, because it hurt like— begging her pardon—the devil, and he might have minded if Mr. Gillian had done it on purpose, but that he hadn't done, Mr. Gillian not holding with shooting people in general, and not his friends in particular, and Jem and Mr. Gillian had been friends ever since they were first breeched together. . .

  His long and convoluted explanation showed every sign of continuing, so Miss Tolliver cut it short with a "Yes, yes, L can clearly see that your Mr. Gillian is a paragon—"

  But that Jem would not allow. "No," he told her gravely, "he's not a paragon—although I'm not quite sure what that is, but I know it ain't Mr. Gillian—it's only that he's—he's just—just—" He frowned with the effort to find the right words. "He's just Mr. Gillian!"

  Miss Tolliver smiled, touched by his loyalty to his friend. "Yes," she agreed, "I can see that he is. And I, too, wish he were not lying unconscious upstairs, for if he were not, perhaps this whole ridiculous thing might never have happened!"

  Jem could not argue with that statement and stood quietly for a moment as the lady before him stared into the fire, thinking hard. Trying to think of what they should do next, she asked Jem if he was aware of another doctor in the neighborhood. Jem said he was not, but volunteered to go in search of the landlord to find out. Miss Tolliver thanked him, and said he would find her upstairs with the invalids when he was ready to make his report.

  There was a warm and crackling fire in the room where Gillian lay, and Miss Tolliver noted how it cast long shad­ows across the slanted ceiling as she quietly slipped through the door and looked across at the silent figure beneath the blue and gold coverlet. From time to time one of Gillian's hands plucked unconsciously at the quilt, and Mrs. Murphy, sitting beside the wounded man, patted the restless hand as she rose to approach Miss Tolliver. Her voice was low as, with a quick glance toward her patient, she asked if the doctor had arrived.

  Miss Tolliver shook her head, explaining that Jem had found the doctor from home. Her uneasiness increased as Mrs. Murphy's lips tightened.

  "Isn't that just like a man?" the innkeeper's wife burst out, running a hand down the ample folds of her apron in her harassed state. "Never there when you need them, underfoot when you do not! Doctors and tapmen and hus­bands and cousins—and I dare say earls and dukes too, no matter that some of them has learning, and some of them has manners, and some of them has brains (a little)—deep down they're really all the same. And happen not a ha'pence of rumgumption between 'em. All the same!"

  Mrs. Murphy seemed predisposed to dwell on the short­comings of men, and Miss Tolliver's lips twitched as she wondered what the innkeeper had done to put his loving spouse in such a flutter. She did not have to wonder long.

  "For instance," Mrs. Murphy said, "I told my man, 'we could take the ball out of the young sir's shoulder, you and I,' for many's the one I've taken out of the gentlemen—" She heard herself suddenly, and co
lored brightly under Miss Tolliver's eyes, remarking self-consciously that they didn't really have doings with the free traders, especially after their move in from the coast, but there had been times when, com­pelled through Christian charity, she'd taken a ball from the shoulder of some poor unfortunate who was unwise enough to step in the way of an exciseman's bullet. But that was when her sister Clara was about, for Clara wasn't squeamish like these he-men.

  Miss Tolliver murmured sympathetically in favor of the absent Clara, and asked what Mr. Murphy had said to his wife's proposal. The dark frown descended on Mrs. Mur­phy's round face again.

  "What did he say?" she repeated. "What did he say? The big looby! He says—just as foolish as you please—'but Martha, there would be blood, and you know I cannot abide blood' for all the world as if it was his blood he'd have to be looking at! Now I could see how a person might be queered by the sight of his own blood, but when it's someone else's—well, all it wants is a little resolution, isn't it? But he doesn't have any resolution, does Mr. Murphy, for all his size. He's got the strength of an ox, and the brain to match, and so I told him, I did. Yes, I did!" Mrs. Murphy's head nodded vigorously, her chins trembling with her fervor, and Miss Tolliver, watching the indignant face before her, had no trouble believing she'd said all she said, and more.

  Gravely she asked if Mrs. Murphy felt it important that the ball be removed immediately, and was met by another passionate nod. Miss Tolliver sighed, and said that since she was not given to fainting at the sight of blood, she would volunteer her services, if only Mrs. Murphy would tell her what to do.

  Mrs. Murphy gave her shoulder a motherly pat and said that she had known from the beginning that Miss Tolliver was a good lass, whatever her cousin Johns might say—a reference that made Miss Tolliver's eyes twinkle—but the truth was, Mrs. Murphy's sister Clara was a big, strapping wench, able to pin a man to the bed if he was inclined to cast about while the ball was taken from his shoulder, while Miss Tolliver. . .