Kidnap Confusion Page 8

  "And while I'm sure that you are right, Jem, and hearing of his brother's injuries will distress his lordship, I think it would be even more distressing for him not to know of their whereabouts for several days, don't you?"

  Put that way, Jem had to reluctantly agree that it was unlikely the earl would not notice the disappearance of his two youngest brothers from their ancestral home, no matter— as he hopefully pointed out to Miss Tolliver, only to be met by a sympathetic shake of her head—how big the house might be. And in the end, having casted frantically about in his mind for someone else to be the bearer of bad tidings and having thought of no one, he sighed heavily and said that he would ride at once for Willowdale.

  Trying to relieve some of the worry on his face, Miss Tolliver teased gently that at least he would not have to face blood again.

  A gloomy Jem shook his head. "I don't know, miss," he said, his movements slow as he pulled on his greatcoat and reached for his hat. His thoughts were on the earl's punishing right—a right he had often seen in the practice ring at Willowdale. "I just hope it won't be mine!"

  The doctor had come and gone, merely shaking his head over the strange tale the landlord told of how his honest inn was turned from a quiet country house to a gentry hospital in the last few hours. He approved Mrs. Murphy's handi­work and left some laudanum for both Gillian and Peter, promising to return in the morning with a mixture he thought might help his youngest patient's fever. He said he felt the greatest alarm for the younger boy, but agreed with Miss Tolliver that any youngster recovering from influenza who subjected himself to the rain and the strain of the day was likely to end up just as Peter had.

  "That's the way it is with some of these young ones," he said gruffly, his brows beetling as he talked with her. "All nerves and no stamina. No sense, either. Should have been home by a fire on a day like this."

  Miss Tolliver agreed, but absently, and the doctor fixed her with one of his keen looks as he inquired about her connection to the young men. She replied with composure that she was a chance stranger who happened along when they needed help, and he seemed satisfied with the answer, but his intense gaze did not abate as he said he understood there to be an earl staying at the inn, too.

  Mrs. Murphy, also present for the conversation, blessed herself and said there was no earl staying in her house, and never had been. It was something she seemed to feel she should be congratulated upon, and the doctor considered her for a long moment before returning his gaze to Miss Tolliver. She told him that his two young patients were the brothers of an earl, and that the gentleman might be expected shortly, to assume their care. Mrs. Murphy threw up her hands and with a disgusted "Men!" stomped from the room to inspect her larder for what she was sure would be an excessive demand upon it.

  Watching her go, the doctor gave a grunt of dour satisfac­tion. "It's as I thought," he said. "My housekeeper can dress a joint of meat as neatly as you please, but when it comes to getting messages straight. . . She swore to me the young man who came requesting my presence here said I was to wait upon an earl and a lady. An unaccompanied lady."

  "Oh." Miss Tolliver knew the implications of such a rumor as well as the doctor, and she met his interrogating gaze with a calm she did not quite feel. "Well. I honestly can't say if that was the message she received, for fee groom sent to fetch you, while I'm sure a young man of many excellent qualities, cannot be considered a coherent conversationalist by any stretch of the imagination. . ." She sighed, her eyes hopeful. "I hope we can rely on ycur housekeeper's discretion?"

  "Discretion?" The doctor shook his head, in real if silent pity. "My dear young woman, she has none!"

  "Oh." Miss Tolliver did not need her brother's coachman present to hear, "I wonder what Sir Charles will say" reverberating in her head, and she frowned. Trying to help, the doctor told her he would set straight in a hurry anyone who asked him about the rumor. Slightly cheered, Miss Tolliver could not know that the doctor's way of "setting someone straight" was to scowl ferociously and tell him to mind his own business, which usually set "tongues wagging even harder.

  Determined not to worry over what she could not prevent, Miss Tolliver promised to follow the doctor's nursing direc­tions to the letter, bade him good-bye, and made her way back to young Peter's room, there to wait for whatever the night might yet bring.

  Chapter 8

  The doctor had been gone no more than an hour when the sounds of horses rode fast and furiously were heard in the innyard, followed almost immediately by the voice of some­one obviously used to command calling for an ostler. Miss Tolliver, pausing for a moment in her efforts to make Peter more comfortable, listened carefully.

  "It is my opinion," she told the sleeping boy with a smile, "that your brother has arrived!"

  She finished her duties quickly and settled in a chair in the corner of the room, out of the fire and candlelight, to await with her customary composure—and a great deal of interest—the coming developments. She did not have to wait long.

  No sooner had the noise died in the courtyard than it was taken up in the inn, and the sound of boots, taking the stairs two at a time, was heard outside Peter's door. There was a pause on the landing as two male voices conferred, then she heard one pair of feet move off toward Gillian's room as another came toward the door behind which she and Peter waited. In a moment the door was thrust open and a man stood in the doorway, his boots muddied and his expression forbidding as he surveyed the room.

  Before his eyes reached Miss Tolliver they landed on Peter, tossing uncomfortably in the bed, and he moved quickly forward, concern replacing the anger in his face.

  Miss Tolliver, deciding she liked the second expression much better, rose and walked toward him, extending her hand. "How do you do?" she asked, smiling pleasantly up into his startled face. "I take it you are—er—'my brother, the earl'?"

  Automatically he took her extended hand and bowed over it, saying politely as he straightened that he was indeed the Earl of Manseford.

  "And who the devil—" the heavy frown descended again "—begging your pardon—are you?"

  Something in his clear irritation at the situation in which he found himself, coupled with the day she had herself experienced, made the question extremely funny to Miss Tolliver, and, forgetting her family's constant chiding that she must at all costs contain her unreasonable lapses into levity, she put one wrist to her forehead, raised her eyes heavenward, and in the style of the most expressive tragic heroines to ever trod the boards, drooped slightly to sigh, "I—alack—am the poor unfortunate female kidnapped—most against my will, my nerves will never recover!—by your brothers!"

  "The devil!" The earl said, not bothering this time to beg her pardon as he glared at her. "Then that faradiddle Jem told us—"

  He was interrupted as an indignant John burst into the room, outrage apparent in face and figure.

  "Giles!" John cried. "There's a woman in Gillian's room who called me a lummox and ordered me out because she said I was upsetting her patient! Of all the—"

  "Oh, is your brother awake then?" Miss Tolliver asked. Two pairs of male eyes turned toward her, and she explained that Gillian was unconscious when brought to the inn. Her explanation continued as she told them kindly that lords to landlords, men were all the same to their hostess, Mrs. Murphy—"without a ha'pence of rumgumption between them," she added conscientiously.

  Their reactions to her disclosures could not have pleased her more, for the expression of blankest astonishment on one face and of narrowed examination on the other nearly sent her into whoops. She smiled—positively grinned—at them as they surveyed the medium-built woman whose once-neat dress was now spotted with bits of Gillian's blood, whose light brown hair straggled to escape its con­finement at the back of her neck, and whose forehead contained a positive smudge from her efforts to make the fire in Peter's bedroom burn more evenly.

  John bowed stiffly, fishing for her name. "Miss—?"

  "Tolliver," she supplied, beamin
g at him. He looked to his brother for enlightenment.

  "The woman," the earl said dryly, "that our three idiots kidnapped in place of the fair Vanessa. Jem had not merely lost his mind when he told us that garbled story."

  "What?" The word exploded out of John, and he stared from Miss Tolliver to the earl in disbelief. "You must be joking! Even such a corker as Gillian can tell a diamond of the first order from—" The infelicity of his remarks oc­curred to him and he colored brightly. Miss Tolliver finished the sentence for him.

  "—from a lump of coal, my lord? Oh!" She placed her hand to her forehead again, raising her eyes to heaven. "I am undone. So mortifying. So mortified. Oh. Oh. Oh." Fishing for her handkerchief, she found she had lost it, and was forced to bury her face in her hands instead. The effect worked just as well, for a disordered John hurried forward, his face horrified.

  "My dear Miss Tolliver!" he said, one hand moving distractedly through his hair as he stopped just short of her, not quite certain what to do. "I am so very sorry—so inconsiderate of me—my wretched tongue—indeed I did not mean—I would never—it is just that—"

  Miss Tolliver was enjoying herself immensely when the earl's languid and very dry voice cut through his brother's disjointed remonstrations.

  "I am not so sure," the earl said, "that Gillian did not kidnap an actress after all."

  "What?" John turned toward him, then started when Miss Tolliver raised a laughing face to them, the laugh disappearing only when Peter moaned slightly and called for his brother again. Instantly she was at his bedside, bending over to smile into his hazy eyes and reaching for the laudanum as she remarked, "And here you are, Peter! Just the man you've been asking for! Your brother Giles!"

  The earl was right behind her and she handed him the glass, watching in approval as, John at his shoulder, Giles raised his youngest brother's head and tipped the medicine down his throat, smiling gently at the drawn face before him.

  "I am afraid," Peter ventured in muffled tones as Giles settled himself on the bed, drawing one of the restless young hands into his own, "that we are in a bit of a scrape."

  The earl agreed it was true.

  "Is Gillian all right?" Peter asked, and upon being told that his brother would mend quickly, turned his head so that his blurry vision encompassed Miss Tolliver, standing be­hind his elder brothers, almost in the shadows.

  "And you, ma'am?" he asked with grave courtesy, "are you all right?"

  "Right as a trivet," she assured him, stepping forward, not noticing the sharp glance the earl directed at her cheerful face as she smiled down at his youngest brother.

  "She's awfully nice," Peter informed them as he drifted off again, still holding Giles's hand. "I wish she were that Vanessa. . ."

  The silence in the room grew until the earl, removing his hand from Peter's slack grasp, rose, slipped his brother's arm under the coverlet, and directed a level glance toward Miss Tolliver.

  "I believe," he said, "that it would be wise for you to tell me all that has transpired today. From the beginning. We have only Jem's account, which is so wild as to border on the incomprehensible, and although I shall certainly have a thorough reckoning from Gillian in time, I would appreciate knowing as much as you can tell me. Now."

  The way he said "now" sounded a great deal like an order to Miss Tolliver, and she was not a lady who liked being ordered. His kindness to his youngest brother had done much to establish him in her esteem, however, so she overlooked the autocratic tone for the moment as she de­scribed, as simply as she could, what the three young

  Willowdale residents had done to amuse themselves that day.

  Her apology for the stupidity of her brother's coachman was waved aside by John, who said he would certainly expect his own coachman to behave in the same manner, were he carrying a defenseless female. He meant it well, for his younger brothers' behavior so shocked a man of his temperament that he was overwhelmingly grateful to find that the lady did not plan to make a scandal the type of which he most deplored—in fact, she had told them the least said, the soonest forgotten—but Miss Tolliver fired up at once, informing him that she was far from defenseless. It was only the earl's timely intervention that saved his open- mouthed brother from being wholly bested in the coming argument.

  The earl said dampingly that the coachman had acted as he thought he ought, and he wished that they would do him the courtesy of doing the same—a statement that made both regard him with either relief or hostility, depending upon their position in the argument. After a severe struggle with her tongue, Miss Tolliver continued, skirting lightly over her own part in the night's drama.

  Well able to read between the lines, the earl was aware of what might have happened to his foolish young brothers had no one with a kind heart and cool head been there to help them. He had much to be grateful for, and he said so, but Miss Tolliver refused to be thanked, laughing as she told them it was more of an adventure than had ever before come her way, and if Peter and Gillian took no serious hurt from it, she certainly was not one to dwell on the night's events.

  "Adventure!" John fairly barked the word, regarding her as sternly as when he had first discovered she was roasting him. "You're as bad as they are! Adventure indeed! It goes beyond all bearing—"

  Miss Tolliver regarded him fixedly for several moments, until his words trailed off and he took a hasty turn around the room, coming to stand again behind his elder brother.

  "You know," she said, nodding tolerantly at the late earl's second son, "I believe you will like my brother. It is just as well." She sighed as she smiled at them. "Charles's coachman left here in high dudgeon and is on his way back to London to tell my brother of what you can be sure they will characterize as my abominable behavior. Unless I am very much mistaken, it will bring Charles here posthaste tomorrow."

  Her voice was apologetic as she continued. "He has the gout. His presence is a fate I would not wish on anyone."

  Forgetting his own often withering indictments of his two youngest brothers, John said austerely that that was no way to speak of one's brother. The earl, however, smiled in understanding and said he would be most pleased to meet Sir Charles.

  "Will you?" Miss Tolliver's eyes opened in considerable surprise. "How very odd! But then, I have had cause to wonder about the mental stability of your family. . ."

  "I say!" The words were John's; the earl refused to be drawn, merely favoring Miss Tolliver with the glint of a smile before his gaze returned to Peter once again.

  "Well," Giles said, "your tale makes me think the situation is not quite as bad as it could be."

  About to agree, Miss Tolliver bethought herself of one more thing, and sighed.

  "Oh yes," she said, "there is one more thing—a ridicu­lous thing, really!—hardly worth mentioning! But I imagine it best that you know about it." Both men regarded her courteously, and to her annoyance she felt the color rising in her cheeks.

  "It really is too ridiculous for words," she assured them. "But there! You know how people are!"

  Neither would admit to such knowledge, and Miss Tolliver, feeling uncharacteristically harassed, plunged on.

  "The thing is," she said, smiling brightly in a way meant to show how ridiculous she, herself, considered this one last thing, "somehow your groom—that is—when the message was left for the doctor to come—" She took a deep breath, and the words tumbled over each other in her haste to say them and be done. "Well, the long and the short of it is, there are people in the village nearby who believe that you and I, your lordship, are staying at this inn alone."

  Chapter 9

  "What?" The word exploded in unison from the brothers, and for the first time Miss Tolliver felt real dismay at her situation. She had not had time to consider it while Gillian lay bleeding, and while Peter was tossing and turning dependent on her alone; when the doctor told her of the rumor sure to be circulating in the village, she had compart­mentalized the knowledge, telling herself that it was not so very bad after all. But
now, faced with two members of the ton, and knowing full well the price exacted for irregular behavior by her society, the full enormity of it swept over her.

  "Well, don't shout at me!" she replied with some asperi­ty. "It was your groom who left the impression! And as for that, if you'd keep a better eye on your wards, they wouldn't be out trying to kidnap an actress for you." That thought made her regard the earl with some severity. "And it seems to me that if you want any kidnapping done, you ought to do it yourself, and not corrupt young boys."

  The earl's brows snapped together as he informed her that he had not sent his brothers to do any kidnapping, and he had no need to do so. John, eager to back him up, added, "Lord, no, not with all the women throwing themselves at Giles—why, he could have his pick of any lightskirt or any lady." He stopped to find his brother regarding him in annoyance, and Miss Tolliver with a return of her good humor.

  "You are not helping, John," Giles said.

  "Oh, but you are," Miss Tolliver assured him with great affability. "Now that you have made it clear that your brother need only snap his fingers to have women flocking to him—"

  "I never—" John began, uneasy under Giles's frosty eye, but Miss Tolliver continued around his words.

  "—I quite understand that it has all been a silly misun­derstanding, and that our present situation is in no way your brother's fault; in fact, when I think about it, it is no doubt mine, for if I had not the temerity to venture out upon the King's road, my carriage would never have been there to tempt your brothers to stop it—"