She looked sideways at her husband. ‘I wonder who found that for him.’
‘No, you don’t,’ he told her, skilfully negotiating a herd of cattle being driven by a sullen boy, ‘you know—or, rather, you guessed—that it was I who arranged it. He does not know that, and you must not tell him—or your mother.’
‘No, they would not like it. My mother even hinted that you might not be best pleased that he had found employment. Why did you do it?’
‘She is your mother, and the girls are your half-sisters. I did not do it for them. I did it for you.’
That did not need saying, Susanna thought, and said aloud, ‘It was a kind action, all the same.’
Ben said simply, ‘I did not wish to see you unhappy at the thought of their poverty and squandering your money on them. This way we are all happy.’
‘Indeed we are, particularly me.’
‘I refuse to allow you the particularly. It is I who am particularly happy,’ he teased her.
‘Both particularly happy, perhaps?’ she teased back.
‘Agreed. Both of us. So noted, as I say to my clerks.’
They had reached The Lair and outpaced their followers. Their grooms who were wearing white wedding cockades on their jockey caps, jumped down to hold the horses for them.
Ben leapt out to hand down his bride. She was still clutching her bouquet of pink and white carnations. In the excitement of the Duke’s intervention at the end of the wedding, she had forgotten to throw it to her sisters.
‘You may do so later at the wedding breakfast,’ Ben had told her.
Now she took his arm and they began to walk towards the door.
Afterwards, Susanna was to ask herself why the premonitions of disaster with which she had been plagued had disappeared completely on her wedding day. Excitement no doubt, she later concluded.
So it was that, when they were halfway to the front door, which was being held open by two footmen, she was almost as surprised as Ben when a man jumped out from the trees and bushes in which he had been hiding to wave a pair of pistols wildly at them.
It was Lord Babbacombe. His clothing and appearance were as wild as his behaviour. Ben held Susanna’s arm firmly, wondering what action he could take. He could only be grateful that Babbacombe had not shot them down on the spot, for his intention was plainly evil.
His first words revealed his fell intent—and the reason for his delay. ‘Well met,’ he cried. ‘I would not have had you, Ben Wolfe, go straight to your maker without knowing that I had repaid you for ruining me and making me gallows meat.
‘Stand aside, Mrs Wolfe. I should not like to shoot you by accident.’
‘No—’ began Susanna defiantly.
She was silenced by Ben, who said gently, without taking his eyes from Lord Babbacombe, ‘Do as he says, Susanna. Madmen should always be humoured.’
‘And who made me a madman,’ roared Babbacombe, ‘but you and your mother! She should have married me—and then none of this would have happened. Well, at least if I hang, it shall be for killing you—and you shall not see me swing. Why did you not stay in India, why?’
He raised one of his pistols.
Susanna, who had obeyed Ben and moved a little away, knew that she was about to lose him.
‘No,’ she shrieked, ‘you shall not kill him,’ and she flung the bouquet which she was carrying straight into Babbacombe’s face as, startled by her cry, he turned his head in her direction.
It was enough for him to be so disorientated that he involuntarily fired the pistol he had raised, and for Ben—the shot going high and missing him—to leap upon him and to try to wrest the second pistol from his grasp.
They both fell to the ground, struggling. Susanna, delighted that her intervention had saved Ben from certain death, now had to watch him trying to overcome Babbacombe. As they writhed on the ground there was a second shot.
For a moment the world reeled about her at the thought that Ben might have been killed, until he stood up, unharmed, his bridal clothes torn and awry while Babbacombe lay supine on the ground. Susanna hurled herself on Ben, exclaiming, ‘Oh, Ben, I thought I had lost you!’
And then, ‘Is he dead?’
Ben held her for a moment, their two hearts beating as one, sharing the joy of danger passed.
‘You saved me,’ he said at last, kissing her. ‘You, the Wolfe’s mate, saved me. And no, I don’t think he’s dead, just sorely wounded.’
The footmen, paralysed by the sight of their master and mistress in danger, were now running towards them. The outriders of the wedding party, who had arrived in time to see the end, also ran up.
‘What is it? What is it?’ they cried, at the sight of Lord Babbacombe lying on the ground, semi-conscious, blood running from a wound in the chest.
Jess, who together with Jack Devereux had reached them first, said shortly. ‘Stand back, everyone. It’s Lord Babbacombe. He tried to kill Mr Wolfe—and failed. I’ll send for the Runners. Leave me to deal with matters, sir, while you and Mrs Wolfe go into the house.’
Ben, used to being the one in charge, was ready to argue until Susanna said, her voice shaking, ‘Yes, indeed, very sensible of you, Mr Fitzroy. We owe a duty to our guests. Come, Ben, you know that Jess is quite capable of looking after matters properly for you.’
Ben, oblivious to those about them, put an arm around her and kissed her, saying, ‘Since you saved me, my love, you shall have your way.’
‘Saved you?’ exclaimed Mrs Mitchell shrilly—she had arrived well after the whole matter was over. ‘Whatever can you mean?’
‘We shall explain to you once we are indoors. Do not let this wretched business mar our happy day,’ said Ben urging them all in, except the footmen who were placing Lord Babbacombe on a makeshift stretcher.
‘Carry him into the summer house and you, Tozzy, find the nearest doctor and bring him here,’ were the last words Susanna heard as Ben ushered her through the front door of her new home.
Madame de Saulx was on her left, not clucking and exclaiming like her mother, but saying gently, ‘What a brave and resourceful creature you are my dear, I arrived in time to see you throw your bouquet at that murdering wretch. I picked it up for you since it deserved not to be trampled on but to be preserved as an emblem of your courage.’
‘I wasn’t brave,’ responded Susanna numbly. ‘I did what I did without thinking.’
‘The truest bravery of all,’ said Ben kissing her again. ‘Take that from an old soldier. And now if the company will excuse us for a moment, let us retire upstairs in order to repair the damage which recent events have done to our bridal wear.’
Jess and Jack Devereux watched them walk away. ‘I tell you, Fitzroy,’ Jack said, ‘that young woman is a fit wife for Ben Wolfe. I would never have thought that he would find anyone who could match him for sheer courage and initiative, but he’s certainly married a nonpareil.’
Jess nodded and said briefly, ‘I know—and once she looked at him any hopes I had of winning her dropped dead. I wish that I could say the same of Babbacombe. He’s still living—just. For Ben Wolfe’s sake, I hope that he doesn’t survive to go to trial. Ben doesn’t deserve to have the whole wretched business rehearsed again.’
‘Agreed,’ said Jack, taking his wife by the arm, ‘but now that he has a helpmate worthy of him, she can share his burdens.’
It was a good epitaph for his own lost hopes regarding Susanna, Jess thought, and then set about organising matters indoors until Ben and Susanna came down, looking refreshed, and ready to face the congratulations of their guests, not just on their marriage, but on their very survival.
Later, much later, the house to themselves, Ben and Susanna were at last alone in their bedroom.
Susanna had exchanged her cream silk wedding dress for a cream cotton nightgown. Ben was wearing a linen one, open at the throat. Trying to overcome her natural shyness, she said, laughing, ‘We are nearly as muffled up in our nightwear as we were in our wedding clothes.�
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‘True,’ said Ben slyly, ‘but not for long, I hope. No, do not blush, my darling. No woman who has just saved her newly married husband’s life should blush.’
‘Oh,’ she said, turning her face into his chest as he put his arms around her, ‘you are over-praising what I did. I’m sure that you would have found some way of overpowering him if I had remained a mere spectator.’
‘No,’ replied Ben, his voice sober. ‘For he was about to shoot me—and would have done so had you not thrown your bouquet into his face. I know the look in an enemy’s eye when he feels ready to attack. Who would have thought that he would have deceived everyone by hiding himself away in England, and waiting for an opportunity to murder me?’
‘Yes,’ said Susanna, shuddering. ‘It is wrong and un-Christian of me but, like you and Jess, I hope that he does not live to be tried. And now, may we forget him, for he failed and what started nearly thirty years ago is over, and we may make our own lives with that shadow removed from it. You can remember your mother as young and lovely, and I can forget Francis Sylvester and the pain he caused me.’
‘You are right, my love—which is a distressing, but useful, habit of yours. Yes, tonight is ours and the future. Come to bed, Mrs Wolfe, and begin to celebrate it.’
Celebrate it they did, and the last memory of the unhappy past disappeared when Lord Babbacombe died of his wound in prison. The Den and The Lair became happy homes again, full of joy and laughter when Susanna and Ben raised what Ben called their wolf pack.
‘The wolf and the wolf’s mate must have cubs to carry on the line,’ he said to Susanna one fine afternoon at The Den some years later, watching their children playing on the lawn, ‘and make the future secure for all the Wolfes to come.’
‘None of whom,’ riposted Susanna naughtily, for she loved to tease him, ‘would have existed if, on a long-ago day, you had not kidnapped the wrong woman.’
‘The wrong woman then, but the right woman now—and forever,’ was his loving reply.
‘I have no answer to that,’ she said—and kissed him.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-6407-9
THE WOLFE’S MATE
Copyright © 1999 by Paula Marshall.
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