“Help?” He could not help being mollified by this first use of his christian name.
“Urgently. There’s trouble brewing. No time to go into it. Will you trust me as I am trusting you?”
“Oh, I think so.”
“Good. Then listen.” He described young Warrender’s visit as succinctly as possible. “I’m off to London with this to the Home Office,” he concluded. “When Warrender calls on you, arrange some pretext to keep in touch.”
“Everyone knows I’ve been wanting to meet him again,” said George Warren.
“Just so. I’ve sent a note to Captain Grange at the barracks. If trouble threatens before I get back, go to him. But, please God, it won’t. General Ludd must be coming down to make sure of the arms young Warrender brought over. Presumably nothing will happen until he gets back to London.”
“Yes.” George Warren had impressed his friend by his quick grasp of the situation. “If Ludd’s the only one who knows the signal, he almost has to be there in person.”
“I would think so. So—we’ve a little time. I wish to God I knew just where Miss Warrender comes into it.”
“Innocently, I am sure.”
“I hope you prove right.” And on this sombre note they parted, Hawth to make record time to London, and Warren to go back to his house and await his visitor. It went against the grain with him to do so. It was odd how badly he wanted to go up to the hall and see Kate Warrender. Just the sight of her face would be enough, he was sure, to dispel the unpleasant miasma of doubt with which Hawth’s story had surrounded her. No. Not just Hawth’s story. She had been in a strange mood yesterday. Something to do with Kit Warrender? He would not believe it There must be an innocent reason for her connection with him, and he would not dream of insulting her by asking for it Still less would he mention her name when young Warrender paid his call.
But the long day dragged by and there was no sign of Kit. Maddening to be confined to the house by the chance of his coming, but there it was, and he must resist the temptation to pay a quick afternoon call at the Dower House just to make sure that all was well there. He did, however, send over a horse for Kate and received a note of thanks in her spiky unmistakable hand. She was his “most grateful Cousin Kate.” He liked that. He found he liked it very much.
Kate was grateful. She had got home in a towering rage from the hall, to find George’s note and the boy from Warren House patiently walking a handsome thoroughbred up and down in the stable yard. “The pick of his stable,” she told her mother. “At least Cousin George does not jump to the worst possible conclusions about me.”
“Kate, dear, are you not refining too much upon poor Lord Hawth’s behaviour?”
“ ‘Poor Lord Hawth!’ If he does not think me fit to have the care of his children, why does he not out with it and say so!”
“I don’t understand,” wailed Mrs. Warrender, not for the first time. “What’s the matter with you two today? You look like death and insist there’s nothing wrong with you and Lord Hawth flies up into the boughs for no reason. I wish you would tell me what is going on, Kate.”
“Mother, I can’t. It’s not my secret, I promise you, it will all be cleared up soon, and then—” She stopped. Then everything would be changed. Tossed this way and that by the night’s amazing events, it had taken her a while to realise the full implications of her brother’s survival. No need now for that set of apartments in Tunbridge Wells. When the crisis was past and Chris was able to make himself known, George Warren would have to pack up and leave Warren House. His tenure as heir in tail would be over. He would go back to Philadelphia, and she would never see him again. The little note of thanks that pleased him so much took her an hour and a half to write.
“At last!” George Warren held out a friendly hand as Warrender was ushered into his study next morning. “I’ve been badly wanting to meet you again, and thank you for saving my life.”
“It was nothing.”
“On the contrary, it was my life. But what’s the news?”
“We’ve a little time. I was down at Tidemills all evening. General Ludd was there—you know about him, I take it?”
“Yes. Hawth told me it all.”
“Good. So you know about the consignment of arms I brought.”
“Yes?” It was an odd thing, but George Warren found his young visitor a disappointment. He had liked him so much at that first meeting, been so grateful for the courage that had saved his life, and now … What was it about him? Something tarnished? Something just a little shabby? The hectic flush of a gambler who has just risked everything on a throw. Well, natural enough, perhaps, considering the desperate life he had led all winter, but disappointing, just the same.
“They’re not for here. The arms.” Warrender sounded a trifle impatient, as if he suspected his host of not paying full attention. “They have to be shared out and laboriously smuggled up to London before anything can happen. He was arranging that last night. The General.” He took a deep draft of the claret Warren had poured for him.
“By the usual channels, I take it.” With an effort, George Warren kept his voice friendly.
“Yes. I’m taking one load. Tell Hawth I’d take it kindly if he’d have a convincing job made off my ‘capture.’ I want to live to fight another day.”
“To spy another day.” Warren could not resist it.
“Call it that if you like.” The young man’s colour rose. “And tell me where England would find herself today without my ‘spying.’ ”
“Fair enough.” George Warren threw out a hand. “My apologies. It’s a dangerous enough game you are playing, God knows. You’ll keep your cousin out of it!” He had not meant to say this,
“My cousin? Oh, Kate. Well, of course. Hardly woman’s work—eh?”
“Then perhaps a pity to have involved her to the extent of that note to Lord Hawth.” He found himself disliking this young man more and more. “Hawth’s jumped to some quite unpleasant conclusions, you know. It might even lose her her place.”
To his amazement, his guest burst into a fit of laughter, “Lose her her place! Oh, that’s rich! Tell Lord Hawth, with my compliments, that there is no need to fret himself about a place for my Cousin Kate. I’ll find her one.”
“You?”
“Not the way you think!” Warrender was struggling to control his mirth. “No, no, Mr. Warren, I don’t propose to marry my Cousin Kate, but by God I’ll make a place for her just the same, and no one will be more surprised than you.”
“You talk in riddles.” Warren did not try to keep the distaste out of his tone. “And about a lady I admire.”
“Admire her, do you? That’s better still. But I’d cut it out if I were you. Quite above your touch, is my Cousin Kate, and so I warn you. Your touch!” He dissolved once more into helpless laughter. “Oh, poor Cousin George.” He reached out for the bottle, refilled his glass and drank. “I have quite other plans for Cousin Kate. Countess of Hawth, don’t you think? Pity about that note, though. Thanks for telling me that. I’ll make it right for her, never you mind how. Oh—and if you were planning to pay a call at the Dower House, as no doubt you are, you might give her a message from me, since my company is so compromising. Privately, if you will. When the old lady is busy with her housekeeping. Tell her, all’s well, and she has nothing to fear.”
“Fear!” exclaimed George Warren angrily. “What should she have to fear?”
“What, indeed?” laughed young Warrender. “With such a preux chevalier to leap to her defence.”
“I think—” Warren rose—“that I will wish you a good day, Mr. Warrender. You will have to visit me again when you know the plans for moving the arms to London, so we must continue to appear friends, but we will not, if you please, discuss Miss Warrender. Or her mother.”
“Oh, very well.” Sulkily. “Just so long as you give Kate my message.”
Left alone at last, George Warren took a hard pull at his wine, and his temper. Sad to have been so disapp
ointed in young Warrender, but absurd to have let him make him angry. He was a spy, a nobody, and what he said about Kate Warrender mere bragging. But it had come uncomfortably close to home just the same. Why had it got him so exactly on the raw? Because of Mrs. Warrender. Her daughter should not be spoken of in such slighting terms. If only he had the right to protect them both. Impossible, of course. Once or twice that winter, watching Mrs. Warrender’s fair head bent over her embroidery, he had been tempted to take the plunge. To ask her to be his wife. But, somehow, something had always stopped him. Not something: she had stopped him herself. So subtly, so gently, that, it had taken him a while to recognise what she was doing, she had made it impossible for him to propose to her.
It left him free. If that unpleasant young man was right, and Hawth made Kate his countess, neither she nor her mother would ever need protecting again. As for him, he would go back to America. He wished he had never left.
And now, when he was not sure that he wanted to, he must call at the Dower House and deliver young Warrender’s odd message. To the future Countess of Hawth? It seemed extremely probable. He could only hope that they would be happy together.
“You’re going to the Dower House, sir?” Chilver was waiting to open the front door.
“Yes?”
“May I make so bold as to ask you to give Miss Kate a message for me?”
“Why, yes.” He had lived in England long enough now to know just what an extraordinary request this was.
“Thank you, sir.” So did Chilver. “It’s to say, sir, please, will she be careful. Not walk over to the hall alone. Stay home at night. There’s something going on,” he added. “Isn’t there, Mr. Warren?”
“Yes. And the less said about it the better. But of course I’ll give your message to Miss Kate. I’d thought of saying very much the same thing to her myself. Though she would hardly be going out at night.”
“No, sir,” said Chilver.
Entering the comfortable little living room at the Dower House, George Warren thought neither of the two ladies looked well. Both were pale and heavy-eyed, as if from lack of sleep, but the pallor, which merely accentuated handsome bone structure in Kate’s face, made her mother strike him, for the first time, as a woman much older than himself. What a fool he had been, and how grateful he was to her. He took his usual place by her chair and looked across the room at Kate, elegant in dark green. Had she grown more handsome, or had his idea of female beauty changed in the course of the winter? She would make a striking countess.
He must give her young Warrender’s message, and Chilver’s. His chance came when Joe appeared to announce a messenger from Lord Hawth, and Mrs. Warrender excused herself to receive him. “Miss Warrender.” He moved across the room to stand over her chair, and she looked up at him, sudden colour flooding her face. “I have a message for you.”
“A message?” The colour drained away, leaving her drawn, anxious. She must think it came from Hawth. “From your cousin,” he hastened to explain. “I don’t much like to be its bearer.”
“Pray, don’t trouble yourself on my account, Mr. Warren. I can see that my kind employer has already told you my character is quite gone. He thinks I have been using the secret passage for assignations. He means to have it nailed up, to prevent me …” Her face changed, darkened, as if at some new and unpleasant idea. “No,” she exclaimed. “Impossible!” And then, with an effort: “Forgive me. A message, you said?”
“I wish I was your brother!” Now, what in the world had made him say that, and why had it turned her whiter than ever? “At least I am your cousin,” he went on, “and I take it unkindly that you are calling me Mr. Warren again. Miss Warrender, if you should ever need help …” Idiot. Lord Hawth would look after her.
“Thank you. But this message?”
“Reassuring enough. Kit Warrender asked me to tell you that all is well and you have nothing to fear.” His tone inevitably betrayed what he felt about the strange message.
“Kind of my Cousin Kit,” she said lightly. “And there I’d been looking under the bed of nights.”
“Just what I said.” He was relieved she took it so. “What should you fear, Miss Warrender?” And then, remembering: “Though in fact, I have another message for you.”
“Another?”
“From Chilver. He waylaid me as I came out. Asked me to warn you to be careful. Don’t go to the hall alone, he says, don’t go out at night.”
“Out at night?” Mrs. Warrender had rejoined them. “Why in the world would we be going out at night, with no invitations, and it the dark of the moon anyway.”
“Poor old Chilver,” said Kate. “He always was a worrier. But a good friend, too. Tell him to be easy, Mr. Warren. Joe takes me to the hall these days, and one of the men brings me back. Lord Hawth insists on it.”
Naturally Lord Hawth did. Bad enough to have his future countess acting governess to his bastard children without letting her risk reputation walking alone, even in his own park. Warren rose to his feet. “I have been keeping you ladies from your work. But before I go, what news from Hawth, ma’am?”
“He returns tomorrow.” Now it was Mrs. Warrender’s turn to blush, and he raged inwardly at himself. Could he actually, with his crazy attentions, have got her to care for him in the course of this devilish winter? “He asks me to send you a message. He’ll call on his way home tomorrow evening.”
“What a great many messages,” said Warren, making his unhappy escape.
“What in the world did he mean?” asked Mrs. Warrender when he had gone. “And as for Chilver! What’s got into the man? The effrontery of it! To send a message by his master.”
“George Warren didn’t mind,” said Kate.
“I’d like to hear what Lord Hawth would say if Parsons were to send us a message by him.”
“My gracious, so would I!” Kate was delighted with this change in the line of her mother’s thought, and half listened while Mrs. Warrender planned the dinner that would welcome his lordship home to the hall. She had much to think about. What precisely had Christopher meant by his message? Presumably that he had managed to convince the Jewkes brothers that she was no risk to them, but the message combined oddly with Chilver’s anxious one. She had a pretty good idea of the fright Chilver must have had when Boney was found in the Warren stables. One of the few people who knew about her impersonations of Christopher, he must have jumped at once to the conclusion that some disaster had befallen her. Well, so it had. She only wished she could see the end of it. In the meantime, she found herself paving more regard to his message than to Christopher’s. Chilver she could trust absolutely. And Christopher?
She made herself face it. This long lost brother of hers had come back a stranger, one she must love but could not trust. Something had been working at the back of her mind ever since Hawth had accused her of using the tunnel for assignations, and had suddenly surfaced when she was talking to George Warren, Chris never had explained what he had been doing in the tunnel when he had found her. She must hope to God that she had not guessed right.
Chapter Sixteen
“It’s all very fine and dandy,” said Jewkes the publican, “but can we believe Kit Warrender, that’s what I want to know? He’s her kin after all; wrong side of the blanket, but kin. He just might tell a tale to protect her.”
“It’s possible.” The man they called General Ludd was sitting with the Jewkes brothers in the closed bar of the Ship. “And too important to be ignored. You’re sure of your facts?”
“Facts? They shout at you, surely. One riding up the track before the ship was so much as in harbour and the other could have landed. Besides, I told you, General. We caught him. Her,” he amended. “Miss Warrender from the Dower House. Seems she’s been play-acting as her cousin all winter. We did a bit of asking, once I started to think.”
“Once she’d got away,” said the General.
“How was I to know young Warrender used the tunnel, too? And he did swear up and down,
like I told you, that she knew nothing, just didn’t understand what had happened to her.”
“Precisely,” said General Ludd. “If you had only left well alone in the first place, there’d have been no trouble. Now, she’s bound to start wondering, and we can’t afford that. I don’t like violence, as you know, but we can’t risk our whole plan for one girl. Listen.”
“He’s got a head on his shoulders, and no mistake,” said the elder Jewkes admiringly when the General had left them. “Make a dandy first minister he will. All planned as neat as one of Lord Wellington’s battles, even down to the drafting of the note, and the hand that’s to forge it. Send her with the decoy run, and make sure she’s caught and killed. All neat as ninepence and no blame to us.”
“I just wish we knew the date we’re to rise,” said his brother.
“But he’s told you and told you, the General has, that no one knows that, not even he. He’ll choose his time when he’s ripe and ready. The mail coaches won’t run, there’ll be risings all over the country. We take the mill, the hall and Warren House, hold the damned aristos as hostages, and wait for word from London. It will be the same all over. Christ, I’d like to be in Brighton and see them pick up fat Guelph from his whore’s arms. Or Petworth to help sack Egremont’s little love nest.”
“But the General said, no sacking, no violence.”
“What the General said, and what may happen, brother Seth, is two things. Not our fault, surely, if there’s a bit of resistance—as there’s bound to be—and a few get hurt.”
“And the women?” asked his brother.
“The General said they wasn’t to be touched.”
“Yes, he did, didn’t he.” Seth’s ironic tone matched his brother’s.
“We’ll go for the Bower House,” Jewkes senior summed it up. “Pity that high-nosed Miss Kate won’t be there, but the old lady’s quite an armful. Lord, won’t they be having themselves a time in Brighton.”
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