It was disconcerting to find the clerk of the justices awaiting him in his study and happily consuming Mrs. Warrender’s uneaten breakfast. “I thought you’d be needing me, my lord.” The man was pleased with himself. “It’s a fine haul. Three of the villains at once. I always did think there was something deuced havey-cavey about that young come-as-you-please Warrender.”
“Did you? Yes, Parsons?”
“It’s a note, my lord, urgent, from East Grinstead.”
“Good God! Yes, of course.” Taking the note, he remembered for the first time in this crowded morning that last night had been the one when the revolutionaries’ arms were to start on their run to London and be “surprised” by soldiers from East Grinstead posted along, the various routes Kit Warrender had indicated. Warrender had expected to be with one of the parties, so what the devil was he doing planning an elopement for the same night? Had he meant to show a clean pair of heels to the lot of them, taking Kate Warrender with him? He opened the note. “Safely housed,” it read, adhering to the code they had arranged. But that should mean that Kit Warrender had been captured and safely isolated from his revolutionary companions. Stranger and stranger. “I’ll see the prisoners now,” he told Parsons. And then, to the clerk: “I may need to see young Warrender alone. Reasons of state.”
“Deuced havey-cavey,” said the clerk, but he said it under his breath.
The prisoners were awaiting them in the high, glum “baronial” hall that even Mrs. Warrender had not tried to make habitable.
“Lord Hawth,” the lieutenant sainted smartly. “Three arrant villains for you. I’ve given my deposition to the clerk. If you’ll excuse me?”
“One moment.” Hawth was looking beyond him at the three prisoners standing against the wall. “No one told me Mr. Warrender was wounded.” Young. Warrender was leaning against the man who must be Chilver, the sling on his right arm showing under the greatcoat whose collar was pulled high round a white face.
“Does it matter?” The officer shrugged. “He’ll be worse than wounded presently. And now, if you’ll excuse me?”
“Gladly.” He knew the man was disappointed at not being congratulated, but was busy reading the deposition. It made out a damning enough case. He looked up, saw young Warrender swaying on his feet and caught a glance of appeal from the man who was supporting him. It decided him. “I’ll see Mr. Warrender alone,” he said. “Bring him to my study.”
“But he’s dangerous, my lord,” protested the clerk.
“He hardly looks it.” He turned to one of the two constables in charge of the prisoners. “Bring him along. Gently there.”
With an effort, young Warrender pulled himself upright. “I can manage, my lord. I’ve given my parole already. And so has Chilver here.”
“Chilver?”
“Yes. He works on Warren Farm. He saved my life. The butler’s cousin.” The words came with difficulty. “I’d be grateful for a word alone, my lord.”
“You shall have it.” Ignoring the protests of clerk and constables, he led the way to his study, where he found Parsons anxiously hovering. “What the hell are you doing here?” And then, seeing the prisoner clutch the back of a chair. “Glad you are. Brandy, Parsons. Quick!”
“Thank you.” Again the voice was muffled. “But—burgundy?”
And, surprisingly, “I have it here,” said Parsons, filled a glass half full and put it in the prisoner’s shaking left hand.
“Oh, sit down, for God’s sake.” Hawth threw himself into his own chair, remembering briefly that Mrs. Warrender had sat there earlier. “Help him, Parsons.”
“Yes, my lord.” Parsons took back the glass, from which the prisoner had had one enlivening draft, found an armless chair and helped him into it gently as a woman might. “And for you, my lord?”
“Nothing. Go and find out how Mrs. Warrender is. Send for the doctor if necessary. I’ll ring when I want you.”
“Mrs. Warrender!” exclaimed the prisoner as Parsons withdrew. “What’s the matter?”
“She’s ill, as well you should guess. Now, quick, before anything else, where is Miss Warrender? Is she compromised beyond recall? Because, if so, you’ll marry her as fast as I can get a licence, even if you do leave her a widow after your trial.”
“Thank you.” Could the prisoner possibly be laughing at him? “But it will not be necessary, my lord. You thought it an elopement? You’ve not much confidence in your children’s governess, have you? What did Mrs. Warrender say to that?”
“She fainted.”
“Oh poor—” A pause. “Who’s looking after her?”
“My daughter and Betty Parsons. If it’s any concern of yours.”
“Could I have some more burgundy?” The first glass had brought a faint flush to the pale cheeks.
“Burgundy?” Pouring it, he remembered. “You drank brandy last time.” Something had been puzzling him ever since his first sight of the prisoner. Wounded, of course, but smaller, slighter, surely? “You’re not …” he said, and then: “Who are you?”
The flush deepened. “I owe you an apology, my lord. Several, I am afraid.” A half defiant pull at the burgundy. “I needed that. Thank God you got back from town. It was the best news I ever had when I heard we were being brought here. I don’t know what I’d have done if it had been one of the other magistrates.” A shaking hand pushed away the concealing coat collar from the face. “I am Kate Warrender, my lord.”
“What?”
“I was afraid you would not like it.”
“Like it! Do you expect me to!”
“Don’t say, ‘My children’s governess’. Or, if you must, say ‘ex-governess.’ ”
“Just so. But—” He had been thinking in a whirlwind. “There are two of you. Two Kit Warrenders.”
“Yes. I’m … sorry.”
“And the other one?”
“My lord—” she leaned forward, a pleading left hand outstretched—“I can’t talk about him. Not yet. Believe what you will.”
“You expect me to get you out of this scrape and then give you my blessing while you run off with this good-for-nothing cousin of yours? Well, Miss Warrender, you may be interested to learn that he was arrested last night, too. That’s why I began to wonder about you.”
“Arrested?” The flush ebbed from her face and left it fineboned with exhaustion.
“Oh, he’ll be protected, your lover, as I suppose I must protect you.”
“Your children’s governess?” The defiance came out faint and pitiful enough.
“No, your mother’s daughter. But to do so I must know what lunacy took you out last night, guiding a parcel of smugglers across the park.”
“I believed them to be Volunteers, my lord.” She had thought hard while she awaited his pleasure in that cold hall. “I had a note—from the other Kit. A forgery. It has to have been a forgery.” Was she trying to convince herself as well as him? Reaching with her good hand into her greatcoat pocket she pulled out the note and handed it over.
“His hand?” He read it quickly.
“I thought so. Now, I’m not so sure. But he always signs like that.”
“And you should know, I take it.”
“Oh, God!” He was obviously still convinced that she and Chris were lovers. “If I could only explain.”
“It is a shade unfortunate,” he said.
Chapter Seventeen
“All’s well, ma’am.” Parsons had found Mrs. Warrender being ministered to by his daughter Betty. “My lord is seeing Miss Kate alone. She’ll tell him. She’ll have to.”
“Yes thank you, Parsons. I don’t know how I’d have borne today without you. Bring her to me as soon as you can.”
“Of course I will. Don’t you fret yourself, ma’am. His lordship will contrive all for the best, you see if he doesn’t.”
“He’ll be very angry, Parsons.”
“Well, yes, ma’am.”
“What am I doing here?” She looked round Lord Hawth’s spar
tan bedroom, one of the rooms in the house that she had not dared touch, except for a thorough cleaning.
“His lordship brought you up, ma’am, when you fainted.”
“Oh.” She sat up shakily in the bed. “Help me to the morning room, Betty. Miss Kate will expect to find me there. And, Parsons, tell Lord Hawth I am better. Thank him. But what are we going to do about Miss Kate?”
“Don’t fret, ma’am,” he said again. “His lordship will manage.”
His lordship, still very angry, was confronting Kate with the same problem. “If you weren’t hurt, I’d make you wait in the tunnel till dark.” He had been furious when he got back and found the panel not yet nailed up. “And serve you right. As it is—wait here.” She heard the click as he locked the door after him.
In the cold hall, he gave his orders quickly, impatiently. “Mr. Warrender’s’ not well,” he told clerk and constables. “I shall keep him here for the time being, Oh, yes, I’ll be responsible.” He brushed aside the senior constable’s objection. “As for these two. Committed for trial at the next assizes. Yes, Parsons?” Ignoring a movement of protest by Sam Chilver, he turned to greet the butler who had just entered the hall. “How is Mrs. Warrender?”
“Better, sir. She’s in her own room, wishful to see you.”
“I’ll come at once.” It would do Kate Warrender no harm to be left for a while to her own thoughts.
Susan was hovering in the hall. “Father?”
“Yes?” Impatiently.
“How is he? Mr. Warrender. They say he’s wounded.”
“He’ll not die this time.” And then, alerted by the way her colour came and went: “What the devil do you know of Mr. Warrender?”
“I love him, father. I’ve promised to be his wife.”
“His wife?” He was speechless for a moment as he faced this new complication. “But how in God’s name?”
“It was he rescued us, last autumn, when we were kidnapped. He and two other men. We promised not to tell …” She dwindled to a stop before his furious gaze.
“One meeting?” And then, as memories fitted themselves together in his mind. “No! That’s what you’ve been doing in my study. ‘Reading’ forsooth! Assignations! Your mother’s daughter. He came through the tunnel. No wonder you haunted the study when I got home. You were afraid he’d come on me by mistake. I wish to God he had. I’d have seen to it he remembered the day.”
“Father,” White as death, she nevertheless stood her ground. “Let me see him. Just for a minute. Please …”
“No!” Why had this new complication decided him to protect Kate Warrender, or had he decided already? “Go to your room, Susan, and stay there until I send for you. One thing only I will promise you. So far as I am concerned, Mr. Warrender will come to no harm. As for your crazy promise to marry him, we will discuss that later, when I have a better chance of keeping my temper. But, in the meantime, begin learning to forget him.”
“But, father
“No!” With the key of the study door in his pocket, he stormed down the hall to the morning room, where he found Mrs. Warrender making a gallant pretence at doing her accounts. “Well!” He slammed the door behind him. “A pretty fool you have made of me among you!”
“My lord!” She had jumped to her feet at sight of him. “You know?”
“Miss Warrender has just condescended to enlighten me.”
“How is she, my lord? She’s wounded, Parsons says.”
The black brows drew further together. “Parsons, of course, has known all along. And how many other of my servants?”
“Only Betty. Please, my lord. Is she … is she badly hurt?”
“No! She’s curing herself with a glass of burgundy in my study. Locked in.” Ever since the discovery, an undercurrent of his mind had been surging round those first meetings with “Kit Warrender,” the things he had said, the fool he had made of himself. “More than she deserves,” he said now. “But, for your sake, ma’am, and a little, I suppose, for my own, I mean to protect her from the results of her own folly, I don’t much want to look the kind of ass I feel just now.”
“Oh please …” Once again he was aware of her gallant effort not to cry. “It was only high spirits, poor child.”
“High spirits! Guiding a gang of smugglers through the park!”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Fact, ma’am.”
“She’ll explain.”
“She has, Whether I believe her … Oh, some of it. But for the moment the question is how the hell we get her safe home to the Dower House without a discovery. Oh, forgive my language.”
“Don’t mind it,” said Mrs. Warrender. “I don’t. I wish I was a swearing woman myself. But as to getting her home—and I do thank you, my lord—I’ve been thinking about that. What’s to stop Kit Warrender escaping by the tunnel?”
“Maybe she already has.”
“Not if she gave you her word. Just give me an hour, my lord, and then send her along it. I’ll be ready to smuggle her home.”
“You’re not well enough.” And then, recognising her set look: “But you’re right. The best way for all of us.” He badly wanted to tell her about Susan and the real Kit Warrender, but there was no time for that now.
It took all Kate’s courage to grope her one-armed way down the tunnel, but at least the effort blanked out that last swift furious confrontation with Lord Hawth, who had seemed, for some reason, angrier than ever. Well, she could hardly blame him.
“Quick!” Her mother and Betty Parsons were waiting for her at the appointed place, and Betty helped her off with her greatcoat, wrapped a swathe of material round the betraying buckskins and draped a cloak gently over the ruffled shirt and the right arm in its sling. “Now you’ll do well enough,” and Mrs. Warrender, “for a girl who’s been kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped?”
“For all the world like the children. It was the best I could think of. Everyone knew you had disappeared, you see. Can you think of a story? Masked villains? Ransom threats? A gallant escape?”
“I expect so,” said Kate wearily. “Oh, mother, what a mull it all is. I’m sorry!” If only she could tell her mother about Chris, but she had promised. And it was not over yet.
“Never mind, dear. At least you’re alive. For a while, I was afraid …”
“You were right to be,” said Kate.
“Gone! And didn’t even ask to see me!” Susan turned on her father like a fury. “I don’t believe you!”
“I don’t care what you believe.” And yet, angry like this, she reminded him, almost for the first time, of himself. “Mr. Warrender apparently values his life above his love,” he went on, thinking as he did so that it was unfair. “His life?”
“Caught with smugglers, child. Hanging or transportation for certain. The sooner you forget him, the better.”
“But, father—” Once again, she was interrupted, this time by Parsons to say that Mr. Warren was asking for his lordship urgently.
It was a relief. What should he say to this daughter of his? How warn her that, so far as he could see, the man she loved was carrying on a simultaneous affair with her own governess. Because, the more he thought about that, the less chance he could see of any other explanation for those two damning notes. Kate Warrender could set up his appointment for Kit. Kit could send Kate out into the dangerous night. A forgery? Perhaps. But she had gone. Cousin? Lover? Both?
“Hawth!” Warren’s tone was urgent “Thank God you’re home. I’ve had a message from young Warrender, asking the two of us to meet him at my house. He was arrested last night, he says, but expects to be free this morning, as planned. Should arrive any minute now. Says there’s no time to be lost. Says you’re the only person will believe him. Will you come?”
“At once.” He was glad of the excuse to get away from the hall and its problems. Mrs. Warrender could be relied on to take care of her daughter—and of his, if necessary. And he had a word or two to say to young Warrender. Mea
nwhile, was he going to tell George Warren, about Kate’s impersonation of her cousin? He thought not. And he was sure he was going to say nothing about Susan. He must contrive to speak to young Warrender alone. He had still not quite made up his mind whether he shared Kate Warrender’s conviction that the note that had nearly lured her to her death had been a forgery. “What do you make of young Warrender?” he asked now, suddenly, out of a silence.
“Odd you should ask that.” The going was bad after a heavy rainstorm and the two horses were making a cautious way down the slippery chalk lane. “I liked him immensely the first time we met. Well … he saved my life. But when you sent him, the other day, I was disappointed somehow. Something—a little shabby about him? Do you trust him?”
“That’s just what I wish I could decide.” Hawth could not help a little spurt of pleasure at the idea that Warren, too, must have begun by encountering the pretence Kit Warrender, that he, too, had been fooled and would, presently, feel it. Or need he? Why should he ever know? More and more, he was certain that he must keep both Kate’s secret and Susan’s. Warren would never know that it was a woman who had saved his life.
Chilver was awaiting them at Warren House. “Mr. Warrender’s just come, sir,” he told George Warren. “He’s eating a luncheon.” And then, turning eagerly to Lord Hawth: “My lord, Miss Kate? Has she been found?”
“Miss Kate?” exclaimed George Warren He turned furiously on Hawth. “Missing? And you didn’t tell me?”
“A storm in a teacup,” said Hawth, and then, qualifying it. “Well, not precisely.” What a blessing Mrs. Warrender had insisted on rehearsing their story so carefully. “She was kidnapped last night.”
“Kidnapped! And you call it a storm in a teacup!” George Warren’s eyes blazed in a face suddenly white.
“Very incompetent kidnappers,” said Hawth urbanely. “She freed herself In the night, came safe home to the hall in the morning, none the worse. Or not much,” he amended, remembering that Kate would have her arm in a sling for a few days. “We’ve had a busy morning at the hall,” he went on. “Another cousin of yours has turned up, George.” Once again he was grateful for Mrs. Warrender’s insistence that they must have a story ready.
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