‘You are right,’ she sighed. ‘Your cousin is a pot-bound fool of a Gussie, so desperate for novelty as to importune a poor Theo over it.’
Theo, arms still folded, subjected her to a hard, cold-eyed stare.
Gussie’s spirit rose under this ungracious treatment. ‘Well, but was it so bothersome a request as all that?’
‘Maundevyle,’ said Theo again. ‘Is that the Selwyn family?’
‘I do not know what the family name might be.’
‘I knew a Selwyn,’ said Theo. ‘School-fellow.’
Gussie wondered if this might be the Henry who had since succeeded to the Maundevyle title, but before she could enquire Theo added, ‘Charles was the name.’
‘Edifying,’ said Gussie.
‘Hated him,’ said Theo.
Gussie blinked.
‘But I think it odd,’ said Theo next, ‘that Mama should object. Especially if you are to have Miss Frostell with you.’
‘Yes!’ said Gussie. ‘And when she and Lady Maundevyle are such old friends, at that.’
‘Are they?’ said Theo, visibly losing interest in so insoluble a problem. His gaze wandered; Gussie knew he would be looking for the book he had doubtless placed down but lately, somewhere easily to hand, where he would in no wise be unable to find it again half an hour later.
‘It is on the window-sill,’ she said with a sigh, pointing to where a large folio lay, drenched in morning sunshine.
‘Hard luck, cousin,’ said Theo, drifting that way. ‘But there is no persuading Mama, when she is fixed upon something.’
Gussie only sighed, and withdrew.
She wandered slowly downstairs again, all the way down and around and down, until she emerged into the sunlight, blinking in the sudden glare. Instead of returning by way of the kitchen-adjacent entrance, as had been her intention, she had, in the abstraction of her thoughts, wandered out of the great front door instead.
In the driveway stood a carriage. Gussie, regarding it in confusion, noted firstly that it was not one of her uncle’s equipages; secondly that it was a great, lumbering travel-coach, a little out of date, but excessively handsome; and thirdly, that the driver sat still upon the box, as though only just arrived.
She had not known that her aunt and uncle were expecting any visitors, and she had passed nobody on her way to the door. Her curiosity piqued, she went around the side of it, to see if she could catch a glimpse of any arms emblazoned upon the gleaming black paint.
The side-door opened in a rush, and somebody barrelled out.
‘Oh!’ said Gussie, and jumped back.
‘Beg pardon,’ said the visitor; a gentleman, by his attire, but the voice was light and melodic.
‘There is no earthly need,’ said Gussie. ‘For if I will blunder into the way of the door, it is quite my own affair if—’
This speech was destined never to be concluded, for to Gussie’s stupefied surprise, she was seized by a pair of thin, but strong arms, lifted off her feet, and borne in the direction of the waiting coach.
‘What in the—’ Gussie spluttered, and recovered from her surprise so far as to writhe like an animal in an attempt to free herself.
‘Oh, but don’t spoil it!’ said her attacker, in tones of exasperation. ‘Otherwise I shall be obliged to call Charles, and that would be very tiresome, for he said I could never manage it alone. You do not want to prove him right, do you?’
Gussie spread out her arms and legs, making each limb an obstacle to her being stuffed through the beckoning doors of the coach. ‘It is the outside of enough,’ she gasped, ‘to be expected to collude in one’s own abduction, for the sake of proving a gentleman wrong!’
‘Don’t think of it as an abduction, then,’ said her abductor, whom Gussie was now quite sure was in fact a woman. ‘Call it a pressing invitation, if you will.’ By some agility beyond Gussie’s comprehension, the insufferable woman contrived to thrust Gussie’s arms into the coach one by one, and soon afterwards she fell all the way in, landing face-first upon somebody’s booted feet.
‘Steady on,’ said another voice, certainly male, and Gussie looked up into a man’s face, young and sharp-featured, with chestnut-coloured curls and vividly green eyes.
Without troubling herself to venture any reply, Gussie picked herself up, thrust her head in the way of the rapidly closing door, and drew in a great breath. Her mouth opened; and in a vast scream borne of fright and indignation both, she cried: ‘Great-Uncle Silvesteeeer!’
The door then colliding smartly with her face, Gussie fell in a senseless heap upon the coach’s floor.
Chapter Four
Contrary, perhaps, to appearances, Lord Bedgberry was not an unfeeling man. If asked, he would not hesitate to declare himself fond of his family; yes, even of thunderous Aunt Wheldrake.
However, in his general view, relatives were best enjoyed from a comfortable distance; and no circle of hell could be considered deep enough to receive those who interrupted his reading.
All of this being the case, the appearance of Great-Aunt Honoria in his quiet tower-room could fill him with nothing but a mild wrath.
‘And I have but just got rid of Gussie!’ he said, snapping shut his book.
‘But that’s just it!’ gasped Great-Aunt Honoria’s head. ‘We have got rid of Gussie! And in a shocking fashion, too! I have been trying to tell you.’
It distantly filtered through to Theo — his head full of J. Barber’s treatise on the nature of the constellations — that Great-Aunt Honoria did not ordinarily manifest in the east tower. Nor was she normally observed to be screaming at such unladylike volume, nor pouring quantities of ethereal blood from the stump of her (apparently) severed neck.
‘Something has upset you,’ he observed.
This silenced Honoria altogether, though only briefly. ‘Theodore,’ she said severely. ‘I tremble to think what is to become of Werth when your poor father dies.’
‘Nothing in particular, I should think?’ said Theo. ‘Why, is something likely to happen?’
‘Something has happened,’ said Honoria. ‘Your cousin! She—’
‘Which cousin?’ enquired Theodore politely.
‘Augusta. As I have just told you — really, did you not hear a word of it? — your unoffending cousin Gussie has this moment been snatched from the very doors of Werth! By a pair of unscrupulous villains!’
Theodore, his thoughts and his gaze having wandered back to his book, looked up. ‘What?’
‘Snatched!’ proclaimed Great-Aunt Honoria.
‘Gussie?’
‘Carried off! Overpowered and borne away!’
‘Abducted?’ Theo said. ‘Gussie? Are you sure you’ve got it right, Aunt?’
‘I saw it with my own eyes!’
‘Perhaps you mean Nell,’ said Theo helpfully. ‘Or m’father. Really, who could want Gussie?’
Great-Aunt Honoria swelled with the sort of rage that could only presage another explosion, and Theo had suffered quite enough unscheduled noise already. He held up a pacifying hand. ‘All right, I can see you are serious about it. But what can it possibly have to do with me?’
‘Why, you must instantly go after her! She must be retrieved!’
A notion wandered through Theo’s thoughts. The notion was this: in the general way of things, he was not the person to whom crises were brought.
It also occurred to him that he ought vigorously to object to such treatment of his family. Indeed, if Great-Aunt Honoria’s report were not a mere nothing, why then he would.
Regretfully, Theo set down his book.
‘Did you chance to observe who these blackguards were?’ he asked.
Great-Aunt Honoria had not. But she had noticed a coat of arms emblazoned on the side of the coach which had carried off his cousin; and when Theo heard her description of this symbol, and discovered that he recognised it, he did not pause to listen to the rest of Honoria’s diatribe. He was out the door and halfway down the stairs in an instant, his
feet pounding heavily upon stone, a slow fury burning in his heart.
He found his father and mother lingering over the breakfast table. ‘That cur,’ he announced, ‘has made off with my cousin.’
Lady Werth looked up from her plate of eggs. ‘Which cur?’ she enquired.
‘Which cousin?’ said Lord Werth.
‘Gussie, and the cur is Charles Selwyn! I always knew he was no good, and now he has taken Gussie!’ Theo said this with the feelings of one vindicated, for had he not always detested the Selwyn boy at school?
‘Selwyn?’ said Lady Werth, setting down her knife and fork. ‘You cannot mean—’
‘Lord Maundevyle’s younger brother,’ supplied Lord Werth. ‘But there must be some mistake, Theo. How could Charles Selwyn come upon Gussie at all, and what cause could he have to carry her off?’
‘He is brazen enough for anything!’ said Theo grimly. ‘He has come right up to our own door, if you please, and snatched her off the doorstep. And there is no mistake, for I have just had it from Great-Aunt Honoria, who was there.’
Lord Werth exchanged a look with his wife. ‘My dear?’ said he. ‘Perhaps you can shed some light upon this?’
Lady Werth had more than once behaved mysteriously regarding Gussie, intervening in her life in ways she did not seem minded to do with Theo’s. But she had been close-lipped about why that might be, and Theo had not the smallest idea what might motivate such treatment.
Nor was he destined to find out, for Lady Werth appeared to be in the grip of some strong emotion. Her eyes stared; her mouth opened in shock, or perhaps fright; and she swelled with… rage? Indignation?
‘My dear,’ said Lord Werth, laying a hand over hers. ‘Calm yourself. I am sure this is all a mistake, and will soon be resolved—'
Ice-crystals formed in her ladyship’s hair, and frost bloomed in her horrified eyes. A flurry of freezing snow burst into the air, liberally covering the table, her husband and her son in a small blizzard.
‘Mother,’ said Theo, wiping snow from his face. ‘Pray remember to breathe—’
But with a crack and an unpromising splintering sound, Lady Werth succumbed. In her chair sat a statue of her ladyship, worked in icy glass, still clutching her silver knife. The detail was truly extraordinary.
Lord Werth sighed.
‘Any chance she’ll recover inside of an hour or two?’ said Theo, without much hope.
‘I should think there is almost no chance of it,’ said his father. ‘I have never known her to reanimate under two days.’
‘Last time it was above a week,’ said Theo gloomily.
‘Do you think there is anything in this absurd tale of Honoria’s?’ said his lordship.
‘If there is I won’t have it. I mean to find out what has become of that coach.’
‘I imagine Gussie has the matter well in hand,’ said Lord Werth, returning, unruffled, to his breakfast. ‘But if you are going, you had better do so without further loss of time.’
His hopes dashed as to the likelihood of his father’s preparing to wade into the fray, Theo was very ready to obey this parental edict. The sooner he left the Towers, the sooner he could come back again; and if he was prompt in pursuit of the coach, no doubt he could overtake it upon the road, at only a little distance away. He and Gussie might be home in time for tea.
But having given orders for the horses to be put to and the carriage brought round (in a clipped tone expressive of his general feelings), every pleasant prospect of the kind was done away with.
‘All the wheels?’ Theo repeated in disbelief. ‘All? From every vehicle?’
Jem Coachman, clad in his driving-coat ready to depart, gave a miserable nod. ‘All four, sir, quite off his lordship’s coach, and the barouche, and my lady’s phaeton as well. Ned came to tell it to me hisself. I can’t think how it came about, only if I weren’t to be thought fanciful, sir, I’d say as it looks like—’
‘Sabotage,’ said Theo grimly.
‘Aye, sir. But who could have done it, ‘round here?’
Theo did not trouble to enlighten him. Later, he would enquire (through Nell) of the Towers’ various spectral inhabitants, if anyone had observed the sabotage being done. No one had; except for Cornelia, who swore to seeing a gentleman saunter into the coach-house as casual as you please. But since poor Corny had died before she had reached her eleventh year, she was not much attended to at any time.
Obliged to await the coach’s repair, Theo consoled himself with a fresh rabbit — just the one, it would not do to over-indulge before a journey — and waited.
In the end, there was a delay of some six and a half hours before he could at last follow the cooling trail left by the Selwyns’ equipage. At such a distance of time, word of the occurrence, and of Theo’s meditated response to it, had spread across the Towers. And the end of that was, that Theo found himself with an unwelcome but persistent travelling companion.
‘I am afraid it is of no use to remonstrate with me,’ Miss Frostell declared, climbing resolutely into the carriage. ‘You cannot imagine I shall sit at my ease when Miss Werth is in trouble, and we shall have Honoria, you know, by way of companion.’
‘Honoria…!’ stuttered Theo, appalled at the twin vision of Miss Frostell ensconced within the very carriage he meant to drive, and the severed head of his great-aunt opposite to her. Both ladies considered it unnecessary to say any more, but only looked at him, calmly certain of his acquiescence.
Theo was left with a choice: to haul both women out by the hair and hurl them into the dust, before driving off as fast as he could without them. Or to submit to the inevitable, and hope that the presence of Miss Frostell in particular did not cause him more difficulties than might be acceptable, in consideration of the cause.
Fool, Theo thought, and savagely slammed the door upon them both. Very well, if they would have it so. On their own heads be it.
***
Sense and feeling returned in an unwelcome rush, for Gussie’s head ached fit to burst. She sat slumped upon the plump, upholstered seat of a swaying coach; straightening, she risked opening her eyes, and at the fresh stab of pain thus provoked, quickly shut them again.
A brief glance had revealed to her the figure of the chestnut-haired gentleman, seated opposite her, and by his side a second person. This additional creature had swept off the tall hat she had worn, and let down the auburn hair previously concealed beneath it. The hat lay on the seat beside Gussie, a mute reproach for having been so easily taken in. The woman’s features were by far too feminine ever to be taken for male; in fact she was ravishingly pretty. No mere hat ought to have so lulled her good sense, Gussie thought; but then, for all the oddities one expected to encounter at the Towers, a woman clad in the garb of a man was not typically to be counted among them.
‘You would be the Selwyns, I suppose?’ said Gussie, without opening her eyes. ‘I have just been hearing about a Charles Selwyn. Quite detestable, I am told, and since you, sir, are both detestable and a Charles, I cannot think it a coincidence.’
She heard amusement in the rich voice that answered her. ‘And what have you to say of my sister’s conduct? I assure you, it was all her idea.’
Gussie half-opened one eye, and regarded the sister in question sourly. She received in response a winning smile. ‘A diabolical pair,’ she pronounced. ‘And when my head has finished aching quite so badly, I assure you I shall do everything in my power to escape.’
‘Oh, please don’t!’ begged the lady. ‘When we have gone to so much trouble to rescue you!’
Gussie’s eyes opened all the way. ‘Rescue me?’ she repeated. ‘From what?’
‘Why, from the tyranny of your uncle and aunt! We knew they would refuse to let you visit us. They did, didn’t they?’
‘That can hardly be termed tyranny,’ Gussie retorted. ‘And I do not remember mentioning any opposition from Lord and Lady Werth, when I declined your mother’s invitation. Not that you can possibly have received my letter
yet.’
‘Well, but why else would you decline?’ said Miss Selwyn.
Since they had, by accident or shrewdness, hit upon the exact truth, Gussie gave up arguing the point. ‘You must take me back,’ she said coolly. ‘It would present so very odd an appearance, you know, if you were to make a habit of abducting your house-guests by force.’
‘Then we shan’t make a habit of it,’ said Miss Selwyn. ‘Just this once, I cross my heart.’ She did so, marking the outlines of a sacred cross over the black expanse of her coat.
Gussie said nothing for a moment, engaged in listening. Was that a scraping upon the roof, perhaps a half-caught glimpse of a flickering shadow beyond the window? She could not convince herself of it.
‘Besides,’ said Gussie next. ‘My family will be frantic with worry when they find me missing, and that is unkind.’
‘They won’t notice for some time yet,’ said Miss Selwyn airily, rather to Gussie’s indignation.
‘And we have sent a letter,’ put in Charles, who hitherto had watched the play between his sister and Miss Werth with a gleam of silent amusement, and said nothing.
‘Yes, so they will know where you are, and shall not be concerned for you at all.’
A terrible suspicion struck Gussie. ‘Did I write this letter?’
‘You dictated it to my brother’s secretary,’ said Miss Selwyn with aplomb. ‘He has particularly fine handwriting.’
Gussie looked at Charles.
‘Her other brother,’ he supplied.
Gussie’s heart sank. Was the whole family complicit in this bizarre scheme? What manner of woman was she to find in Lady Maundevyle?
Resolved upon one last-ditch attempt at reason, she sought desperately for another rational objection (all the self-evident ones having failed to move the Selwyns), and at last fixed upon saying: ‘Had you really to whisk me off alone? If I had accepted your invitation, I was to have brought Miss Frostell with me.’
‘And who is Miss Frostell?’ said Miss Selwyn. ‘Is she amusing?’
‘She was my governess.’
‘Not amusing, I collect,’ said Miss Selwyn, wrinkling her perfect nose. Her eyes widened in realisation. ‘Oh! But you shall have no need of a chaperon, Miss Werth. You will have me.’ A seraphic smile punctuated this statement, and Gussie began to wonder, with a distant flicker of alarm, whether there was any madness in the Selwyn family.
Wyrde and Wayward Page 3