Kitty

He turned away without waiting for her answer. Next moment, he had leaped down and was handing both reins and whip to the groom, who left the horses to take them. Vaguely Kitty was aware that the groom was swinging himself up into the driving seat. But her eyes were upon Claud as he came around the back of the carriage to her side. He held up his hands to her.

‘Come on, I’ll lift you down.’

There was no help for it. Kitty let the blanket fall away and half-rose, moving to find the step. But two strong hands seized her by the waist. There was an instant of helplessness, and she grasped at his convenient shoulders. Then she was set upon her feet, the hands shifting to her arms to steady her. Kitty felt strangely light-headed, and was conscious of warmth where his gloved hands touched her.

She looked up into his face, and found the blue eyes had softened.

‘You’re a confounded nuisance, young Kate. But I’ll stand buff, never fear. I won’t let Aunt Silvia bully you!’

This from one who had bullied her unmercifully! Kitty had no words left for protest, for the unpleasant behaviour of her heart was giving her enough to contend with. An imposing individual of great girth and age had opened the door of the Haymarket house. Kitty allowed herself to be shepherded up the short flight of steps and meekly followed the gentleman inside.

The hall into which she stepped was long and somewhat narrow, with a staircase towards the back. There was space only for a table to one side with a gilded mirror above, together with a hat stand and a porter’s chair.

Claud stripped off his gloves and handed them, together with his hat, to his aunt’s butler. The fellow was fortunately too discreet to say anything, he thought, as he briefly checked his image in the mirror and passed a hand across the cropped blond locks to straighten them. One could not blame the butler for the look he had cast upon Kate, following in his wake. Not that Tufton gave himself away by so much as a flicker. But the fellow could scarcely fail to have been astonished.

‘Is my aunt in, Tufton?’

‘To you, m’lord, yes.’

‘In the yellow saloon, is she?’

The butler bowed. ‘As is her custom, m’lord. She is with—’

But Claud was already ascending the staircase, turning to ensure that Kate was following. There was not a dog’s chance of keeping this escapade from his aunt, so there was nothing for it but to beard her at once. At least she had not run to his mother. One might entertain some hope of brushing through this with the minimum of fuss. He turned to his cousin as he reached the first floor.

‘Looks as if your mama ain’t blown the whistle, in which case you may escape with a scold.’ Her eyes were as round as saucers. The wench looked scared to death! ‘It’s all right, silly chit. She can’t bite you.’

Kitty swallowed on the choking feeling occasioned by the frantic beating at her bosom. Her hands were trembling, and she was obliged to clasp them together. Her legs felt like jelly, but she trod resolutely behind Claud, her eyes on the back of his fair head, as he strode purposefully for a little way down a corridor and stopped outside one of a series of doors of dark wood. He gave her an encouraging wink.

‘Here goes!’

And then the door was open, and there was nothing to do but to square her shoulders and walk into the unknown.

Claud let his cousin precede him, and then strolled into the well-known yellow saloon. It was aptly named, with walls covered in a paper of dull mustard, striped in gilt that was rubbed away in places. The Hepplewhite chairs of mahogany were cushioned at the seat in faded yellow brocade, and cracked gilding enhanced the mantel as well as the stain-spotted mirror above. That it was a family room was evidenced by the general air of dilapidation, the plethora of knick-knacks and ornaments placed upon every surface, and the wear in the brown patterned rug.

His aunt Silvia, a matron with a tendency to corpulence, and attired most unsuitably in a gown fashionably waisted below her ample bosom, was seated in a striped sofa of yellow and brown set close to the fireside—although there were no coals burning there today. The small table to one side held a jumble of the impedimenta required by a knitter. And on the sofa beside her, holding up between her hands a skein of wool in order to enable his aunt to wind it into a ball, sat a young female whom Claud knew almost as well as he knew himself.

In the blankest amazement, he stood staring at his cousin. The deuce! If Kate was sitting there, then who in the name of all the gods was the girl by his side? And why was she the living spit of the Honourable Katherine Rothley?

Chapter Two

At the back of Claud’s mind hovered a realisation that both aunt and cousin, having caught sight of the girl, were staring in a species of shock. But the recognition that he had made a colossal blunder—had not the chit said so over and over?—made him address his immediate feelings to the stranger herself.

‘Hang it all, I’ve made a mistake! Deuced sorry for it—er—’ what in the world was he to call her? ‘—ma’am, only you look so alike! Don’t know who you may be, but I’ve obviously dragged you off to no purpose.’

The girl made no reply. He could not be sure she had heard him. She was in the devil of a tremble, that he could see. Not surprising. He was a thought shaken himself!

A faint moan turned his attention back to the sofa. To his deep dismay, his aunt Silvia had turned ashen. The ball of wool she had been holding had fallen from her grasp and was rolling unchecked across the carpet, unwinding as it went. At any other time, Claud would have leaped to retrieve it, but the sight of his aunt’s pallid features, accompanied by a series of palpitating moans that began to issue from her mouth, had thoroughly unnerved him. An attack of the vapours! That was all he needed!

The matron toppled backwards, falling against the upholstered back of the sofa, her eyes rolling alarmingly in their sockets and showing white. Claud darted forward and checked again, irresolute.

But his cousin, whose own rapt attention had been all upon the unknown female, had started at her mother’s collapse and jumped up, her skein of wool discarded. She seized her mother by the shoulders.

‘Mama! What is the matter? Mama, pray!’

Claud took a hand, moving to the sofa. ‘No use shaking her like that, silly chit! Here, let me. Haven’t you any smelling salts? Give me another cushion!’

In a moment, he had arranged his aunt more comfortably upon the sofa, her head resting upon two cushions. His cousin had darted to an escritoire and was rummaging in a drawer. Claud stood back, looking down at the stricken matron in no small degree of perturbation.

Her breathing was shallow, shown by the rapid rise and fall of her overlarge bosom, and her eyes, sinking into the plump folds of flesh, were closed. But she had not quite fainted away, Claud decided, for a series of protesting groans were escaping from her lips. She had no colour, and it was clear to the meanest intelligence that she had sustained a severe shock.

Claud glanced at the cause of it, and found the girl standing just where he had left her, staring round-eyed at the appalling result of her sudden appearance in the yellow saloon. And all because she looked like his cousin. Not that the girl was in the least to blame. It was his fault, and he must presently face the consequences—which loomed horribly ugly, if Aunt Silvia’s reaction was any measure. He brushed this aside for the present. At this juncture, it was of more moment to revive his ailing aunt.

To his relief, Kate came dashing back, armed with a small bottle. ‘I have it. Stand aside, Claud!’

Claud stepped hastily out of the way, allowing his cousin to move into the sofa. But it was with mixed feelings that he heard her soothing words.

‘Poor Mama. You will be better directly, I promise you.’

He was not at all sure that he wanted to be present when his aunt should feel recovered. It was rapidly being borne in upon him that his arrival with an unknown female who all too closely resembled Kate was a faux pas of the first order. He tugged at the short green spencer that had shifted with his exertions, unconsciously smoothing its fit across his chest. What in Hades was there in the stranger to cause this reaction?

Wholly absorbed, and forgetful of the unknown female herself, he watched as his cousin opened the bottle and waved its contents under her mother’s nose.

Kitty, standing all the while in a state of petrified shock, could almost envy the large woman lying on the sofa. She could herself have done with a dose of sal volatile. Had she not guessed it? There could be no doubt. She must belong somehow in this family. Else why should the woman become subject to a dramatic collapse? She must know something.

Her heart hammered painfully, and her gaze turned upon the girl Kate, for whom her abductor had taken her. The resemblance was uncanny. The female had hair as dark and perhaps as long as Kitty’s own, though since it was dressed in a chignon high upon her head, it was difficult to tell. Her figure was masked by a demure gown of white muslin, the fashionable folds of which sent a thrill of envy through Kitty. Was the bosom—which was all the curve visible—as full as her own? Hard to tell. And equally difficult to see at this moment whether Kate had a thought the advantage of her in height. Yet there could be no doubt that in face she looked all too familiar. It was not quite like a mirror, but Kitty could not find it in her to blame Claud for his error.

The reflections left her as she saw that the afflicted matron was recovering. Kitty unconsciously shifted backwards as she saw the woman’s eyes flutter open. Finding herself stopped by a chair against the wall, Kitty froze again, wishing she might become invisible.

‘There, Mama, that is better, is it not?’

The woman gazed up at her daughter. A frantic look came into her features, and a wavering hand rose up to catch at Kate’s fingers.

‘Where is she? Did I truly see it? Oh, what a nightmare!’

Kitty shrank away. If only the floor might open and swallow her up! She heard the voice of the girl Kate, but did not take in the words as with a resurgence of dread she saw the woman threshing to get up.

‘Pray don’t distress yourself, Mama! No, no, don’t try to sit up. Stay there, I beg of you!’

The matron’s efforts to raise herself ceased, but her eyes, casting about the room, fastened upon Kitty, whose heart jerked as the creature pointed, horror in her face.

‘She is there still! Oh, what have I ever done to deserve this?’

‘Mama, pray hush!’ begged Kate.

Claud, torn between a sense of duty and a strong desire to retire from the coming scene as fast as he could, found his cousin’s eyes upon him in a scowl very like that to which he had been subjected by the female he had brought with him.

‘Claud, how could you? Look what you’ve done!’