The Counterfeit Gentleman (16 page)

For a moment Lady Clovyle was tempted to claim that
she was too ill to see anyone, but in the end she was com
pelled to discover the worst. “No, no, I shall come down. Send Agnes to help me dress.”

By the time Lady Clovyle descended to the ground floor, her headache had returned, but the pain in her stomach vied
with it in intensity.

Her niece’s butler was waiting in the entry hall, and two
of the footmen were hovering anxiously behind him. “He is
in here,” Uppleby said, indicating the door. “Although he is dressed as a gentleman, there is something about him I can
not trust, and I have been watching to make sure that having gained admittance to the house, he does not attempt to
sneak away while our backs are turned, taking with him
any of the silver or other valuables.”

It was not a thief that Lady Clovyle feared to find in her
anteroom, but the bringer of scandal, because she knew in
her bones that whatever urgent business this stranger had
with her, in some manner it concerned her wayward niece.

“If you want, I could go in with you and provide some degree of protection,” Uppleby said.

But Lady Clovyle had no desire for the servants to know
any more than was absolutely necessary about this whole
sordid affair. Waving him back, she entered the room
alone, then closed the door firmly behind her. Doubtless the
butler and footmen would immediately press their ears
against the door panels, but that could not be helped.

The visitor—and he was indeed a complete stranger to
her—was standing in front of the window. With the light behind him it was difficult to see his face, but his size alone
made her thankful that the three servants were right outside the door and almost made her wish she had accepted Up
pleby’s offer of protection.

“You wished to speak with me?” she said in the same
voice she used to depress the pretensions of encroaching
mushrooms. This time it failed to produce any noticeable
effect.

“My name is Rendel,” he said, moving away from the
window. “Digory Rendel at your service.”

Now that she could see her visitor better, she inspected
him from head to toe. To be sure, he was indeed dressed
like a gentleman, but Uppleby had been right: There was
something about the man that made him look out of place
in a lady’s drawing room.

He was not handsome. Although his features were regular, they were a bit too strongly drawn, and as a result, he
exuded a bit of something that... that... well whatever it
was, it did not matter. She would soon be rid of him.

“My butler informs me that you have urgent business
with me. I cannot believe that such is the case, Mr. Rendel,
so I suggest you quit these premises at once before I have
you forcibly removed.”

As if he had not heard a word she said, he wandered over
to the fireplace and pretended great interest in the painting
hanging above it. It was a portrait of her niece, taken when
Bethia was but six years of age.

“I am here on behalf of Miss Pepperell,” the man said, turning to face her.

Despite her resolve to handle this affair with the proper
decorum, Lady Clovyle’s knees weakened, and she was
forced to sink down upon the chair closest to hand. “What
about my niece?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.
“What have you to do with her?”

“She was abducted from this house exactly one week ago
today,” he said.

“You lie,” she croaked out, but he went on, each word
more astounding than the last.

“She was kidnapped by two men who were hired to kill her. They are now both dead.”

It was such an obvious fib that lady Clovyle sat up
straighter and said quite forcefully, “Preposterous! Such
things do not happen in polite circles. You must think me quite green if you expect me to believe such a tale.”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “Very well, what actually happened is that your niece eloped with me. We had
intended to go to Gretna Green, but after a sennight to
gether, she finds she has quite changed mind.”

“No, no, Bethia would never do a thing like that—she
could not be so lost to propriety,” Lady Clovyle said, feel
ing faint at the very thought of the scandal that would result if her niece had succumbed to the temptations of the flesh.

That this man could appeal to the baser instincts of a
woman was quite obvious. She knew now what it was
about his eyes that frightened her—he looked like a man
who would be much more at home in a lady’s boudoir than
in her drawing room.

While she was staring at him, he suddenly strode over to where she was sitting, and she could not keep from shrinking away from him. He was too forceful, too strong, too ... too masculine.

Looming over her, he said, “You refuse to credit the
truth, and you do not choose to accept a perfectly plausible Banbury tale, so there is nothing left for you to believe but
your own falsehood.”

Cowering back in her chair, Lady Clovyle said weakly,
“My niece is upstairs in her own room, laid low with a
slight fever.”

“Just so,” the stranger said. “If you wish to have further
discourse with me, I am staying with Lady Letitia.” His
smile was mocking and his bow was insolent, and before Lady Clovyle could stop him, he turned and walked out of
the room.

“But... but...” With unaccustomed alacrity she sprang
from her chair and hurried after him. “But where is my
niece?” she cried out. Her only answer was the front door closing in her face. Turning to the servants, who were at
tempting to disguise their eagerness to know what had tran
spired, she pulled herself together and attempted to salvage what she could from this whole sordid mess.

“The man was here by mistake,” she said firmly. “He
was seeking another—a
different
Lady Clovyle.” Her lie
sounded implausible even to her own ears.

“Then if he returns, we are not to admit him?” Uppleby asked, his tone decidedly lacking the proper respect.

Dangerous strangers she might not know how to deal
with, but Lady Clovyle was quite adept at handling insolent servants. Her tone frosty, she said, “If Mr. Rendel should
return, you will of course inform me of that fact, and
I
shall
decide if I shall see him again. Is that clear?”

“Quite clear, m’lady,” Uppleby said.

“Then you are dismissed.”

In but a few seconds Lady Clovyle was alone, and she
had not the slightest idea how to proceed. “Oh, that
wretched girl, wherever can she be? What have I done to deserve such cavalier treatment?”

She stood there in the hallway, wringing her hands, un
sure what her next move should be, and knowing no one
she could turn to for advice and assistance, when a voice
spoke behind her.

“If you care to join me in here, Aunt Euphemia, I believe
we have things to discuss.”

“Bethia!” Lady Clovyle said, hastening back into the
room where she had so recently spoken with the enigmatic Mr. Rendel. “Thank the dear Lord you are safe.”

But as soon as she shut the door and turned to face
Bethia, her eyes widened in horror. “Dearest child, what
ever can you be thinking of? That gown is quite outmoded
and a most unbecoming color. I can only hope that no one has seen you dressed in such a
...
a
...”
The look of scorn
on her niece’s face made the words of reproach die in her
throat.

Feeling the tiniest bit guilty—although in truth it was not
at all her fault that her niece had chosen to disappear with
out a word to anyone—Lady Clovyle pulled together the
shreds of her composure and said, “You have a lot of ex
plaining to do, young lady.”

Her voice was not as firm as she might have wished, but
that was not to be wondered at. Her niece could not possi
bly understand how she had suffered, being left behind to
try to stave off the gossips.

Feeling much put out, she continued, “While you have
been out jaunting around the countryside doing heaven
knows what, I have been in a veritable agony of nerves not knowing what to tell people. And here you return with that
dreadful
man, who told me such ridiculous stories, I cannot
know what to believe. Never would I have suspected you
had it in you to be that inconsiderate of me. Already I can
feel palpitations coming on. Have you had no thought for the worries you have been causing me?” She tottered over
to a chair and sank down in it.

Looking not the least bit repentant, Bethia said, “In the
last few days I have been bound and gagged and lowered
out my window on the end of a rope. I have had drugged
wine poured down my throat, and then been cast into the
sea to drown. I have also watched while the two men who
were paid to kill me were themselves killed. Rather than to have wasted your time worrying about my reputation, you
would have done better to have hired a Bow Street runner to try to find me. As it is, Mr. Rendel saved my life, and if
he had not been there, you would never have seen me alive
again.”

“I cannot believe,” Lady Clovyle said, her head now
splitting from the pain, “that you—

“I care not what you believe,” her niece said, looking
mulishly stubborn. “Whether you wish to acknowledge it or
not, one of my mother’s cousins is trying to kill me!” As if
that statement were not preposterous enough, she added,
“And whether he meets with your approval or not, Mr.
Rendel is the man I am going to marry.” And with those as
tounding words, Bethia virtually ran out of the room.

Lady Clovyle sat where she was, too flabbergasted to
move. Whatever had happened to her niece in the last
week, it had wrought an unfortunate change in her personality. Not that she herself believed for a moment that Bethia
had been kidnapped. Why, in all her years she had never
even
heard
of a properly brought-up young lady being ab
ducted, at least not against her will.

There was, unfortunately, no such problem with believ
ing that Bethia had indeed eloped with the thoroughly un
suitable Mr. Rendel. Flighty young girls had been doing
that for time out of mind. Fortunately, so long as she was
safely home again, and provided no one had actually
seen
the two of them together, it would be possible to work
around that problem.

An ill-advised marriage with a stranger was not, how
ever, the desired solution, and so Lady Clovyle intended to
inform Bethia—just as soon as the poor child recovered
from her ordeal, of course. There was no point, after all, in trying to reason with someone whose nerves were clearly overset and whose wits were patently disordered.

Her headache quite diminished, Lady Clovyle rang for
Uppleby and instructed him to have hot tea sent up to her
niece. Then she mounted the stairs to her own room, where she instructed the maid to close the curtains. Then reclining
on her chaise longue, she contemplated the immediate fu
ture.

In one respect Bethia was right—it was indeed high
time she was married. And once she was in a calmer frame
of mind, the two of them could sit down and decide which
of her suitors—her
acceptable
suitors—it would be best to
encourage.

It was indeed unfortunate that Bethia could not be
brought to favor one of her cousins, but then young girls
could often not see the advantages of taking a much older
husband. She herself had married a man forty years older
than she was, and consequently she had only had to endure
seven years of marriage before she became a widow, which
was without question the most desirable state a female
could aspire to.

But as was so often the case, the younger generation did not wish to learn from the wisdom of their elders.

* * * *

Bethia knew she should be overjoyed to be home again, safe in her own room, wearing her own clothes, and waited
on by Mrs. Drake, the dresser whom Aunt Euphemia had
insisted upon hiring for her.

But she had never felt so out of place in her life.

“If you have no objections, I shall have this ... this
gar
ment
burned.” Using two fingers, Mrs. Drake held up the
dress Bethia had been wearing when she had arrived home.