“Be quiet, Walter!” Setting down her glass, Marjorie rose, bosom heaving with wrath. Ignoring the runner, she turned on Alex. “I knew you’d try to cozen your way out of it. Oh, I knew.” Her glare returned to the minion of the Law. “Tell me this. By what right does he aid and abet my cousin, who was in my care, mark you, to flout her guardian’s authority?”
Benjamin’s glance came back to Alex and he stepped forward, his tone redolent with scorn. “I claim no rights, ma’am. Pure fellow feeling, that’s all. Besides,” he added, turning to Benjamin, “it was plain to me young Miss Greenaway would only run away if I attempted to take her back. Thought she was safer with me than blundering about on her own.” He held up a finger as Marjorie opened her mouth to protest. “What’s more, I had every care to her reputation and took her to stay with my sister. Which is where these — these guardians of hers caught up with us and started bleating about having me up on a charge of kidnapping. And that was only because I refused to give her up to them.”
Benjamin held up a ham-like hand. “Just a moment, me lord. If they was her guardians, I’m bound to state you didn’t have no right to hold on to the lady when they come to fetch her.”
“Ha! There’s for you!”
“What have you to say to that, my lord girl-stealing Dymond?”
Inwardly cursing, Alex struggled to control his rising temper. “I have this to say. Apple didn’t want to go back with you, and —”
Walter Greenaway sprang forward. “That’s a lie! She even said she’d come and you wouldn’t let her.”
“That’s so,” said Marjorie in an eager tone, turning to Benjamin. “Apple was ready to return. I’m telling you, the whole thing was a concerted plot. That sister of his pretended she didn’t even know her, but then he arrived —” pointing an accusing finger at Alex — “and Apple emerged from hiding and said she’d come home.”
“Only this monster refused to allow it. Said we’d take her over his dead body or some such thing. Threatened to have us chucked out of the house and all!”
“And I’ll have you chucked out of this one if you don’t stop yelling in my father’s library!”
Two fulminating faces turned on him. Glancing at the runner, Alex found him enviably unmoved by the kerfuffle surrounding him. The hiatus enabled him to take a hand.
“When you’ve quite finished, sir and madam, maybe you’ll let me do the job as you’ve wished me to do.”
Alex could not but admire the fellow’s stolidity. Did nothing shake him?
“Now then, me lord. What you’re telling me is, I take it, as the young lady was wishful of remaining with you of her own free will?”
Consigning a twinge of conscience to perdition, Alex closed with this promising avenue with alacrity. “That’s it. Knew she’d be off on her own if I let her go. Managed to persuade her she’d be a deal better off remaining with my family here until her birthday, when I’d take her to London as she wished.”
Benjamin eyed him in a ruminating way that Alex found distinctly unsettling. The Greenaways, for once refraining from interference, looked poised for what the runner might say. “You ain’t going to deny as she was here then, me lord?”
“Wouldn’t dream of denying it.”
Guessing what was coming, Alex braced for the inevitable.
“Then where is she now, me lord, if she ain’t here?”
Here it was. The question he couldn’t and wouldn’t answer. Evasion would only increase the fellow’s suspicion. “Can’t tell you that.”
“Oh? And why not, me lord?”
Alex cast a glance at the Greenaways, both of whom were showing signs of believing in their triumph. “Because I won’t allow these so-called guardians of hers to trouble her.”
“Ha!”
“You see? You see!”
Benjamin held up his hand again to silence them, but his eyes remained on Alex. “I’m bound to state, me lord, that it don’t look good.”
“I’m aware of that.”
The runner ruminated for a space. Alex waited. No point in precipitating anything. Besides, his best defence lay in silence.
“What I don’t see, me lord,” said the fellow at length, “is what’s significant about this here birthday. Would I be right in thinking the young lady comes of age?”
“You would.”
“And would I be right in thinking as this trust you spoke of come into play here?”
