Kitty. Elizabeth Bailey

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      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!’

      ‘How was I to know?’ protested Claud aggrievedly. ‘I thought it was you!’

      His cousin turned to look at her hapless mirror image. ‘Well, I can see there is a resemblance. But surely you must have known it wasn’t me? Those clothes, for one thing! Where did you find her?’

      ‘In Paddington.’

      These simple words acted upon his aunt as if a firework had been set off beneath her. The matron reared up, dislodging her daughter, who fell back in disorder, and gazed upon her nephew with eyes standing wide with dread.

      ‘Paddington?’

      Claud winced. ‘Confound you, Aunt, I wish you would not shriek like that!’

      She paid him no heed. ‘It is as I suspected. You must take her back! Now. Immediately.’ Her arms stretched out towards him, and her voice took on a plea. ‘And not a word to your mother, I implore you, Devenick! If Lydia were to hear of it, there is no saying what she would do. Oh, it is too bad! Why, why had you to bring her here?’

      She withdrew her hands, wringing them painfully, and casting loathsome glances at the wretched female that was the innocent cause of the brouhaha. Claud’s mind was alive with curiosity. Nor was he the only one, for he perceived that Kate, having taken in the gist of her mother’s speech, was looking at the girl with a new interest. It became expedient to explain himself.

      ‘The thing is, I was coming back from Westbourn Green—stayed at my friend Jack’s place, for we were at cards last night until the small hours—’

      ‘Do get on, Claud!’

      Wounded, Claud protested his cousin’s impatience. ‘I am only explaining СКАЧАТЬ