Vixen (16 page)

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H
ugo stirred heavily in the deep featherbed. He drew in the stale reek of beer and bodies as he rolled onto his back. Groaning, he flung his arm over the soft mound of flesh beside him. Betsy snuffled and turned her plump body sideways, burrowing deeper into the feathers. Still only half conscious, Hugo smiled in vague warmth and gave her a couple of friendly pats before making more purposefully suggestive movements.

Betsy moaned in halfhearted protest but lent herself as she always did. It was her job, and this customer was gentler and more regular than most, and paid with a generous hand.

Afterward, Hugo lapsed once more into unconsciousness, coming to an hour later with a horrid jerk into heavy-limbed, aching wakefulness. Betsy had left the bed and was lighting the candles. “Time to go, luv,” she said.

Her petticoat was grubby, barely covering her ample breasts and riding high on her chunky calves, but her smile was friendly. “Got other customers. Can’t make a livin’ lyin’ ’ere with you ’til mornin’, now, can I?”

Hugo closed his eyes, filled with a terrifying emptiness. If he was alone, the void would swallow him.

“Come back to bed,” he said. “I’ll pay you for the rest of the night.”

“Can’t,” Betsy said firmly. “The bed’s promised to Sal now. We takes it in turns, and now it’s my turn for the street corners. It’s not so bad in summer, but it gets right parky on a winter night.” She chuckled expansively and bent to the tarnished copper plate that served as a mirror, pulling a comb through her tangles. “Fair do’s, luv. Sal an’ me ’ave worked it like this for a year now.”

Hugo struggled up. His hands shook and the iron band around his head tightened ominously. He looked around the room With a flash of desperation.

“ ’Ere.” Betsy handed him a brandy bottle in instant
comprehension. “There’s a drop in there. It’ll keep the crawlers at bay.”

Hugo downed the contents and his hands steadied, the incipient pain died. “Come home with me.” There was a pleading note in his voice. “I can’t be alone, Betsy. I’ll pay you for the night and it’ll be a lot more comfortable than street corners.” He attempted a cajoling smile, but all his facial muscles were stiff.

“And ’ow’ll I get back then?” Betsy frowned at him.

“I’ll make sure you do,” he promised. “Please, Betsy. I promise you won’t lose on it.”

She shrugged plump shoulders. “Well, why not. But I’ll want a guinea for the ’ole night. And some extra for the inconvenience, mind.”

“Whatever you say.” He stood up slowly, ready for the violent swinging of the room around him. It steadied and he picked up his coat, hanging over a chair, feeling through the pockets. “Here, be a good girl and buy another bottle of that gut rot from your friend downstairs while I get dressed.”

Betsy took the coin and went out in her petticoat. It wasn’t her business if a customer chose to drink himself into an early grave.

Hugo pulled on his britches, concentrating hard on every little movement. If he didn’t allow his mind to wander from the minute details of the present, the void wouldn’t swallow him.

Betsy came back with the brandy and he took another deep swallow. He felt stronger immediately and a happy tingle of warmth spread through him, sending the demons back where they came from.

He escorted Betsy, his arm around her shoulders, down the stairs and to the mews where his horse was stabled. “You don’t mind riding pillion, do you, Betsy, my love?” he said with a chuckle, slapping her ample rear in friendly punctuation.

“I don’t, but the ’orse might,” Betsy responded with an answering chuckle. “’Elp me up, then.”

Hugo heaved her upward and then mounted in front of her. The horse was well rested and stood firm beneath the combined weight. Hugo pulled the bottle from inside his coat and took a long pull, then clicked his tongue and nudged his mount’s flanks. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been away from Denholm. Several days, he guessed. But it hardly mattered.

It was a brilliant night, the air mild and soft, the white road to Denholm winding ahead of them. Betsy began to hum a ribald taproom song and Hugo joined in, taking occasional pulls from the bottle. The void no longer threatened. There was emptiness, but it was a comforting emptiness. No demons lurked; he could remember nothing in the past and couldn’t care less about the future. He existed only in the capsule of the present with Betsy’s warm, welcoming body against his back, the horse moving between his thighs, the brandy curling in his belly. Hugo Lattimer was happy.

Samuel heard the horse’s hooves on the cobbles beneath his open window. He heard Hugo’s deep chuckle and a feminine giggle. With a resigned sigh he rolled over and composed himself for sleep. At least Sir Hugo was back and in one piece. There was always the fear that during one of these orgies in the stews when Hugo forgot who he was and what he was, he’d fall victim to some assailant intent on robbery and murder. Somehow, though, he always came through unscathed. Probably because even when he was drunk he didn’t lose the power and stature of a man who’d commanded one of His Majesty’s ships of the line. There was an indefinable authority about the man that transcended even the uncoordinated merriness of a drunkard.

Hugo managed to put his horse in the stable, fumbling with saddle and bridle and stirrup leathers as he
unsaddled him. But he got the job done and turned to Betsy, standing in the doorway, still humming her ribald song. As he turned, his eye fell on an unfamiliar shape in a neighboring stall. He frowned, shaking his head, wondering how a strange beast had found its way into his stables. The shadow of the answer seemed to be there, but it wouldn’t take shape. It was supremely irrelevant; everything was supremely irrelevant at the moment. Flinging his arm around Betsy, he hustled her into the house and into the library.

Chloe hadn’t heard Hugo’s arrival in the courtyard, since her chamber was at the other end of the house, but Dante, stretched out across the end of the bed, pricked up his ears as the master entered the house. He listened for a minute, then, satisfied that nothing out of the ordinary was happening, dropped his head back onto Chloe’s feet with a heavy sigh.

The sound of the piano drifting up through her open window woke Chloe. She lay listening as the music filled the darkness. It was a cheerful, rollicking tune unlike any she’d heard Hugo play before. Together with her relief that he’d returned safely came a flicker of hope that if the demons had left him, he’d revert to the man he’d been before his cruel rejection of her.

The music stopped after a while, and she tried to go back to sleep. But gradually, as the possibility of an end to her wretched loneliness and confusion grew, she began to feel a return of her usual strength of purpose. Her life was still hers to manage. And there were fences to mend before her future could be arranged.

She was out of bed before she realized she’d made any decision. Dante jumped down and shook himself, going to the door.

“No, stay here,” she said. “I won’t be long.” She slipped out into the corridor, closing the door quietly behind her. The dog whined.

It was only when she was halfway down the stairs that Chloe realized she was again running around the house in her nightgown. But there was no one to see and she wasn’t going outside. At the library door she paused with a flicker of uncertainty. He’d told her she wasn’t to approach him unless he summoned her … but that had been when the demons had been with him, when he’d been a different person. The man who’d been playing that merry tune couldn’t possibly be the same man who’d thrust her from him with such rough unkindness.

She lifted the latch and pushed the door open. A silvery thread of moonlight lay across the worn Turkey carpet. There were soft sounds in the room, puzzling sounds that stirred her with a strange mixture of apprehension and curiosity. She stepped into the room.

The entwined figures lay in the moonlight, rustling with muffled whispers and heavy breathing. Chloe stared in shock, seeing plump white thighs gleaming in the moonlight, enclosing the long, hard body of Hugo Lattimer. His chestnut hair flopped over his forehead as he gazed down at his partner, moving himself rhythmically within the generous welcoming maw of her body.

With a small chuckle of pleasure he threw his head back, tossing the long lock of hair away from his brow. His eyes opened.

The sight of the girl standing in open-mouthed shock in the doorway hit Hugo like an icy waterfall. He’d forgotten about her. He’d forgotten about everything that had driven him into the brandy lake of amnesia and into the hospitable arms of an amiable whore. And as he took in the slight figure outlined by the candlelight from the hall behind her, the gleaming hair tumbling about her shoulders, bitter bile burned in his throat and the brandy in his stomach turned sour. He tried to tell her to
go away, to avert her eyes from this shameful sight, but he couldn’t form the words.

And then she’d gone, the door closing quietly behind her.

“Eh, what was that?” Betsy demanded. “What’s ’appened to you, then?” It was very clear her partner was no longer either interested in or capable of completing their coition.

Hugo disengaged and stood up. He felt queasy and horror-struck. He looked down at Betsy sprawling on the rug at his feet and saw only the degrading vulgarity of her position, the white slabs of flesh beneath the rucked-up grimy petticoat. With a muttered curse he turned from her.

“Get dressed and go.”

“Eh, now, what’s all this?” Betsy sat up, shaking down her petticoat. “All night, you said. You’re not turnin’ me out of ’ere like that!”

“It’s almost dawn,” he said, pulling up his britches. “The carrier’s wagon passes the bottom of the drive at six o’clock. He’ll give you a ride into Manchester.” He went over to the desk in the corner, pulled open a drawer, and took out a strongbox. “Here, take this.”

Betsy stared at the three gold sovereigns winking in the fading moonlight. It was as much as she could expect to earn in two months, and it had been earned without much effort and no discomfort. “You’re a rum ’un, you are,” she said, taking the money with an easy shrug. “I’ll be off, then.”

Hugo made no response. He went to the window and stared out into the graying night, waiting while Betsy hooked herself into her dress, pulled on her cheap cotton stockings, and thrust her feet into her wooden clogs.

“All right, then,” she said, hesitating at the door. “I’m off.”

The rigid figure didn’t move a muscle. With another
shrug she went into the hall, closing the door behind her.

“Who are you?”

Betsy jumped at the soft question. She turned to look at the small figure sitting on the bottom stair. “Bless my soul! And what’s it to you, might I ask?” She approached and examined the white-faced girl curiously. “Was it you just came in there, then?”

“I didn’t know,” Chloe said in a flat voice. “Are you a friend of Hugo’s?”

Betsy laughed, a rich chuckle from her belly. “Bless you, no, dearie, not what you’d call a friend exactly. It’s my business to cheer gentlemen up and I does what I can.” The coins chinked in her skirt pocket. “But what’s a kiddie like you doin’, prowlin’ around in the middle o’ the night, seein’ things you shouldn’t?”

“I’m not a child,” Chloe said. “And I wasn’t prowling.”

Betsy peered closer. “Reckon as ’ow you’re not such a babby after all,” she agreed with a note of sympathy. “Ad a bit of a shock, did you, dearie?”

The library door opened before Chloe could respond. Hugo stepped into the hall. “Go up to your room, Chloe,” he directed, his voice without expression.

Chloe stood up slowly. “I’m sorry I interrupted you,” she said with an ironic courtesy. “Please forgive me. I didn’t realize you had a visitor.” She turned and ran up the stairs without a backward glance.

“That’s a pickle, an’ no mistake,” Betsy observed wisely as Hugo opened the front door for her. “You’d do best to keep your little entertainments out of the ’ouse, if you wants my advice.”

Hugo said nothing, simply closed the door on her. He went back to the library and steadily gathered up all the bottles scattered around the room, the full, the half full, and the empty. He took them into the kitchen, then went upstairs and woke Samuel.

Samuel listened to his instructions in complete silence. When his employer had finished, he said, “Reckon you can do it?”

“I must,” Hugo said simply, but there was quiet desperation in his voice and eyes. “Keep Chloe away from the library at all costs.” As he left the room, he added with a tinge of humor that surprised them both, “She has the devil’s own facility for appearing in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Mebbe so, but then, mebbe not,” Samuel mused as he got out of bed. Maybe this time she’d appeared in the right place at the right time.

Hugo went back to the library and closed the door. He sat down in the cracked leather wing chair beside the empty grate and stared sightlessly into the graying light of the room as he waited for the long, slow descent into hell to begin.

C
HLOE DIDN’T GO
back to sleep. She sat on the window seat, watching the sunrise, Dante’s head on her knee, Falstaff preening his raggedy feathers with a peacock’s pride. Beatrice climbed out of the hat box, stretched, yawned, arched her back, and glided purposefully to the door. Chloe let her out. The cat knew her way in and out of the house by now.