Vixen (17 page)

Chloe examined her emotions with an almost distant curiosity. She discovered that she was no longer hurt or confused; she was, very simply, angry. She supposed it was none of her business whom her guardian chose to bed, but the supposition did nothing to cool her indignation. He’d banished her from his presence and taken a fat whore in her place! Maybe she was a
kind,
fat whore, but a whore nonetheless. From now on she was going to have nothing to do with Sir Hugo Lattimer beyond the absolute necessities engendered by his guardianship. She’d been hurt and humiliated enough, and the sooner she made arrangements to leave his roof, the better it would be for everyone. The only question was where she should go.

And then she remembered Miss Anstey. Why shouldn’t she set up an establishment with Miss Anstey? Presumably her fortune could pay a companion at least as much as she’d be paid by Lady Colshot. She would write first to Miss Anstey, and if she received a favorable response, then she would lay out the plan in a formal letter to her guardian. He’d made no secret of his anxiety to be rid of her, and it was so like the plan he’d had
himself that he’d surely jump at it. But she would insist on establishing herself in London.

Thus resolved, Chloe went down to the kitchen to fetch a jug of hot water. The library door was closed as she passed it, and she stuck out her tongue at it in a childish gesture that nevertheless relieved her feelings.

“You’ll be wantin’ your breakfast,” Samuel observed as she entered the kitchen. In full possession of the facts now, he cast her a shrewd glance, assessing her state of mind. The leaden depression of the past few days seemed to have left her, although the light in her eyes didn’t strike him as particularly joyful.

“I’d like a bath more than anything,” Chloe said, surprising herself with the realization. She ran her hands through her hair. “I’d like to wash my hair.”

“Long as you don’t mind the kitchen,” Samuel said. “I don’t relish carrying jugs of ’ot water up them stairs. There’s a tub somewhere in the scullery.” He went into the small back kitchen, reappearing with a tin hip bath. He set it down in front of the range. “Reckon yell need a screen or summat.”

“There’s that fire screen in the library,” Chloe said, moving to the door.

“I’ll get it, miss. You’re not to go in there, you understand?” The sharp urgency of his voice arrested her.

“I’ve seen him drunk before,” she said acidly. “And rather more than that.”

“I know,” Samuel said. “But what’s goin’ on in there now is between Sir ’Ugo and ’is own self. You put one finger on that door, and you’ll be answerin’ to me.”

Chloe blinked at this unlooked-for ferocity from the usually phlegmatic Samuel. “What’s he doing, then?”

“Never you mind. None o’ your business.” He stomped to the door. “I’ll set that bath up for you straightaway.”

Chloe sat at the table, thoughtfully picking at the crust on a loaf of bread. Now what was going on?

Samuel went quietly into the library. Hugo was still sitting in the chair, his hands clenched on the arms, the knuckles bloodless. Sweat shimmered on his forehead.

“Bring me some coffee, Samuel.”

“Right you are.” Samuel picked up the heavy fire screen. “Miss is goin’ to ’ave a bath in the kitchen.”

“Well, watch young Billy,” Hugo said. “I wouldn’t put it past him to play Peeping Tom.”

It was an attempt at levity, and Samuel smiled tightly in response. “You want anythin’ to eat?”

Hugo just shook his head.

Samuel returned with a pot of coffee and set it down beside Hugo. He filled a beaker and silently held it out. Hugo took it carefully, his hands curling around the warmth, the aromatic steam hitting his nostrils. “Thanks.”

“Anythin’ else?”

“No, just leave me.”

The door closed behind Samuel, and Hugo took a sip of coffee. His stomach revolted and a wave of nausea broke over him. He set the mug down and closed his eyes. He’d been blind drunk for four days, in a constant state of semi-intoxication for several years, and it was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

While Chloe bathed, she tried out her plan for Miss Anstey’s companionship on Samuel, who was peeling potatoes beyond the screen, keeping a watchful eye out for unexpected visitors.

“I should think Sir Hugo would approve,” she concluded, pouring a jug of water over her hair. “If he ever sobers up enough to listen, of course.”

“There’s no call for talk like that,” Samuel reproved. “Don’t go meddlin’ in what you don’t understand.”

“You mean the demons?”

“Reckon so.”

“But you don’t understand them either. You said so.”

“No, I don’t. And so I don’t go throwin’ stones.”

Chloe was silenced. She stood up and reached for the towel hanging over the screen. “I wish I did understand,” she said finally, twisting the towel around her wet hair. “Then maybe I wouldn’t be so angry.” She shrugged into a dressing gown and came out from behind the screen. “I could stick a knife in his ribs, Samuel!”

Samuel smiled his tight smile. “I wouldn’t recommend tryin’ it, miss. Not with Sir ’Ugo. Drunk or sober, ’e’s a hard man to tangle with.”

Chloe went upstairs to dress. As she selected one of her new gowns, she found herself wondering if Crispin would pay her another visit. The prospect surprisingly was rather pleasing. Not least because she suspected Hugo would be annoyed by it.

A man who amused himself in drunken sport with fat whores deserved to be annoyed.

She was in the stable yard, examining Rosinante’s wounds when Crispin arrived, leading a roan mare of elegant lines.

“What a disgusting beast,” he said without thought as he took in the turnip seller’s abused nag. “It should be fed to the crows.”

Chloe laid a strip of gauze over one of the still-oozing wounds on Rosinante’s flanks before saying in a deceptively neutral tone, “Oh, do you really think so?”

“I know so.” Crispin dismounted. “It’s not even worth a bullet. Why are you wasting your time and good medicine on such a travesty?”

Chloe turned and surveyed her visitor. The look in her eye caused Crispin to take an involuntary step backward. “You always were a brute,” she declared, fire and ice in her voice. “Too good for a bullet, is it? This pitiable
creature has been tortured throughout its life, and when it can’t endure anymore, it’s to be fed to the crows? That attitude makes me sick, Crispin.” She turned back to the patient.

Crispin flushed a dark red at this vigorously uncivil castigation, and it took the certainty of his stepfather’s wrath and the promise of eighty thousand pounds to keep him from rewarding her insolence with the back of his hand.

“It was a manner of speaking,” he said at last. “There’s no need to fly into the boughs, Chloe. And I must say”—he laughed, a feeble and unconvincing attempt—”I must say, to accuse me of always being a brute is a bit much, you know.”

Chloe continued with her ministrations in silence for a minute, then said, “You used to pull the wings off butterflies.”

Another unconvincing little laugh. “Oh, come now, Chloe. Boys will be boys, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” she said shortly.

“Well, I don’t do it anymore,” he said somewhat lamely.

“No. But do you still bring your hunters back from the field bleeding and foundered? A hunter with broken wind isn’t worth much either, is it? But I expect you’d do it the kindness of a bullet.”

This bitter, passionate speech left Crispin for a moment dumbfounded. The attack seemed to have come out of nowhere, and he floundered around, trying to find a way of recovering his equilibrium. Chloe had suddenly reduced him to the status of an unpleasant little boy. His gloved hands flexed as he held himself on a tight rein.

“If we could change the direction of the subject of horseflesh, Sir Jasper has sent you a present,” he said stiffly.

“Oh?” Chloe turned, squinting up at him against the sun.

He gestured to the horse he was leading. “This is Maid Marion. She’s out of Red Queen by Sherrif. Your brother thought you might like a good riding horse.”

“Oh, I remember Sherrif,” Chloe said. “A magnificent stallion. No wonder she’s such a pretty lady.” She accepted the change of subject with the rueful reflection that her attack on Crispin had rather gone to extremes. “But I couldn’t possibly accept her.”

He’d been warned to expect this and had his answer ready. “Why not? It’s perfectly customary for brothers to give their sisters gifts.”

Chloe blew softly into the mare’s nostrils. Maid Marion wrinkled her velvety nose and rolled back her lips in a horsey smile. Chloe stroked her neck and said as neutrally as she could, “Perhaps so, but I really can’t accept her as a gift. Maybe I could borrow her one day though.”

It would achieve the same purpose. Crispin relaxed and asked lightly, “Will your guardian permit you to ride with me?”

Chloe frowned. Hugo had forfeited all rights to dictate to her. There was not the slightest reason why she shouldn’t spend time with her own family. It wasn’t as if she had a surfeit of caring friends and relatives around her. She swallowed hard, castigating herself mentally for self-pity. She knew instinctively that Hugo would not permit her to ride with Crispin, but the reasons had nothing to do with her; they belonged to whatever lay between Jasper and Sir Hugo. She failed to see why her happiness should be sacrificed.

“I shan’t ask him,” she said. “But it can’t be today. I’d have to plan it.”

Crispin couldn’t hide his satisfaction and asked eagerly, “When, then?”

“Let me think about it and we’ll make plans when you come tomorrow. … If you come tomorrow,” she added.

“You’ll have to promise to receive me with more courtesy,” Crispin said. He tried to make his voice teasing, but his eyes were hard and he bent to pat the ever-present Dante, hoping to conceal his expression. The dog moved away.

“If I was rude, I apologize,” Chloe said. “I sometimes speak out of turn when I’m angered … and I do become very angry when animals are maltreated.” She shrugged as if such a response were only to be expected. “Poor Rosinante. Can’t you imagine what it must have been like, unshod, starved, and beaten, and forced to haul impossibly heavy loads?”

“Not being a horse, I’m afraid I can’t,” Crispin said. He offered a wry grin and Chloe, whose sense of humor was never far from the surface, half smiled in response.

“I suppose I do become rather obsessive,” she conceded. “But you did pull the wings off butterflies.”

Crispin raised his hands in a disarming gesture of defeat. “But I was very young, Chloe. No more than nine or ten. I’ve reformed, I promise.”

“Oh, very well,” she said, laughing. “We’ll consign it to the dim and distant past.”

“And you really won’t let me leave Maid Marion with you?”

Chloe shook her head. “Thank Jasper for me, but I can’t possibly accept such a gift. I’d be happy to buy her though,” she added. “Sir Hugo said we would purchase a good horse for me, once—”

“Once?” Crispin prompted when she seemed disinclined to continue.

“Oh, once it’s been decided where I should live and in what manner,” she said with another dismissive shrug.

“And when will that be decided?”

When and if my guardian is ever sober enough to think about it.
“Soon, when Sir Hugo’s looked at all the options.”

“And what are the options?”

For some reason, despite her newfound charity with him, Chloe discovered she didn’t want to confide her plans to Crispin. “Oh, I’m not sure yet,” she said casually. “I have to prepare a fresh poultice for Rosinante, so …”

“I have to be on my way.” Crispin took the hint. He reached for her hand and raised it to his lips. “Until tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” Chloe agreed, retrieving her hand in some surprise. She hadn’t expected gallantry from Crispin. So far, in the arena of gallantry, she’d experienced only the stammers and fumbles of the curate and Miss Anne’s nephew. The butcher’s boy didn’t really count.

And neither did what had happened between herself and Hugo. That hadn’t been gallantry. What had it been?

She waved good-bye as Crispin rode out of the courtyard, leading Maid Marion. What had it been? It had been magical, but it had far transcended the games and rituals of gallantry. It had not been play. There had been nothing playful about it at all.

That night she heard the pianoforte again. But there was nothing merry or rollicking about the music—in fact it wasn’t music. It was a harsh melange of discordancy, the notes beaten from the keyboard with a desperation that chilled her. It was a cry of pure anomie—a despairing statement of aloneness. The agonized cry of a man who’d lost his grounding in his own world.

Chloe could find no words for the pain described in the sounds coming through her window. But she felt the pain as if it were her own. She got up and sat on the window seat. Dante was shivering against her and Beatrice
had curled around her kittens, her body and her warmth a protective arc.

Chloe heard Samuel’s tread, heavy on the stairs. She heard the library door open and she drew a ragged breath. Samuel would help him as she knew she could not. The depths of her own ignorance, her own inability to grasp such pain, stunned her.

The discordant music ceased. She exhaled slowly, feeling the tension leave her body.

When Samuel’s callused hands covered Hugo’s on the keys, Hugo’s head dropped onto his chest. “I don’t know if I can do it,” he whispered.

“Aye, you can,” Samuel said softly. “You need rest.”

“I need brandy, damn you!” Hugo held out his hands. They shook uncontrollably. “My skin’s on fire,” he muttered. “I feel as if I’m shoveling fuel on Satan’s fires already. Eden in hell.” His crack of laughter was mirthless. “Seems appropriate, doesn’t it, Samuel? You want to join me there? I promise you the road is paved with every debauchery known to man. The question is—” He shook his head slowly. “The question is, Samuel, whether the joys of the road are worth the hell of its destination.”

“Come upstairs,” Samuel said. “I’ll put you to bed—”

“No, damn you!” Hugo pushed away his helping hands. “I can’t sleep. I’ll stay here.”

“You need to eat something—”