Vixen (25 page)

Her hands shook as she lit her carrying candle, then she flew like a wraith along the corridor, down the stairs to the library. She was acting on impulse now as she fumbled across the room, her candle flickering on the massive dark furniture and throwing eerie shadows on the heavy paneling.

She knew what she was looking for: the backgammon board she faintly remembered seeing the first time she’d entered this room. She found the hinged board on an inlaid chest against the wall. The pieces and dice were in a carved box beside it.

Clutching the heavy board and box to her chest with one arm, she made her way back to the hallway, holding her candle as high as she could. Dante, now resigned to these untimely peregrinations, trotted at her heels as she carefully negotiated the stairs and turned down the corridor to Hugo’s chamber.

She knocked on the door.

Hugo was sitting on the window seat, drawing deep breaths of the cool night air. His hands were clenched in tight fists against his face, leaving a bruising imprint against his cheekbones.

When the knock came at his door, he started and for a minute was disoriented. Then, assuming it was Samuel, he said wearily, “Come in.”

Chloe stood in the doorway, something clutched to her breast, a flickering candle in her other hand. Her hair tumbled in sleep’s unruly tangles over her shoulders. Her eyes were blue velvet as they gazed anxiously
at him. “I thought perhaps you couldn’t sleep again,” she said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. “I thought perhaps you’d like a game of backgammon.”

“Backgammon! For God’s sake, Chloe, it’s three o’clock in the morning!”

“Is it? I didn’t know.” She advanced farther into the room. “You haven’t been to sleep yet.” It was statement rather than question. Somehow, she knew Hugo was in trouble tonight and every line of her body, every movement of her features, evinced utter determination to help him.

“Go back to bed, Chloe,” he said, running his hands through his hair.

“No, I’m not in the least sleepy.” She set her candle down and opened the board on the bed. “I’m sure you’d like some company. Shall I set up the pieces?”

“Just why is it that you’re always so sure about what I want?” Hugo demanded. “For some reason, you keep popping up beside me, informing me that I must be lonely and in need of
your
company.”

“Well, it’s true,” Chloe said with that recognizable stubborn twist to her lovely mouth. “I know it is.” She perched on the bed and began to set up the draftsmen.

Hugo knew that an hour’s distraction would save him. He didn’t know how Chloe knew it, but know it she did. He came over to the bed and sat down on the edge opposite her, saying with a resigned sigh, “This is madness.”

There was a scratching at the door and Dante whined. “Oh, dear.” Chloe jumped up. “I shut the door on him. You don’t mind if he comes in, do you?”

Hugo shook his head in dumb surrender to an un-movable force.

Chloe was not wearing a dressing gown yet again,
and her slender frame moved fluidly beneath the thin cambric of her nightdress as she opened the door.

It was one area in which he could assert himself. Hugo went to the armoire and drew out a brown velvet robe. “Come here.” Taking her arms, he thrust them into the long sleeves, spun her around, and pulled the voluminious sides across her body, tying the girdle at her waist with a firm jerk. “How many times, Chloe … ?” he demanded in not entirely feigned exasperation.

“It’s not cold, so I don’t think about it,” she said.

“Well, I suggest you start thinking about it if you’re going to continue to roam around in the middle of the night.” He turned back to the backgammon board on the bed.

Chloe hopped up and sat cross-legged in front of her half of the board, arranging the folds of her borrowed robe around her. “Why does it bother you?”

Hugo looked sharply at her and read the mischievous invitation in her eyes. His world took that familiar tilt again as the need for brandy was abruptly joined by one with even more potential for trouble. If he let her see it, however, he’d be tacitly acknowledging the invitation.

“Don’t give me that pseudo-naivete, lass,” he said mildly, throwing the two dice. “It doesn’t bother
me
particularly. But you know perfectly well it’s not appropriate for a young girl to wander around half dressed.” He moved a draftsman.

Not fooled, she threw the dice in her turn. A questioning miaow came suddenly from the door she’d left ajar. Beatrice stood in the doorway, a tiny bundle of fur gripped by the scruff of its neck between her teeth.

“Oh, she’s bringing the kittens for their first outing,” Chloe said, extending her hand in welcome to the advancing cat. Beatrice leapt on the bed, deposited the kitten in Chloe’s lap, and went out again. Five more
times she came and went as Hugo watched in a kind of dazed disbelief. When all six kittens were settled in Chloe’s velvet lap, Beatrice curled on the coverlet and gazed unwinking at the tableau.

“We lack only Falstaff and Rosinante,” Hugo observed. “Oh, I was forgetting Plato. Perhaps you should fetch them.”

“You’re funning,” Chloe said. “It’s your throw.”

“Funning? Whyever should I be funning?” He tossed the dice. “I have a profound dislike of domestic animals, and yet at three-thirty in the morning I’m playing backgammon in an animal house that used to be my bedroom.”

“How could you dislike them?” Chloe stroked one of the fur bundles with the tip of her finger. The kitten blinked its newly opened eyes at Hugo.

“Forgive the indelicate question, but are they house-broken? I have to sleep in that bed.”

“Beatrice cleans up after them,” Chloe informed him serenely.

“Oh, how very reassuring.” Laughter swelled from some deep well in his chest, and he realized that the desperate tension of his brandy craving had left him. His hands were steady, his stomach at peace.

Chloe looked up from her intent concentration on the board and laughed happily as she examined his face. “You’re better?”

He looked sharply at her. “Yes, how do you know?”

“I can feel it when people are hurting,” she said. “Just as I can feel it when the pain goes away. Will you ever be able to drink again, do you think?”

The question surprised him. He hadn’t expected someone with so little experience of the world to understand his agony so completely. She was regarding him intently, the mischievously seductive playmate transformed into a solemn, caring companion.

“I don’t know, I’ll have to wait and see,” he answered as seriously as if she were of his own generation. “But I’m not stupid enough to put it to the test yet awhile. It’s too damn difficult to resist at the moment.”

“I’ll help you.” Reaching over, she laid her hand over his and it startled him more than any of her previous intimacies. It was a simple human gesture of support and friendship.

“You already have,” he answered quietly.

The silence in the room grew to enclose them, and he felt as if he were slipping into the deep blue depths of her eyes. Then, with a supreme effort of will, he hauled himself out of entrancement and broke the spell.

“Come on, it’s time you went back to bed.” He scooped the draftsmen up and put them in the box. “You’ve done what you came to do, and I’m very grateful, but now I’d like my own room back. How are you going to transport that litter?”

“I’ll fetch the hat box.” She moved the nest of kittens from her lap and slipped off the bed, hiding her disappointment. Struggling with the unwieldy folds of the robe, she went to get the box. When she returned, Hugo had cleared away the board and pieces, shooed Dante off the bed, and was staring somewhat nonplussed at Beatrice, who lay fast asleep, unimpressed by the busyness around her.

“She looks as if she’s settled for the duration,” he said as Chloe put the box on the bed.

“She’ll follow the kittens.” She picked them up and put them in the box. “I can’t carry them without tripping over your robe, so if you don’t mind, I’ll take it off.” She shrugged out of it, laying it over the foot of the bed. “Good night.” Her voice was flat.

“Chloe?”

“Yes?” She paused at the door.

He came up behind her, turned her, and gently kissed
her brow. “Thank you. You were a great help.” She quivered under his hands, her rounded shoulder warm in his palm beneath the thin nightgown, but she said nothing, and he released her. She left, Beatrice and Dante streaking ahead of her down the corridor.

Hugo lay down fully dressed on his bed, wrinkling his nose at the faint lingering smell of warm animal.

Something had to be done before the situation became completely out of hand. He would have to send her away somewhere. But where? Where would she be safe from Jasper if he himself wasn’t there to protect her? One thing he knew with absolute certainty: The three of them couldn’t go on living together in this dangerous intimacy. Each day he drew closer to breaking faith with Elizabeth. If he yielded, he would ruin a sweet-faced innocent who didn’t understand the consequences of what she was offering—and such a prospect belonged amid the depravities of the crypt.

Down the corridor, Chloe lay in bed, unaware that her thoughts were in one respect an echo of Hugo’s. Something had to be done. But in her case, she searched for a way to bring her plan to a swift conclusion. She was a prey to such tormenting fires and dreams and only one thing would quench the one and fulfill the other. She sensed it needed one firm push to propel Hugo over the edge of restraint. But what form should the push take? She’d tried gentle maneuvering and soft insinuations, hoping he’d pick up on the initiative. Perhaps it was time to do something utterly outrageous. But what?

She yawned and closed her eyes as a wave of sleepiness washed over her. The opportunity would present itself if she was on the lookout for it.

“W
HERE’S THE LASS
this morning?” Hugo came into the kitchen, yawning, rubbing his flat palms over his face. His clothes were more than usually rumpled.

“She ’ad breakfast about an hour ago. Said she was goin’ t’ put nag to grass in the orchard.” Samuel cast a sharp look at his employer. It was mid-morning, unusually late for Sir Hugo to rise unless he’d been drinking heavily. But apart from looking as if he’d slept in his clothes, he seemed clear-eyed and refreshed.

Samuel poured coffee. “We need supplies, so if ye’ve got a few pennies, I’ll take the cart.”

Hugo grimaced. “How much is a few pennies, Samuel?”

Samuel shrugged. “A couple o’ guineas!! prob’ly do for a bit o’ flour an’ coffee an’ the like. But the pig’ll ’ave to be stuck soon if there’s to be bacon for the winter, and Colin likes ’is money on the dot. An’ there’s the farrier to pay.”

“Won’t Colin take payment in kind? A side of bacon?”

“Aye, ’e might. Things is ’ard for ’im at the moment. ’ard for everyone, what wi’ wages bein’ cut at the mill.”

“Mmm.” Hugo drank coffee. “And there’ll be no reform meetings for a while. Henry Hunt’s been sentenced to two years in prison.”

“Just makes ’em more riled. They’d see the magistrates swing soon as look at ’em.” Samuel set a plate of ham in front of Hugo. “That do ye?”

“Amply, thanks.” Hugo cut into the meat. “Take what
you need for the supplies from the strongbox in the library.”

He remembered with a guilty pang the three gold sovereigns he’d given Betsy … not to mention the two he’d lavished on the turnip seller for Rosinante—more than enough to pay the farrier and the pig sticker and keep them in flour and coffee for a month. Chloe had insisted it was her money he was spending, but he couldn’t see himself recouping the outlay from his ward’s pin money.

“I could do with a bath, Samuel,” he said, diverting his thoughts to a more easily remediable situation.

“I’ll set it up for ye in ’ere,” Samuel said. “Like I did for the lass. Ye’ll be wantin’ to use the screen, I reckon.”

“Yes, I’d better,” Hugo said. Until Chloe’s advent, he’d been accustomed to bathing without such niceties, usually under the pump in the courtyard, in clement weather. But they were no longer an all-male household.

Half an hour later, he was ensconced in the hip bath before the range and behind the fire screen, luxuriating in the hot water that steamed gently around him. Toward dawn, he’d finally fallen into a deep sleep and he was now filled with a sense of physical well-being. He had fought his addiction last night and won, and the sense of achievement was sweet. Chloe’s part in the victory had to be acknowledged and he contemplated what he could do to please her that wouldn’t involve him in vast expense. Another trip to Manchester … and perhaps he’d bite his tongue when she demanded some hideous monstrosity and let her enjoy her purchase. But then again, remembering what tended to appeal to her, perhaps not. He closed his eyes, flexing his toes over the edge of the bath, idly slurping water over his chest.

The water was cooling slightly, and he thought he
heard Samuel in the kitchen. “Before you go, Samuel, bring me another jug of hot water.”

Chloe stood in the open doorway, looking around the deserted kitchen. She was about to tell the disembodied voice of her guardian that Samuel wasn’t in the room, when a hot tide of excitement washed over her, sending a jolt to the pit of her stomach that made her knees weak. Here was the opportunity … and a golden one at that.