Vixen (27 page)

“Heaven help us both, but I think you will too,” he murmured. There was a power here too strong for one man to resist on the grounds of scruple. Somehow, he’d steer a path through it.

“But I don’t like it when you withdraw at the end in that fashion,” she said suddenly, a crease appearing between her brows. “If it was so that I won’t conceive, I would prefer to take the potion.”

Hugo stiffened and abruptly rolled her onto the bed beside him. Leaning over her, he spoke with soft vehemence. “You will not ever again take that filthy stuff, Chloe.”

“Why not?”

The crypt rose in its dank evil, its smell filling his nostrils. Stephen Gresham’s voice rang in his ears. The man’s vicious hungers spread themselves on the carpet of memory. This girl was his daughter. A creature with
all the appetites, vital and glowing with a devouring lust for life’s pleasures,

“What is it?” She saw him go from her, back to the world of his painted devils, and in fear she touched his face. “I’m sorry, Hugo. Please. Whatever I did, I didn’t mean it.”

He pulled himself back to the sunlit room and the reality of the woman he’d just loved with such shared joy. He spoke evenly. “There are many things you don’t understand, lass. You will have to trust me to know what’s best in these matters.”

“I do … I will,” she said hastily. The bright morning seemed to have dimmed somewhat. “But you’re not sorry, are you? You don’t regret what happened?”

How could he regret such pleasure, or deny the spur of unstoppable passion? He was not harming Chloe, he knew that now. She was an equal partner for all the disparity in their ages. And maybe he was the best person to guide the vast appetite she had for life in all its earthly facets. Perhaps Elizabeth had sensed that too. Even in her laudanum trance she would have had a mother’s recognition of her daughter’s nature. Had she been afraid that once free of the restraints of her girlhood, her daughter would follow where her appetites and her stellar beauty led? Unguided, they would lead her to ruin. Had Elizabeth recognized Stephen in their daughter?

She was still regarding; him with anxiety, and he saw the ingenuous girl again. He remembered the openness of her responses. Appetites as such were not wrong if they were not governed by evil. The sins of the father should not be visited upon the child.

“No,” he said. “I don’t regret it, lass.”

“I
’M SURE THERE’S
a simple answer to this, lass, but just why do you never wear shoes these days?” Hugo regarded his ward’s bare feet as she came into the kitchen from the orchard. The memory of her grass-stained soles of the previous day was still vivid.

“Because I don’t have any,” she responded simply, taking an apple from the basket and rubbing it against her skirt.

“What do you mean, you don’t have any? Of course you have shoes.”

“Only brown serge kind of shoes,” she explained, scrunching into the apple. “Clumpy half boots that look silly with this dress.”

“The dress looks as if it could do with a wash,” he observed. “It looks as if you’ve been mucking out the stables in it.”

“Oh, it’s just from Rosinante and the dust from the stillroom,” she said, flicking carelessly at a smudge on her muslin skirt. “I was trying to encourage Plato to eat one of Beatrice’s mice, but I think he’s too young. I’ll have to dig up worms for him.”

“That will certainly improve the condition of your gown,” Hugo said dryly. “However, I think we’d better have another shopping trip to see about shoes.”

“And a riding hat,” Chloe reminded him. “I lost the other one at St. Peter’s Fields. I’ve a mind to purchase a shako. I saw a woman wearing one in Bolton once. It looked very dashing.”

“A shako!” Hugo groaned. “You’re far too small for such a style, lass.”

“Stuff,” Chloe declared. “It’ll make me look taller. Are we to go this morning?”

“We might as well get it over with,” Hugo said.

“Then I’ll change into my habit.”

“Give me strength,” Hugo muttered as the door closed on her energetic departure. “A shako! What the hell’s she’s going to come up with next?”

“Reckon as ’ow ye’ll be able to steer ’er right,” Samuel observed, biting off a length of thread. He held up the shirt he’d been mending and shook his head. “Ye’d do as well to buy yerself a new shirt. This one’s more patches than anythin’.”

“Not with the farrier to pay,” Hugo said, getting to his feet. He sighed. “Ah, well, into the breach, I suppose. Wish me luck, Samuel.”

Samuel gave him a dry smile. “If’n ye think ye needs it.”

Hugo’s answering smile was rueful. “Oh, make no mistake, Samuel, I’m going to need all the luck in the world to steer a safe path through this maze.”

Neither of them was referring to the shopping expedition. Hugo rarely had to tell the old sailor anything directly. His friend missed little of what went on around him.

“Tell the lass to bring down that gown and I’ll wash it while yer gone.”

“I hardly think it’s your place to do her laundry,” Hugo said, frowning.

“Right ’andy she is wi’ the animals,” Samuel said, “but I don’t reckon they taught ’er much about washin’ an’ flat irons in that seminary. She ’ad enough trouble washin’ the curtains from ’er room … and she didn’t know one end of the iron from t’other, as I recall.”

“No, I don’t imagine an heiress with eighty thousand
pounds would have been expected to learn the finer arts of domesticity,” Hugo said. “But then, I don’t imagine such an heiress would expect to be living in quite such spartan surroundings either.”

“She’s ’appy enough,” Samuel said gruffly.

“Are you talking about me?” Chloe’s clear voice came from the doorway and both men turned toward her.

“Yes, we were,” Hugo said calmly. “Samuel is offering to wash your gown.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t let you do that.” She crossed the kitchen.

She danced rather than walked, Hugo thought, watching as she bent and kissed Samuel’s cheek. And what an amazing capacity for love and friendship, a capacity until now starved of recipients except the lonely, injured, and unloved of the animal kingdom.

“Nonsense,” Samuel said, his ruddy cheek glowing. “Just fetch It down ’ere and then get along wi’ ye. I’ve enough to do wi’out all this argumentation.”

“Do as he says, lass,” Hugo said. “And then let’s get moving.”

”P
urple shoes with gold rosettes and three-inch heels, Samuel!” Hugo flung himself into a chair at the kitchen table. “And the hats … you would not believe how many milliners we had to visit before we found a hat that the lass liked and I was prepared to tolerate.”

He shook his head, massaging his temples. “There was a cartwheel of straw and tulle … you have never seen its like … but the shako … Dear God, I thought we were going to come to blows over that. Can you imagine what such a minute creature would look like in purple shoes and a foot-high shako with a monstrous dyed scarlet plume?”

“The shoes were lovely,” Chloe said indignantly.
“Don’t take any notice of him, Samuel. They were the most beautiful shoes I’ve ever seen, and Hugo is the stuffiest, primmest, most … most old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud!”

Perched on the table, she extended one dainty foot and examined with a grimace of disgust the bronze kid slipper enclosing it. “Look at this, it’s so
boring.”

“It’s tasteful,” Hugo said. “And elegant.”

“It’s boring, isn’t it, Samuel?”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Samuel said, stirring the contents of a pot on the lugpole. “I don’t know nothin’ about such flimflam.”

“And I don’t like the hat nearly as much as the one I lost.” Chloe glared at her guardian. From her point of view, it had not been a successful shopping expedition, and Hugo had shown a dismaying propensity to behave as if their relationship had not changed dramatically as a result of the previous morning’s activities.

“Well, you shouldn’t have lost the other one, lass,” he said, refusing to be drawn. “No one forced you into the midst of a melee, as I recall.”

“Oh, yes, they did! Crispin and Jasper did.”

“But who chose to be so forced?” His eyebrows lifted and his smile was slightly mocking.

“Oh, you make me so cross sometimes!” Chloe jumped off the table. “I’m going to feed Plato.”

“Hey! Not in those slippers,” Hugo protested as she stalked to the kitchen door. “You are not going to dig up worms in kid slippers. They cost a small fortune.”

“The sooner they’re ruined, the sooner I can buy a new pair.”

The silly challenge fell into a stony silence, and Chloe bit her lip, her cheeks warming as she heard her petulance. In a subdued voice she said, “I’ll put on my clunky boots.”

As she passed him on her way to the hall door, Hugo
reached out and caught her around the hips, drawing her close to his chair. “Don’t be cross, lass. I really do know better than you.” He smiled up at her, his eyes crinkling with amusement and something else that she couldn’t yet read with fluency.

“But you don’t know what I like better than I do.”

“Oh, I think I might take you up on that later,” he said softly. “You might well be surprised.”

Her knees were suddenly weak, and the day’s irritations faded as if they’d never been. His arm tightened around her, his hand flattening on her thigh, and she drew a shaky breath.

“I do like surprises.”

He laughed and released her with a light pat. “Find your clunky boots and see to that owl. Samuel’s dinner won’t wait.”

Chloe recovered her good humor with habitual speed and, Plato having been fed, came to the table with a ready hunger. Samuel carved a leg of mutton, ladled boiled potatoes, green peas, and parsnips onto her plate and set it before her as she took her usual seat at the side of the long table.

“Would you like a glass of wine with that, lass?” Hugo raised a questioning eyebrow as he was about to take his own seat at the head of the table.

Chloe shook her head and gave him a quick smile. “No, thank you, just water.”

“I think Samuel’s dinner deserves accompaniment,” Hugo said calmly. “Fetch two glasses.” He took the cellar key from the wall and went down.

Chloe looked anxiously at Samuel, who shrugged slightly and said, “Do as ’e says, I should.”

She took two wineglasses from the dresser and then stood at the table, uncertain where to place them.

Hugo came up with a bottle of claret. “You and Samuel, lass,” he said with a slight smile, pulling the cork.
Deliberately, he examined the cork, sniffed it, nodded, placed it on the table, and filled their glasses. Then he sat down and began to eat.

A collective easing of tension rippled around the table. Hugo had set himself a test and had passed it.

Chloe helped Samuel with the dishes while Vivaldi filled the house from the library; they could both hear the harmony in Hugo’s soul as it flowed from his fingers.

Afterward she went into the library and stood behind him, one hand lightly clasping his neck. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at her. “You’re tired. You had a long ride. Why don’t you go up to bed?”

“I’m not tired,” she denied, spoiling the effect with a deep yawn.

Hugo laughed. “No, of course you’re not. Go on upstairs.” His voice softened. “I’ll come up and wake you later.”

Some instinctive wisdom told her that she couldn’t insist that he accompany her, nor could she stay with him until he was ready. Hugo had too dense a thicket around himself for such a new relationship to penetrate. She had no rights of possession, no right to intrude on his privacy. His age and experience demanded that she respect his ruling on the time, the place, and the manner in which they conducted their liaison.

“Promise?”

He reached up, cupped the back of her head, and pulled her face down to his, kissing her firmly. “Promise. I’ll play you a lullaby.”

“But I don’t want to go to sleep yet.”

“Didn’t I say I’d wake you?”

She nodded and left, the soft strains of a nursery lullaby, cleverly varied by the pianist, accompanying her up the stairs and drifting through her open window as she undressed.

She hadn’t expected to fall asleep, but the music worked its magic and within minutes she was sleeping peacefully.

Samuel took himself to bed soon after, and Hugo continued to play for himself, softly now so as not to disturb the sleepers, enjoying the quiet of the house, the knowledge of the sleeping girl waiting for his waking touch, the satisfaction of another day’s battle fought and won.

A
cross the courtyard, three dark-clad figures ran in a huddled crouch, hugging the shadows. The side of the house overlooking the courtyard was in darkness, and they couldn’t hear the now-muted strains of the piano from the library, where only a single candle cast its light.

Silently, one of the three lifted the latch on the stable and they crept inside. A horse shuffled in the straw, whickered in alarm at the scent of strangers. The three moved fast, piling straw in a corner of the building. Flint scraped on tinder, a yellow flare lit the cobwebbed corners, threw an outsize shadow of a horse’s head on the wall.

The yellow flare was put to the pile of dry straw. A horse whickered again, a panicky sound as the smell of burning filled the confined space.