Vixen (35 page)

“What the ’ell … ?” Samuel stared at the new arrival, who was transfixed with terror as Dante put his huge paws on Chloe’s shoulder, licking her face in exuberant, ecstatic welcome.

“Oh, you didn’t think we were going to stop at bear cubs, did you?” Hugo said sardonically. “I don’t think Miss Gresham will be satisfied until she’s turned my house into a lying-in ward and an orphanage in addition to an animal rescue center.”

He turned back to Chloe. “See to your protégée and then come to the library. I have a few things to say to you.” With which he marched into the library and slammed the door.

“Now what’ve you gone an’ done?” Samuel said.

“It’s not so much what I’ve done as what I said,” Chloe replied with a rueful grimace. Then she shrugged philosophically. “Oh, well, I’ll worry about it later. Down, now, Dante. Yes, I love you too, but you’re frightening Peg.” She smiled with warm reassurance and introduced her protégée. “This is Peg, Samuel.”

“Oh, is it?” Samuel regarded the girl without much enthusiasm. “And no better than she ought t’ be, I’ll lay odds.”

“Ah’ what business is it of your’n, I’d like to know?” demanded the belligerent Peg. But even Samuel could see the pathetic, undernourished scrap of humanity beneath the aggression.

“She’s hungry,” Chloe said. “I’ll take her to the kitchen and find her some food, although I suppose Alphonse will get all hoity-toity about it. And then I think we should heat some water so she can have a bath and I’ll find some clothes.”

“Bath?” Peg squealed. “I ain’t goin’ in no bath.”

“Come along wi’ me, girl,” Samuel said. “Mrs. ’Erridge’ll
know what’s best for ye. If I were you, lass, I’d get meself into the library and take what’s comin’. The longer ’e frets on it, the worse it’ll be.”

“I suppose so.” Chloe still hesitated. Mrs. Herridge was the housekeeper and a woman of rather unyielding disposition. But Alphonse tolerated her in his kitchen a great deal better than he did Chloe and her various dependents. “Go with Samuel, Peg,” she said. “They’ll look after you in the kitchen, and when you feel better we’ll talk about what you want to do next.”

“You ain’t takin’ me to no Bridewell.” Peg glared at Samuel, but there was uncertainty bordering on terror beneath the glare.

“Now, why would I go an’ do a thing like that?” he said, shaking his head. “Come on, girl, let’s get some food down ye. There’s two o’ ye goin’ ’ungry at the moment.”

Chloe watched as a still-hesitant Peg went with Samuel through the swinging door to the kitchen quarters, then she squared her shoulders and went into the library. Dante made straight for his usual spot on the hearth rug and flopped down with a heavy sigh.

“How dare you say such a thing?” Hugo demanded even before she’d closed the door. “How could you be so childishly thoughtless? Of all the insulting, stupid remarks I’ve ever heard—”

“But I just wanted to reassure her,” Chloe broke in. “I thought it would make her feel at ease.”

“Oh, you thought it would make her feel at ease! Dear God!” He ran his hands through his hair. “And just how do you think it’s going to sound when she regales the rest of the household with your
reassurance.
A fallen woman! Chloe, I don’t know what to do with you!”

That consequence had not occurred to her. “They won’t take it seriously,” she said uncertainly. “They’ll think it was a joke, or that she misheard me.”

“And what makes you certain of that?”

“Well … well, because it’s obviously absurd,” she said. “Oh, Hugo, you know it is. It wouldn’t occur to anyone that … that …”

“That I debauched my ward,” he finished for her with an icy snap.

Chloe realized that she’d inadvertently raised Hugo’s guilt demons. In a minute he’d slip from her into the world of his painted devils … unless she could stimulate some other response from him.

“Oh, pah,” she stated, picking up the
Gazette
and pretending to be absorbed in the first page. “I wish I knew what it felt like to be debauched. It sounds as if it might be amusing. It seems to me, if I remember aright, that if any debauching went on, it was I who did it to you. So I don’t see why you should take all the credit,” she added, risking a peep over the paper to gauge his reaction. The ploy seemed to have worked all too well. The bleakness had vanished from his expression, and he looked thunderous.

He plucked the newspaper from her hand and she took to her heels with a squeak of mock fright before he could grab her.

“Brat.” He leapt after her as she jumped onto the sofa and scrambled over the back. She danced behind the table and stuck her tongue out at him.

“Tell me what it feel likes to be debauched, Hugo? Please, I’m dying to know.” She dodged sideways as he came around the table and sprang onto the seat of a chair, flinging a leg over the back preparatory to sliding over. The suddenness of her movement overbalanced the chair, and it toppled to the floor. Her startled shriek as she tumbled over in a swirl of skirts, stockinged legs waving indelicately in the air, brought a reluctant grin to Hugo’s lips.

He swooped down on her, disentangling her from the
chair. “I’m not even going to ask if you’re hurt,” he declared, lifting her up and setting her on her feet. “If you are, it’s only what you deserve.” He smoothed down the back of her skirt with a degree of calculated vigor. “Don’t let me hear any more discussion on fallen women or debauchery.”

“No, Hugo,” she said with a docility every bit as feigned as her earlier fright. Her cheeks were pink with exertion and what he knew was arousal, and her eyelashes fluttered as she fixed him with a melting look.

“And don’t flirt with me.”

“I’m not,” she said truthfully. “Shall I lock the door?”

“Shall you what?”

For answer, she ran to the door and turned the key. “There now.” She leaned back against the door, her breast lifting with her swift breath, her eyes dancing with invitation, the rich sensual currents flowing fast in their deep blue depths. “We could be quick. We wouldn’t have to take our clothes off.”

Hugo was lost anew. Vaguely he wondered if he would ever be free of her spell, ever be able to resist her when she drew him into her realm of magic in this way. She was so sure of herself, of what she wanted, of what she was offering … and she was so sure of his response. She was archetypal woman.

She raised her skirt and petticoat slowly, her eyes never leaving his face. “We could do it standing up. Can it be done in that way?”

“Yes, it can,” he said savagely, consumed with the pure, primitive fire of lust. He crossed to her, tore loose the string of her drawers so that they fell in a silken rustle to her ankles, and unfastened his britches.

“Brace yourself.” He pushed her knees apart with his own knee and she laughed … an exultant laugh … as she obeyed, holding her skirts high, bracing herself
with her shoulders against the door, reeling the molding of the paneling pressing into her back.

He entered the velvet moistness of her body with one swift thrust and she drew a shaky breath, smiling at him with luminous joy. He gripped her hips with both hands, his fingers curling into the satin skin as he drove himself within her. He could feel her pleasure mounting with each thrust just as he could see it on her face. Her tongue touched her lips and she laughed again. She never closed her eyes, not since the time he’d asked her not to, and he thought he would fall into the volcano of passion that beckoned with their midnight fires.

“Now,” she whispered suddenly. “Hugo, now!”

“I know, sweetheart,” he said. “But wait.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.” He held himself still, deep within her. She held her breath in an agony of suspense, her body thrumming around his flesh. And then he moved and she cried out as her climax ripped through her.

Hugo’s head fell against the door as his own body swirled in the vortex of delight. Only when the passion was spent and his head cleared did it occur to him that he had been outfoxed again, craftily manipulated out of his anger and taken into a world far from the sway of the painted devils. How could he suffer guilt making such wondrous love to this uninhibited, artful minx who knew a lot more about the world than he’d ever given her credit for? Or was it that she knew a lot more about himself?

“M
AY
I
OFFER YOU
a glass of claret, duke?” Hugo gestured politely toward the decanters on the sideboard.

“Thank you … thank you.” His august visitor watched as the wine was poured. “I trust you look kindly upon my suit.”

Hugo bowed in acknowledgment. He could hardly look unkindly upon the suit of the Duke of Alresford. It would be a brilliant match for Chloe. The duke was no fortune hunter and a mere ten years older than herself. “The decision must of course rest with my ward,” he said. “Chloe has a mind of her own.” He smiled and raised his own glass of claret. He was becoming expert at appearing to drink in social situations without doing so.

“I flatter myself that she is not altogether indifferent,” his grace said. It would be unspeakably vulgar to allude to his title and fortune, but his smugness was allusion enough.

“Then if you’ve discussed this with Chloe, duke, what more can I say?”

“Oh, goodness me, no.” The duke made haste to defend himself from any possibility of impropriety. “I wouldn’t broach such a subject without your permission, Sir Hugo. But I have been led to have hopes …” He gestured vaguely. “Miss Gresham is all condescension.”

“Is she indeed,” Hugo murmured. Chloe’s private mockery of her pompous suitor had enlivened the dinner
table on more than one occasion. However, he considered it his bounden duty to promote the duke’s suit. Not that he had much hope of Chloe’s bending to his will.

“Rest assured, duke, I will inform my ward of the inestimable honor of your proposal as soon as she returns from her ride.”

Alresford put down his glass and took his leave. “Then I may expect a response before tomorrow.”

“I believe so,” Hugo said gravely, escorting his guest to the front door.

Alresford, like the rest of Chloe’s increasing cast of suitors and friends, had come to accept the eccentric Samuel as butler and doorman and took his hat and cane from the earringed sailor with barely a thought about his oddity. “I await Miss Gresham’s response most eagerly,” he said.

“To what?” Samuel demanded, closing the door behind him.

“A proposal of marriage. The lass is being offered the opportunity to become a duchess.”

“Much store she’ll set by that,” Samuel stated. “’Ave you seen ’er take off ’is funny way of wrinklin’ ’is nose?”

“I have. Where’s Peg?”

“Sittin’ by the kitchen fire with ’er feet in a mustard bath, eatin’ gingerbread,” Samuel informed him. “Lazy little devil, she is.”

“She’s entitled,” Hugo said. “At least until she’s had the baby. Then we’ll see what’s to be done with her.”

“I expect the lass ’as some notion.”

“I wish she’d come up with a plan for that damn bear,” Hugo said grimly. “It’s growing like a weed.”

The sounds of laughter came from beyond the front door, and Samuel pulled it open.

“Oh, thank you, Samuel.” Chloe walked in, her eyes
bright with amusement, her cheeks pinkened with cold. She was followed by three young men, also laughing.

Hugo looked in vain for some female chaperoning presence … one of her escort’s sisters or at the very least a maid. But his ward had a lamentable habit of dispensing with such niceties. For some reason she seemed to avoid censure by all but the highest sticklers for behavior that in anyone else would be considered fast. But he’d seen her charm the severest matrons with the sweet smile and soft voice that she knew how to use to advantage. A crafty little fox was Miss Gresham.

“Hugo, you’re acquainted with Lord Bentham and Sir Frank Manton?” Chloe was saying, drawing off her gloves. “But I don’t know if you know Denis DeLacy. He’s only recently come to town.”

Hugo felt the ground shift beneath his feet. The young man was the spitting image of his father, Brian DeLacy. Brian, a close friend of Stephen Gresham’s, had been a chief player in the crypt. Brian had witnessed his friend’s death.

“I believe you knew my father, Sir Hugo,” Denis was saying, offering a frank smile. “He died two years ago, but I seem to remember his mentioning your name.”

It could be perfectly innocent. They had been friends of a kind, members of the same social set. But what if Brian had told his son that Hugo had been a member of the Congregation? Did this young man know the story of Stephen Gresham’s death?

Hugo forced himself to smile and shake the man’s hand. He murmured some platitude while his thoughts tumbled in his head. They were all sworn to secrecy over the duel … a secrecy that surely encompassed a man’s son. But supposing Brian had broken his oath?

“I hadn’t seen your father for many years,” he said. “The war curtailed many friendships.”

“I came back to fetch Dante,” Chloe informed him
cheerfully, for once too intent on her own plans to notice Hugo’s abstraction. “We’re going to take him for a walk in Green Park.”

“Did you leave your female companion outside the door?” Hugo queried, raising his eyebrows. “How very impolite, Chloe.”