Vixen (46 page)

“After that …” He shrugged. “That’s for Crispin to decide. Your fortune will pass into his hands, and thus into my hands, as it should have done on the death of my father. Somehow, your mother managed—” He stopped abruptly, but the ugliness of his expression remained. Elizabeth, the innocent, the fool, had somehow outmaneuvered both her husband and his son.

“You will take your mother’s place,” he resumed, “and fulfill your mother’s obligations with one difference. It will be the consummation of your marriage and Crispin will take your virginity. That is all.” He turned from her.

“Not quite,” Chloe said, unsure why she was speaking except that she had a desperate need to puncture her brother’s calm assurance. “Crispin cannot take my virginity. It’s not there to be taken.”

“What!”
Jasper spun around, his expression astounded. “What the hell are you talking about? You’ve been living in a goddamned nunnery since you were seven.” A speculative gleam appeared in the cold eyes. “And since then you’ve been safe and sound in the care of Hugo Lattimer, haven’t you?” he said slowly.

Throwing back his head, he laughed with rich enjoyment. “So that explains your vigorous championship. No wonder you know about the snake on his chest. Well … well … well … the self-righteous drunkard isn’t so pure after all. He debauched you, did he? The innocent maiden left to his care by the woman he’d sworn to love to eternity.”

“He did not debauch me.” Chloe’s voice was low but fierce.

Jasper shook his head, still chuckling. “He hasn’t changed at all. Well, that does add a fascinating dimension
to tomorrow night’s revels. Lattimer’s interest will be all the keener when he watches your initiation.”

Chloe had paled. “Watches … ? What do you mean? How can he watch when he’s not here.”

“Oh, he will be,” Jasper assured her with calm conviction. “If he left as soon as he received my message, he should arrive hotfoot at the crypt just as the ceremony begins. And we shall have a pleasant reception for him … and a most unpleasant and utterly final conclusion.” His mouth smiled, but the pale eyes were voids. He left her.

Chloe paced the small space. She was not frightened for herself anymore, she realized. Instead, she was filled with a surging energy and determination to do something to effect her escape. She’d been passive for too long. If Hugo was coming—and he would be if he knew where she was—then there was hope, but also the desperate need now to ensure that he didn’t fall into Jasper’s trap. She had to escape and warn Hugo before he reached Shipton. But how?

Her eyes searched the room for inspiration. The attic was too high up for escape through the window, even if she could squeeze through the tiny aperture. Perhaps she could start a fire, and when they opened the door, she could slip out under cover of the smoke? But supposing they didn’t smell the smoke? How long would it take for a fire in this isolated part of the house to become noticeable downstairs? Too long. She’d be suffocated by the time they reached her.

The only chance was to escape when the door was opened. If she could win enough time to get out into the corridor and lock the door behind her, then she’d have a chance. It was a slim one, but all that was available.

The only object heavy enough was the chair. She lifted it over her head with an effort. But it could be
done. She positioned the chair behind the door and sat down on the bed to await her next visitor.

Her ears, straining into the silence, caught the sound of footsteps as they ascended the stairs at the end of the corridor. She darted behind the door and lifted the chair. The blood thudded in her ears and her heart pounded against her rib cage as if it would burst from her body. The key grated in the lock. The door swung open.

In the same instant, she sprang out and slammed the chair down on Crispin’s head as he stepped inside. He yelled and fell to his knees. Chloe leapt behind him and out of the door … and straight into the arms of her brother.

Jasper said nothing, simply lifted her off the ground and thrust her back into the room. Crispin was rubbing his head, blinking in bemusement. But he rose to his feet immediately as Jasper hauled Chloe to the foot of the bed.

“Give me your cravat!” Jasper commanded crisply as he yanked his prisoner’s arms high above her head. Crispin handed him the strip of linen. “Hold her arms.” His stepson obeyed as Jasper twisted the material into a thin, strong rope and tied Chloe’s wrists to the frame of the tester.

The next second she screamed as he brought his riding whip down once across her shoulders. Catching her hair, he pulled her head back and spoke softly against her ear. “I warned you, little sister.” And then they were gone and the key turned in the lock.

She didn’t know how long she hung there, her arms at full stretch, her toes supporting her weight. The pain of the whip cut faded to a dull ache and was soon canceled by the strain in her extended arms. The light faded from the room as dusk fell and she retreated from her
body’s pain, her mind taking refuge in some dark corner of her self.

It was full darkness when footsteps pierced her trance and the door opened. Jasper entered carrying a candle and a tray. He set them on the dresser and bent to pick up the fallen chair. Then he approached the still figure.

“I assume you’ve had sufficient time to reflect,” he observed, slicing through her bonds with a knife. Chloe toppled forward onto the bed as her arms fell to her sides and her aching toes gave way. “You’ll receive no more visitors until tomorrow,” Jasper continued, going to the door, adding with faint mockery, “Sleep well.”

Chloe rolled over onto her back as the door closed. The soft glow of the candle was comforting, and she lay for a long time, returning to a full sense of herself and the room around her. Her body ached in every limb, every muscle as sore as if she’d been in a prizefight. She wasn’t seriously hurt. But she was most seriously warned.

After a while she got up and examined the tray. There was half a loaf of bread and a mug of milk—cold, punitive fare, but it was better than nothing. She ate a little dry bread and finished the milk, then crept fully clothed under the covers. Undressing seemed dangerous for some reason, as if in her nightgown she’d be even more vulnerable.

Hugo would come to find her. He wouldn’t abandon her to Jasper. He didn’t love her, but he wouldn’t desert her. Pride, if nothing else, would bring him. And he’d walk into Jasper’s trap. Hugo didn’t love her and so her own future was immaterial now. But she loved him and could not bear his death.

Seven miles away, in Denholm Manor, Hugo sat with Samuel over the fire in the kitchen, explaining his plan and Samuel’s role in it. But every now and again his
voice faded and a haunted expression flashed across his eyes. Several times he got up and strode to the door, opened it, and stared out into the darkness, listening.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, Samuel. I just feel Chloe. I can feel her fear,” he said. “But I can’t do anything about it at the moment … I miss that damned dog,” he added, slamming the door. “In fact, the whole godforsaken menagerie.”

“I know what you mean,” Samuel said. “It’s kind of quiet wi’out ’em.” He stood up. “Can you sleep?”

“No.” Hugo shook his head. “I’m going to play. It won’t disturb you?”

“Never ’as done before,” Samuel said, going to the door. “I’m fer me bed, then.” Only once had it disturbed him, he remembered as he climbed the stairs. During that dreadful time when Hugo had wrestled with his demons and his addiction and those terrifying discordant notes had filled the long night hours. He lay in bed, listening intently to the sounds of the piano—the sounds that would give him an insight into Hugo’s state of mind.

Hugo played the lullaby he’d once played for Chloe, on the night of the stable fire. He played it as if she could hear it and be soothed and comforted by it. Did she know how close he was? He tried with his music to tell her, as if the sounds would carry on the crisp, clear night air the seven miles across the valley. Was she sleeping? He prayed she was.

He remembered how she’d completed his quote that day when she’d only just come into his life—a life ruled by the painted devils. Tomorrow night he would lay them finally to rest.

He played on throughout the night.

C
HLOE AWOKE STIFF
and cold despite her clothes. There was no fire in the attic room and sleet had begun to fall, coating the grimy window and filling the cheerless room with a cold gray light.

She got up and went to wash her face. The water in the ewer was frozen solid. The remains of the loaf on the tray were dry and stale. Hungry and thirsty, with no way of alleviating either condition, she returned to bed, huddling beneath the covers in an effort to keep warm.

It was many hours later before she heard footsteps on the stairs and the key turned, in the lock. Jasper and Crispin came in. Neither of them spoke to her as they approached the bed and stood looking down at her white face on the pillow, all that was visible of her body. She stared up at them, reading cold indifference in Jasper’s face, hungry anticipation in Crispin’s, and for the life of her she couldn’t decide which was the most frightening.

“Sit up and drink this,” Jasper finally said, holding out the cup he held.

“What is it?” She made no move to obey.

“That is not something you need to know. Sit up.”

“I’m hungry and cold,” she said.

“Soon you won’t be,” he returned. “Sit up. I won’t tell you again.”

Slowly, she struggled up on the pillows and took the cup. Its contents were thick and syrupy, giving off a strange and repulsive odor. “I don’t want it,” she said, turning her head away, holding the cup out to him.

Jasper said nothing. He took the cup and handed it to Crispin. Then he sat on the bed and caught Chloe’s head in the crook of his arm, forcing it back. She was tightly wrapped in the bedcovers and couldn’t free her limbs as she struggled violently. He held her head in a vise and took the cup from Crispin.

“Open her mouth.”

Crispin’s fingers brutally pulled her mouth open and the evil-smelling liquid slid down her throat. With her head tipped back as it was, she had no choice but to swallow. Crispin clamped her jaws shut and she thought she was going to suffocate. And then they released her.

“You are a little fool,” Jasper said. “You have nothing to gain by resistance.”

They went out and left her alone again. She fell back on the pillows, numbed with shock, tears streaming unheeded down her cheeks. A foul taste was in her mouth, like bitter aloes, and she was abruptly reminded of the potion Hugo had given her. That hadn’t tasted as bad, but the herbal quality had been the same.

What was this one supposed to do? It wasn’t poison. They wouldn’t poison her when they had such plans for her. She lay in terror, waiting for something to happen. When it did, it took her by surprise. Her body began to feel warm and relaxed, her head slightly muzzy, but it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation at all. She was no longer hungry or even particularly thirsty and soon drifted into a light-headed doze filled with a sequence of soft-edged dreams.

She lost all sense of time and, when her door opened again, looked with fuzzy lack of curiosity at her visitors. Louise’s anxious face hung over her like a moon in a mist, and Chloe smiled reassuringly, or thought she did.

“Come along, dear, it’s time to dress,” Louise said. Her voice sounded a little peculiar, but Chloe let the
speculation slip from her. She tried to sit up and the maid who had accompanied Louise moved to help her.

Her head swam and the room tilted violently. A wave of nausea washed over her and she fell back again. “No, I’ll stay here,” she said faintly.

“You can’t, dear.” Louise sounded almost desperate. “Once you sit up, it’ll be better.” She tugged at Chloe’s arm, and because she sounded so unhappy, Chloe made one more effort. This time the room stopped spinning once she opened her eyes wide.

She submitted to being undressed and her body washed in warm water from a steaming copper jug. They brushed and rebraided her hair, fastening the braids in a coronet around her head. She tried to help her “attendants, but her limbs were too heavy to lift and her mind kept slipping sideways so she forgot what it was she’d intended to do. But nothing seemed to matter. The room wasn’t even cold anymore.

They dressed her in a white silk shift that covered her body from neck to ankles, white silk stockings gartered above the knees, white satin pumps. Vaguely she was aware that some article of underwear was missing, but the recognition simply flitted through her untroubled brain. Finally, Louise slipped over her head a white silk gown with long sleeves and a high, ruffled collar and the maid pinned a diaphanous veil onto the golden crown of her hair.

“How lovely you are,” Louise said, her voice thick with tears as she gazed at the vision … the sacrifice she had prepared for her son. She tried to tell herself that Crispin would make a good husband, that Chloe was making a perfectly good match, one that many girls would give their eyeteeth for. Maybe she wasn’t too eager, but what young girl was? It wasn’t a love match, but such connections were rare these days and they were young; they could grow together.