Vixen Read online

“And whose knife did this mighty assailant use?” Jasper demanded quietly. “Don’t make excuses for your incompetence. It was a simple enough task, and you botched it.” He turned on his heel.

  Jethro looked in panic at his wounded companions, then spoke up again, a slight shrillness to his voice. “Sir Jasper … sir, what about our purse? A guinea apiece, you promised.”

  Jasper spun around and Jethro shrank as the blank, shallow eyes seemed to flay him. “I pay for work done, not for the incompetence of a trio of fools. Get off my land.”

  “But sir … sir…. Ned can’t work with that hole in ’is shoulder, and there’s kiddies to feed … six of ’em, sir, and another on the way.”

  “Get off my land, the lot of you, before I set the dogs on you!”

  “Oh, Jasper, is that quite fair?” The hesitant question came from a woman wrapped in a shawl, standing to one side of the stableyard.

  “Are you questioning my judgment, madam?”

  Louise Gresham’s rare moment of courage died as her husband looked through her. “No … no, of course not, sir. I wouldn’t do such a thing … it was only—” She fell silent.

  “Only what, my dear?”

  She shook her head abjectly. “Nothing … nothing at all.”

  “You will catch cold out here, my dear. I’m sure you must have business to attend to in the house.” His voice was silky but the command was no less clear. Louise scuttled out of the yard, averting her eyes from the three men she had tried to champion.

  “Crispin, see them off the premises.”

  “Certainly, sir.” As his stepfather walked away, Crispin pushed himself away from the wall against which he’d been lounging. He strolled into the tack room and returned, carrying a heavy whip. His eyes gleamed with amusement as the three would-be kidnappers stumbled in terror toward the gate out of the yard. He pursued them lazily, cracking the whip at their heels until they had reached the end of the long drive and stood beyond the gateposts.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” he said with a mocking bow, then retraced his steps, absently kicking the gravel over the blood so untidily shed by the wounded men.

  His mother appeared out of the shadows as he entered the house. She thrust a handful of coins at him and spoke in a scared whisper. “Crispin, you must give this to those men. Ned’s wife is about to have another baby, and if he can’t work, there’ll be no food….”

  “Don’t be so soft, Mother.” Crispin glanced at the small pile of coins, guessing how long it had taken his mother to amass this pathetic sum from the pin money she managed to beg from her husband when in the direst necessity. He took her hand and dropped the coins into her palm. “If Sir Jasper discovers you’re trying to meddle—”

  “Crispin, you mustn’t tell him!” Her hands flew to her worn cheeks and she looked in terror at her son.

  Crispin shook his head with a dismissive contempt and stalked toward the breakfast parlor, where he would find his stepfather.

  Louise stared after him and tried to remember her son in the days when he’d been a loving little boy … in the days before he’d come to regard his mother through the harsh, derisive eyes of his stepfather. And not just his mother, she thought, turning to go upstairs. And not just the women they took to the crypt. The whole female sex it seemed. Poor little Chloe. She’d been such a bright, lively child despite her mother’s illness and neglect. How long would it take Jasper and Crispin to break her too?

  It didn’t occur to Louise for one minute that her husband and son would fail in their plans for Elizabeth’s daughter. Jasper wasn’t going to be put off by one setback.

  “Dog’s come back, then,” Samuel observed, lifting a steaming kettle off the fire as Hugo entered the kitchen. The back door stood open, filling the room with the brilliant sunlight of mid-morning.

  Hugo winced at the dazzle and ran his hands through his hair. “Where is he?”

  “Miss took him outside for a walk.” Samuel glanced shrewdly at his employer and added an extra spoonful of coffee to the jug before pouring boiling water on the grounds.

  Hugo swore and strode to the door. “Hasn’t she got a grain of common sense? Wandering all over the countryside after last night!”

  “Don’t suppose she’s gone far.” Samuel stirred the coffee. “Not in ’er nightgown and wi’ no shoes.” He poured a mug of the thick black aromatic liquid. “Anyways, what about last night?”

  Hugo didn’t immediately answer. He turned back to the room, demanding in exasperation, “You’re not telling me she’s gone outside again in her nightgown?”

  “Dog was in a powerful ’urry,” Samuel offered in explanation, pushing the mug across the table.

  Hugo took it, cupping his hands around its warmth, inhaling deeply of its fragrance. It cleared his head. “Any strangers around here yesterday, while I was in Manchester?”

  Samuel nodded. “A fellow wantin’ casual work. ’E fixed the ’enhouse roof … did quite a decent job.”

  “Could he have taken the dog?”

  Samuel’s faded blue eyes sharpened with intelligence. “Reckon so, while young Billy was havin’ ’is dinner.”

  Hugo told him the events of the night up to the moment when he’d thrown the bolt on the front door, his ward and the dog safely inside.

  “Chloe’s convinced they were after the dog, but I’m not so sure it’s as simple as that,” he concluded. He debated sharing with Samuel his suspicions of Jasper’s involvement, but to do that he would have to reveal some of the hideous tangle of the past, and he couldn’t face that.

  “Until I can decide what’s best to do, she’ll have to be watched all the time … but don’t make too much of it. I don’t see any point alarming her unnecessarily.”

  Samuel’s sharp eyes didn’t waver. He heard much that was unspoken, but he was accustomed to Hugo’s secrecy and knew better than to probe.

  Hugo strode back to the door. As he looked impatiently out at the walled kitchen garden, an exuberant Dante came bounding from the orchard beyond, tail flying. Chloe followed the dog, the long skirts of the kitchen overcoat trailing in the grass.

  At least she’d taken the point about wandering around in a skimpy nightgown. Hugo’s eyes were riveted to her bare feet. They were the most beautiful feet, long and slender with high arches, straight pink toes, and lovely rosy heels. But then, one wouldn’t expect perfection to be marred even by something as insignificant as feet. His head swam. Somehow he had to forget what had happened in his brandy-sodden trance. He had to compel Chloe to forget what had happened … or at least to put it behind her as an aberration stemming from the excitement and confusion of the night’s events.

  It would never happen again, and the greatest service he could do her now would be to kill in her whatever bud of passion awaited watering.

  “In future, you are not to go outside without an escort,” he snapped, standing aside as she came up to the door. “In fact, you’re not to go farther than the courtyard without my permission. It’s completely inappropriate for you to be roaming the countryside unescorted. You’re not a milkmaid.”

  Whatever greeting she’d been intending died on her lips and she gazed up at him, such aching vulnerability in her eyes that his heart turned over. He continued with the same harshness. “And since that damn dog gets into trouble at the drop of a hat, you are to keep him with you at all times. If you can’t control him, then he goes. Is it understood?”

  Hurt and confusion stood out for a moment in her eyes, and then were abruptly replaced by a flash of defiant anger, and her firm, round chin tilted. “A puzzling volte-face, Sir Hugo, since only yesterday you were forbidding Dante the house. Or am I to be confined to the stable also?”

  “If you continue in that vein, my child, you will discover I have a short way with insolence,” he said with the softness that Chloe knew denoted danger.

  “Dante will need exercise,” she pointed out, standing her ground. “A two-year-old dog can’t be kept indoors indefinitely.”

&nb
sp; “Samuel or Billy will take him for a decent walk once a day.” Hugo turned away with a dismissive gesture that infuriated her as much as it hurt her.

  “I also need more exercise than pacing around the courtyard,” she fired back.

  He swung back to her, his eyes narrowed. “I suggest you occupy yourself about the house, in that case. You’ve cast enough aspersions on its general state of cleanliness. I should imagine you’d be happy to kill two birds with one stone. I’m certain scrubbing and polishing will be sufficient exercise.”

  “I thought it wasn’t a fit occupation for an heiress of eighty thousand pounds,” she retorted, her voice shaking with fury. She had no idea why she was being targeted in this way any more than she understood why it had happened last night, but her spirit rebelled at the injustice and at this moment she couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything more than dislike for her guardian.

  “You may as well make yourself useful,” he said, shrugging.

  Blindly, Chloe picked up the nearest hard object, which turned out to be the breadboard, and hurled it, bread and all, across the kitchen.

  Hugo ducked sideways, but the missile had been unaimed and crashed against the wall with a resounding crack. The loaf had departed in flight and fell to the floor under Dante’s nose. He sniffed at it, a long tongue drooling.

  Chloe sprang for the hall door and Dante, abandoning his unexpected prize, charged after her. The door slammed on their departure. Samuel bent to pick up the bread. He examined it critically. “Bit ’ard on the lass, weren’t you?” He dusted the loaf off on his apron. “What’s she gone an’ done to get the rough edge o’ your tongue?”

  “Mind your own business, damn you!” Hugo flung down his coffee mug. “Just make sure she keeps that dog with her as protection, and keep an eye on her.” He stalked out of the kitchen.

  Samuel heard his feet on the cellar steps. He scratched his nose, frowning. In the past fourteen years he’d stood beside Hugo Lattimer under cannon fire and musket shot. He’d watched the twenty-year-old lad grow into the wisdom and maturity of a victorious commander. And he’d sat with him through the bouts of black depression over the brandy bottle during every shore leave. He’d never known what caused the blackness, although he sensed the deep self-directed anger that fueled it.

  He’d accepted the moods phlegmatically, secure in the knowledge that as soon as they hauled anchor, his friend would become again the cheerful, quick-thinking, authoritative commander, secure, too, in the belief that no young man of Hugo’s character and abilities could live forever under such a bitter curse of self-contempt. Something would happen to repair the breaches in his soul.

  But with the return to Denholm Manor, the depressions had become more frequent and intense. Again Samuel was vouchsafed no explanation, but he guessed that it was the proximity to the past that triggered them—that and the lack of purpose in Hugo’s present existence. And the brandy merely exacerbated the misery. Patiently, he’d sat it out, trusting that something would happen to put things right.

  Then the girl arrived. She was a bright, lively young thing with a streak of independence and determination that would require firm handling. Samuel had hoped she’d be just the thing to take Sir Hugo’s mind off his troubles.

  Now Samuel was beginning to suspect that Miss Gresham had gone a lot further than that. Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen.

  He heard Hugo’s returning footsteps on the cellar stairs. They crossed the hall and the library door banged. Presumably he was shutting himself away for a long session with whatever he’d fetched up from the cellar. Samuel sighed. Clearly, at the moment the advent of Miss Gresham was not helpful.

  Hugo opened the bottle and poured himself a drink. His head was beginning to ache and only more brandy would dull the pain. He walked to the window, staring out at the overgrown garden. A climbing rose much in need of pruning straggled across the window, tangling with a rampant honeysuckle, filling the room with their mingled scents. Chloe’s special fragrance suddenly seemed to hang in the air, a tantalizing memory so vivid as to be almost real.

  With a muttered oath he turned from the window and his eye fell on the couch where they had tangled with such sudden and all-consuming passion. The stain of her virgin blood glared at him in dark reproof.

  Sweet Jesus! What if she’d conceived a child? How could he ever have permitted such a thing to happen? How could he ever have been so blind to the consequences of his drunken folly as to have taken not even the most elementary precaution against conception?

  There were things that could be done to avert such a consequence. But they were methods practiced by harlots and the Society women of his past—those who dallied without affection, who deceived lovers and husbands without a qualm as they bolted down the barren paths in search of something that would give pleasure or purpose to their lives.

  To provide Chloe with such a means would put her in the same category as those women … would ally her with his haunting, bitter past. But what choice did he have?

  He drained his glass and refilled it. He’d taken her maidenhead—the act of a cur. Would he now, having satisfied his rutting urge, run off like a cur in an alley, leaving her to bear the fruits of that urge?

  He mentally lashed himself, choosing the most despicable images his fevered brain could create, and when he’d done with it, he went to the stables for his horse.

  Chloe was in the kitchen with Samuel, eating breakfast with a remarkable lack of appetite, when the library door opened. She sat up, all attention, a look of hope and expectancy in her eyes. But with the slamming of the side door, her shoulders slumped and the light died out of her eyes.

  “Don’t mind ’im,” Samuel said gruffly. “When he gets these moods on ’im, there’s nowt anyone can do ’til it’s over.”

  “But I don’t know what I’ve done wrong,” Chloe said, lethargically spearing a grilled mushroom. A light blush mantled her cheek. She could guess where the trouble lay, although not why, but she could hardly confide in this bluff sailor with his gold hoop earrings and rough tongue.

  “Leave well alone,” Samuel advised. “It’s best not to go near ’im when the mood’s on ’im.”

  “But I don’t see why I should put up with it,” Chloe stated, pushing her plate from her. “It’s unjust that he should attack me without telling me why. It wasn’t my fault Dante got loose, and I don’t see how he could have expected me to ignore him when he was barking.”

  Samuel shrugged as if the subject had ceased to interest him. Hugo was keeping his own counsel on the subject of last night, and Samuel wasn’t going to be drawn into anything. He’d keep an eye on the girl and a closed mouth, as he’d been instructed. “There’s a pig’s liver in the pantry for that cat of your’n.”

  Chloe managed a smile of thanks and wandered out to the courtyard. She sat on the upturned rain barrel in the corner, lifting her face to the sun. Dante flopped down at her feet with a breathy sigh.

  The sun was warm on her closed eyelids and a soft red glow soothed her eyes as Chloe tried to puzzle her way through her hurt confusion. She had enjoyed what had happened in the library with a pleasure uncomplicated by regret or guilt. She was well aware that society’s rules decreed that lovemaking should be confined to the conjugal bed, but in her experience, such rules had no meaning when applied to the reality of her life. This seemed just such an instance. She wasn’t injured in any way by what had happened, quite the opposite. She felt opened to the world for the first time, as if she had crossed the threshold that separated the dreary confines of her girlhood from the vibrant, exciting realm of adult experiences.

  But what had Hugo found so disturbing about it? Even in her inexperience, it had been obvious that his bodily pleasure had matched her own. Knowing this had augmented her own pleasure, released her from inhibition, allowed her to give herself without reserve or fear of embarrassment.

  But he’d turned on her afterward with a bitterness that had tarnished the purity of
her pleasure. Mortified, she had fled the library arid had lain awake, wondering why he should have unloosed such a flood of contempt. And this morning he had spoken to her with the harsh authority of the severest guardian …

  Ah! Chloe’s eyes shot open as she began to see a path through the maze. Just because she didn’t feel guilty didn’t mean that Hugo didn’t. He was her guardian and he probably had some antiquated notion about the way guardians should behave toward their wards. He’d certainly become quite prune-faced at her suggestion that they dip into her fortune to benefit both of them. Perhaps he didn’t yet understand that Chloe had her own plans for her future and wasn’t inclined to sit passively while things happened to her. She had made last night happen much more than Hugo had. She was responsible. How absurd for him to blame himself.

  Suddenly much more cheerful, Chloe slipped off the rain barrel and went to the stables to check on Rosinante. The nag looked as sorry as ever, notwithstanding warm bran mash and a bale of fresh hay.

  “A bullet’d be the kindest thing, I reckon,” Billy opined, shaking his head.

  “Maybe,” Chloe said. “If he doesn’t improve in a few days, I’ll ask Sir Hugo to put him out of his misery.” She ran her hand over the painfully thin rib cage, and her mouth tightened. “I know whom I’d like to put a bullet through!” Then she looked up at Billy, asking casually, “By the way, do you know where Sir Hugo went?”

  Billy shook his head. “Just wanted ’is ’orse saddling.”

  “Did he say how long he’d be?”

  Again Billy shook his hand. “Nah. No reason why ’e should. None o’ my business.”

  “I suppose not.” Chloe left the stable deep in thought. It seemed it was up to her to put matters right. She must simply reassure Hugo and persuade him that they had done nothing wrong. In fact, maybe the best way to do that would be to make it happen again.

  She gave a little skip on the mired cobblestones at the thought. She suspected that there was much more to the business of lovemaking than last night had vouchsafed, and the prospect of further experiments sent little prickles of anticipation coursing up her spine.