Vixen Page 13

  Thus resolved, Chloe went down to the kitchen to fetch a jug of hot water. The library door was closed as she passed it, and she stuck out her tongue at it in a childish gesture that nevertheless relieved her feelings.

  “You’ll be wantin’ your breakfast,” Samuel observed as she entered the kitchen. In full possession of the facts now, he cast her a shrewd glance, assessing her state of mind. The leaden depression of the past few days seemed to have left her, although the light in her eyes didn’t strike him as particularly joyful.

  “I’d like a bath more than anything,” Chloe said, surprising herself with the realization. She ran her hands through her hair. “I’d like to wash my hair.”

  “Long as you don’t mind the kitchen,” Samuel said. “I don’t relish carrying jugs of ’ot water up them stairs. There’s a tub somewhere in the scullery.” He went into the small back kitchen, reappearing with a tin hip bath. He set it down in front of the range. “Reckon yell need a screen or summat.”

  “There’s that fire screen in the library,” Chloe said, moving to the door.

  “I’ll get it, miss. You’re not to go in there, you understand?” The sharp urgency of his voice arrested her.

  “I’ve seen him drunk before,” she said acidly. “And rather more than that.”

  “I know,” Samuel said. “But what’s goin’ on in there now is between Sir ’Ugo and ’is own self. You put one finger on that door, and you’ll be answerin’ to me.”

  Chloe blinked at this unlooked-for ferocity from the usually phlegmatic Samuel. “What’s he doing, then?”

  “Never you mind. None o’ your business.” He stomped to the door. “I’ll set that bath up for you straightaway.”

  Chloe sat at the table, thoughtfully picking at the crust on a loaf of bread. Now what was going on?

  Samuel went quietly into the library. Hugo was still sitting in the chair, his hands clenched on the arms, the knuckles bloodless. Sweat shimmered on his forehead.

  “Bring me some coffee, Samuel.”

  “Right you are.” Samuel picked up the heavy fire screen. “Miss is goin’ to ’ave a bath in the kitchen.”

  “Well, watch young Billy,” Hugo said. “I wouldn’t put it past him to play Peeping Tom.”

  It was an attempt at levity, and Samuel smiled tightly in response. “You want anythin’ to eat?”

  Hugo just shook his head.

  Samuel returned with a pot of coffee and set it down beside Hugo. He filled a beaker and silently held it out. Hugo took it carefully, his hands curling around the warmth, the aromatic steam hitting his nostrils. “Thanks.”

  “Anythin’ else?”

  “No, just leave me.”

  The door closed behind Samuel, and Hugo took a sip of coffee. His stomach revolted and a wave of nausea broke over him. He set the mug down and closed his eyes. He’d been blind drunk for four days, in a constant state of semi-intoxication for several years, and it was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

  While Chloe bathed, she tried out her plan for Miss Anstey’s companionship on Samuel, who was peeling potatoes beyond the screen, keeping a watchful eye out for unexpected visitors.

  “I should think Sir Hugo would approve,” she concluded, pouring a jug of water over her hair. “If he ever sobers up enough to listen, of course.”

  “There’s no call for talk like that,” Samuel reproved. “Don’t go meddlin’ in what you don’t understand.”

  “You mean the demons?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “But you don’t understand them either. You said so.”

  “No, I don’t. And so I don’t go throwin’ stones.”

  Chloe was silenced. She stood up and reached for the towel hanging over the screen. “I wish I did understand,” she said finally, twisting the towel around her wet hair. “Then maybe I wouldn’t be so angry.” She shrugged into a dressing gown and came out from behind the screen. “I could stick a knife in his ribs, Samuel!”

  Samuel smiled his tight smile. “I wouldn’t recommend tryin’ it, miss. Not with Sir ’Ugo. Drunk or sober, ’e’s a hard man to tangle with.”

  Chloe went upstairs to dress. As she selected one of her new gowns, she found herself wondering if Crispin would pay her another visit. The prospect surprisingly was rather pleasing. Not least because she suspected Hugo would be annoyed by it.

  A man who amused himself in drunken sport with fat whores deserved to be annoyed.

  She was in the stable yard, examining Rosinante’s wounds when Crispin arrived, leading a roan mare of elegant lines.

  “What a disgusting beast,” he said without thought as he took in the turnip seller’s abused nag. “It should be fed to the crows.”

  Chloe laid a strip of gauze over one of the still-oozing wounds on Rosinante’s flanks before saying in a deceptively neutral tone, “Oh, do you really think so?”

  “I know so.” Crispin dismounted. “It’s not even worth a bullet. Why are you wasting your time and good medicine on such a travesty?”

  Chloe turned and surveyed her visitor. The look in her eye caused Crispin to take an involuntary step backward. “You always were a brute,” she declared, fire and ice in her voice. “Too good for a bullet, is it? This pitiable creature has been tortured throughout its life, and when it can’t endure anymore, it’s to be fed to the crows? That attitude makes me sick, Crispin.” She turned back to the patient.

  Crispin flushed a dark red at this vigorously uncivil castigation, and it took the certainty of his stepfather’s wrath and the promise of eighty thousand pounds to keep him from rewarding her insolence with the back of his hand.

  “It was a manner of speaking,” he said at last. “There’s no need to fly into the boughs, Chloe. And I must say”—he laughed, a feeble and unconvincing attempt—”I must say, to accuse me of always being a brute is a bit much, you know.”

  Chloe continued with her ministrations in silence for a minute, then said, “You used to pull the wings off butterflies.”

  Another unconvincing little laugh. “Oh, come now, Chloe. Boys will be boys, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know,” she said shortly.

  “Well, I don’t do it anymore,” he said somewhat lamely.

  “No. But do you still bring your hunters back from the field bleeding and foundered? A hunter with broken wind isn’t worth much either, is it? But I expect you’d do it the kindness of a bullet.”

  This bitter, passionate speech left Crispin for a moment dumbfounded. The attack seemed to have come out of nowhere, and he floundered around, trying to find a way of recovering his equilibrium. Chloe had suddenly reduced him to the status of an unpleasant little boy. His gloved hands flexed as he held himself on a tight rein.

  “If we could change the direction of the subject of horseflesh, Sir Jasper has sent you a present,” he said stiffly.

  “Oh?” Chloe turned, squinting up at him against the sun.

  He gestured to the horse he was leading. “This is Maid Marion. She’s out of Red Queen by Sherrif. Your brother thought you might like a good riding horse.”

  “Oh, I remember Sherrif,” Chloe said. “A magnificent stallion. No wonder she’s such a pretty lady.” She accepted the change of subject with the rueful reflection that her attack on Crispin had rather gone to extremes. “But I couldn’t possibly accept her.”

  He’d been warned to expect this and had his answer ready. “Why not? It’s perfectly customary for brothers to give their sisters gifts.”

  Chloe blew softly into the mare’s nostrils. Maid Marion wrinkled her velvety nose and rolled back her lips in a horsey smile. Chloe stroked her neck and said as neutrally as she could, “Perhaps so, but I really can’t accept her as a gift. Maybe I could borrow her one day though.”

  It would achieve the same purpose. Crispin relaxed and asked lightly, “Will your guardian permit you to ride with me?”

  Chloe frowned. Hugo had forfeited all rights to dictate to her. There was not the slightest re
ason why she shouldn’t spend time with her own family. It wasn’t as if she had a surfeit of caring friends and relatives around her. She swallowed hard, castigating herself mentally for self-pity. She knew instinctively that Hugo would not permit her to ride with Crispin, but the reasons had nothing to do with her; they belonged to whatever lay between Jasper and Sir Hugo. She failed to see why her happiness should be sacrificed.

  “I shan’t ask him,” she said. “But it can’t be today. I’d have to plan it.”

  Crispin couldn’t hide his satisfaction and asked eagerly, “When, then?”

  “Let me think about it and we’ll make plans when you come tomorrow. … If you come tomorrow,” she added.

  “You’ll have to promise to receive me with more courtesy,” Crispin said. He tried to make his voice teasing, but his eyes were hard and he bent to pat the ever-present Dante, hoping to conceal his expression. The dog moved away.

  “If I was rude, I apologize,” Chloe said. “I sometimes speak out of turn when I’m angered … and I do become very angry when animals are maltreated.” She shrugged as if such a response were only to be expected. “Poor Rosinante. Can’t you imagine what it must have been like, unshod, starved, and beaten, and forced to haul impossibly heavy loads?”

  “Not being a horse, I’m afraid I can’t,” Crispin said. He offered a wry grin and Chloe, whose sense of humor was never far from the surface, half smiled in response.

  “I suppose I do become rather obsessive,” she conceded. “But you did pull the wings off butterflies.”

  Crispin raised his hands in a disarming gesture of defeat. “But I was very young, Chloe. No more than nine or ten. I’ve reformed, I promise.”

  “Oh, very well,” she said, laughing. “We’ll consign it to the dim and distant past.”

  “And you really won’t let me leave Maid Marion with you?”

  Chloe shook her head. “Thank Jasper for me, but I can’t possibly accept such a gift. I’d be happy to buy her though,” she added. “Sir Hugo said we would purchase a good horse for me, once—”

  “Once?” Crispin prompted when she seemed disinclined to continue.

  “Oh, once it’s been decided where I should live and in what manner,” she said with another dismissive shrug.

  “And when will that be decided?”

  When and if my guardian is ever sober enough to think about it. “Soon, when Sir Hugo’s looked at all the options.”

  “And what are the options?”

  For some reason, despite her newfound charity with him, Chloe discovered she didn’t want to confide her plans to Crispin. “Oh, I’m not sure yet,” she said casually. “I have to prepare a fresh poultice for Rosinante, so …”

  “I have to be on my way.” Crispin took the hint. He reached for her hand and raised it to his lips. “Until tomorrow, then.”

  “Tomorrow,” Chloe agreed, retrieving her hand in some surprise. She hadn’t expected gallantry from Crispin. So far, in the arena of gallantry, she’d experienced only the stammers and fumbles of the curate and Miss Anne’s nephew. The butcher’s boy didn’t really count.

  And neither did what had happened between herself and Hugo. That hadn’t been gallantry. What had it been?

  She waved good-bye as Crispin rode out of the courtyard, leading Maid Marion. What had it been? It had been magical, but it had far transcended the games and rituals of gallantry. It had not been play. There had been nothing playful about it at all.

  That night she heard the pianoforte again. But there was nothing merry or rollicking about the music—in fact it wasn’t music. It was a harsh melange of discordancy, the notes beaten from the keyboard with a desperation that chilled her. It was a cry of pure anomie—a despairing statement of aloneness. The agonized cry of a man who’d lost his grounding in his own world.

  Chloe could find no words for the pain described in the sounds coming through her window. But she felt the pain as if it were her own. She got up and sat on the window seat. Dante was shivering against her and Beatrice had curled around her kittens, her body and her warmth a protective arc.

  Chloe heard Samuel’s tread, heavy on the stairs. She heard the library door open and she drew a ragged breath. Samuel would help him as she knew she could not. The depths of her own ignorance, her own inability to grasp such pain, stunned her.

  The discordant music ceased. She exhaled slowly, feeling the tension leave her body.

  When Samuel’s callused hands covered Hugo’s on the keys, Hugo’s head dropped onto his chest. “I don’t know if I can do it,” he whispered.

  “Aye, you can,” Samuel said softly. “You need rest.”

  “I need brandy, damn you!” Hugo held out his hands. They shook uncontrollably. “My skin’s on fire,” he muttered. “I feel as if I’m shoveling fuel on Satan’s fires already. Eden in hell.” His crack of laughter was mirthless. “Seems appropriate, doesn’t it, Samuel? You want to join me there? I promise you the road is paved with every debauchery known to man. The question is—” He shook his head slowly. “The question is, Samuel, whether the joys of the road are worth the hell of its destination.”

  “Come upstairs,” Samuel said. “I’ll put you to bed—”

  “No, damn you!” Hugo pushed away his helping hands. “I can’t sleep. I’ll stay here.”

  “You need to eat something—”

  “Samuel, leave me alone.” The sentiment was savage, the voice quiet.

  Samuel left the library and went back to bed. Chloe heard him come upstairs and crept back beneath the covers Of her own bed, encouraging Dante to leave her feet and come up beside her. His breath was damp and warm on her face, his heavy body like an extra blanket, and finally she fell asleep.

  In the library Hugo kept up his lonely vigil of endurance.

  Crispin didn’t come the following morning, and Chloe, who had already worked out a plan for evading her custodian’s sharp eyes, was more disappointed than she cared to acknowledge. Restlessly, she decided to take Hugo’s advice and divert her energies into housekeeping. She took down the hangings and curtains in her bedchamber and washed them, hanging them to dry in the courtyard. With Samuel’s grumbling assistance, she hauled the Elizabethan rug outside and beat the clouds of dust from it, then swept and polished the oak floor and the heavy wooden furniture in the bedroom. By sundown she was exhausted but satisfied. Dante, who’d had a long walk in Billy’s charge, was equally at peace and flopped muddy and breathily at her feet in the kitchen.

  Samuel was preoccupied, his grizzled, beatling eyebrows drawn together in a frown of anxiety as he clattered copper pots on the range. He’d been in and out of the library all day, bearing pots of coffee, bowls of soup, all of which he’d brought back untouched.

  Chloe was well aware of this, but when she asked what was going on with Sir Hugo, Samuel told her it was none of her business and changed the subject. All her speculations led back to the assumption that he’d drunk himself into unconsciousness and Samuel was waiting for him to come to. She contemplated going into the overgrown garden and peering in through the library window, but quailed at the thought of what would happen if Hugo caught her and this time could justifiably accuse her of prying.

  She lay in bed, waiting for the haunting sounds of the pianoforte, but Hugo had gone far from the solace of his music into a world where nothing could express his anguish. His body was racked with pain, every muscle and joint aching with the single-minded concentration of his will. It would be so easy to put a stop to his agony. One swallow and he would begin to feel better, but he fought on even when he saw shapes in the corners of the room, felt creeping things on his arms, and his spine was terrifyingly alive with myriad tiny feet he could neither catch nor see. He prayed for the gift of sleep, for just an hour of surcease from his torments, but he remained wakeful, sweating, staring into the room, visited by every evil memory and every shame of his past.

  There was no sign of Crispin the next morning, and Chloe decided that she’d mortally offended h
im. She minded more than she felt she should, and the realization didn’t sweeten her temper. By late afternoon she was on the verge of defying prohibition and taking herself off for a long walk across the fields, when Crispin rode into the courtyard.

  His absence had been carefully calculated and had achieved the desired result. Any doubts Chloe might have had about playing truant in Crispin’s company had been defeated by the prospect of losing the opportunity for truancy.

  She greeted him with a warmth she’d not shown before.

  “I give you good afternoon, Chloe,” he said with a slightly smug smile as she came swiftly toward him, ready words of welcome on her lips. “Or is it evening? I’m sorry I couldn’t come before, but Sir Jasper had some business he wanted me to transact for him in Manchester.” He dismounted carefully, holding a small lidded box against his chest. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Oh?” Chloe took the box. Instantly, she knew it held something living. Gently she lifted the lid, where air holes had been bored. “Oh,” she said again. “Poor baby. Where did you find it?”

  A baby barn owl lay in a nest of straw, its dark eyes unblinking in the heart-shaped face. Its plumage was ruffled, one buff wing oddly angled.

  “It must have fallen out of its nest,” Crispin said. “I found it near the ruined belfry of Shipton Abbey. I think it’s broken its wing.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it has.” Delicately, she touched the awkward-looking wing. “If it’s a simple break, I believe I can splint it. How clever of you to find it, Crispin.”

  “And even cleverer to bring it to you,” he said with another complacent smile. “I trust I’ve made up for my unkind remarks about that pathetic nag.”

  Chloe laughed. “Indeed, you’ve earned your pardon.”

  “Sufficiently for you to come on a picnic with me?” He slapped the reins in the palm of his hand, watching her reaction through narrowed eyes.

  “Certainly,” Chloe said promptly, gently stroking the bird’s breast. “I have it all planned. I will meet you at the bottom of the drive. But it would be best if we made it early in the morning. Samuel’s busy then, helping Billy in the stables.”