Vixen v-2

by Jane Feather

  "Oh, make no mistake, my friend. My hands are strong enough," Hugo said softly.

  Crispin could feel Hugo's breath on his neck. He tried to move his head, but the long, white fingers tightened… and tightened. "Where is she?"

  He choked, shook his head. The pressure increased on his windpipe. He was suffocating, his chest heaving. "Where is she?" The inexorable question was breathed into his ear. Black spots danced before his eyes, and he felt as if his chest were about to burst. "Where is she?"

  His shoulders slumped as he struggled to speak. Mercifully, the pressure lessened and the question was asked again.

  "Don't know," he choked out. The vise tightened again, and Crispin thought his head would explode with his lungs. A red mist threatened to swallow him. "Truly," he whispered. "Please." "Explain." The hands relaxed just enough for him to do so. In a heaving gasping whisper he said that Chloe, for some unknown reason, had left him and bolted with her horse toward the city.

  Hugo removed his hands from Crispin's throat and dusted them off with a grimace. "I'm sure you know the reason, but it can wait. You may leave. And you may tell Jasper that it's the mark of a coward to hide behind the ineffectual incompetence of his minions. If he wants to do battle, then I'm ready and waiting… I have been for fourteen years," he added. "Tell him, Crispin."

  He stood back and watched as the young man remounted, his face red and mottled, one hand unconsciously stroking his throat where the finger bruises purpled on the delicate skin.

  Crispin's throat was too sore for a reply even if he'd been able to think of one. For one terrifying moment he

  had faced his own death by strangulation. He had never imagined such power in a man's fingers. He rode off, bending low over his horse.

  Hugo thoughtfully flexed his fingers. A musician's fingers. Delicate and sensitive. A smile of satisfaction touched his lips, then he remounted and turned his horse toward Manchester, where presumably Chloe was to be found, caught up in the crowd. But what the hell were they all up to?

  And then he remembered. It was Monday, August sixteen. The day Orator Hunt was to address the Reform Meeting at St. Peter's Fields. The demand was for manhood suffrage and the magistrates would be prepared for the worst.

  He turned his horse off the road and rode across country, skirting the crowds in his haste to reach the city.

  Chloe stayed with the crowd as it surged onto St. Peter's Fields. The excitement was infectious, and she pushed speculation about Crispin and the post-chaise to one side for the moment. It was all very interesting, and clearly she'd have to discuss it with Hugo, but there wasn't much to be done about it now.

  People continued to pour onto the field, a torrent of humanity waving banners and shouting. An air of good humor pervaded the mass, with children playing and tumbling underfoot and young couples, arms entwined, exchanging surreptitious kisses. The hustings were hung with brightly colored flags, others waved gaily from flagpoles. The crowd jostled and chanted on the field, gazing eagerly toward the platform where Orator Hunt would soon step up to speak.

  Chloe sat her horse on the outskirts of the throng. She had a clear view over the crowd to the hustings and

  watched as a party of men climbed onto the platform. A great roar of welcome went up from the gathering and the chant of "Votes for workers" swelled on the sultry summer breeze.

  A man in an unusual white top hat stepped to the edge of the platform and the crowd roared louder. The man who'd told them about the Reform Meeting that day she and Hugo had come to Manchester had worn a white top hat, Chloe remembered. Presumably it was some kind of membership insignia.

  Orator Hunt's voice rose above the crowd, which fell into a murmuring quiet. But whenever the speaker paused for effect, they roared approval and chanted his name.

  Chloe's blood stirred as she strained to hear the orator over the crowd, and then she became aware of a different sound, a strange murmuring coming from one section of the meeting. She swiveled in the saddle and looked toward a church at the far side of the field.

  "It must be the folks from Blackburn comin'," a burly man in a cobbler's apron declared from the ground beside her. There was a murmur of agreement as people stood on tiptoe to peer over heads to see what was causing the disturbance.

  "It's soldiers," Chloe said. A troop of cavalry in blue and white uniforms trotted around the corner of a garden wall. The sun glinted on the unsheathed blades they held. Wheeling in formation, they lined up in front of a row of houses overlooking the field and facing the hustings.

  A shout went up from the crowd, but it sounded perfectly good-humored to Chloe, more of a welcome than anything. And then it happened.

  The cavalry, rose in their stirrups and waved their sabers over their heads. Someone shouted an order and with a cry the soldiers spurred their horses and charged

  the front ranks of the throng, slashing right and left with their swords.

  Chloe stared in horrified disbelief as the front ranks swayed before the cavalry charge and the air was rent with screams. Around her people were shouting, "Stand fast… stand fast." The crowd stood its ground and the soldiers fell back for a minute, unable to force their way through the compact press of humanity to reach Orator Hunt. Then they charged again, their swords chopping and hacking at the people blocking them. Chloe could see spurting blood, and the screams grew agonized, interspersed with groans and cries of terror.

  "Break!" someone yelled. "They're killing them and they can't get away." And the cry was taken up. "Break… break." The crowd held still, as if drawing breath, and then with a rumbling roar surged and broke apart. It was like a tidal wave, immense and unstoppable. Maid Marion whinnied with fear as the mass of people eddied around her, and Chloe knew she would have bolted if she could have pushed through. Holding tight to the reins, desperate to prevent her from rearing and causing even more havoc to the hapless foot traffic around her, she struggled to guide the mare out of the crowd. All around, people were being trampled in the mob's terror-struck frenzy. The yeomanry charged through them wherever there was an opening, hewing at heads and hands and arms as they forced their way to the hustings and the man they'd come to arrest.

  A child fell to the ground and screamed in terror as feet pounded around him. Chloe flung herself from Maid Marion, sweeping the child up. Leading the horse, she clutched the boy against her, stumbling as the mob propelled her forward.

  She reached the relative safety of a garden on the outskirts of the field. Maid Marion was sweating and trembling, her eyes rolling, the whites glaring. Chloe set

  the child on his feet. He stared at her for a moment in shock and then picked up his heels and ran.

  Presumably he knew his way home. Chloe felt sick with a rage greater than any she had known. The mob teemed past the garden and suddenly it was quiet. The field, which ten minutes ago had been a maelstrom of humanity, was almost deserted. The hustings were a wrecked heap of broken spars, the remnants of flags fluttering on the flagstaffs, torn banners lying crumpled in the dirt. And beneath the pitiless glare of the August sun, bodies lay as they'd fallen, one on top of another, crushed and suffocated, trampled and cut. The dry grass was littered with the bright fragments of clothes, hats and bonnets, shoes, that had been ripped from bodies in the stampede.

  Chloe tied the mare to the garden gate and moved out onto the field. The yeomanry had dismounted and stood around, wiping their sabers, loosening the girths of their horses. The humid air was alive with groans emerging from the mounded bodies and the whinnies of the horses as they pawed the earth and smelled blood.

  Other people now appeared on the field, bending over bodies. Chloe knelt beside a young woman, bleeding from a sword cut to her breast. She was alive, though, and her eyelids fluttered. Chloe lifted the skirt of her habit and tore a strip from her petticoat, using it to staunch the blood. Two men passed by, carrying a dead man. An elderly man staggered along, leaning on the arm of a young lad. His lips were blue in his waxen face and he was wheezing painfu
lly.

  "I'll take 'er now, miss," a voice said softly. A man bent and picked up the young woman. "Thankee kindly." His eyes were blank, his voice flat.

  Chloe wandered over the battlefield, helping where she could as people lifted bodies off bodies, releasing

  the survivors and the wounded from the suffocating press of flesh.

  They were all stunned, moving as if in a trance, saying little or nothing. Out of the sixty thousand peaceful people at St. Peter's Fields that afternoon, four hundred had been wounded and nine men and two women killed by a troop of yeomanry ordered by the city magistrates to arrest Orator Hunt.

  Chapter 11

  Hugo was riding fast down Market Street in the eerily deserted city when the rumble, like low thunder, reached him from St. Peter's Fields. His horse started, lifting his head, nostrils flaring. Then the screams came and ice water ran in Hugo's veins. He turned down Cross Street, spurring his horse. People surged toward him, screaming "Cavalry" in warning and explanation as they ran.

  The magistrates must have panicked, as he'd been afraid they would. But how the hell would he ever find Chloe in this mob? He rode on against the tide of humanity, searching the crowd. He turned the corner by the church, reaching the field as the last of the fleeing throng rushed past him. He sat his horse, feeling sick as he took in the carnage on the littered field. Was Chloe somewhere at the bottom of one of those misshapen mounds of tangled limbs? She was so tiny, she couldn't possibly survive such a crush.

  He dismounted and tethered his horse to a post by the church. Then he walked onto the field. He saw her almost immediately, on her knees beside a prone body. She had lost her hat and her hair was escaping from its pins. It threw off the sun's radiance in a luminous glory of luster and color that was almost shocking against the grimness of the scene.

  "Chloe!" He yelled her name across the space that separated them, his knees abruptly weakening with relief.

  She looked up, then scrambled to her feet and ran toward him. "Oh, Hugo!" She fell into his arms, clutching him around the waist with fierce need in a gesture that flooded him with memories to stir his body and set his blood racing.

  She was crying and her eyes were like drowned cornflowers.

  "Are you hurt?" he demanded roughly.

  She shook her head. "No… no, not really… but I'm so angry. How could they have done such a thing? What possible justification? It was the most terrible… terrible… wicked thing, Hugo." Her voice caught on a gulping sob.

  "Hush." He stroked her hair and pulled out his handkerchief. "Dry your eyes… and your nose is running." He mopped the tears and wiped her nose with a briskness that concealed his emotion and enabled him to see her as he wanted to see her-a distressed child in need of comfort.

  "I've lost my hat," she said with forlorn irrelevance.

  "There are other hats."

  "But I was most particularly fond of that one." She looked around the field and said with another cry of outrage, "Why? Why would they do such a thing?"

  "Fear," he said quietly. "France has taught the power of the mob. They're terrified of a popular uprising."

  "I'd guillotine the lot of them," she said fiercely. "And knit while their heads fell into the basket… except that I can't knit." Her eyes filled with tears again and abruptly she sat on the ground.

  "What is it7" Alarmed, Hugo bent over her.

  "I don't know," she said. "My legs are shaking. Perhaps it's because I haven't had anything to eat all day except for an apple."

  Hugo lifted her to her feet, sure that rather more than her customary complaint of hunger lay behind the sudden faintness. However, satisfying such a basic need

  might help to distance the afternoon's honor for her. "That's easily remedied." He took her hand. "There's nothing more you can do here."

  Chloe glanced around the field. The citizens of Manchester were looking after their own, the field slowly clearing as the wounded were carried off by friends and family.

  The anger still burned, but it was true she wasn't needed. Her own concerns could come to the forefront now.

  "Crispin was supposed to bring a picnic… Oh, I have to tell you about Crispin." She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her free hand as Hugo led her off the field.

  "I already know." He handed her back his handkerchief.

  "How?" She blew her nose vigorously and offered him the crumpled ball.

  "Keep it," he said. "I came across him and he was… uh, induced, shall we say, to tell me that you had left him in some haste. He affected not to know why."

  "There was a post-chaise and I had the strangest feeling they were going to force-induced?" She looked up at him, momentarily diverted. "Did you hurt him?"

  "Not much."

  "I wish you had."

  For such a healing soul and champion of the underdog, she could be remarkably ruthless, Hugo thought. "Crispin is just obeying your half brother," he told her. "like the men the other night. I've known that all along, and I don't believe in wreaking vengeance on minions."

  "The men the other night'" Chloe stopped and turned to look up at him. "You mean… they wanted me, not Dante?"

  Hugo's lips curved a fraction at her astonishment. "Strange as it may seem to you, lass, I believe that you're

  rather more valuable a prize than that mongrel… -not that I'm casting aspersions on Dante's lineage, you understand… but…"

  The teasing remark lifted the shadows somewhat on the somber countenance. "What would they want with me?"

  "You're a wealthy young woman. Jasper would like to keep your fortune in the family."

  "By marrying me to Crispin," she asserted. She kicked at a loose pebble, her mouth hardening. "He can't force me to marry him?"

  "No, not if I have a say in the matter," Hugo agreed calmly. "But if he got his hands on you, he'd have a damn good try."

  Chloe absorbed this in silence. They reached the garden where she'd left Maid Marion and she withdrew her hand from Hugo's.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To fetch my horse… or, rather, Jasper's horse. You didn't think I was riding Dapple, did you?"

  Hugo realized he hadn't given the matter any thought. And when he saw the animal she led over, he whistled in admiration. "Beautiful lines."

  "Yes, she's out of Red Queen by Sherrif… I know the stallion but not the dam. Sherrif s the pride of Jasper's stud." She stroked the mare's neck. "She's highly strung, but she seems quieter now."

  Hugo frowned. "She'll have to be returned to Shipton."

  "I told Crispin to tell Jasper I couldn't accept her as a gift, but I would purchase her," Chloe informed him.

  "Oh, did you now?" He raised his eyebrows. It seemed an appropriate juncture to initiate the new regime and assert his seriously diminished authority with his headstrong ward. "And just who gave you permission to make such a major decision? Permit me to re-

  mind you, Miss Gresham, that your fortune is in my control and I will decide how it's to be spent."

  "But that's silly when we both know this horse is a good buy and I don't-"

  Hugo silenced her with a raised forefinger. "You may not be aware of it, young Chloe, but you are already in a good deal of very hot water. I shouldn't compound your position if I were you. You've enough explaining to do as it is."

  Chloe bit her lip. "I didn't think you'd be vexed after what's happened here."

  "What happened here has nothing to do with how and why you happen to be in the middle of it." He caught her waist and lifted her onto the mare. "We'll discuss it in the quiet of Girton's Coffee House."

  "But I did leave you a note so you wouldn't be worried," she ventured as he mounted his own horse.

  "I will take that into account," he said. "But how much it will weigh against my having to leap from my bed and chase after you without so much as a mouthful of coffee or a moment to shave, I don't know."

  It didn't sound too promising to Chloe. She cast him a sideways glance. He did look uncomfortably in n
eed of hot water and a razor. "I did save myself," she pointed out.

  "If you'd done as you were told, it wouldn't have been necessary."

  Chloe lapsed into a somewhat apprehensive silence.

  Girton's Coffee House was empty of custom. The entire city seemed to be in shock, people gathered in dazed knots on street corners or huddled in doorways. Mr. Lampton greeted his guests without ceremony, asking immediately if they'd been at St. Peter's Fields. Hugo told him what he knew.

  "Eh, but it's 'ard to credit," Lampton said, shaking his

  head. "It'll set the cat among the pigeons, you mark my words."

  "They've arrested the orator." A man appeared in the doorway, his face drawn, a cudgel in his hand. "Folks is gatherin' at the Mitre." Announcement made, he vanished to stop at other doors down the street.

  "Not me," Lampton said, shaking his head again. "There's trouble enow. What can I get for you folk?"

  "A pot of chocolate for the lady, coffee for myself, and whatever you can provide in the way of nuncheon," Hugo readily informed him.

  A tureen of potato soup and a cold chicken appeared in short order, and Hugo waited until they'd both satisfied their hunger. Then he leaned back in his chair, crossing one booted leg over the other, and bent a stern eye on his ward.

  "Well?" he said.

  Chloe shifted uneasily but took up the offensive, meeting the green eyes with a defiant light in her own. "I didn't know Crispin meant me any harm. You didn't say anything about suspecting Jasper of wanting to kidnap me. If you had, of course I wouldn't have gone with him."

  "I may not have shared my suspicions with you, but as I recall, you were most expressly forbidden to leave the estate without permission."

  "I've known Crispin all my life. We used to play together as children. I couldn't see anything wrong with going for a ride with him."

  "If you didn't see anything wrong with it, why didn't you simply ask me?" He raised his eyebrows. "You could have presented such a convincing case quite eloquently."