Vixen

by Jane Feather

  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 it?” 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 horror 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 remind 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 need 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.”

  “You weren’t there to ask,” Chloe retorted. “And Samuel said I wasn’t to go into the library.”

  He shook his head. “That won’t do, lass. You had only to ask Samuel to consult me.”

  Chloe could think of nothing with which to counteract this truth.

  “It couldn’t have been because you decided I didn’t warrant consulting, now, could it?” he mused. “It couldn’t have been that you simply decided to flout my authority because you were out of temper with me?”

  Chloe decided she knew what a pinned butterfly must feel like as the green eyes fixed her with a steady and uncomfortably knowing look.

  Hugo nodded slowly when she said nothing. “I thought as much. So, what am I going to do with you, Miss Gresham?”

  Chloe broke the hold of that mesmerizing gaze and decided it was time to defend herself with the biggest guns she had. She put up her chin. “Yes, I was out of temper with you. And with very good reason … if you can remember.” A slight flush blossomed on her cheek, but she continued to meet his eye steadily.

  “That brings us to something else we need to discuss,” he said. His voice was crisp and level, but he didn’t change his relaxed posture. “I am going to say this just once and then the subject will not be referred to again by either of us. I regret what happened more than I can say, Chloe. But it happened and it’s over. I was, God forgive me, not in my right mind. I took advantage of your innocence and of my position—”

  “But I wanted—”

  “No!” He swung forward, his hands coming to rest on the table between them, his face close to hers. “No, Chloe. You will not say it. You’re far too young to know what you could have wanted. It was an aberration, the product of a diseased mind … mine. And it’s finished.”

  It wasn’t. She could feel it in every bone and sinew of her body, the knowledge flowed with her blood through her veins. It was no more finished for Hugo than it was for herself. But argument wouldn’t convince him. It would need something much more potently persuasive.

  “And let’s just get one more thing straight while we’re about it.” He sat back again, as if satisfied that her silence indicated acceptance. “I may have given you the impression that I’m somewhat lax, careless about conventions, and easygoing enough to be treated without undue attention. To an extent that’s true. But I have my limits, and if you find them, lass, I can safely promise that the discovery will prove most uncomfortable.”

  He drew on his gloves and stood up, beckoning to the server. “Bring my reckoning, lad.”

  He pulled Chloe’s chair back for her and said in much the same tone, “Since we’re beginning this relationship on a new footing, we’ll not on this occasion revisit the past, but it’ll be worth remembering from now on that I have an inconvenient need to be obeyed by those in my charge.”

  There seemed no obvious response to a statement that sounded all too convincing. She stood aside as he paid the reckoning. He ushered her outside in customary fashion with a hand between her shoulder blades and lifted her onto the mare.

  “Don’t look so disconcolate, lass,” he said, suddenly smiling. “I’m no ogre and I’m certain we’ll deal extremely well together from now on. And if you wish to keep the horse, then I’ll send payment to Jasper.” He chuckled. “It’s a nice twist that’ll have him spitting, I’ll lay odds.”

  His ward managed a smile, but she was feeling too chastened to enjoy properly the prospect of her brother’s reaction to such a table-turning. It was one thing to plan the seduction of the easygoing, insouciant Hugo she’d assumed sobriety would return to her, quite another to make such plans with the stern, composed guardian he’d now become.

  They rode out of the city and met Samuel on the road. “Oh, thank God ye’re safe,” he said, his weather-beaten face twisted with anxiety. He turned his horse to ride beside Hugo. “I got no news of Miss and the young man on the road to Edgecombe, so turned back to follow ye. But the crowds was summat awful. Couldn’t ’ardly get through. And what the ’ell’s goin’ on in the city?”

  Hugo explained. “Chloe was in the middle of it,” he concluded.

  Samuel cast her a sharp glance, taking in her pallor. “Y’re not ’urt?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “But it was wicked, Samuel. Evil! They just charged the crowd with their swords.”

  “Damn yeomanry,” Samuel muttered. “You wouldn’t think they w’d do that to their own kind.”

  “No,” Chloe agreed. “Any more than you’d think my own brother would try to kidnap me and make me marry Crispin. But I still don’t see how he could force me into marriage, Hugo.”

  Hugo saw Jasper as he had been in the crypt … Jasper holding down a feebly struggling young woman whose eyes were glazed with drugs and liquor; Jasper raising his hand to a cringing serving maid who’d had the misfortune to drop a plate at his feet; Jasper taking a dog whip to a hound that had displeased him. Not images he would share with his ward.

  Chloe was chilled anew by his expression. She’d seen it before—a mask of anger and contempt, carved and immobile, his eyes the haunted eyes of a man who looked into hell.

  And then his face cleared. He shook his head briskly. He’d reached some accommodation with his memories in the dreadful hours in the library and, while they’d never leave him, their power was lessened.

  “He’s not going to get the chance, Chloe,” he declared. “From now on you are going to stay within eyesight and earshot of the house at all times unless you’re with me or Samuel … even if I have to tether you.”

  Chloe offered no argument. Apart from the fact that she was more shaken than she cared to admit by the ruthlessness of her brother’s plotting, it would suit her own plans to stay close to Hugo. Once she’d overcome the awkward attack of conscience that had hit him with his newfound sobriety, she could pursue her London plan. It was a plan she was convinced would benefit them both. Hugo was wasting his life in his neglected house on the Lancashire moors, and if he wouldn’t save himself from such a desolate and meaningless existence, then she’d have to do it for him.

  An idea glimmered and a spark of cheerfulness penetrated the bleakness of the day’s memories. “I wonder if that woman you had in the library the other night was in the crowd,” she remarked casually. “I hope she wasn’t hurt. She seemed very nice.”

  Hugo drew breath sharply. She was looking at him with an imp of mischief dancing in her eyes and a wicked little curve to her mouth. His world tilted. Grimly, he brought it back on an even keel. He glared at her and said in soft warning, “I should be very careful if I were you, miss.”

  Chloe put her head on one side as if considering the advice, then said in a puzzled tone, “But I only said I thought she was nice. Rather plump, of course, but some men like that, I believe. And she had a kind smile and seemed very cheerful.”

  Samuel choked and Hugo realized just in time that by responding in any way at all to these outrageous remarks, he would fall into a pit of depthless indignity.

  Ignoring her observation, he turned to Samuel with a comment on the afternoon’s mayhem.

  Chloe nudged the mare’s flanks and took off down the road at a mad gallop, her hair flying out behind her, the warm air whistling past her ears. The speed seemed to clear her head of the day’s confusions, tensions, and agonies, and her body relaxed, moving fluidly with the roan’s long, graceful stride.

  She had decided how to broach the citadel of Hugo Lattimer’s conscience. Constant provocation. She would keep him whirling with one challenge after another. She knew instinctively that he wanted to respond to her as he
had done once. And since that one experience had aroused in her a vortex of curiosity and yearnings, she could see no bar to bringing about the satisfaction of their mutual interests. And once that was achieved, then she could set about arranging a future that would haul Hugo from his self-imposed renunciation of the world and put her well beyond her half brother’s reach.

  Chapter 12

  WHEN CHLOE CAME down to the kitchen the following morning, Hugo was sitting at the table in buckskins and top boots, a white linen cravat tied neatly if without great artistry at his throat.

  “Are you going to visit someone?” Chloe filled a beaker from the milk churn and drank deeply.

  “Your half brother,” he said, pushing his plate away and leaning back in his chair. “To settle the matter of Maid Marion. You did say you wanted to keep her, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” She regarded him thoughtfully, and he caught himself thinking that her eyes were like gentians in the sun. “Will you be discussing anything else?”

  Hugo shook his head. “I’ll play it by ear, but I hardly think it’ll be necessary to spell anything out, lass.”

  “No, I suppose not,” she agreed, trawling her fingers through a bowl of gooseberries on the table until she found a particularly succulent one.

  “Jasper’s not obtuse … although I’m not sure the same could be said of Crispin.” She popped a berry into her mouth and punctured the skin with her front teeth, closing her eyes in unconscious pleasure as the sharp juice squirted down her throat and the lush round fruit yielded its flesh. “Are you going alone?”

  Hugo was for a minute riveted by the sheer sensuality of her expression and missed the careful deliberation of the question. How could such a vibrant creature so full of earthly hungers have grown in Elizabeth’s pure, pale womb? But she’d also sprung from the loins of Stephen Gresham. The black thought came and went with surprising lack of pain.

  He stood up. “I’ll only be a couple of hours. If you care to ride out with me this afternoon, lass, I have to do a long-overdue survey of the estate. It’ll give Dante a decent walk too.”