Vixen

Chapter 13

Crispin had been watching his stepfather throughout dinner. He knew from the signs that Jasper was in one of his more fearsome rages. The morning's visit from Hugo Lattimer and Chloe had put bellows to the smoldering ashes of his fury at the failure of the previous day. When Crispin had returned empty-handed and with the marks of Hugo's fingers on his throat, Jasper had held back his wrath at his stepson's failure. Now Crispin was afraid that the reprieve was to be short-lived. Someone would have to pay for whatever had happened between Lattimer and Jasper that morning.

Louise also recognized her husband's mood. She sat trembling throughout the meal, terrified that a servant would fumble, or a dish would not be hot enough, or his wineglass wouldn't be refreshed quickly enough. Any domestic derelictions, however minor, would be visited on her. There would be first the icy request that she correct the fault immediately. Later that night would come the punishment. He would humiliate her with his body while his voice softly taunted until he grew bored with her weeping and he would go to his own bed.

The servants knew their own danger and tiptoed around the gloomy, silent dining hall, keeping their eyes on the floor and standing as far away as possible from their master when they served him.

Jasper looked up suddenly. "What's the matter with

you, my dear wife? You look as blue as a gaffed carp."

Louise jumped and tried to find something to say.

"Oh, nothing… nothing at all, Jasper. Nothing's the matter… not at all… at all…"

"I take your point," Jasper interrupted with heavy sarcasm. "There's no need to belabor it, my dear. However, surely you must have some conversation with which to enliven the dinner table. Some detail of domestic trivia to impart, perhaps… or some piece of news from a friend… but, I was forgetting, you don't have any friends, do you, my dear?"

Tears filled his wife's eyes. Desperately she blinked them away, knowing that any sign of distress would only goad him.

Crispin shifted in his chair, wishing his mother weren't so pathetic. It seemed to him she invited his father's displeasure with her nervous twitching and stammering.

"Not even the vicar's wife," Jasper continued, his shallow eyes skidding over his wife's pale countenance. "It strikes me as odd that the vicar's wife should not call upon the wife of the chief landowner. Have you offended our neighbors in some way, my dear?"

Louise pressed her hands together tightly in her lap. Jasper had done the offending, as well he knew. The ungodly goings-on in the crypt, while not known in any detail, were widely speculated upon. And the whole neighborhood knew that Sir Jasper was a bad man to cross. No one would willingly and knowingly set foot across his boundaries.

"I await an answer," he said silkily, half smiling at the effigy at the other end of the long table. He picked up his wineglass and sipped, his eyes glittering over the lip of the glass.

Louise took a deep breath. Her mouth worked and she pressed her handkerchief to her lips. Her voice shook as she said, "I don't believe so, Jasper."

"You don't believe so? Well, I wonder what the explanation could be. It's quite a puzzle."

Louise pushed back her chair. "If you will excuse me, I'll leave you to your port." She fled the room with a pitiable lack of dignity that not even the servants could miss.

"Put the decanters on the table and get out!" Jasper said savagely to the butler, who obeyed and left with a degree more sangfroid than his mistress had shown.

Crispin hid his apprehension as he waited for the ax to fall on him now. He knew his only hope was to appear unafraid. Casually, he poured himself a glass of port as his stepfather slid the decanter toward him on the polished surface of the table.

"So what are you going to do, sir?" He asked the question almost nonchalantly, leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs, taking a sip of his port, hoping that by bringing the issue into the open he would avert an explosion.

Jasper gave a sharp crack of laughter. It was not a pleasant sound. "Maybe you have a suggestion, dear boy, since you signally failed to bring off mine."

"That was hardly my fault, sir." Crispin defended himself as he knew he must. "Chloe took off before I knew what was happening. If the crowds hadn't been so thick, I wouldn't have lost her. If she hadn't been riding Maid Marion, I might have caught her."

"So it was my fault, was it?" Jasper stared morosely into the ruby contents of his glass. "Somehow, I don't believe she would have escaped me. Maid Marion or not."

"But you weren't there." He was daring much, but if anything would work, it was courage.

"No." Jasper sat back. "For the simple reason, my asinine stepson, that Chloe would go nowhere with me willingly. God knows why she holds me in such dislike

… to my knowledge, I've always treated her with kid gloves."

"She's not afraid of you."

"No… not yet," Jasper agreed. "But that will come, make no mistake." He twisted the stem of the glass between finger and thumb and his mouth thinned to a vicious line.

"So what do we do now?" Crispin knew he was no longer in danger.

"Intimidation," Jasper said. "I'll be revenged on Lat-timer, and that little sister of mine is going to begin to feel the smart of fear."

"How?" Crispin sat forward, the candlelight falling across his sharp face, his small brown eyes eager pinpoints in his sallow complexion.

"A little arson," Jasper said softly. "And I believe one of those ridiculous creatures my sister loves so much must be constrained to suffer a little."

"Ahh." Crispin sat back again. He remembered the stinging rebuke she'd administered when he'd commented so carelessly on the condition of the nag. It would be very satisfying to avenge the insult in such appropriate fashion.

JTor the next two days Chloe played her game discreetly. She entered with enthusiasm into the music lessons but offered Hugo no seductive smiles, and whenever she stood or sat beside him she was careful to behave as if she were unaware of his closeness. When she touched him she made it seem like an accident. But she could feel Hugo responding to every brush of her hand, to every move she made when she was close to him. She knew he watched her when she seemed to be absorbed in the music, and she knew that much of the time he was not watching with the eye of a tutor or of a

guardian. And the more she affected ignorance and behaved with the natural ease of a girl who'd never tumbled with him on the faded velvet cushions of the old couch, the more relaxed he became in his responses.

They rode out together around the estate, Chloe on her new horse, a spritely chestnut gelding that almost made up for the loss of Maid Marion. Hugo found her an attentive and intelligent companion as he went about the dreary business of listening to the universal complaints of his tenant farmers, dismally examining the tumbledown cottages, the leaking barn roofs, the broken fences, desperately trying to think of some way to raise the funds to make the necessary repairs.

He sat up late in the kitchen after their ride, the sleeping house creaking quietly around him. His body was tired, but his mind, as always, wouldn't take a backseat. His first sober overview of his estate had shaken him to his core. He'd allowed an already neglected property to go to rack and ruin in the past years, while he wallowed in brandy-induced self-pity. It was a painful realization and one that prevented all possibility of sleep.

Several times his eye and his mind drifted to the cellar steps. He could picture the racks with their dust-coated bottles of burgundy and claret, madeira, sherry, and brandy. It was a magnificent cellar acquired by his father and grandfather. He himself had added little… he'd been too busy depleting it.

That lash of self-contempt kept him away from the cellar for half an hour. Then he found himself on his feet, inexorably crossing the kitchen, lifting the heavy brass key off its hook by the cellar door. He put the key in the lock and turned it. It grated in the lock and the door swung open with a complaining rasp. The dark flight of stone steps stretched ahead. The cool earth smell of the cellar, overlaid with the musty scents of

wine, teased his nostrils. He took a step down, then realized he had no lantern.

He turned back. Abruptly he slammed the door shut at his back. The violence of the sound jarred the night. He turned the key, hung it back on its hook, extinguished the lamps in the kitchen, lit a carrying candle, and went up to bed.

The bang awoke Dante, who leapt from the bed with a growl. Chloe sat up. "What is it?" Dante was at the door, snuffling at the gap beneath, his tail waving joyously in recognition of the familiar.

It must be Hugo coming to bed. Chloe wondered what the time could be. She seemed to have been asleep for hours, but it was still darkest night beyond the window. Was he once again unable to sleep?

She slipped from bed and quietly opened the door onto the corridor. Hugo's apartments were at the far end, beyond the central hallway. She could see the yellow glimmer of light beneath his door. She waited, shivering slightly, for the light to be extinguished, but it remained for hours, it seemed, much longer than it would take someone to prepare for bed. Thoughtfully, she went back to bed and lay down. Dante settled on her feet again with a sigh that expressed relief that these strange nighttime wanderings had ceased.

Sleep wouldn't return. She lay gazing up into the darkness that her now-accustomed eyes could easily penetrate. Not for the first time, she wondered what it must be like never to know that once night fell, one would sleep and wake refreshed. She could see Hugo's face in repose, when the vibrancy no longer concealed the deeply etched lines of fatigue around his eyes and mouth, the purple shadowing in the hollows beneath his eyes.

She thought he'd slept better since he'd emerged from the days in the library. He looked less depleted, his eyes

clearer, his skin supple. But what did she know about the way he spent the long, dark hours of the night?

She jumped out of bed and went back to the door. The light still glowed beneath the door at the far end of the corridor. Suddenly, she had the unmistakable sensation of pain… of some kind of struggle in the air around her. Was he drinking again? Please, no.

Her hands shook as she lit her carrying candle, then she flew like a wraith along the corridor, down the stairs to the library. She was acting on impulse now as she fumbled across the room, her candle flickering on the massive dark furniture and throwing eerie shadows on the heavy paneling.

She knew what she was looking for: the backgammon board she faintly remembered seeing the first time she'd entered this room. She found the hinged board on an inlaid chest against the wall. The pieces and dice were in a carved box beside it.

Clutching the heavy board and box to her chest with one arm, she made her way back to the hallway, holding her candle as high as she could. Dante, now resigned to these untimely peregrinations, trotted at her heels as she carefully negotiated the stairs and turned down the corridor to Hugo's chamber.

She knocked on the door.

Hugo was sitting on the window seat, drawing deep breaths of the cool night air. His hands were clenched in tight fists against his face, leaving a bruising imprint against his cheekbones.

When the knock came at his door, he started and for a minute was disoriented. Then, assuming it was Samuel, he said wearily, "Come in."

Chloe stood in the doorway, something clutched to her breast, a flickering candle in her other hand. Her hair tumbled in sleep's unruly tangles over her shoulders. Her eyes were blue velvet as they gazed anxiously

at him. "I thought perhaps you couldn't sleep again," she said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. "I thought perhaps you'd like a game of backgammon."

"Backgammon! For God's sake, Chloe, it's three o'clock in the morning!"

"Is it? I didn't know." She advanced farther into the room. "You haven't been to sleep yet." It was statement rather than question. Somehow, she knew Hugo was in trouble tonight and every line of her body, every movement of her features, evinced utter determination to help him.

"Go back to bed, Chloe," he said, running his hands through his hair.

"No, I'm not in the least sleepy." She set her candle down and opened the board on the bed. "I'm sure you'd like some company. Shall I set up the pieces?"

"Just why is it that you're always so sure about what I want?" Hugo demanded. "For some reason, you keep popping up beside me, informing me that I must be lonely and in need of your company."

"Well, it's true," Chloe said with that recognizable stubborn twist to her lovely mouth. "I know it is." She perched on the bed and began to set up the draftsmen.

Hugo knew that an hour's distraction would save him. He didn't know how Chloe knew it, but know it she did. He came over to the bed and sat down on the edge opposite her, saying with a resigned sigh, "This is madness."

There was a scratching at the door and Dante whined. "Oh, dear." Chloe jumped up. "I shut the door on him. You don't mind if he comes in, do you?"

Hugo shook his head in dumb surrender to an un-movable force.

Chloe was not wearing a dressing gown yet again,

and her slender frame moved fluidly beneath the thin cambric of her nightdress as she opened the door.

It was one area in which he could assert himself. Hugo went to the armoire and drew out a brown velvet robe. "Come here." Taking her arms, he thrust them into the long sleeves, spun her around, and pulled the voluminious sides across her body, tying the girdle at her waist with a firm jerk. "How many times, Chloe…?" he demanded in not entirely feigned exasperation.

"It's not cold, so I don't think about it," she said.

"Well, I suggest you start thinking about it if you're going to continue to roam around in the middle of the night." He turned back to the backgammon board on the bed.

Chloe hopped up and sat cross-legged in front of her half of the board, arranging the folds of her borrowed robe around her. "Why does it bother you?"

Hugo looked sharply at her and read the mischievous invitation in her eyes. His world took that familiar tilt again as the need for brandy was abruptly joined by one with even more potential for trouble. If tie let her see it, however, he'd be tacitly acknowledging the invitation.

"Don't give me that pseudo-naivete, lass," he said mildly, throwing the two dice. "It doesn't bother me particularly. But you know perfectly well it's not appropriate for a young girl to wander around half dressed." He moved a draftsman.

Not fooled, she threw the dice in her turn. A questioning miaow came suddenly from the door she'd left ajar. Beatrice stood in the doorway, a tiny bundle of fur gripped by the scruff of its neck between her teeth.

"Oh, she's bringing the kittens for their first outing," Chloe said, extending her hand in welcome to the advancing cat. Beatrice leapt on the bed, deposited the kitten in Chloe's lap, and went out again. Five more

times she came and went as Hugo watched in a kind of dazed disbelief. When all six kittens were settled in Chloe's velvet lap, Beatrice curled on the coverlet and gazed unwinking at the tableau.

"We lack only Falstaff and Rosinante," Hugo observed. "Oh, I was forgetting Plato. Perhaps you should fetch them."

"You're funning," Chlpe said. "It's your throw."

"Funning? Whyever should I be funning?" He tossed the dice. "I have a profound dislike of domestic animals, and yet at three-thirty in the morning I'm playing backgammon in an animal house that used to be my bedroom."

"How could you dislike them?" Chloe stroked one of the fur bundles with the tip of her finger. The kitten blinked its newly opened eyes at Hugo.

"Forgive the indelicate question, but are they house-broken? I have to sleep in that bed."

"Beatrice cleans up after them," Chloe informed him serenely.

"Oh, how very reassuring." Laughter swelled from some deep well in his chest, and he realized that the desperate tension of his brandy craving had left him. His hands were steady, his stomach at peace.

Chloe looked up from her intent concentration on the board and laughed happily as she examined his face. "You're better?"

He looked sharply at her. "Yes, how do you know?"

"I can feel it when people are hurting," she said. "Just as I can feel it when the pain goes away. Will you ever be able to drink again, do you think?"

The question surprised him. He hadn't expected someone with so little experience of the world to understand his agony so completely. She was regarding him intently, the mischievously seductive playmate transformed into a solemn, caring companion.

"I don't know, I'll have to wait and see," he answered as seriously as if she were of his own generation. "But I'm not stupid enough to put it to the test yet awhile. It's too damn difficult to resist at the moment."

"I'll help you." Reaching over, she laid her hand over his and it startled him more than any of her previous intimacies. It was a simple human gesture of support and friendship.

"You already have," he answered quietly.

The silence in the room grew to enclose them, and he felt as if he were slipping into the deep blue depths of her eyes. Then, with a supreme effort of will, he hauled himself out of enhancement and broke the spell.

"Come on, it's time you went back to bed." He scooped the draftsmen up and put them in the box. "You've done what you came to do, and I'm very grateful, but now I'd like my own room back. How are you going to transport that litter?"

"I'll fetch the hat box." She moved the nest of kittens from her lap and slipped off the bed, hiding her disappointment. Struggling with the unwieldy folds of the robe, she went to get the box. When she returned, Hugo had cleared away the board and pieces, shooed Dante off the bed, and was staring somewhat nonplussed at Beatrice, who lay fast asleep, unimpressed by the busyness around her.

"She looks as if she's settled for the duration," he said as Chloe put the box on the bed.

"She'll follow the kittens." She picked them up and put them in the box. "I can't cany them without tripping over your robe, so if you don't mind, I'll take it off." She shrugged out of it, laying it over the foot of the bed. "Good night." Her voice was flat.

"Chloe?"

"Yes?" She paused at the door.

He came up behind her, turned her, and gently kissed

her brow. "Thank you. You were a great help." She quivered under his hands, her rounded shoulder warm in his palm beneath the thin nightgown, but she said nothing, and he released her. She left, Beatrice and Dante streaking ahead of her down the corridor.

Hugo lay down fully dressed on his bed, wrinkling his nose at the faint lingering smell of warm animal.

Something had to be done before the situation became completely out of hand. He would have to send her away somewhere. But where? Where would she be safe from Jasper if he himself wasn't there to protect her? One thing he knew with absolute certainty: The three of them couldn't go on living together in this dangerous intimacy. Each day he drew closer to breaking faith with Elizabeth. If he yielded, he would ruin a sweet-faced innocent who didn't understand the consequences of what she was offering-and such a prospect belonged amid the depravities of the crypt.

Down the corridor, Chloe lay in bed, unaware that her thoughts were in one respect an echo of Hugo's. Something had to be done. But in her case, she searched for a way to bring her plan to a swift conclusion. She was a prey to such tormenting fires and dreams and only one thing would quench the one and fulfill the other. She sensed it needed one firm push to propel Hugo over the edge of restraint. But what form should the push take? She'd tried gentle maneuvering and soft insinuations, hoping he'd pick up on the initiative. Perhaps it was time to do something utterly outrageous. But what7

She yawned and closed her eyes as a wave of sleepiness washed over her. The opportunity would present itself if she was on the lookout for it.