Vixen

Chapter 3

Chloe recovered her composure in the undemanding, accepting company of her animals. The one-legged parrot swore softly at her from the windowsill, where he preened himself in the sun, and Dante lay with his head in her lap as she sat on the floor beside the hat box, watching the nursing mother.

Animals had always been her chief companions. She had a sure touch with the sick, wounded, or abandoned and an unfailing nose for finding them. Her acquisitions had not been popular with the Misses Trent any more than had her frequent embarrassing confrontations with neglectful or abusive owners. However, Chloe was not easily turned from a course of action, and when her anger and pity were aroused, it would have taken much more than the combined efforts of Miss Anne and Miss Emily to dissuade her.

Now she stroked Dante's head with a soothing rhythm until her flush died down and she could imagine facing her guardian again. Until he'd thrown aside the bedclothes, she hadn't thought twice about his nakedness beneath the sheet. She hadn't thought twice about being in a man's bedroom-a virtual stranger's bedroom -conducting such a long and relatively intimate conversation. She had little experience to go on, but it did not seem as if that had been a most unusual circumstance. In fact, everything about this business was unusual. Here she was, orphaned and alone, thrust into the clearly unwelcoming arms of a stranger who lived in a decaying Tudor manor house on the Lancashire moors with only a servant for company. And not an ordinary servant either.

Dante stood up and went to the door, whining. He needed to go out, and presumably the cat would need to as well. And they had to be fed. The thought of food made her realize that she was starving, and the need to do something practical for her menagerie chased away any lingering embarrassment about the morning's interview.

She picked up the cat, who mewed at her sleeping kittens but was not reluctant to be carried away. Dante pranced ahead of her as she hurried down the corridor, hoping she wouldn't meet Sir Hugo with her arms full of feline. She dashed across the hall and out into the sunny courtyard, where the cat dug herself a tidy hole under a bush and Dante went off, tail flying, to investigate the stables.

She was halfway across the hall, returning mother to babes, when chaos broke out in the courtyard. The air was split with the frenzied barking of what sounded like half a dozen maddened dogs. The cat leapt from her arms with a high-pitched yowl and belted for the stairs.

"What the devil's going on?" Hugo emerged from the kitchen, wiping his mouth on a checkered table napkin. The cat streaked past him and the cacophony from outside grew to new proportions.

"Beatrice… Beatrice, come here. For heaven's sake, it's only Dante." Chloe ran after the frantic cat, now racing up the stairs.

"Beatrice/" Hugo exclaimed. "What sort of a name is that'" Then he shook his head impatiently. "Stupid question. What else would you call her?" He grabbed Chloe's arm, halting her pursuit. "Leave the cat. If that damn dog of yours is causing trouble out there, lass, you will sort it out."

"Oh, dear… yes, I suppose so," Chloe said, staring distractedly after the cat. "I suppose Beatrice will find her way back to her kittens… mother's instinct. Don't you think?"

"I don't know the first thing about cats and I don't give a tinker's damn. But I want that noise stopped now."

Chloe flung up her hands in defeat and ran back outside. It was hard to distinguish one dog from another in the whirling ball of fur in the courtyard. "Dante!" she yelled, running down the steps.

"Don't get in the middle of them!" Hugo called in sudden panic as she raced to the snapping, growling, barking ball of fur.

Chloe stopped dead. "I'm not a fool! What do you take me for?" Her tone was considerably less than polite. Without waiting for an answer, she ran to the pump in the corner of the courtyard, filled two leather buckets, and lugged them toward the fray.

Hugo watched the diminutive figure struggle with the heavy buckets, but he was still smarting from that flash of insolent impatience and made no attempt to help her.

She heaved the contents of the first bucket over the snarling animals, who immediately sprang away from one another. The second bucketful sent Dante's two opponents whimpering toward the stables. Dante, in apparent indifference, shook himself heartily and trotted over to his mistress.

Chloe bent down to the dog. Hugo couldn't hear what she said, but Dante's head hung, his tail drooped, and he slunk off into the far corner of the courtyard.

Chloe straightened, throwing her hair back over her shoulders. She hadn't replaited it, and its radiance seemed to throw back the sunlight like a halo. She looked at Hugo, her expression uncertain, and he returned the look grimly. With a visible stiffening of her shoulders she crossed the yard toward him.

"I'm sorry if I was rude," she said abruptly. "But I know perfectly well how to deal with a dogfight."

"I assume you've had plenty of experience with that ill-bred, ill-disciplined beast," he stated. "He's to be tied up in the stables. I'll not have him causing trouble with my hounds."

"But that's so unjust!" she exclaimed in vigorous defense. "How can you possibly know that Dante started it? It was two against one, I'll have you know." She glared at him, all apologetic conciliation vanished. "And he's not ill-disciplined. Look how downcast he is because I scolded him."

Hugo had an urge to laugh at this passionate defense of her maligned pet. She reminded him of a Lilliputian. He relented slightly. "If there's any more trouble, he's to be tied up." He turned back to the house and his neglected breakfast. "And I will not have him in the house."

Chloe knew that keeping Dante permanently out of the house would be beyond even such a hardened dog-disliker as Hugo Lattimer, so she was not unduly perturbed by the prohibition. Everyone yielded to Dante in the end. For the moment, though, she left him in disgrace and went in search of Beatrice, who had found her brood without the least difficulty and was once again ensconced in the hat box.

"And now I'll have to find you some food," Chloe murmured, frowning. Her stomach growled, asserting its own claims.

Sir Hugo had clearly been eating his breakfast in the kitchen-another odd circumstance. But with any luck, he would have finished by now and be out of the way. Samuel would be easier to manage.

Unfortunately, her guardian was still very much in evidence when she entered the kitchen. He was leaning back in a chair at the table, one booted leg negligently swinging over the arm, a tankard of ale in his hand. Samuel was clearing away dirty plates. They both turned to the door as she came in. "I'm rather hungry," she said, feeling awkward.

"Then Samuel will find you some breakfast," Hugo responded, looking at her over his shoulder.

"I had breakfast in Bolton at five o'clock this morning," Chloe pointed out, casting a rapid glance toward the open pantry door. She could see a milk chum, which would be a start for Beatrice, but not much comfort to Dante.

"Then he will find you a nuncheon," Hugo said, still observing her. "Now, what are you looking for? Or is it at again?"

Chloe's cheeks warmed. "Nothing."

Hugo regarded her thoughtfully. He didn't think Chloe Gresham was a very proficient prevaricator. "Don't fib," he advised. "It makes you go very pink." Not that that delicate blush did anything more than enhance her beauty.

Dear God, what was he thinking of? Quite apart from whose child she was, she was indecently young for a man in his thirty-fifth year to slaver over.

He thumped his tankard on the table and said crisply, "If you want something, lass, I suggest you come right out and ask."

"Well, I do usually," she replied, wandering toward the pantry in a rather roundabout fashion, as if to disguise her destination. "It usually saves a deal of time, but I don't think you're going to be sympathetic."

"Imagine you're lookin' for summat to give that cat of your'n," Samuel remarked as Chloe peered into the pantry.

"And just where is the cat'" demanded Hugo.

"In my room."

"Your room?" His eyebrows vanished into his scalp.

"Samuel told me to choose which I liked," she said, turning back to the kitchen. "I hope that was all right. It's a corner room, but there aren't any sheets on the bed. I was going to ask Samuel where I could find some."

Hugo closed his eyes. Things seemed to be getting out of hand. "You aren't staying here, Chloe."

"But where else am I to go?" The deep blue eyes took on a purplish hue, and he didn't like what he read in them. She was expecting something hurtful.

"I have to discuss it with Scranton," he said.

"Why does no one ever want me?" she said so softly he barely caught the words.

He swung his leg off the chair arm, stirred despite himself. "Don't be silly," he said, going over to her. "That's not it at all. You can't stay here because I don't have an appropriate household… you must see that, lass." He caught her chin, lifting it. Her eyes still had that purplish hue, but the soft mouth was set.

"I don't see why," she said. "I could keep house for you. Someone needs to."

"Not an heiress with a fortune of eighty thousand pounds," he said, smiling at this absurdity. "And Samuel keeps house for me."

"Not very well," she stated. "It's so dirty everywhere."

"Got enough to do, wi'out wonyin' over a peck o' dust," Samuel grumbled. "If you want to eat, miss, ye'd best come to the table. I can't spend all day in the kitchen."

"I have to feed Beatrice first," Chloe demurred. "She's suckling all those kittens."

Hugo seized the change of subject with relief. He had little to lose by accommodating her in this area. By this evening Chloe Gresham and her dependents would be respectably installed elsewhere. Scranton was bound to have some further information that would provide a solution. "I suppose she can stay upstairs for the time being. But the dog is not to come inside."

"I don't see why it should matter. The house is already so dirty, Dante isn't going to make it worse."

"Has nobody ever told you that it's extremely impolite to criticize one's hospitality?" Hugo demanded, good resolutions forgotten in the face of this intransigent refusal to accept the compromise. "Particularly when one is an uninvited guest."

"That's not my fault. If you bothered to read your letters-" she fired back. "Anyway, why don't you?"

"Because there is never anything of the slightest interest in them… if it's any of your business, miss," he snapped, stalking to the door. "I suggest you stop making a nuisance of yourself and eat your nuncheon." The door banged on his departure.

Why didn't he bother to open his mail? Hugo pondered the question as he went into the library, wondering also why he'd allowed himself to be drawn into a pointless squabble with an argumentative and irritating schoolgirl. No wonder the Misses Trent had been so ready to see the back of her. Ten years of that would try the patience of Job.

He picked up the pile of letters and glanced through them. The truth, of course, was that he didn't want any reminders of the past. He didn't want to hear news of the people he had once known so well. He didn't want anything to do with the world he had once inhabited. The memories of the past were so hideous, and he couldn't summon a spark of interest for the future. He hadn't been able to since the war ended, and he'd returned to his sadly deteriorated family home and the recognition that apart from Denholm Manor and an equally dilapidated house in London, he was without financial resources. What fortune he'd had he'd run through in those two years with the Congregation of

Eden before the duel. It hadn't been more than a competency, anyway, but with careful management he could have kept a wife, set up his nursery, maintained the estate, and even taken his wife to London for the Season. But one is not wise at eighteen, and his trustees had exerted no control over the willful, dissolute youth in their charge.

After the duel, in a frenzy of guilt and misery, he had ridden to Liverpool and taken the king's shilling aboard the frigate Hotspur. One year before the mast had stripped all vestige of privilege, of youthful excess, from him. It had honed and hardened him. At twenty-one he was promoted from the ranks to midshipman and, as the war took its toll, he moved rapidly upward. Within three years he was commanding his own ship of the line.

During those years he was able to forget… except at night, when the nightmares came a-visiting. They were relentless and as far as possible he chose not to sleep during the hours of darkness.

But with Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo had come peace. He'd taken his conge of the king's service and here he was, whiling away his days on the Lancashire moors and his nights in the Manchester stews.

And he was not interested in his mail.

He flung the letters down on the table and picked up a bottle from the sideboard. Its dusty coating indicated vintage rather than poor housekeeping. He glanced at the clock. Half past noon. A bit early for the first brandy of the day, but what did it matter? What did anything matter?

' Vvhy doesn't Sir Hugo open his mail?" Chloe asked

Samuel as she spread butter lavishly on a crust of bread.

"None of your business, like "e said" was the uncompromising response. Samuel dumped dishes in a bucket of water.

Chloe cut a wedge of cheese and chewed in silence for a minute. "Why are you the only servant'"

"Inquisitive, aren't you?"

"Perhaps… but why?"

"No need for anyone else. Do right enough on our own." Samuel walked to the door. "There's a chicken wing in the pantry. Reckon it'll do for that cat."

"And Dante?" Chloe said hastily, as he seemed about to disappear.

"E'U get what the hounds get. Ask young Billy in the stables." He opened the back door.

"And sheets," Chloe said. "Where will I find sheets for my bed?"

Samuel turned slowly. "Still reckon on stayin?" "Oh, yes," Chloe said with conviction. "I am going nowhere, Samuel."

He snorted, whether with derision or amusement, she couldn't tell. "There's prob'ly summat that'll do in the cupboard on the upstairs landing. 'Elp yourself."

Lawyer Scranton was a short, fat man with bristling white whiskers and a bald head. He rode into the courtyard on a round cob at the end of the afternoon and dismounted, huffing and puffing as he looked around.

Chloe observed him from her perch on top of an upturned rain barrel in the corner of the yard, then stood up and came over to him, Dante at her heels. "There's a lad called Billy who'll take your horse," she offered.

Scranton smoothed the skirts of his brown coat and adjusted his cravat, peering myopically at her. "Do I have the honor of addressing Miss Gresham?"

Chloe nodded solemnly, swallowing the bubble of laughter at this pomposity. "My guardian is in the house somewhere."

"I should hope so!" The lawyer huffed again. He was not accustomed to receiving brusque summonses, and Sir Hugo's had been imperious in its curt urgency. He cast a critical glance around the disheveled courtyard, littered with straw and manure. One of the stable doors hung crooked on its hinges.

A youth emerged from the tack room, sucking on a piece of straw. He kicked an iron bucket, sending it clattering across the cobbles, and sauntered over.

"This is Billy," Chloe said. "Will you take Mr. Scran-ton's horse, Billy?"

"Reckon so," the youth said, lethargically lifting the reins. He clicked his tongue against his teeth and the fat cob ambled off beside him to the stables.

"Shall we go in?" Chloe offered a hostess's smile even as she wondered which of the dust-laden gloomy rooms would be appropriate for entertaining the guest.

She preceded Lawyer Scranton up the steps. At the door she instructed a disconsolate Dante to stay, and went into the cool of the great hall. The heavier items of her luggage were still lying around, since she couldn't manage to carry them upstairs herself and had seen no one but Billy since her nuncheon in the kitchen.

She took a step toward the library, when the door opened and Hugo stood on the threshold, holding a glass and a bottle by its neck in one hand.

"Oh, there you are, Scranton," he said shortly. "Come into the kitchen. We have to sort this mess out. I hope to God you've got some answers."

The kitchen was certainly the most welcoming room in the house, Chloe reflected. The lawyer didn't seem taken aback at the invitation, and she followed the two men.

Hugo, his shoulder holding the door open for his visi tor, seemed to notice her for the first time. He frowned, then said, "Oh, well, I suppose it's as much your business as anyone's. Come on in."

"You weren't going to leave me out?" she demanded in some indignation, wondering why his eyes had become rather clouded.

'To tell you the truth, I hadn't thought about it one way or the other." He put his free hand between her shoulder blades and propelled her into the kitchen ahead of him.

Chloe was not surprised to see that Samuel was to be present at this discussion. He was dividing his attentions between a sirloin of beef turning on the spit in the fireplace and a basket of mushrooms he was picking through on the table.

The lawyer sat at the table and accepted a glass of port. Hugo refilled his own glass from the brandy bottle he held, and sat down. Chloe, who was feeling ignored, sat down and filled a glass of port for herself. She'd never drunk anything stronger than claret hitherto, and took a cautious sip. Hugo gave her a cursory glance, then turned back to Scranton, taking the copy of the will out of his pocket.

"What can be done about this, Scranton?" He slapped the document on the table. "There must be some way to have it overset."

Chloe sipped her port, deciding that the taste improved on acquaintance.

The lawyer shook his head. "As legal as any will I've seen, Sir Hugo. Drew it up myself at Lady Gresham's dictation. Her ladyship was in sound mind and it was witnessed by my clerk and the housekeeper."

Hugo looked at the date of the will. It was October 1818. Had he received Elizabeth's note by then? But he couldn't remember. It was another of those facts lost in brandy fumes.

"Of course, you're not the only one who'd like to see it overset." The lawyer waxed expansive over his second glass of port. "Sir Jasper's been creating such a ruckus. Storming around my office, swearing it couldn't stand in a court of law. But I told him it would stand up to anything. As legal as any will I've seen, I told him."

Hugo's chair scraped on the flagstones as he suddenly pushed back from the table, but he didn't say anything, his eyes were fixed with intensity on the lawyer.

"You should have heard him." The lawyer shook his head. "Such a pother. On and on he went about how he was Miss Gresham's brother-the only fit person to assume guardianship-and it wasn't fitting for a complete stranger with no ties to the family to have her in charge."

"He has a point," Hugo said dryly. And even more of a point if the truth of his dealings with the Greshams were ever to be revealed.

The lawyer seemed not to have heard him. "I told him that the law respects the wishes of the dead above all other claims in these matters, and as far as I could see, there was nothing more to be said."

Hugo sighed. The last thing he wanted was to find himself at daggers drawn with Jasper Gresham. A river of enmity ran between them already. But he knew that Elizabeth had chosen him because he would stand up to Jasper as no one else would. Chloe and her fortune would need protection from the Greshams, and he'd been designated to provide it. But there had to be a way to distance himself from his charge.

He glanced sideways at the girl, whose stillness and silence had been almost palpable during the lawyer's peroration. She reached for the port decanter again and he flung his hand out, catching her wrist.

"That's enough, lass. Samuel, fetch some… some lemonade, or something."

"But I'm enjoying the port," Chloe protested. "Don't have any lemonade anyways," Samuel de-dared, chopping mushrooms with a blinding speed.

"Water, then," Hugo said. "She's too young for port in the middle of the afternoon." "But you didn't object before," Chloe pointed out. "That was before," he said with a vague gesture. "Before what'"

Hugo sighed. "Before it was made irrevocably clear to me that I have no choice but to assume responsibility for you."

Imps of mischief danced suddenly in her deep blue eyes. "I can't believe you're going to be a prim and stuffy guardian, Sir Hugo. How could you be, living the way you do?"

Hugo was momentarily distracted by those enchanting eyes. He shook his head in an effort to dispel the confusing tangle of emotions and turned back to the lawyer, forgetting the issue of the port. Chloe, with a tiny smile of triumph, filled her glass. "I understand Miss Gresham was a pupil at a seminary in Bolton," Scranton was saying.

"Unfortunately, there was a lovelorn curate, a butcher's boy, and Miss Anne Trent's nephew," Hugo said with a wry grin. "The estimable Misses Trent found the lass too hot to hold. However, there must be another such establishment-"

"No!" Chloe broke in with a cry. "No, I will not go to another seminary. I absolutely will not." Her voice shook at the thought of being packed off yet again like some unwanted animal, banished again to a confinement that had become unendurable in its loneliness. "If you attempt such a thing, I shall simply run away."

Hugo swung his head toward her and the green eyes were no longer clouded. They held her gaze steadily, and she almost fancied little spurts of flame in their vivid depths. "Are you challenging me, Miss Gresham?" he asked very softly.

She wanted to say yes, but those little spurts of flame were too intimidating and the short word wouldn't get past her lips.

"It would be inadvisable to challenge me, you should understand," he continued in the same soft voice that had caused many a midshipman to shiver in his shoes. Chloe recognized the side of her guardian that she had encountered that morning in the bedroom. It was a side with which she had no particular wish to become reacquainted.

There was total silence in the kitchen. Samuel scraped chopped mushrooms into a pan as if oblivious of the tension. Lawyer Scranton stared up at the smoke-blackened timber of the ceiling.

"You don't understand," Chloe said finally in a much more moderate tone. "I couldn't bear it anymore." Then she turned her head away abruptly, biting her lip, desperately blinking away the tears crowding her eyes.

Hugo wondered if she realized how much more persuasive he found appeals to his sympathy than challenges to his authority. If she didn't understand it now, she soon would, if she spent much time under his roof. He remembered her desolate question earlier: Why does no one want me? The urge to scoop her up and cuddle her was as ridiculous as it was inappropriate, but he felt it nevertheless.

"What would you like to do?" he asked with a briskness that disguised his sudden compassion. "Where would you like to go?"

"To London." Chloe looked up, the tears miraculously dried. "I want to be presented at court and have my come-out. And then once I'm married and have my fortune, I want to establish an animal hospital. It shouldn't be too difficult to find a suitable husband," she added reflectively, "one who won't interfere too much. Eighty thousand pounds should count for something, and I'm quite pretty, I think."

Elizabeth's daughter had a talent for understatement, Hugo thought. "It shouldn't prove too difficult to find a husband," he agreed. "But whether you can find one willing to support your philanthropy, lass, I don't know. Husbands can be an unaccommodating breed, or so I've been told."

Chloe frowned. "Of course, Mama said Jasper intended me to marry Crispin. And that I certainly shouldn't care to do."

So that was it! Hugo drained his glass and reached again for the bottle. Simplicity itself. Jasper's stepson from his wife's former marriage would thus control Chloe's fortune. There was no bar to such a union-not a drop of consanguinity. Presumably, Elizabeth had intended him to forestall such a plan. "Why don't you care to?"

Her response was sharp and definite. "Crispin's a brute… just like Jasper. He rode his hunter into the ground once and brought him home foundered and bleeding from his spurs. Oh, and he used to pull the wings off butterflies. I'm sure he hasn't changed."

No, not a suitable mate for someone with a mission to succor needy members of the animal kingdom. "Why has that foul-mouthed parrot only got one leg?" he asked involuntarily.

"I don't know. I found him in Bolton. He'd been left in the gutter and it was raining."

"Beefs ready." Samuel made the laconic declaration as he turned the spit. "Lawyer stayin?"

Scranton looked anxiously to his host and received a calm "If you care to."

"Well, I daresay it'll be way past dinner when I get home," he said, rubbing his hands at the succulent aromas arising from the fireplace. "So I'll thank ye kindly."

"I'm starving," Chloe declared.

"Had enough bread and cheese for nuncheon to feed a regiment," Samuel commented, bringing the meat to the table.

"But that was hours ago. Shall I fetch knives and forks?"

"In the dresser."

That hideous dress did nothing to mask the grace of her movements, Hugo thought, watching her dance around his kitchen with an assumption of familiarity that filled him with foreboding. He went down to the cellar to bring up wine.

Chloe pushed her glass forward expectantly when he drew the cork.

"I've no objection to your drinking burgundy, but this is a particularly fine wine, so don't gulp it like orgeat," he cautioned, filling her glass.

Lawyer Scranton sipped and purred. Eating in the kitchen of a decaying manor house in the company of a man and his servant might be unusual, but there was no fault to be found with the fare.

Chloe seemed to agree. She consumed a quantity of rare beef, mushrooms, and potatoes that astounded Hugo, who wondered where in that tiny frame it could all be stored. Elizabeth, as he recalled, had had the appetite of a sparrow. He shook his head in a bemused gesture that was becoming all too familiar and returned to the issue of first importance.

"Scranton, you know both sides of Miss Gresham's family. Are there any female relatives she could go to?"

"Oh, you can't send me to stay with some elderly aunt who'll expect me to walk an overfed pug and polish the silver," Chloe said.

"I thought you liked animals."

"I do, but I prefer the ones that other people don't like."

Revealing, he thought, but said only, "Do you have such an aunt?"

"Not that I know of," Chloe said. "But there was a girl at the seminary who had one."

Someone else's aunt was not helpful. "Scranton?" Hugo appealed to the lawyer, who wiped his mouth with some deliberation and took another sip of his wine.

"Lady Gresham had no living relatives, Sir Hugo. Hence the size of Miss Gresham's fortune. I don't know about Sir Stephen's side of the family. But perhaps Sir Jasper would be of assistance there."

That was a dead end if he was to honor Elizabeth's unspoken wishes. "I suppose I could employ a governess-no don't interrupt again," he said sharply as Chloe's now-familiar expostulation began. "The lass could be established somewhere in the charge of a respectable female."

"And do what?" Chloe demanded.

It was not an unreasonable question, he was obliged to admit. However…

"I don't see any other solution. Your education isn't yet complete-"

"It's perfectly complete," she interrupted, forgetting the earlier stricture. "I can do everything any schoolroom miss can do, and a great deal else besides."

"Like what'"

"I can mend a bird's broken wing, and deliver a lamb. I know how to treat a sprained fetlock and foot rot-"

"I don't doubt it," he interrupted in his turn. "But it doesn't alter the facts."

"Why can't I stay here?" She asked the simple question almost without emphasis.

"And do what?" Hugo gave her her own again. "Lancashire is a long way from a come-out in London."

"Maybe not," she said quietly.

Now, what the hell did that mean? Hugo gave up. There was clearly nothing to be done tonight. "It seems there's little choice for the moment. You'll have to stay here tonight."

"I told you so," Chloe said to Samuel with a sweet smile, gathering up the dirty plates.

"Reckon you did," Samuel said.