Vixen

Chapter 6

"Where's Dante?" Chloe slipped from her pony in the courtyard and looked around, frowning.

v v The dog's absence was conspicuous. It was inconceivable that he wouldn't have come rushing to greet her.

Hugo dismounted and yelled for Billy. The lad appeared from the direction of the kennels, swinging an empty pail. He set the pail down and came toward them, rather less lethargically than usual.

"I was feedin' the dogs, sir." He tugged a forelock and then stared in unabashed disgust at the turnip seller's nag. "What's that?"

"You may well ask," Hugo said. "Where's Miss Gresham's dog?"

Billy scratched his head. "Well, I don't rightly know." He gestured to the pump. "I 'ad 'im fastened over yonder. But 'e up an' went when I went for me dinner."

"Did he break the rope?"

Billy shook his head. "Don't look like it, sir. Rope looks like it's gone an' untied itself."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Chloe stalked across to the pump. The rope was not frayed or broken. "You must have tied him insecurely."

"He'll be back, lass," Hugo said, seeing her expression. "How long's he been gone, Billy?"

" 'Bout an hour, I reckon, sir."

"He's chasing rabbits in the wood, I'll lay odds," Hugo reassured her. "He'll be back covered in mud and starving as soon as it gets dark."

Chloe frowned unhappily. "I'll look for him when I've seen to Rosinante."

"You've christened that sorry beast Rosinante?" Hugo gave a shout of laughter. "You absurd creature."

"Rosinante was a fairly sorry animal," Chloe retorted. "Anyway, I've always liked the name. And he'll grow into it, won't you?" She scratched between the ears of the nag's hanging head. "Billy, I want you to make up a bran mash. I'm going to do something about his cuts."

Hugo turned toward the house, inquiring with a degree of curiosity, "By the by, what name does the parrot rejoice in?"

"Falstaff," she said promptly. "I'm sure he's had a thoroughly dissolute life."

Chuckling, Hugo went inside.

Chloe bathed Rosinante's wounds, fed him warm bran mash, and installed him in a stable with a lavish supply of hay.

"I'm going to look for Dante," she said, entering the kitchen. "It's getting dark."

Hugo, gratefully ensconced before a bottle of burgundy, squashed the uncomfortable conviction that he ought to abandon his wine and accompany her himself.

"Take Billy with you, since it's largely his responsibility."

"What if I don't find him?" Her eyes were purple.

"I'll go out with you after dinner," he promised. "But be back here in half an hour."

Chloe returned punctually but empty-handed and sat miserably at the table, picking at the laden plate Samuel put in front of her.

"Summat wrong wi' it?" he demanded roughly.

She shook her head. "No, I'm sorry… I'm not hungry"

"That's a first," Samuel remarked to no one in particular.

"Have some wine." Hugo filled her glass. "And eat your dinner. You only think you're not hungry."

Chloe chewed a mouthful of chicken. It tasted like sawdust. She drank her wine with rather more enthusiasm and by the second glass was beginning to feel more cheerful. Dante was a young, healthy dog who hadn't had too many opportunities to roam the countryside, chasing up scents.

"Wretched animal!" she exclaimed crossly, and attacked her dinner. There was no point going hungry because the exasperating creature was doing what dogs, given half a chance, did.

"That's better," Hugo approved. "What are you going to do with him when he does decide to return?"

"Nothing," Chloe said. "What could I do? He doesn't know he's doing anything wrong… in fact, he's not. He's just being a dog."

But the knowledge that Dante would never choose to spend this amount of time away from her obtruded through wine-induced buoyancy.

By midnight she was distraught and Hugo at point non plus. All three of them had stumbled across fields by the light of an oil lantern, trod cautiously through the tinder-dry wood, and called until they were hoarse.

"Go to bed, lass." Hugo leaned wearily against the kitchen door to close it. "He'll be outside in the morning, a picture of penitence."

"You don't know him," she said, the catch in her voice accentuated by unshed tears.

But Hugo had formed a pretty fair impression of Dante and didn't believe for one minute that his continued absence from his beloved owner's side was voluntary. However, he strove to keep that from Chloe.

"It's time you were in bed," he said again. "There's nothing more to be done tonight."

"But how can I sleep?" she cried, pacing the kitchen.

"Supposing he's hurt… in a trap…" She covered her face with her hands as if to block out the images of Dante in agony.

" 'Ot milk and brandy," Samuel declared, setting the oil lamp on the table. "That'll send 'er off like a babby."

"Heat some milk, then," Hugo said. He took Chloe's shoulders and spoke with calm authority. "Go upstairs and get ready for bed. I'll bring you up something to help you sleep in a minute. Go on." He turned her with a brisk pat on the behind. "You can do Dante no good by pacing the floor all night."

There was sense in that, and she was bone-weary. It had been a long and exhausting day after a disturbed night. Chloe dragged herself upstairs. She put on her nightgown and sat beside the hat box, trying to take comfort from the contentment of Beatrice and her now-much-prettier offspring.

Downstairs, Hugo contemplated lacing the milk with laudanum rather than brandy. But then he thought of Elizabeth, slipping into addiction. Maybe such tendencies could be passed on. He slurped a liberal dose of brandy into the beaker Samuel filled with milk and took it upstairs.

He tapped lightly on the door to the corner room and went in. Chloe was sitting on the floor. She looked up as he entered, her eyes huge in her white face. He remembered how young she was, but he also remembered fourteen-year-old midshipmen who'd witnessed death and suffered agonizing deaths of their own under his command. Seventeen was mature enough to handle the emotional stresses of a missing dog.

"Into bed, lass." He put the beaker on the table beside the bed. "In the morning, you'll be able to deal with it."

She didn't argue. "It's not knowing, that's all," she said, scrambling to her feet. "I could accept his death… I just find it hard to think of him suffering alone somewhere." She pushed her hair away from her face and regarded him seriously. "You mustn't think that I count the suffering of a dog above the suffering of people. But I do love Dante."

Perfectly mature enough to handle the emotional stresses of a missing dog… and some. Without conscious thought, he put his arms around her and she hugged his waist fiercely, her head resting against his chest. He cupped her chin in the palm of his hand and turned her face up, lowering his head.

He had intended an avuncular kiss on the brow, or perhaps the tip of her nose. But instead he kissed her mouth. All might still have been well if it had been a light brushing of lips. But as his lips met hers, a heady, intoxicating rush of blood surged through his veins, driving all else from his mind but the warmth of her skin through the thin shift, the delicate curve of her body in his arms, the press of her breasts against his chest. His hold tightened as he possessed her mouth with a fervent urgency and she responded, her lips opening for the probing tongue, her arms gripping his waist. Her scent of lavender and clover honey engulfed him, tinged now with the spice of arousal… and for too long he yielded to the intoxication, exploring her mouth, encouraging her own tentative exploration, his hands sliding to her bottom, kneading the firm flesh, clamping her to the rising shaft of his body.

Too long he yielded to temptation, and when reality finally broke into entrancement, he pushed her from him with a roughness that could almost have been engendered by revulsion. For a moment he took in her swollen, kiss-reddened lips, her tousled hair, the excitement in her eyes, now the color of a midnight sky. With a soft execration he turned from her and left the room. Chloe touched her lips wonderingly. Her heart was pounding, her skin damp; her hands trembled. She could feel the imprint of his body on hers, his hands pressing her against him. And she was on fire, a surging maelstrom of emotions and sensations that as yet she had no name for.

Dazed, she picked up the beaker of cooling milk and drank it down, the brandy curling in a hot wave in the pit of her stomach, bringing insidious relaxation to her already heavy limbs. She blew out the candle and climbed into bed, pulling the sheet up to her chin, lying still and flat on her back, staring up into the moonlit dimness, waiting for the fire to die down, for some words to come to mind that would make sense of what she was feeling… of what had just happened to her.

Hugo walked slowly downstairs, cursing himself. How had he allowed himself such a piece of flagrant self-indulgence? And the memory of her eager response lashed at him even further. He was her guardian, a man she trusted. She lived under his roof, subject to his authority, and he'd taken shameless advantage of his position and her innocence.

Samuel looked up as Hugo entered the kitchen, watched as he swept up the brandy bottle from the table, and left again, the door banging shut behind him. Samuel recognized the signs, and sighed. Something had happened to send him into one of his black tempers, from which sometimes he wouldn't emerge for days.

Music drifted in from the library. Samuel listened, recognizing Beethoven's strong chords. Anger was the driving force at the moment. When the bleak despair was on him, Hugo played the most desolate passages of Mozart or Haydn. Samuel preferred the anger-recovery was usually speedier.

The library was beneath Chloe's bedchamber, and the strains of the pianoforte came clearly through her open window. She'd heard him playing the night before, a haunting melody that couldn't drown out Dante's howls. The power of this music would drown groans from heil. A wave of sleepiness broke over her, and she turned over, pulling the sheet over her head.

She didn't know how long she slept, but something brought her awake and upright in the same movement. The music had stopped and the night seemed blacker. She sat unmoving, straining her ears to catch the sound that had awakened her. Then she heard it again. It was faint but unmistakable. A dog was barking frantically.

"Dante," she whispered. She jumped out of bed and ran to the window. She listened, trying to pinpoint the direction of the frenzied barking. Her room faced the front of the house and the side opposite to the courtyard, but if she craned her neck she could see the gravel driveway winding down to the road. The sound was coming from somewhere along the driveway. But why? He must be hurt, or stuck.

She ran from the room, her bare feet making no sound on the wooden floor, down the staircase, and across the hall. She stubbed her toe on an uneven flagstone and her cry of pain, hastily bitten back, sounded loud in the creaking quiet of the house.

She listened, but to her relief it seemed that she hadn't awakened anyone. Dante had already caused enough upheaval without dragging the two reluctant men from their beds at dead of night.

She opened the door quietly and slipped outside, pulling it to gently behind her. Clouds had come up and the stars were now mostly hidden, making the night much blacker than it had been. She wondered what time it was, wishing she'd thought to look at the clock in the hall.

An owl hooted and there was a sudden screech of a small animal's terror and pain. But the barking had ceased.

Chloe knew she hadn't imagined it. She ran lightly down the steps to the courtyard, the cobblestones cold beneath her feet. A breeze stirred, freshened with the coming of dawn, and she shivered as it pressed her nightgown to her body. She hesitated, thinking of the overcoat behind the kitchen door. But when she heard a faint yelping on the breeze, she forgot the cold and ran down the driveway, heedless of the gravel pricking the soles of her feet.

Hugo had heard her cry from the hall, but it took many minutes to penetrate the brandy stupor he had finally achieved as he sat slumped over the keyboard, a candle guttering beside him.

He raised his head, blinking fuzzily, listening, but there were only the usual night creaks of the sleeping house. He shook his head and let it drop onto his folded arm again; one finger of his free hand began picking out the melody of a piece by Scarlatti. But slowly, a prickle of unease penetrated his semi-conscious trance. He raised his head again, listening. There was still no sound, but he had the unmistakable conviction that something was missing from the house.

Chloe? She was sound asleep above him, knocked out by brandy and milk and physical and emotional exhaustion. His head dropped and then lifted again. He pushed himself off the bench and stood for a second swaying as he tried to marshal his senses. He'd go upstairs and satisfy himself that she was asleep in her bed and then perhaps he'd be able to pass out in his own bed.

Staggering slightly, he negotiated the obstacles in the library and stepped into the hall. A gust of wind blew the unlatched front door open, and he blinked at it, puzzled. Then the puzzlement left him and his head cleared somewhat.

again! Presumably, she'd gone out in search of that damned mongrel-wandering around the countryside all alone in the dead of night. Hadn't she the faintest sense of self-preservation? It was a relief to turn his anger on someone outside himself, and a relief to recast her in the image of a stubborn, exasperating schoolgirl with a proclivity for scrapes that urgently required curbing.

He strode to the door, his step becoming firmer with each one as the brandy fumes cleared. He stared down into the shadows of the courtyard. There was no sign of her. He couldn't guess how long it had been since he'd heard the first alerting noise. It could have been anything from five minutes to twenty-brandy played merry hell with a man's sense of time.

Then he heard a dog's bark, faint but frenzied, coming from the direction of the bottom of the driveway. It explained Chloe's expedition, although it didn't excuse its recklessness. Why the hell hadn't she called him?

He set off down the drive, following the sound. The trees lining the driveway formed an archway, blocking out what little moonlight the intermittent clouds let through. He peered ahead, trying to catch the sounds of her footsteps or the glimmer of her shape. The barking grew closer and the frenzied note was even more pronounced. The dog must be trapped somewhere. He increased his speed, thankful that he knew the twists and turns of the drive like the back of his hand.

He called her name several times, but there was no reply. Presumably, intent on listening to Dante's barking, she had ears for nothing else. He emerged from the avenue of trees at the bottom of the drive and then the barking ceased. A sense of foreboding sent a chill through his gut.- Without knowing why, he began to run toward the crumbling stone gateposts. As he reached them, a scream, abruptly cut off, shivered on the air.

He hurtled onto the narrow lane outside his estate. Frantically, he gazed up and down the lane as a crescendo of barks deafened the night. He could make out a group of moving shadows a hundred yards down the lane. An agonized yelp interrupted the barking and the shadows wreathed in some kind of frenetic dance. The indecisive moon chose that moment to emerge, and the knives in their belts glinted.

It had to be Jasper, there was no other explanation. And then he had but one thought as he veered sideways into the undergrowth: He had no weapon. And whatever was going on, it was violent and one unarmed man would be no match for the three shapes he could make out. Three… no four. But the fourth was on the ground, a shapeless bundle wrapped in something.

Somehow, he had to separate them. One he could take on, but no more. He could hear their voices now and Dante's alternate barks and yelps. Then he heard Chloe's voice as furious as she liad been that afternoon with the turnip seller. She was yelling at them to leave her dog alone. He couldn't see so could only guess that she'd somehow freed herself from her wrappings. Praying that she'd have the strength to distract them for a few moments longer, he crept on his belly until he was alongside the scene.

Dante caught his scent and began another frantic whirligig at the end of the rope that Hugo now saw bound him. Someone swore and turned on the dog, a knife lifted.

ChSoe hurled herself across the lane and grabbed his arm, her teeth sinking into his hand. The knife clattered to the ground, six inches from Hugo.

He had it in his hand while the other two men were grappling with Chloe, flinging a blanket over her head, struggling to restrain her wildly thrashing limbs in the suffocating folds. Hugo sliced through the rope holding Dante, and the dog leapt for the throat of one of the men holding Chloe. He went down with a shrill scream of terror.

One down, one unarmed. Hugo sprang for the third man's back. His knife sank into his shoulder. The man spun around, a look of total surprise on his face, his hand flying to his shoulder. Hugo reached forward and yanked his knife out of his belt.

He had no way of telling whether he had disarmed his opponents or whether one of them might produce a pistol. Either way, he was still one against three, and the odds, even with Dante, were not good enough to stay around and ask questions. Surprise was his last card.

Chloe was still struggling with the blanket, and he simply picked her up, maneuvered her slight weight over his shoulder, and again dived sideways into the undergrowth. He had no desire to present a running target for a pistol shot, and he had a boyhood's knowledge of the rough terrain.

Dante crashed through the bushes at his side and Hugo was capable of one grateful prayer that this time the dog didn't consider him the enemy, for all his rough handling of his mistress.

Chloe had the sense to lie still despite her shock and the violently jolting progress. Her head and arms were still buried in the stuffy folds of the blanket and she'd seen nothing of what had happened. But she knew who held her and she could hear Dante, so she lay limp and tried not to sneeze.

There were no sounds of pursuit. Hugo slowed as they broke through the underbrush onto the driveway of Denholm Manor. Chloe struggled, trying to bring her imprisoned arms up to free her head.

"Keep still." It was a curt instruction and she opened her mouth to respond, but the words were lost in a hairy mouthful of blanket. She sneezed violently.

Hugo used a word she'd never heard before and increased his pace. Until they were safely behind his own locked door, he wasn't prepared to stop to unravel her.

Dante, tail waving furiously, bounded up the steps into the house, his exuberance clearly unaffected by his recent ordeal. Hugo slammed the door behind him and threw the heavy iron bolt that he rarely used. He carried Chloe into the library. Only then did he set her on her feet and pull the swaddling blanket away from her.

"Who was it?" she said. "Why would anyone want to kidnap Dante? Do you think they thought he was valuable… I know he's unusual, but…"

For a minute Hugo was taken aback. She hadn't seen herself as the target of the attack. But then, why should she? She had almost no sense of self-importance, and it probably made better sense to her that her adored dog should be coveted than that anyone should have designs on herself.

Her face was pink and hot, strands of hair sticking to her cheeks, her eyes wide with a curious wonder rather than fear. She tossed her hair back and sneezed again. Hugo's heart turned over. She'd suffered enough rejection in her lonely life without being told that her family intended her harm… that she was of value to her kin only in terms of her fortune. Desperately, he resisted the urge to bundle her into his arms.

"I have not the slightest idea why anyone should be mad enough to want that ridiculous animal," he exploded. "For God's sake, just look at you! You've been told once about running around loose in nothing but your nightgown. And where the hell are your shoes? You'll catch your death of cold! And what the devil did you think you were doing anyway? Why didn't you call me when you heard Dante barking?"

At the sound of his name, Dante pricked up his ears. His tail thumped.

Chloe could never later analyze why she did what she did next. Earlier in the evening Hugo had awakened her from the chrysalis of her girlhood. Then she had been assaulted and terrorized, rage and fear coursing through her. And then she'd been rescued as suddenly and as violently as she'd been attacked. It seemed to her now that nothing ordinary could ever happen to her again.

Following blind instinct, she flung her arms around Hugo's waist and looked up at him, her head on his chest, her eyes dark with emotion. "Please don't be vexed," she begged, the catch in her voice as richly sensual as anything he had ever heard. "Please, Hugo."

The last tenuous thread of his resistance snapped. His arms went around her; a cupped palm molded the curve of her cheek. "I'm not vexed," he murmured, adding almost as a prayer. "I wish to God I were."

"Kiss me." She stood on tiptoe, reaching her arms around his neck, her small hands cupping his scalp, pulling his head down to her.

Hugo inhaled sharply at the soft yet insistent command, and all the preconceptions of his universe tilted as her lips locked onto his with a hungry assurance that had no place in the world of seminaries. She tasted of milk and brandy, of innocence and experience, and her body in his hands was soft and sinuous, hard and determined by turns.

He moved a hand to her breast, closing over the soft mound, his thumb stroking the hard bud of the nipple beneath her shift. She shuddered against him and her mouth opened to him, her body arching as she thrust her breast against his palm.

Chloe was adrift, storm-tossed on a wild sea of sensation. It was as it had been earlier, with that first kiss, and this time she was determined not to lose the sensation, but to follow the path to its end. Her mind held no sway over her responses as she drank greedily of his tastes and drew in the powerful male scents of his body.

He lifted her against him, his mouth still joined to hers, and placed her on the couch, coming down with her. Her nightgown rode high on her thighs. Impatiently, he pushed it to her waist, bending to kiss her belly, to curl his fingers in the silky fleece at the apex of her thighs.

Chloe cried out softly as he parted the fleece and found the core of her sensitivity. She was aware only of a wild excitement, of delight swirling and raging through her veins.

He slipped one hand beneath her, lifting her as he pulled the nightgown over her head, letting her fall back naked on the faded velvet cushions. She shifted on the cushions, her eyes half closed, glorying in the feel of her nakedness, in the pulsing stimulation of arousal.

Her arms lifted to him and he came down on top of her, his mouth closing again over hers as their tongues warred, danced, plunged in a wild spiral of passion that excluded all but the urgency of desire. Her legs curled around him, pressing her opened body instinctively against the erect shaft rising against his britches. With the same instinct her tongue darted, dancing in the corner of his mouth, running over his lips in a tingling, tantalizing caress.

Hugo tugged at the waistband of his britches, and her hands were helping him, pushing the restraining garment off his hips, then running in greedy exploration beneath his shirt, over the narrow hips, enclosing the burning, throbbing root that lifted to her touch.

There was a moment when he paused on the threshold of her eagerly welcoming body, a vague sense of unease hovering at the edges of passion. He looked down at her. Her eyes were closed, her face lost in joy. Then the thick golden eyelashes swept up, and her eyes like a midnight sky carried both appeal and a passion that matched his own.

"Please," she whispered, lifting her hand to touch his mouth.

Delicately, he guided himself within the moist, tender portal. He checked when he sensed the resistance of her maidenhead, and his muscles strained under the effort of will. But her hands went to his buttocks, gripping with urgent demand, and he yielded with a soft exhalation of release. For a second Chloe couldn't breathe as a taut fullness stretched her body, and then it gave way and her low cry was more a sigh of relief than a cry of pain.

Hugo touched the corner of her mouth, stroked her damp temples, moved his hand to her breast, sliding his thumb over the pliant, responsive peak. He felt her relax, supple and open, and he eased deeper.

Pleasure raced through her from one nerve ending to another. She began to move with him, reveling in the joy of fusion. The bud of joy began to blossom, her muscles tightened in expectation of she knew not what. Then he withdrew to the very edge of her body and she lay beneath him, taut as a bowstring. He smiled down at her, knowing how she felt, knowing how close she was to fulfillment. With great deliberation he drove to the very center of her self and the bud burst into full flower. It was a long time before she moved beneath him, shifting on the cushions as the liquid dissolution of muscle and sinew faded and she came back to a sense of herself and the world around her. Hugo's body was heavy on hers, his head turned away from her on the cushions. She touched his back, where his shirt clung damply to his skin, feeling suddenly shy.

Slowly, Hugo sat up. He looked at her face in silence, a devastated look in his eyes that terrified her. She opened her mouth to say something… anything to break the silence. But the words were stillborn under that brooding green gaze. Instead, she tried to smile.

Hugo rose to his feet. He stood beside the couch, staring down at her. He saw the wanton sprawl of her naked body-the pose of a body that a man has just left. He saw the smite-the seductive smile of a lover. Her voice was still in his ears, demanding her fulfillment. He could feel her hands on his own skin, arousing, tantalizing, insistent. He saw a girl v/hose trust he'd violated as surely as he'd violated her innocence, but he also saw a seductress-a woman who'd had no doubt about the power of her beauty or of how to use that power.

Thoughts and images tumbled in his head. He could see Elizabeth in her daughter, but Elizabeth had had no passion, no hungers. She had been as pure and fragile as crystal despite her husband's attempts to sully her purity.

But Elizabeth's daughter was also Stephen's daughter. A man of passions and deep hungers. And it seemed to Hugo, looking at the abandonment of the woman he'd just initiated, that her father's passions and hungers ran as deeply and as virulently in the daughter.

God help him, but she would have enjoyed the crypt.

The unbidden, loathsome thought brought bile to his mouth, and black spots danced before his eyes. He snatched up her discarded nightgown. "Cover yourself."

The rasping command was so shocking after the silence that Chloe made no attempt to take the garment from him. She lay unmoving, gazing up at him, dismay chasing the soft glow from the blue depths of her eyes.

Hugo dropped the shift on her belly. "Cover yourself." he repeated. "And then go upstairs to your room." He turned from her, pulling up his britches with shaking hands.

In shock and disbelief Chloe sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the couch. Then she just sat there, holding her nightgown on her knees, too stunned to move. Hugo spun around. "Did you hear what I said?" Roughly, he pulled her to her feet. "I told you to put this on." He picked up her nightgown, dropped it over her head, and pushed her arms into the sleeves. "Now go up to your room."

"I don't understand," she whispered, crossing her arms and hugging her breasts. "What have I done?" She quailed before the look in his eyes, where vipers of rage and disgust darted at her. "Get out! Now."

She ran from the room, Dante at her heels. Hugo stood staring into the empty hearth, his mind skittering. Perhaps it hadn't happened… perhaps in a brandy trance he had dreamed it. Brandy played such tricks sometimes, so that one didn't always know what was true and what was fantasy.

But denial was a child's trick to escape consequences, and after a minute he went to close the door Chloe had left open. He glanced sideways at the couch. There was a dark stain on the faded velvet cushion where she'd been lying.

He sat down at the pianoforte, staring bleakly out at the dawn breaking beyond the window. Chloe had not been responsible. Her seductive behavior had been that of a young girl trying her wings. She didn't know her own power any more than she knew not to yield to swirling emotions and hungers she'd never before encountered. It had been his responsibility to provide the control. A sharp snub would have finished the business once and for all… Instead…

Hugo picked up the brandy bottle and hurled it against the paneled wall.