Vixen (13 page)

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

“H
OW, IN THE NAME
of goodness, could three able-bodied idiots fail to lay hands on a seventeen-year-old chit?” Jasper Gresham stared in disbelief at the three men huddled in the dawn chill of the stable yard at Gresham Hall.

“It weren’t our fault, sir.” Jethro Grant, the only man still standing upright, spoke now for his wounded companions. “It was that dog from ’ell, bit Jake clean through ’is arm; and we wasn’t expectin’ no man with a knife on the road neither.” A truculent note entered his voice. “You didn’t say as ’ow there’d be any guards on ’er, Sir Jasper. Ned’s got a demmed great ’ole in ’is shoulder … beggin’ your pardon, sir.”

Jasper’s eyes, unreadable, untouchable, slithered over the man facing him and Jethro shivered, cleared his throat, and his shoulders slumped a little.

“And whose knife did this mighty assailant use?” Jasper demanded quietly. “Don’t make excuses for your incompetence. It was a simple enough task, and you botched it.” He turned on his heel.

Jethro looked in panic at his wounded companions, then spoke up again, a slight shrillness to his voice. “Sir Jasper … sir, what about our purse? A guinea apiece, you promised.”

Jasper spun around and Jethro shrank as the blank, shallow eyes seemed to flay him. “I pay for work done, not for the incompetence of a trio of fools. Get off my land.”

“But sir … sir…. Ned can’t work with that hole in ’is shoulder, and there’s kiddies to feed … six of ’em, sir, and another on the way.”

“Get off my land, the lot of you, before I set the dogs on you!”

“Oh, Jasper, is that quite fair?” The hesitant question came from a woman wrapped in a shawl, standing to one side of the stableyard.

“Are you questioning my judgment, madam?”

Louise Gresham’s rare moment of courage died as her husband looked through her. “No … no, of course not, sir. I wouldn’t do such a thing … it was only—” She fell silent.

“Only what, my dear?”

She shook her head abjectly. “Nothing … nothing at all.”

“You will catch cold out here, my dear. I’m sure you must have business to attend to in the house.” His voice was silky but the command was no less clear. Louise scuttled out of the yard, averting her eyes from the three men she had tried to champion.

“Crispin, see them off the premises.”

“Certainly, sir.” As his stepfather walked away, Crispin pushed himself away from the wall against which he’d been lounging. He strolled into the tack room and returned, carrying a heavy whip. His eyes gleamed with amusement as the three would-be kidnappers stumbled in terror toward the gate out of the yard. He pursued them lazily, cracking the whip at their heels until they had reached the end of the long drive and stood beyond the gateposts.

“Good day, gentlemen,” he said with a mocking bow, then retraced his steps, absently kicking the gravel over the blood so untidily shed by the wounded men.

His mother appeared out of the shadows as he entered the house. She thrust a handful of coins at him and
spoke in a scared whisper. “Crispin, you must give this to those men. Ned’s wife is about to have another baby, and if he can’t work, there’ll be no food….”

“Don’t be so soft, Mother.” Crispin glanced at the small pile of coins, guessing how long it had taken his mother to amass this pathetic sum from the pin money she managed to beg from her husband when in the direst necessity. He took her hand and dropped the coins into her palm. “If Sir Jasper discovers you’re trying to meddle—”

“Crispin, you mustn’t tell him!” Her hands flew to her worn cheeks and she looked in terror at her son.

Crispin shook his head with a dismissive contempt and stalked toward the breakfast parlor, where he would find his stepfather.

Louise stared after him and tried to remember her son in the days when he’d been a loving little boy … in the days before he’d come to regard his mother through the harsh, derisive eyes of his stepfather. And not just his mother, she thought, turning to go upstairs. And not just the women they took to the crypt. The whole female sex it seemed. Poor little Chloe. She’d been such a bright, lively child despite her mother’s illness and neglect. How long would it take Jasper and Crispin to break her too?

It didn’t occur to Louise for one minute that her husband and son would fail in their plans for Elizabeth’s daughter. Jasper wasn’t going to be put off by one setback.

“D
og’s come back, then,” Samuel observed, lifting a steaming kettle off the fire as Hugo entered the kitchen. The back door stood open, filling the room with the brilliant sunlight of mid-morning.

Hugo winced at the dazzle and ran his hands through his hair. “Where is he?”

“Miss took him outside for a walk.” Samuel glanced shrewdly at his employer and added an extra spoonful of coffee to the jug before pouring boiling water on the grounds.

Hugo swore and strode to the door. “Hasn’t she got a grain of common sense? Wandering all over the countryside after last night!”

“Don’t suppose she’s gone far.” Samuel stirred the coffee. “Not in ’er nightgown and wi’ no shoes.” He poured a mug of the thick black aromatic liquid. “Anyways, what about last night?”

Hugo didn’t immediately answer. He turned back to the room, demanding in exasperation, “You’re not telling me she’s gone outside again in her nightgown?”

“Dog was in a powerful ’urry,” Samuel offered in explanation, pushing the mug across the table.

Hugo took it, cupping his hands around its warmth, inhaling deeply of its fragrance. It cleared his head. “Any strangers around here yesterday, while I was in Manchester?”

Samuel nodded. “A fellow wantin’ casual work. ’E fixed the ’enhouse roof … did quite a decent job.”

“Could he have taken the dog?”

Samuel’s faded blue eyes sharpened with intelligence. “Reckon so, while young Billy was havin’ ’is dinner.”

Hugo told him the events of the night up to the moment when he’d thrown the bolt on the front door, his ward and the dog safely inside.

“Chloe’s convinced they were after the dog, but I’m not so sure it’s as simple as that,” he concluded. He debated sharing with Samuel his suspicions of Jasper’s involvement, but to do that he would have to reveal some of the hideous tangle of the past, and he couldn’t face that.

“Until I can decide what’s best to do, she’ll have to be watched all the time … but don’t make too much of it. I don’t see any point alarming her unnecessarily.”

Samuel’s sharp eyes didn’t waver. He heard much that was unspoken, but he was accustomed to Hugo’s secrecy and knew better than to probe.

Hugo strode back to the door. As he looked impatiently out at the walled kitchen garden, an exuberant Dante came bounding from the orchard beyond, tail flying. Chloe followed the dog, the long skirts of the kitchen overcoat trailing in the grass.

At least she’d taken the point about wandering around in a skimpy nightgown. Hugo’s eyes were riveted to her bare feet. They were the most beautiful feet, long and slender with high arches, straight pink toes, and lovely rosy heels. But then, one wouldn’t expect perfection to be marred even by something as insignificant as feet. His head swam. Somehow he had to forget what had happened in his brandy-sodden trance. He had to compel Chloe to forget what had happened … or at least to put it behind her as an aberration stemming from the excitement and confusion of the night’s events.

It would never happen again, and the greatest service he could do her now would be to kill in her whatever bud of passion awaited watering.

“In future, you are not to go outside without an escort,” he snapped, standing aside as she came up to the door. “In fact, you’re not to go farther than the courtyard without my permission. It’s completely inappropriate for you to be roaming the countryside unescorted. You’re not a milkmaid.”

Whatever greeting she’d been intending died on her lips and she gazed up at him, such aching vulnerability in her eyes that his heart turned over. He continued with the same harshness. “And since that damn dog gets into trouble at the drop of a hat, you are to keep him with
you at all times. If you can’t control him, then he goes. Is it understood?”

Hurt and confusion stood out for a moment in her eyes, and then were abruptly replaced by a flash of defiant anger, and her firm, round chin tilted. “A puzzling volte-face, Sir Hugo, since only yesterday you were forbidding Dante the house. Or am I to be confined to the stable also?”

“If you continue in that vein, my child, you will discover I have a short way with insolence,” he said with the softness that Chloe knew denoted danger.

“Dante will need exercise,” she pointed out, standing her ground. “A two-year-old dog can’t be kept indoors indefinitely.”

“Samuel or Billy will take him for a decent walk once a day.” Hugo turned away with a dismissive gesture that infuriated her as much as it hurt her.

“I also need more exercise than pacing around the courtyard,” she fired back.

He swung back to her, his eyes narrowed. “I suggest you occupy yourself about the house, in that case. You’ve cast enough aspersions on its general state of cleanliness. I should imagine you’d be happy to kill two birds with one stone. I’m certain scrubbing and polishing will be sufficient exercise.”

“I thought it wasn’t a fit occupation for an heiress of eighty thousand pounds,” she retorted, her voice shaking with fury. She had no idea why she was being targeted in this way any more than she understood why it had happened last night, but her spirit rebelled at the injustice and at this moment she couldn’t imagine ever feeling anything more than dislike for her guardian.

“You may as well make yourself useful,” he said, shrugging.

Blindly, Chloe picked up the nearest hard object,
which turned out to be the breadboard, and hurled it, bread and all, across the kitchen.

Hugo ducked sideways, but the missile had been unaimed and crashed against the wall with a resounding crack. The loaf had departed in flight and fell to the floor under Dante’s nose. He sniffed at it, a long tongue drooling.

Chloe sprang for the hall door and Dante, abandoning his unexpected prize, charged after her. The door slammed on their departure. Samuel bent to pick up the bread. He examined it critically. “Bit ’ard on the lass, weren’t you?” He dusted the loaf off on his apron. “What’s she gone an’ done to get the rough edge o’ your tongue?”

“Mind your own business, damn you!” Hugo flung down his coffee mug. “Just make sure she keeps that dog with her as protection, and keep an eye on her.” He stalked out of the kitchen.

Samuel heard his feet on the cellar steps. He scratched his nose, frowning. In the past fourteen years he’d stood beside Hugo Lattimer under cannon fire and musket shot. He’d watched the twenty-year-old lad grow into the wisdom and maturity of a victorious commander. And he’d sat with him through the bouts of black depression over the brandy bottle during every shore leave. He’d never known what caused the blackness, although he sensed the deep self-directed anger that fueled it.

He’d accepted the moods phlegmatically, secure in the knowledge that as soon as they hauled anchor, his friend would become again the cheerful, quick-thinking, authoritative commander, secure, too, in the belief that no young man of Hugo’s character and abilities could live forever under such a bitter curse of self-contempt. Something would happen to repair the breaches in his soul.

But with the return to Denholm Manor, the depressions had become more frequent and intense. Again Samuel was vouchsafed no explanation, but he guessed that it was the proximity to the past that triggered them—that and the lack of purpose in Hugo’s present existence. And the brandy merely exacerbated the misery. Patiently, he’d sat it out, trusting that something would happen to put things right.

Then the girl arrived. She was a bright, lively young thing with a streak of independence and determination that would require firm handling. Samuel had hoped she’d be just the thing to take Sir Hugo’s mind off his troubles.

Now Samuel was beginning to suspect that Miss Gresham had gone a lot further than that. Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen.

He heard Hugo’s returning footsteps on the cellar stairs. They crossed the hall and the library door banged. Presumably he was shutting himself away for a long session with whatever he’d fetched up from the cellar. Samuel sighed. Clearly, at the moment the advent of Miss Gresham was
not
helpful.

Hugo opened the bottle and poured himself a drink. His head was beginning to ache and only more brandy would dull the pain. He walked to the window, staring out at the overgrown garden. A climbing rose much in need of pruning straggled across the window, tangling with a rampant honeysuckle, filling the room with their mingled scents. Chloe’s special fragrance suddenly seemed to hang in the air, a tantalizing memory so vivid as to be almost real.

With a muttered oath he turned from the window and his eye fell on the couch where they had tangled with such sudden and all-consuming passion. The stain of her virgin blood glared at him in dark reproof.