Vixen (9 page)

“Leaving aside any plans
I
might have for my life,” he
said, still humorously, “just how do you intend we should establish ourselves in London?”

“In your house, of course. We can use my fortune to make it habitable and to pay for my come-out, which I believe is excessively expensive, what with a court dress and a come-out ball and everything.”

Hugo took a deep breath. “My child, there is an extremely unpleasant word for a man who helps himself to his ward’s fortune.”

“But that’s not what would be happening at all!” she exclaimed. “We would be using my money to benefit me. I have to have somewhere to live and a come-out. This is the simplest way of doing it, and if it benefits you, too, then all the better.”

Hugo’s patience ran out with his sense of humor. “I have never heard such arrant nonsense,” he stated. “I have absolutely no intention of going to London, and if you wish to do so, then you will have to find yourself a suitable chaperone.”

“But you are a suitable chaperone.”

“I am not. Even if I wanted to be, it’s absurd. You need a respectable lady with entrees into the first circles.”

“Don’t you have entrees?”

“Not anymore,” he said shortly. “And if I hear another word of this idiocy, you’ll spend the rest of your ward-ship in brown serge.”

Chloe closed her lips tightly. She had planted the seed, and maybe that was as far as she could expect to go in one day.

B
ack in the courtyard, Dante continued to howl. He’d been tied to the pump to keep him from following his mistress and strained desperately at the leash, nearly choking himself.

A man in laborer’s smock sauntered into the courtyard. “What’s the matter with ’im?”

“Oh, ’e can’t abide being wi’out Miss,” Billy said. “You want summat?”

“Casual work,” the man said, continuing to look at the dog with interest. “What’d ’appen if you let ’im go?”

“Reckon ’e’d be off afta ’er, like as not. Should’ve ’eard him ’owling last night, when Master wouldn’t let ’im in the ’ouse.”

“Powerful attachment that’d be,” the laborer mused. “’Appens like that sometimes, though.”

“Aye,” agreed Billy. “If’n you want work, ye’d best talk to Samuel. ’Ell be in the kitchen, I reckon. Back door’s thataway.” He gestured with his chin toward the back of the house.

“Thankee, lad.” The man followed the directions.

W
hen they entered the city of Manchester, Hugo led his ward to the George and Dragon, where they left their horses.

“We’ll go to the bankers first,” Hugo said as their horses were led off to the stables.

“Immediately?” Chloe looked wistfully toward the open door of the inn, from whence emanated the most enticing aromas.

“Yes … why, what’s the matter?”

“I’m hungry,” she said. “And something smells wonderful.”

Hugo sighed. “Of course, you didn’t have your eggs, did you? Well find you a meat pie or something in a minute.” He chivvied her ahead of him out of the inn yard and into the street.

A troop of men in the jerkin and britches of the laborer were gathered in the town square, marching and wheeling to the orders of a drill sergeant. A crowd had
gathered to watch, shouting encouragement and good-humored jeers as the marchers stepped on one another’s feet, lost tempo and straggled out of line, or skipped to catch up with their neighbors.

Chloe jumped on her toes, looking over the heads of the spectators. “What’s it for?”

A man wearing ail unusual white top hat turned toward her. “They’re preparing for Orator Hunt, miss,” he said in cultured accents. “The reformers have invited him to address a meeting on manhood suffrage next month. They’re expecting a big crowd and the organizers reckon it’ll be more orderly if they drill groups of participants in advance.”

“Such militancy is more likely to alarm the magistrates,” Hugo said somberly, taking a hip flask from his coat pocket. “It looks more as if the men are being drilled to offer armed resistance than anything else.” He took a swig of his emergency supply of brandy.

The man’s clear gray eyes sharpened. “It’s to be hoped there’ll be nothing to resist, sir. If the magistrates are sensible, it’ll go off as peaceably as a Christmas mass.”

“I have little faith in the common sense of magistrates when it comes to fear of a radical mob,” Hugo said, thrusting the flask back into his pocket. “Come along, Chloe.” Taking her arm, he led her away from the crowd.

“Who’s Orator Hunt?”

“Henry Hunt—a fire-breathing radical,” Hugo told her. “He’s a professional political agitator and as far as civil authorities are concerned, every meeting he addresses brings the country one step closer to revolution and the guillotine.”

“Oh, I see.” Chloe frowned. “Maybe they should listen, then, and do something about it.”

Hugo laughed. “Sweet child, that’s a Utopian viewpoint if ever I heard one.”

There was nothing unkind about his laughter, and Chloe couldn’t be offended. Instead, she smiled at him, tucking her hand into his arm.

Hugo glanced down at her upturned face and felt as if something had punched into his solar plexus. It was absurd. How could she possibly have such an effect on him? She was just a pretty child hovering on the verge of womanhood.
And wouldn’t it be wonderful to take her over that verge?
Dear God, he was heading for Bedlam!

“Is that boy selling pies?”

The prosaic question returned him to reality. Thankfully, he dragged his eyes away from her and looked around.

A boy pushing a wheelbarrow was calling out his wares in an indistinct singsong. However, the smells were enough to identify his produce, warming on a rack over a bed of hot coals.

Hugo bought a steaming meat pie, and then, all thoughts of seduction banished, watched with some amusement as Chloe, standing on the street corner, bit into it. “Good?”

“Delicious. I was about to faint away with hunger.”

“Well, perhaps you can eat it while we resume our walk.”

Chloe nodded amenably, her mouth full.

Mr. Childe of Childe’s Bank welcomed Hugo with a low bow, gesturing toward his inner sanctum. “If Miss Gresham would like to wait in the anteroom, I’ll have the clerk bring her some tea,” he said with an avuncular smile at the girl in her hideous schoolgirl’s serge.

“Oh, no,” Chloe said. “I wish to understand about my fortune. And I don’t need tea … thank you,” she added in belated afterthought.

Mr. Childe looked astounded. “But … but you can
have no interest in funds and percentages, my dear. Young ladies find such things most boring. I’m sure we can find a periodical for you to look at while you’re waiting….” He nodded encouragingly. “The latest fashions, I’m sure, will hold your attention much more than our tedious discussion.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Chloe replied with a sweet smile. “I’m not in the least interested in fashion, but I am most interested in understanding about my fortune. You see,” she explained kindly, “I intend to have the management of it myself when I’m married, so I must learn all about it.”

Mr. Childe’s jaw dropped. He turned in appeal to Sir Hugo, who was looking out of the window, apparently unconcerned by his ward’s heretical statement. “Surely not, Sir Hugo?”

“That would rather depend on the husband in question,” Hugo responded. “It seems a little premature to speculate, since there’s no gentleman on the horizon. However, if the lass wants to sit in, then I see no objection. If she’s bored, she’ll have only herself to blame, and if she learns something, then that’s no bad thing.” With a hand between her shoulder blades, he ushered her ahead of him into the banker’s sanctum.

It occurred to Chloe that she was becoming accustomed to being moved along in this fashion. She wondered why it didn’t irritate her.

She listened intently while the two men discussed financial intricacies. Hugo was patient with her interruptions, but Mr. Childe grew increasingly testy and finally Hugo waved her into silence when she broke into a particularly convoluted explanation of the banker’s.

“Save your questions until later, lass. Otherwise we’ll be here all afternoon.”

“But will you be able to answer them?”

“I’ll try.”

“But—”

“That’ll do, Chloe.”

The sharpness took her aback and she subsided, knotting her fingers in her lap, closing her lips firmly.

Hugo cast her a sideways glance. She was looking distinctly aggrieved, but he had no intention of offering encouragement for further interruption.

“One last matter, Sir Hugo. Will you be continuing the yearly payment to Sir Jasper Gresham?” the banker asked, resting his clasped hands on the pile of documents on the desk.

“What?”
This ejaculation of Chloe’s went unadmonished.

“For the past ten years Lady Gresham had instructed us to pay Sir Jasper three thousand pounds a year.” The banker pointedly addressed her guardian. “Her will contained no instructions to us to continue the payments.”

So that was how Elizabeth had protected herself and her daughter from the Greshams. Hugo tapped the tips of his fingers together as the pieces fell into place. Three thousand pounds a year was a tidy sum; Jasper wouldn’t take kindly to its cessation.

“What was Mama paying Jasper for?”

“How should I know?” Hugo lied. He couldn’t say
your safety,
although he was certain that had been uppermost in Elizabeth’s mind.

Jasper would have tried to take control of the heiress to his stepmother’s fortune. With Elizabeth drifting through life in a laudanum haze, he could have taken Chloe under his own roof and exerted his own inimitable influence over the child. She would have been married to Crispin at sixteen whether she wanted to or not. Elizabeth had managed to protect her daughter into adulthood by removing her completely from Shipton, and by bribing Jasper. She would have hoped that if Chloe reached adulthood untouched by her half-brother’s
authority and therefore unafraid of him, she would have the strength to resist the pressure he would bring to bear on her once her mother was no longer around.

And to give her an extra advantage, Elizabeth had called upon the memory and obligation of an old love and aligned Jasper’s greatest enemy on her daughter’s side.

“No,” he said. “If Lady Gresham left no instruction, then the payments should lapse.”

“Good,” Chloe declared. “I fail to see why Jasper should have my money.”

“That’s a most unnecessary statement,” Hugo said repressively, seeing the banker clearly scandalized by this unladylike young lady.

Elizabeth really would have helped him in the task she’d set him if she’d managed to instill some conventional manners into her daughter.

He stood up. “Well, that seems to be everything, Mr. Childe. We’ll take up no more of your time.”

“What about my allowance?” Chloe reminded him.

Hugo frowned and said off the top of his head. “A hundred pounds a quarter should be ample.”

“Four hundred pounds a year!” Chloe exclaimed. “When Jasper was getting three thousand, and it wasn’t even his money.”

Mr. Childe’s little eyes seemed to pop in his red face.

Hugo, who felt that Chloe had a point for all its reprehensible presentation, said quickly, “We’ll discuss it later. Come.” He extended a hand in farewell to the banker and drew Chloe forward with the other. To his relief, she made her farewells very prettily, thanking the banker for his time and apologizing for having been a nuisance.

It was hard to withstand her smile and Mr. Childe was somewhat mollified. He patted her hand, then accompanied
them to the door. “Will you be informing Sir Jasper about the change in payment, Sir Hugo?”

Hugo shook his head. He intended to have no dealings whatsoever with Stephen’s son. “No, I’ll have Lawyer Scranton notify him.”

Outside, Chloe said again, “Whyever would Mama have paid Jasper all that money? She detested him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” her companion said shortly, beginning to walk down the narrow cobbled street.

“Are you vexed?” Chloe looked up at him, a hint of anxiety darkening her blue eyes. “I know I shouldn’t have said that about Jasper and I suppose I shouldn’t have objected about my allowance, but it all took me by surprise.”

“I must endeavor to keep you from surprises in future,” he said dryly. “Childe was scandalized, and I don’t blame him.”

“I was only expressing an opinion.”

“There are some opinions that should not be expressed before strangers, however legitimate they might be.”

“Ah, so you
do
agree with me,” she said with a little skip of triumph.

He stifled a grin, stepping over a pile of ordure in the kennel. “That’s beside the point. However, you’re not getting an allowance of three thousand pounds a year, so don’t think it.”

“But in London I’ll need enough to maintain my horses as well as my wardrobe.”

Hugo stopped as they emerged from the narrow alley into a broader thoroughfare. “I told you I didn’t want to hear any more of that,” he stated. “Are we going to continue this errand to the milliner’s or not?”

Nothing would be gained by depriving herself of new clothes. Chloe shrugged and said with an accepting smile, “Continuing, please.”

Hugo cast her a suspicious glance to which she returned a dazzling smile of such innocence, he knew his suspicions were justified. He shook his head in resignation and resumed walking.

The city’s milliners and drapers were gathered together on one street. Hugo was not a frequent customer of such shops, but from a lifetime’s acquaintance with Manchester, he knew the names of the most reputable and had a particular establishment in mind. Chloe, however, was utterly and indiscriminately entranced by every display in every bow-fronted window. She pranced from one side of the lane to the other, drawing his attention to gowns and hats as they caught her eye.

To his dismay, Hugo realized that she had not the slightest idea about what was either tasteful or appropriate. As he listened to her rapturous praise of a gown of violet sarsenet embroidered with paste sapphires and a tulle hat of the most ludicrous proportions, he realized he was going to have to revise his plans for the remainder of the afternoon.