Vixen

Chapter 23

Hugo behaved the following morning as if the night's confrontation had never taken place. He greeted his ward cheerfully when she appeared somewhat heavy-eyed in the breakfast parlor, and asked her if she'd like to ride with him in Richmond Park.

Chloe regarded him warily, on the watch for some sign of gloating, but his smile was warm, his eyes calm, his posture relaxed as he leaned back in his chair, one booted leg crossed over the other, the Gazette open on his lap.

"I have other plans," she said, turning to the chafing dishes on the sideboard.

"May I be a party to them?" Hugo folded back the newspaper, skimming the contents of the page.

"Is that a question or an order?" She turned back to the table and put down her laden plate as she sat down.

Hugo cast an amused glance at her plate. Chagrin and annoyance hadn't affected her appetite, it seemed. "I would like to know," he said neutrally.

"Well, I haven't decided yet. I'll be sure to inform you when I do." She took a forkful of bacon and carried it to her mouth, not caring that she sounded petulant at best, uncivil at worst. She had passed the most wretchedly uncomfortable night of her life and had no intention of making peace without some statement of protest.

"I'd be glad if you would," he said with careful courtesy, refusing to rise to the challenge. "Where's your duenna this morning?"

"Breakfasting in bed on tea and toast… although I think there's a platter of sirloin in case she should recover her appetite later. She feels a touch of gout and thinks it's because the air's damp." Despite herself, the old mischief appeared in her previously frosty eyes and her voice caught on a bubble of laughter. "Do you think she can be a… a… oh, what do you call it? A valetudinarian, that's it?"

"I think it's quite likely," Hugo said with a solemnity belied by the laughter in his own eyes. He pushed back his chair and rose. "Are you sure you won't ride with me, lass?" He came around to her chair and lightly tipped her chin. "Since your plans don't appear to be written in stone." He flicked a toast crumb from the corner of her mouth with a fingertip, and smiled.

It was a smile to melt the most obdurate desire to punish. Her lip trembled in response and she tried to hang on to her justifiable grievance, but it was feathers on the wind. "I don't know whether I like you enough to ride with you," she said in a last-ditch attempt, but her eyes spoke other words.

Hugo laughed. "Cry peace, Chloe. You were in the wrong and you know it. I won't ask you to admit it, but I'll happily put it behind us if you will."

Not even with the best will in the world could she do anything else. Apart from the fact that she couldn't bear to be at odds with him, a peevish withdrawal from him would surely make him only too glad to see the back of her.

She reached up and clasped his wrist, her eyes darkening. "We could ride… but then again, we could ride."

"In broad daylight'" he mocked, trying to disguise the turbulent resurgence of the desire he'd fought so successfully to keep in check last night.

"It wouldn't be the first time."

"No, but this is London, not Lancashire, it's Mount Street with a house full of servants, not Denholm Manor and Samuel."

It was impossible. Chloe sighed and accepted reality. "Then it'll have to be Petrarch and Richmond."

They spent the morning in perfect amity and that night, when Chloe came to his bed, Hugo made love to her with a fierce need that met and matched her own and restored their equilibrium, obscuring the memories of his punishing self-control. It was a night Chloe remembered for many weeks afterward as the last occasion when they made love without constraint.

Denis DeLacy seemed to be everywhere. His voice was always to be heard in the house on Mount Street, and wherever Chloe was, Denis was in attendance.

Hugo couldn't decide what to make of the burgeoning relationship. Chloe seemed impervious first to his hints and then to his outright declaration that she was singling out DeLacy and that if she wasn't to set tongues wagging, she should be a little less particular in her attentions. She had ignored his instructions, maintaining that Denis DeLacy would make a very good husband: rich enough, very well connected, amusing, easygoing, intelligent, and probably could be persuaded to accept the kind of equal partnership she had in mind. However, when her guardian pressed her to say whether she really wanted to marry Denis, she always managed to evade the issue.

But it wasn't only because Chloe was making herself the talk of the town with the flirtation that Hugo couldn't reconcile himself to the increasing intimacy. Every time he heard Chloe's laugh, saw her brush Denis's sleeve with that delicate airy gesture that he'd come to associate with their own liaison, his gut roiled.

Was he jealous of Denis DeLacy? Of course he was.

The knowledge was bitter and unpalatable, but irrefutable. At thirty-four, he was impossibly in love with an exquisite seventeen-year-old innocent, who was showing a distinct partiality for a young man of her own generation-the perfectly appropriate match he, as her guardian, had been advocating.

He had no choice but to withdraw completely from the field. For both their sakes. As long as their intimate liaison continued, he couldn't help but hinder the progress of Denis's suit. Maybe that was what lay behind Chloe's reluctance to commit herself to the final step. And only by separating himself completely from Chloe could he gain some peace of mind. He was not going to repeat the past. He was not going to be devoured by another hopeless love.

Deliberately and joylessly he set about expanding his social circle. Night after night he stayed out until near dawn, returning to the house only after Chloe had finally yielded to sleep. During the day he was to be found in Jackson's Saloon, or Manton's Shooting Gallery, or Angelo's Fencing Studio, or the Corinthian Club, where he exorcised passion in the sports that had always been his metier in the company of men, who, like himself, eschewed the insipid pursuits of the clubs on St. James's. He grew fitter and stronger and grimmer by the day.

Samuel watched, understood, and waited for the outcome. He saw not only Hugo's unhappiness but Chloe's bewildered misery beneath the bright facade she offered the world. He heard the brittle quality to her ever-ready laughter, saw the fragility of her smile, saw the longing in her eyes as they followed Hugo whenever he was in her vicinity.

Samuel was not deceived by her flirtation with Denis DeLacy and couldn't understand why Hugo seemed to be. These days, in a strange imitation of past bad times, he listened for the sound of the piano in the library. But it was Chloe who played it, using the music to express her unhappiness in a way that words could not, and Samuel learned to recognize her mood from the choice of music, as he had done with Hugo.

Chloe couldn't understand why her ploy had suddenly stopped working. For quite a while Hugo had shown satisfactory signs of disapproving of her flirtation with Denis. He had even become annoyed enough on one occasion to forbid her to dance more than one dance with him in an evening. She had defied this edict, hoping for an overt confrontation that would lead to a long and exciting night, only to find that Hugo dropped the subject abruptly as if it had lost all interest for him. Once he'd asked her if she intended to marry Denis and she'd had the feeling that her answer would matter to him; but now he no longer seemed to notice when she was in Denis's company, and in general no longer frequented the social occasions to which his ward was invited. On the rare occasions he did, he was always to be found in the company of some sophisticated woman of his own age. It seemed to Chloe that he had developed a life of his own that completely excluded her.

In her confusion and unhappiness, she flirted ever more provocatively with Denis. And he met and matched her pace with an eagerness that soon had tongues wagging and bets being laid in the clubs as to how soon DeLacy would lead the beautiful heiress to the altar.

The progress of the affair was watched with undisguised interest by two men lodging in a discreet inn off the Strand.

"Why don't we act now?" Crispin paced the private parlor between the two windows. A grayish light filled the room from the thick snow falling outside.

"Patience," his stepfather counseled, sprinkling nutmeg on the contents of a silver punch bowl. He dipped the ladle into the bowl and sampled the brandy punch with a critical frown before reaching for a saucer of sliced lemons and judiciously adding a few slices.

"But why?" Crispin demanded, staring down into the lane below the window. A dray loaded with ale barrels had come to a halt in a pile of drifting snow and a group of people had gathered around, offering vociferous advice to the driver, who lashed his straining horse and cursed loudly enough to carry to the watcher above.

"Because journeying to Lancashire in a snowstorm is hardly sensible," Jasper snapped. "Use your head, lad."

"We could keep her here. She can be as easily persuaded here as at Shipton. We could be married here." Crispin sounded sullen. It was hard to be kept in the background while Denis DeLacy had all the amusement and he was impatient for his own moment on center stage.

"Sometimes I think you've cloth between your ears, just like your mother," Jasper declared, ladling punch into two goblets. "Here, drink this, it might sharpen your wits." He held out a goblet.

Crispin took it, flushing at his stepfather's contemptuous tone.

"Where do you suggest we keep the girl?" Jasper went on in the same tone. "Somehow I don't see my little sister peaceably settling in one of the inn's bedchambers while we run to fetch a priest. Oh, and where do you think we'll find a priest in London willing to marry her against her will? And you can be damned sure she'll create blue murder however persuasive I might be. And I intend to be very persuasive," he added with a vicious curl of his lip. "Not a quiet process."

"There are things you can give her to keep her quiet," Crispin pointed out, still sullen.

"Yes, and we'll need them on the journey," Jasper replied. "I've no intention of sitting cramped in a post-chaise for a week with that girl spitting and struggling. We stick to the plan: Denis will bring her to Finchley, where we'll transfer her to the chaise and we will all go to Shipton. There, my impatient, lusting son, old Elgar in the parish of Edgecombe will do as I tell him. He'd tie the knot between you and a sheep if so ordered. And you will spend your wedding night in the crypt."

"What about Denis?"

"He'll have his reward, but don't worry, no one will interfere with the exercise of your conjugal rights."

Jasper drank deeply of the brandy punch, feeling its warmth curling in his belly. His father had died because of Chloe's mother and Hugo Lattimer. He'd waited fourteen years for his revenge, and he wasn't going to bungle it because of the impatience of a brainless lad who thought with his loins. He didn't want Lattimer to be more than one day behind them when he began his pursuit. One day would be long enough to get the marriage over and the scene in the crypt set up. It would be an exact replica of the scene of Elizabeth's presentation, but this time Hugo Lattimer would be in no position to do anything but watch. And afterward, Jasper would kill him, bringing the blood feud full circle.

There was a knock at the door and Denis came in, shaking snow off his curly-brimmed beaver. "It's the devil's own luck," he declared disgustedly. "I had everything set up, and now this." He gestured to the window.

"Patience," Jasper counseled yet again. He ladled punch into a third goblet. "We'll lose nothing by waiting a day or two."

Denis took the goblet with a murmur of thanks. "I'm just afraid that something will happen," he said. "I've got her right where I want her… she'll do anything I suggest at the moment. But I have this feeling that it's like… it's like… I don't know… she's like a thread stretched so tight, it's bound to snap at any moment."

Jasper looked up sharply. "Why? What's wrong with her?"

"I don't know. Nothing that you can put your finger on, but… but I can feel it. There's something." He drank from the goblet and said slowly, feeling for words, "Sometimes I have this feeling that she's just using me. Sometimes I don't think she sees me at all, even when she's paying me the most particular attention."

"Oh, nonsense," Jasper said. "Fanciful nonsense. The silly chit's fallen head over ears in love with you. She's a baby with no more experience of the world than a five-year-old. I expect she's overawed by you."

Denis would have liked to believe that, but he couldn't. But he couldn't explain his conviction any clearer either, so he let the subject drop.

"Have you kissed her?" Crispin demanded with the irritability of envy.

"A peck on the cheek," Denis said. It was impossible, too, to put into words his knowledge that however willing Chloe was to play games with him, there was a line she wouldn't cross. At least, not voluntarily.

"I don't want to frighten her by being too insistent," he explained.

"There'll be plenty of time for that," Jasper said. He straightened and stretched, wandering over to the window. How long before the snow abated? It was the devil's own luck, a snowstorm this early in December. But it shouldn't take hold and they'd be on the road within the week.

.Hugo let himself into the house that same afternoon, reflecting that this was an evening they would all spend within doors. No one in their right minds would put their horses to the shafts in these conditions unless it was a matter of life or death.

He closed the door behind him, wondering where Samuel was. Two of Beatrice's offspring playing tag raced through the hall, skittering on the polished wood as they ran between his legs before bounding up the stairs. He picked up the letters on the console table and riffled through them. After a minute, it occurred to him that the house was strangely quiet. And for once there was no evidence of Denis DeLacy in temporary residence, he thought grimly, going into the library.

The fire had been allowed to go down and he frowned, bending to throw another log on the glowing embers. Where was everyone? He didn't have a large household, but it was surely large enough to ensure that the fires could be kept in, particularly on a day like this.

He strode into the hall and bellowed for Samuel. There was no immediate response and then suddenly Chloe appeared at the top of the stairs.

"Hugo!" Her voice cracked, filled with tears, and he strode to the bottom of the stairs.

"Sweetheart, what is it?" The rarely used endearment went unnoticed by either of them.

She flew down the stairs and into his arms. "It's Peg," she sobbed against his chest. "She's gone."

"Gone… gone where?"

"I don't know! She can't read or write, so she couldn't leave a note… and she didn't say anything. She's just disappeared."

"Now, just a minute." Hugo stood her upright and pulled out his handkerchief. "I can't hear a word when you're mumbling into my chest. Start at the beginning."

"There isn't a beginning," she said, taking his handkerchief but not using it, so the tears still poured unchecked down her cheeks. "She's just gone, that's all. Out into the snow. And she's left the baby. Why? Why

would she do something so silly, Hugo? She'll freeze to death."

"She's left the baby?" Hugo struggled to absorb this.

"Yes. Just walked away and left her."

"God's grace," he muttered. "Now I'm responsible for a foundling as well as a menagerie."

"How can you be so heartless!" Chloe exclaimed through her tears. "Peg's out there in all that snow…"

"Of her own free will, lass," Hugo reminded her. Taking her arm, he eased her into the library, closing the door behind them. "She wasn't happy here."

"I know, but why wasn't she?" Chloe huddled over the fire. "I don't understand it. She had plenty to eat and drink, and warm clothes, and… and a home. Why would she walk away from that?"

"Come here." Hugo sat down on the couch and drew Chloe backward, pulling her onto his lap. "I know it's hard to accept, but you can't save the world, not even with a heart as big as yours."

"I know I can't," she said, gulping. "I just want to save some of it."

He held her tightly for a minute, then took the neglected handkerchief from her and mopped her tears. "Blow your nose."

She did so vigorously and then leaned back against him, resting her head on his shoulder. "I wish she hadn't gone out in the snow. Why wouldn't she wait… I don't understand, Hugo. What could have driven her?"

"I don't really know," he said, stroking her hair away from her brow. "But people do things we can't understand sometimes. Peg lives on the streets. It's what she knows. There must be people out there she knows… there was a grandmother, wasn't there?"

"Her nan," Chloe said. "She said she could sometimes sleep in the washhouse… but why would she want to do that when she could be warm and dry here? It's not sensible."

"Impulses usually aren't. But you have to remember that Peg knows that world out there. It's her world." He traced the delicate arch of her eyebrow with a fingertip.

"I know one can't make people accept help," Chloe said with one of her devastating flashes of mature insight that still surprised and delighted him. "And since I don't think I was trying to help her just so that / would feel good, I shouldn't feel miserable just because she prefers to do something else."

She was silent for a minute, then continued rather more cheerfully. "Well, at least she left the baby. And at least she was able to have the baby safely… but.,." She sat up as a thought struck her. "But you know what will happen to her. She'll get pregnant again… she doesn't know about potions or… or withdrawing… or things like that. She'll be pregnant again in no time. And she's so young. She told me she didn't even know how old she is." She relaxed against him again with a heavy sigh.

Hugo said nothing immediately, dwelling on the somber reflection that the diminutive philanthropist on his knee knew all too much about potions… and withdrawing… and things like that… as she put it, with an apparent ingenuousness quite at odds with both the sentiment and her earlier conclusions.

He hadn't held her for an eternity, it seemed, and the slight weight, so familiar to him in its contours and fragrances, filled him with an inconsolable yearning. There was nothing sensual about her at this moment. In fact, she seemed unaware of their proximity, so involved in her sorrow and bewilderment over Peg that she might be sitting anywhere instead of on his knee, leaning against his shoulder. Was she even aware of his fingers playing in the tumbling guinea-gold hair?

The door opened suddenly. "Oh, my goodness… oh, I didn't realize…" Lady Smallwood stood foursquare in the doorway, blinking at the pair on the sofa. "I was looking for Chloe," she said.

"And now you've found her," Hugo said easily. "The lass is very upset about Peg." Gently, and he hoped with an air of complete naturalness, he tipped her off his knee and stood up. Dolly would think nothing of it. She would simply see a guardian comforting his unhappy young ward.

"Yes, and what a to-do," Dolly declared. "Talk about ingratitude… talk about biting the hand that feeds-"

"We aren't," Chloe said sharply. "We aren't talking about that at all."

Her chaperone sniffed and with customary fatal lack of tact plowed ahead. "Samuel's come back. He says he's looked all over and there's no sign of her. And good riddance, if you ask my opinion."

"I can't imagine ever doing such a thing," Chloe said, tight-lipped. "Your opinions, madam, can hold not the slightest-"

"Chloe, that'll do." Hugo stepped in before the tirade became unstoppable.

Fortunately, at this point Samuel provided a diversion. He entered the library, snow sticking to his cloak and clinging to his bushy, grizzled eyebrows. "Not a sign," he said. "An' no one's seen 'er neither. I asked up an' down the street. Not that you can see much out there," he added, going to the windows, gazing out at the dense blanket still descending.

He glanced back at the tear-streaked Chloe and said gruffly, "Now, don't you go afrettin', lass. She'll 'ave known where to go. She's no fool, that Peg. If you ask me, she's 'appy as a grig now. No baby to worry over. She 'ad the money you gave 'er, all those good clothes.

She'll be in some alehouse by now, snug and warm, an' havin' the time of 'er life."

"Until the money runs out," Chloe said, refusing to be cheered by a picture that, knowing Peg, she had to admit was quite possibly accurate. 'Maybe she'll come back then."

Samuel shrugged. "More to the point, seems to me, is what's to be done with the babe."

"A wet nurse, I suppose," Chloe said. "But where do we find one in this weather?"

"Well, it just so 'appens that the ead groom's wife 'as just 'ad a little-un. I daresay she'd not be averse to takin' on another for a few guineas."

"Oh, Samuel, you are wonderful." Chloe flew across the room and kissed him heartily on both cheeks, oblivious of Lady Smallwood's scandalized little cry.

"Get along wi' you," Samuel said, blushing. "If yell fetch the babe down 'ere, I'll take it along to the mews. Ted's waitin' fer it."

"And then, when she's weaned, she can come and live with us," Chloe stated.

"It's to be hoped your husband won't be averse to taking on an infant of unknown parentage," Hugo commented somewhat aridly.

Chloe's heart skipped a beat as she realized that she had simply spoken from the forbidden assumption-an assumption that despite the present bewildering estrangement was still intrinsic to her view of their future.

She said with a slight shrug, "Oh, I'm sure Persephone will win over the most unkind heart."

"Persephone! Dear God in heaven! What kind of a name is that for some poor little bastard from the city stews?" Hugo exclaimed, immediately diverted from contemplation of Denis DeLacy's reaction to adoptive parenthood.

Chloe's mouth took a familiar stubborn turn. "I fail to see why a bastard from the stews shouldn't have a pretty name."

"Hugo!" Lady Smallwood squeaked. "Oh, goodness me, whatever will she say next? If anyone should hear… oh, my poor heart, such palpitations." She sank onto a chair, fumbling in her reticule for her smelling salts.

Unfortunately, Hugo caught Chloe's eye, brimful of wicked merriment. Over her shoulder Samuel was grinning with unabashed amusement. Hugo developed a violent coughing fit as the only recourse.

"Well, I'll go and fetch Persephone," Chloe declared, regarding her convulsed guardian with feigned concern. "That is the most dreadful cough, Hugo."

He pulled himself together. "Must it be Persephone?"

"Yes," Chloe said simply, turning to the door. "And while I'm in the mews, I thought, perhaps, since its such a miserable night and he'll be cold and lonely-"

"No," Hugo said.

"But I promise I'll keep him on the leash; he's very good about it. And I'll only let him in here. He and Dante like to play together and they can lie by the fire."

"No."

"Oh, Hugo, please."

"Is she talking about that wild animal?" Lady Smallwood recovered from one set of palpitations and prepared for the next. "I will not… absolutely not stay under the same roof as a wild beast."

"Oh, ma'am, he'll only be in the library," Chloe said. "There's no reason why you should even see him." She turned dark purple eyes on Hugo. "Demosthenes hasn't been able to play with Dante all day because of the snow. And he'll be so lonely."

It was true that the massive brindle mongrel and the bear cub had developed some kind of rapport. It was also true that the pair of them could reduce a room to ruin before a man could blink.

"No," Hugo repeated.

"But I promise I'll keep him on the leash. And if he won't be quiet, then I'll take him straight back to the stables." Tearstains still tracked down the damask cheeks, her eyes were still tear-washed, that lovely soft mouth quivered in appeal.

Hugo wondered absently why he even bothered to begin a battle that experience told him he couldn't possibly win. He'd forbidden the bear the house on innumerable occasions, but it didn't seem to make the slightest difference. Demosthenes still came in.

Shaking his head in defeat, he bent to throw another log on the fire.

"Hugo, I've been meaning to talk to you about that young DeLacy," Lady Smallwood said, abruptly recovering from her palpitations as the door closed on a triumphant Chloe. "His attentions are most particular."

"I had noticed." Hugo turned to face his cousin. "And as far as I can gather, so has everyone else."

"Chloe doesn't appear to hold him in dislike," his cousin said.

"That, if I may say so, is the understatement of the season, ma'am."

"It's a perfectly good match… not brilliant of course, and with that beauty and such a fortune, one would have hoped-"

"But as we both know, ma'am, Chloe refused the brilliant offers made her."

"Yes." Lady Smallwood touched her smelling salts to her nose. "It's past time she settled down. All this nonsense with wild animals and waifs and strays… it really won't do. It's amazing that Society has tolerated her oddities this far. But I'm convinced that once she has a husband and a house and a family of her own, then she'll leave this willfulness behind."

"I wouldn't call it willfulness," Hugo demurred. "But I take your point. What are you suggesting, Dolly?"

"That you should ask DeLacy what his intentions are," she said. "He must be brought to the point. The flirtation has gone on quite long enough, and Chloe has too little experience to know how to encourage the young man to speak up."

If you only knew. Hugo steepled his fingers and painted an expression of alert concentration on his face. "You think he needs a push?"

"Most certainly. I wouldn't be doing my duty as chaperone if I didn't give you my opinion. The child is very high-spirited and sometimes it leads her into… well, we won't say anything about that… and one can't help loving her nevertheless. I really would like to see her happily settled, and if this match is something she wants, then I think we must do all possible to promote it."

"Your advice is as always most valuable, Dolly."

The door burst open. Dante leapt excitedly into the room, sending the Turkey carpet skewing across the floor. He danced backward, barking in greeting as Demosthenes galloped at the end of his leash, hauling Chloe, a laughing but totally inadequate counterweight, behind him.

Lady Smallwood gave vent to a faint gasp and fled the room, Hugo sank onto the sofa and covered his head with a cushion. There was nothing like a quiet evening at home.

And when Chloe was happily married to Denis DeLacy, he'd never have to endure another.