Louise pressed her hands together tightly in her lap. Jasper had done the offending, as well he knew. The ungodly goings-on in the crypt, while not known in any detail, were widely speculated upon. And the whole neighborhood knew that Sir Jasper was a bad man to cross. No one would willingly and knowingly set foot across his boundaries.
"I await an answer," he said silkily, half smiling at the effigy at the other end of the long table. He picked up his wineglass and sipped, his eyes glittering over the lip of the glass.
Louise took a deep breath. Her mouth worked and she pressed her handkerchief to her lips. Her voice shook as she said, "I don't believe so, Jasper."
"You don't believe so? Well, I wonder what the explanation could be. It's quite a puzzle."
Louise pushed back her chair. "If you will excuse me, I'll leave you to your port." She fled the room with a pitiable lack of dignity that not even the servants could miss.
"Put the decanters on the table and get out!" Jasper said savagely to the butler, who obeyed and left with a degree more sangfroid than his mistress had shown.
Crispin hid his apprehension as he waited for the ax to fall on him now. He knew his only hope was to appear unafraid. Casually, he poured himself a glass of port as his stepfather slid the decanter toward him on the polished surface of the table.
"So what are you going to do, sir?" He asked the question almost nonchalantly, leaning back in his chair, crossing his legs, taking a sip of his port, hoping that by bringing the issue into the open he would avert an explosion.
Jasper gave a sharp crack of laughter. It was not a pleasant sound. "Maybe you have a suggestion, dear boy, since you signally failed to bring off mine."
"That was hardly my fault, sir." Crispin defended himself as he knew he must. "Chloe took off before I knew what was happening. If the crowds hadn't been so thick, I wouldn't have lost her. If she hadn't been riding Maid Marion, I might have caught her."
"So it was my fault, was it?" Jasper stared morosely into the ruby contents of his glass. "Somehow, I don't believe she would have escaped me. Maid Marion or not."
"But you weren't there." He was daring much, but if anything would work, it was courage.
"No." Jasper sat back. "For the simple reason, my asinine stepson, that Chloe would go nowhere with me willingly. God knows why she holds me in such dislike
… to my knowledge, I've always treated her with kid gloves."
"She's not afraid of you."
"No… not yet," Jasper agreed. "But that will come, make no mistake." He twisted the stem of the glass between finger and thumb and his mouth thinned to a vicious line.
"So what do we do now?" Crispin knew he was no longer in danger.
"Intimidation," Jasper said. "I'll be revenged on Lat-timer, and that little sister of mine is going to begin to feel the smart of fear."
"How?" Crispin sat forward, the candlelight falling across his sharp face, his small brown eyes eager pinpoints in his sallow complexion.
"A little arson," Jasper said softly. "And I believe one of those ridiculous creatures my sister loves so much must be constrained to suffer a little."
"Ahh." Crispin sat back again. He remembered the stinging rebuke she'd administered when he'd commented so carelessly on the condition of the nag. It would be very satisfying to avenge the insult in such appropriate fashion.
JTor the next two days Chloe played her game discreetly. She entered with enthusiasm into the music lessons but offered Hugo no seductive smiles, and whenever she stood or sat beside him she was careful to behave as if she were unaware of his closeness. When she touched him she made it seem like an accident. But she could feel Hugo responding to every brush of her hand, to every move she made when she was close to him. She knew he watched her when she seemed to be absorbed in the music, and she knew that much of the time he was not watching with the eye of a tutor or of a
guardian. And the more she affected ignorance and behaved with the natural ease of a girl who'd never tumbled with him on the faded velvet cushions of the old couch, the more relaxed he became in his responses.
They rode out together around the estate, Chloe on her new horse, a spritely chestnut gelding that almost made up for the loss of Maid Marion. Hugo found her an attentive and intelligent companion as he went about the dreary business of listening to the universal complaints of his tenant farmers, dismally examining the tumbledown cottages, the leaking barn roofs, the broken fences, desperately trying to think of some way to raise the funds to make the necessary repairs.
He sat up late in the kitchen after their ride, the sleeping house creaking quietly around him. His body was tired, but his mind, as always, wouldn't take a backseat. His first sober overview of his estate had shaken him to his core. He'd allowed an already neglected property to go to rack and ruin in the past years, while he wallowed in brandy-induced self-pity. It was a painful realization and one that prevented all possibility of sleep.
Several times his eye and his mind drifted to the cellar steps. He could picture the racks with their dust-coated bottles of burgundy and claret, madeira, sherry, and brandy. It was a magnificent cellar acquired by his father and grandfather. He himself had added little… he'd been too busy depleting it.
That lash of self-contempt kept him away from the cellar for half an hour. Then he found himself on his feet, inexorably crossing the kitchen, lifting the heavy brass key off its hook by the cellar door. He put the key in the lock and turned it. It grated in the lock and the door swung open with a complaining rasp. The dark flight of stone steps stretched ahead. The cool earth smell of the cellar, overlaid with the musty scents of
wine, teased his nostrils. He took a step down, then realized he had no lantern.
He turned back. Abruptly he slammed the door shut at his back. The violence of the sound jarred the night. He turned the key, hung it back on its hook, extinguished the lamps in the kitchen, lit a carrying candle, and went up to bed.
The bang awoke Dante, who leapt from the bed with a growl. Chloe sat up. "What is it?" Dante was at the door, snuffling at the gap beneath, his tail waving joyously in recognition of the familiar.
It must be Hugo coming to bed. Chloe wondered what the time could be. She seemed to have been asleep for hours, but it was still darkest night beyond the window. Was he once again unable to sleep?
She slipped from bed and quietly opened the door onto the corridor. Hugo's apartments were at the far end, beyond the central hallway. She could see the yellow glimmer of light beneath his door. She waited, shivering slightly, for the light to be extinguished, but it remained for hours, it seemed, much longer than it would take someone to prepare for bed. Thoughtfully, she went back to bed and lay down. Dante settled on her feet again with a sigh that expressed relief that these strange nighttime wanderings had ceased.
Sleep wouldn't return. She lay gazing up into the darkness that her now-accustomed eyes could easily penetrate. Not for the first time, she wondered what it must be like never to know that once night fell, one would sleep and wake refreshed. She could see Hugo's face in repose, when the vibrancy no longer concealed the deeply etched lines of fatigue around his eyes and mouth, the purple shadowing in the hollows beneath his eyes.
She thought he'd slept better since he'd emerged from the days in the library. He looked less depleted, his eyes
clearer, his skin supple. But what did she know about the way he spent the long, dark hours of the night?
She jumped out of bed and went back to the door. The light still glowed beneath the door at the far end of the corridor. Suddenly, she had the unmistakable sensation of pain… of some kind of struggle in the air around her. Was he drinking again? Please, no.