Her hands shook as she lit her carrying candle, then she flew like a wraith along the corridor, down the stairs to the library. She was acting on impulse now as she fumbled across the room, her candle flickering on the massive dark furniture and throwing eerie shadows on the heavy paneling.
She knew what she was looking for: the backgammon board she faintly remembered seeing the first time she'd entered this room. She found the hinged board on an inlaid chest against the wall. The pieces and dice were in a carved box beside it.
Clutching the heavy board and box to her chest with one arm, she made her way back to the hallway, holding her candle as high as she could. Dante, now resigned to these untimely peregrinations, trotted at her heels as she carefully negotiated the stairs and turned down the corridor to Hugo's chamber.
She knocked on the door.
Hugo was sitting on the window seat, drawing deep breaths of the cool night air. His hands were clenched in tight fists against his face, leaving a bruising imprint against his cheekbones.
When the knock came at his door, he started and for a minute was disoriented. Then, assuming it was Samuel, he said wearily, "Come in."
Chloe stood in the doorway, something clutched to her breast, a flickering candle in her other hand. Her hair tumbled in sleep's unruly tangles over her shoulders. Her eyes were blue velvet as they gazed anxiously
at him. "I thought perhaps you couldn't sleep again," she said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. "I thought perhaps you'd like a game of backgammon."
"Backgammon! For God's sake, Chloe, it's three o'clock in the morning!"
"Is it? I didn't know." She advanced farther into the room. "You haven't been to sleep yet." It was statement rather than question. Somehow, she knew Hugo was in trouble tonight and every line of her body, every movement of her features, evinced utter determination to help him.
"Go back to bed, Chloe," he said, running his hands through his hair.
"No, I'm not in the least sleepy." She set her candle down and opened the board on the bed. "I'm sure you'd like some company. Shall I set up the pieces?"
"Just why is it that you're always so sure about what I want?" Hugo demanded. "For some reason, you keep popping up beside me, informing me that I must be lonely and in need of your company."
"Well, it's true," Chloe said with that recognizable stubborn twist to her lovely mouth. "I know it is." She perched on the bed and began to set up the draftsmen.
Hugo knew that an hour's distraction would save him. He didn't know how Chloe knew it, but know it she did. He came over to the bed and sat down on the edge opposite her, saying with a resigned sigh, "This is madness."
There was a scratching at the door and Dante whined. "Oh, dear." Chloe jumped up. "I shut the door on him. You don't mind if he comes in, do you?"
Hugo shook his head in dumb surrender to an un-movable force.
Chloe was not wearing a dressing gown yet again,
and her slender frame moved fluidly beneath the thin cambric of her nightdress as she opened the door.
It was one area in which he could assert himself. Hugo went to the armoire and drew out a brown velvet robe. "Come here." Taking her arms, he thrust them into the long sleeves, spun her around, and pulled the voluminious sides across her body, tying the girdle at her waist with a firm jerk. "How many times, Chloe…?" he demanded in not entirely feigned exasperation.
"It's not cold, so I don't think about it," she said.
"Well, I suggest you start thinking about it if you're going to continue to roam around in the middle of the night." He turned back to the backgammon board on the bed.
Chloe hopped up and sat cross-legged in front of her half of the board, arranging the folds of her borrowed robe around her. "Why does it bother you?"
Hugo looked sharply at her and read the mischievous invitation in her eyes. His world took that familiar tilt again as the need for brandy was abruptly joined by one with even more potential for trouble. If tie let her see it, however, he'd be tacitly acknowledging the invitation.
"Don't give me that pseudo-naivete, lass," he said mildly, throwing the two dice. "It doesn't bother me particularly. But you know perfectly well it's not appropriate for a young girl to wander around half dressed." He moved a draftsman.
Not fooled, she threw the dice in her turn. A questioning miaow came suddenly from the door she'd left ajar. Beatrice stood in the doorway, a tiny bundle of fur gripped by the scruff of its neck between her teeth.
"Oh, she's bringing the kittens for their first outing," Chloe said, extending her hand in welcome to the advancing cat. Beatrice leapt on the bed, deposited the kitten in Chloe's lap, and went out again. Five more
times she came and went as Hugo watched in a kind of dazed disbelief. When all six kittens were settled in Chloe's velvet lap, Beatrice curled on the coverlet and gazed unwinking at the tableau.
"We lack only Falstaff and Rosinante," Hugo observed. "Oh, I was forgetting Plato. Perhaps you should fetch them."
"You're funning," Chlpe said. "It's your throw."
"Funning? Whyever should I be funning?" He tossed the dice. "I have a profound dislike of domestic animals, and yet at three-thirty in the morning I'm playing backgammon in an animal house that used to be my bedroom."
"How could you dislike them?" Chloe stroked one of the fur bundles with the tip of her finger. The kitten blinked its newly opened eyes at Hugo.
"Forgive the indelicate question, but are they house-broken? I have to sleep in that bed."
"Beatrice cleans up after them," Chloe informed him serenely.
"Oh, how very reassuring." Laughter swelled from some deep well in his chest, and he realized that the desperate tension of his brandy craving had left him. His hands were steady, his stomach at peace.
Chloe looked up from her intent concentration on the board and laughed happily as she examined his face. "You're better?"
He looked sharply at her. "Yes, how do you know?"
"I can feel it when people are hurting," she said. "Just as I can feel it when the pain goes away. Will you ever be able to drink again, do you think?"
The question surprised him. He hadn't expected someone with so little experience of the world to understand his agony so completely. She was regarding him intently, the mischievously seductive playmate transformed into a solemn, caring companion.
"I don't know, I'll have to wait and see," he answered as seriously as if she were of his own generation. "But I'm not stupid enough to put it to the test yet awhile. It's too damn difficult to resist at the moment."
"I'll help you." Reaching over, she laid her hand over his and it startled him more than any of her previous intimacies. It was a simple human gesture of support and friendship.
"You already have," he answered quietly.
The silence in the room grew to enclose them, and he felt as if he were slipping into the deep blue depths of her eyes. Then, with a supreme effort of will, he hauled himself out of enhancement and broke the spell.
"Come on, it's time you went back to bed." He scooped the draftsmen up and put them in the box. "You've done what you came to do, and I'm very grateful, but now I'd like my own room back. How are you going to transport that litter?"
"I'll fetch the hat box." She moved the nest of kittens from her lap and slipped off the bed, hiding her disappointment. Struggling with the unwieldy folds of the robe, she went to get the box. When she returned, Hugo had cleared away the board and pieces, shooed Dante off the bed, and was staring somewhat nonplussed at Beatrice, who lay fast asleep, unimpressed by the busyness around her.