Vixen by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online

up to Jasper as no one else would. Chloe and her fortune would need protection from the Greshams, and he’d been designated to provide it. But there had to be a way to distance himself from his charge.
    He glanced sideways at the girl, whose stillness and silence had been almost palpable during the lawyer’s peroration. She reached for the port decanter again and he flung his hand out, catching her wrist.
    “That’s enough, lass. Samuel, fetch some … some lemonade, or something.”
    “But I’m enjoying the port,” Chloe protested.
    “Don’t have any lemonade anyways,” Samuel declared, chopping mushrooms with a blinding speed.
    “Water, then,” Hugo said. “She’s too young for port in the middle of the afternoon.”
    “But you didn’t object before,” Chloe pointed out.
    “That was before,” he said with a vague gesture.
    “Before what?”
    Hugo sighed. “Before it was made irrevocably clear to me that I have no choice but to assume responsibility for you.”
    Imps of mischief danced suddenly in her deep blue eyes. “I can’t believe you’re going to be a prim and stuffy guardian, Sir Hugo. How could you be, living the way you do?”
    Hugo was momentarily distracted by those enchanting eyes. He shook his head in an effort to dispel the confusing tangle of emotions and turned back to the lawyer, forgetting the issue of the port.
    Chloe, with a tiny smile of triumph, filled her glass.
    “I understand Miss Gresham was a pupil at a seminary in Bolton,” Scranton was saying.
    “Unfortunately, there was a lovelorn curate, a butcher’s boy, and Miss Anne Trent’s nephew,” Hugo said with a wry grin. “The estimable Misses Trent found the lass too hot to hold. However, there must be another such establishment—”
    “No!” Chloe broke in with a cry. “No, I will not go to another seminary. I absolutely will not.” Her voice shook at the thought of being packed off yet again like some unwanted animal, banished again to a confinement that had become unendurable in its loneliness. “If you attempt such a thing, I shall simply run away.”
    Hugo swung his head toward her and the green eyes were no longer clouded. They held her gaze steadily,and she almost fancied little spurts of flame in their vivid depths.
    “Are you challenging me, Miss Gresham?” he asked very softly.
    She wanted to say yes, but those little spurts of flame were too intimidating and the short word wouldn’t get past her lips.
    “It would be inadvisable to challenge me, you should understand,” he continued in the same soft voice that had caused many a midshipman to shiver in his shoes.
    Chloe recognized the side of her guardian that she had encountered that morning in the bedroom. It was a side with which she had no particular wish to become reacquainted.
    There was total silence in the kitchen. Samuel scraped chopped mushrooms into a pan as if oblivious of the tension. Lawyer Scranton stared up at the smoke-blackened timber of the ceiling.
    “You
don’t understand,” Chloe said finally in a much more moderate tone. “I couldn’t bear it anymore.” Then she turned her head away abruptly, biting her lip, desperately blinking away the tears crowding her eyes.
    Hugo wondered if she realized how much more persuasive he found appeals to his sympathy than challenges to his authority. If she didn’t understand it now, she soon would, if she spent much time under his roof. He remembered her desolate question earlier: Why does no one want me? The urge to scoop her up and cuddle her was as ridiculous as it was inappropriate, but he felt it nevertheless.
    “What would
you
like to do?” he asked with a briskness that disguised his sudden compassion. “Where would you like to go?”
    “To London.” Chloe looked up, the tears miraculously dried. “I want to be presented at court and have my come-out. And then once I’m married and have my fortune,I want to establish an animal hospital. It shouldn’t be too difficult to