"Hush," Chloe said, taking her hand. "No one's going to hurt you. No one's going to take you to Bridewell. I want you to come to my home, where you'll be warm and can have something to eat. When did you last eat?"
The girl's struggles ceased and her eyes darted between them, suddenly sharp and focused. "Dunno."
"I promise we won't hurt you," Chloe repeated. "When you've had something to eat and I've found you some warm clothes, then you can go anywhere you wish. I promise."
"You one a them do-gooders?" the girl demanded. "I bin wi' the likes a them. All preachin' and nuthin' to eat but a bite a bread and a bit a gruel… an' you don't get that 'n you don't say as 'ow yer a fallen' woman an' sorry fer it."
"Oh, I'm a fallen woman too," Chloe said cheerfully, oblivious of Hugo's sharp intake of breath. "So you'll be quite safe from any preaching. And I detest gruel, so we don't have any of that in the house."
Hugo closed his eyes in despair. "Not another word!" he snapped, conscious of the tiger's big ears. "You have not a grain of discretion. Get up!" Releasing his hold on Chloe's new prize, he caught his ward around the waist and swung her into the curricle. "Are you coming?" He turned back to the pregnant girl, who hadn't taken advantage of her freedom to run.
" 'Spose so," she said. "But we're not goin' to no Bridewell?"
"No!" Hugo said impatiently. "We are not."
The girl scrambled into the somewhat overcrowded curricle with Hugo's helping hand.
"Let go their heads," he said curtly to the fascinated tiger as he took up the reins.
"Right you are, guv." With a cheery grin the lad released the team and dashed for his perch at the rear of the curricle as it took off down Brook Street.
Chloe scrunched up on the seat to make room for the girl beside her. It put her in very close contact with Hugo, who glanced down at her with a look that guaranteed retribution. She offered a tentative smile and squiggled closer so that her thigh was pressed hard against his. Hugo's expression didn't soften.
Chloe turned her attention to the girl. "What's your name?"
"Peg."
"How old are you, Peg?"
"Dunno."
"Where do you live?"
"Nowhere in partic'ler." She shrugged her scrawny shoulders and hunched over her belly, folding her bare arms against the chill wind.
"You don't have a home?"
Peg shrugged again. "Sometimes I sleep at me nan's. She's cook in a big 'ouse, and sometimes they lets me sleep in the wash'ouse. But the 'ousekeeper's a right tartar an' if she found me, she'd 'ave me nan turned off wi' no character."
"What about the baby's father?"
"What about 'im?"
"Well… well, where is he?"
"Dunno. Dunno who 'e is."
"Oh." Chloe was silenced at the ramifications of this statement.
Hugo drew rein outside his house and jumped down.
He helped his passengers to alight and then followed them into the house.
"What the 'ell…?" Samuel stared at the new arrival, who was transfixed with terror as Dante put his huge paws on Chloe's shoulder, licking her face in exuberant, ecstatic welcome.
"Oh, you didn't think we were going to stop at bear cubs, did you?" Hugo said sardonically. "I don't think Miss Gresham will be satisfied until she's turned my house into a lying-in ward and an orphanage in addition to an animal rescue center."
He turned back to Chloe. "See to your protegee and then come to the library. I have a few things to say to you." With which he marched into the library and slammed the door.
"Now what've you gone an' done?" Samuel said.
"It's not so much what I've done as what I said," Chloe replied with a rueful grimace. Then she shrugged philosophically. "Oh, well, I'll worry about it later. Down, now, Dante. Yes, I love you too, but you're frightening Peg." She smiled with warm reassurance and introduced her protegee. "This is Peg, Samuel."
"Oh, is it?" Samuel regarded the girl without much enthusiasm. "And no better than she ought t' be, I'll lay odds."
"An' what business is it of your'n, I'd like to know?" demanded the belligerent Peg. But even Samuel could see the pathetic, undernourished scrap of humanity beneath the aggression.
"She's hungry," Chloe said. "I'll take her to the kitchen and find her some food, although I suppose Alphonse will get all hoity-toity about it. And then I think we should heat some water so she can have a bath and I'll find some clothes."
"Bath?" Peg squealed. "I ain't goin' in no bath."
"Come along wi' me, girl," Samuel said. "Mrs. 'Er-
ridge'll know what's best for ye. If I were you, lass, I'd get meself into the library and take what's comin'. The longer 'e frets on it, the worse it'll be."
"I suppose so." Chloe still hesitated. Mrs. Herridge was the housekeeper and a woman of rather unyielding disposition. But Alphonse tolerated her in his kitchen a great deal better than he did Chloe and her various dependents. "Go with Samuel, Peg," she said. "They'll look after you in the kitchen, and when you feel better we'll talk about what you want to do next."
"You ain't takin' me to no Bridewell." Peg glared at Samuel, but there was uncertainty bordering on terror beneath the glare.
"Now, why would I go an' do a thing like that'" he said, shaking his head. "Come on, girl, let's get some food down ye. There's two o' ye goin' 'ungry at the moment."
Chloe watched as a still-hesitant Peg went with Samuel through the swinging door to the kitchen quarters, then she squared her shoulders and went into the library. Dante made straight for his usual spot on the hearth rug and flopped down with a heavy sigh.
"How dare you say such a thing?" Hugo demanded even before she'd closed the door. "How could you be so childishly thoughtless? Of all the insulting, stupid remarks I've ever heard-"
"But I just wanted to reassure her," Chloe broke in. "I thought it would make her feel at ease."
"Oh, you thought it would make her feel at ease! Dear God!" He ran his hands through his hair. "And just how do you think it's going to sound when she regales the rest of the household with your reassurance. A fallen woman! Chloe, I don't know what to do with you!"
That consequence had not occurred to her. "They won't take it seriously," she said uncertainly. "They'll think it was a joke, or that she misheard me."
"And what makes you certain of that?"
"Well… well, because it's obviously absurd," she said. "Oh, Hugo, you know it is. It wouldn't occur to anyone that… that…"
"That I debauched my ward," he finished for her with an icy snap.
Chloe realized that she'd inadvertently raised Hugo's guilt demons. In a minute he'd slip from her into the world of his painted devils… unless she could stimulate some other response from him.
"Oh, pah," she stated, picking up the Gazette and pretending to be absorbed in the first page. "I wish I knew what it felt like to be debauched. It sounds as if it might be amusing. It seems to me, if I remember aright, that if any debauching went on, it was I who did it to you. So I don't see why you should take all the credit," she added, risking a peep over the paper to gauge his reaction. The ploy seemed to have worked all too well. The bleakness had vanished from his expression, and he looked thunderous.
He plucked the newspaper from her hand and she took to her heels with a squeak of mock fright before he could grab her.
"Brat!" He leapt after her as she jumped onto the sofa and scrambled over the back. She danced behind the table and stuck her tongue out at him.
Tell me what it feel likes to be debauched, Hugo? Please, I'm dying to know." She dodged sideways as he came around the table and sprang onto the seat of a chair, flinging a leg over the back preparatory to sliding over. The suddenness of her movement overbalanced the chair, and it toppled to the floor. Her startled shriek as she tumbled over in a swirl of skirts, stockinged legs waving indelicately in the air, brought a reluctant grin to Hugo's lips.