"Come here," Crispin commanded, snapping his fingers.
"I'm not a dog," Chloe said, deciding that Crispin could probably safely be defied… at least for the moment.
"I owe you a lot," Crispin said quietly, his hands going to his throat, remembering those steely fingers squeezing the life from him. "And I can promise you, Miss Gresham, that you will get everything that's due you."
"I don't doubt your intention, Crispin," she said coldly, leaning against the doorjamb as she sipped her wine. "But forgive me if I doubt your powers."
Crispin sprang up with an exclamation. She stood her ground, knowing that if she kept total silence, offered total submission, she would lose the will to endure. And when the time for true endurance came, she would need every fiber of will.
He gripped her shoulders and brought his mouth down on hers, grinding her lips against her teeth with savage violence. She tried to wrench her head sideways, tried to create enough space between their bodies to bring her knee up.
Then abruptly he let her go, looking sheepishly over her shoulder to where his stepfather stood in the doorway. Chloe gasped for breath, her lips stinging, every inch of her body throbbing with the sense of violation.
"She is insolent," Crispin declared with an air that
reminded Chloe of a schoolboy telling tales to escape censure.
"Really," Jasper said, holding up his wineglass to the light, subjecting the contents to an interested examination.
"Insolence goes without its dinner," he murmured indifferently. "But you will leave disciplinary measures to me in the future. Is that clear?"
Crispin flushed. "Yes, sir."
"Then let us go in to dinner… even those of us who will not partake." He took Chloe's arm and pushed her ahead of him across the corridor to the private parlor. "Sit down." He pulled out a chair for her in a parody of chivalry.
The promised shoulder of mutton sent up the most enticing aromas from the sideboard, filling the air with the scent of fresh rosemary. The compote of mushrooms, a bowl of red currant sauce, and a dish of roasted potatoes sat in the center of the table.
It was past nine o'clock and Chloe had eaten nothing since noon. It was one thing to be deprived of her dinner, she thought, battling with tears of rage and disappointment. Quite another to have to sit and watch while others consumed. The tormenting aromas set her saliva running, her stomach cleaving to her backbone.
Leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes, folding her hands neatly in her lap, and took her mind out of the parlor and away from the company of her captors. It was not an entirely successful ploy from her own point of view, but at least it ensured her companions didn't have the satisfaction of her obvious discomfort.
But the ordeal was over at last. Back in their bedchamber, Jasper locked both doors and pocketed the keys. Chloe prepared for bed behind the screen. When she emerged in her nightgown, Jasper was standing in
his britches by the fire. He'd pulled off his boots and was now unbuttoning his shirt. He tossed the garment aside and strode toward the bed.
Chloe stared at his chest… at the tiny coiled snake pricked into the skin above his heart.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" Jasper demanded, struck by her arrested expression. "I suppose you haven't seen a man without his shirt before. Well, you needn't worry, little sister, you stand in no danger from my bare chest."
"That-" Chloe said, her voice sounding strangled. She pointed at the device. "That… that snake… Hugo…"
"What'" Jasper gave a sudden crack of laughter. "Oh, so you've seen your esteemed guardian in a state of undress, have you? I suppose it's not surprising that drunken sot failed to observe the proprieties."
"Don't call him that!" Chloe said fiercely. "He is not."
"Such a vehement defense." Jasper's voice was suddenly very soft, his eyes narrowed. "Now, whatever could Lattimer have done to earn such violent championship?"
"He was kind to me," Chloe stated, praying she wouldn't blush, that nothing would be revealed in her expression. Rushing her words, she demanded, "But why do you both have that snake?"
"Ahh, so Hugo didn't think to let you into his little secret," her brother mused. He gestured to the bed. "Get in."
"Are we sh-sharing the bed?"
"You will sleep in it, I will sleep on it," Jasper said impatiently. "Now, hurry up."
Chloe pulled back the sheet and slid between the covers. She lay on her back, very still.
Jasper lay down on the cover beside her. "Give me your wrist." He had his belt in his hand and quite calmly fastened one end around Chloe's wrist and the other around his own.
"Now," he said softly, "I'll tell you a story, little sister. A bedtime story…"
Chapter 25
When Jasper's messenger arrived at Mount Street at eight o'clock the following morning, Hugo and Samuel had been on the road for four hours. The letter with its seemingly innocuous information that Chloe was safe and sound in her brother's charge and on the way to Shipton lay on the hall table to await Hugo's return. Jasper was leaving nothing to chance. He wanted Hugo to pursue Chloe to the crypt, and if drink had addled his brains to such an extent that he failed to put two and two together on his own, his ward's captor would help him out.
Chloe had said almost nothing since she'd awakened, disoriented, in the cold dawn. For a few seconds she had no idea where she was. Her arm was stretched out away from her body and she tried to pull it back. Something tightened around her wrist. It all came back then. She turned her head on the pillow. Jasper seemed to be asleep beside her, but the belt was wound several times around his wrist and the tie clasped in his clenched fist.
She lay still again, remembering everything he'd told her last night. She had the secret now to Hugo's painted devils. Why hadn't he told her himself of the desperate part he'd played in her own life… how inextricably he was bound up in the coils that had determined her lonely childhood. Hadn't he trusted her enough? But of course she knew the real answer. He hadn't loved her enough. He hadn't loved her enough to trust her with his soul.
The manner of her father's death didn't overly trouble her. Judging by Jasper's description of the Congregation's activities, Stephen Gresham's death was no great loss to the world. She minded much more about her mother… that Hugo hadn't told her he'd loved her mother with a love so deep and abiding that he was prepared to risk his life for her. If he'd told her everything, told her about her father-the kind of man he was -then she would have understood about her mother's withdrawal from the world. She would finally have understood why Elizabeth had seemed to reject her daughter. There would have been a reason for the bitter loneliness Chloe had endured throughout her childhood in the hands of indifferent caretakers, and she would have been able to lay to rest the bleak assumption that there was something lacking in herself that had made her unsuitable company for her mother.
But he hadn't cared enough for her to see that.
And it was all irrelevant now. Once she was wedded to Crispin, nothing would matter anymore. And Jasper was going to make that happen unless she could escape. But she felt small and powerless and knew herself to be so when pitted against the combined strengths and resources of her brother, his stepson, and Denis.
Feeling sick with hunger and in serious need of the commode, she pulled tentatively on the belt, hoping to wake her companion without giving him the impression she was trying to escape. She was not prepared to do or say anything that might result in the loss of her breakfast.
Jasper sat up in one movement. He was not disoriented. "What die hell do you think you're doing?"