Bemused, he turned slowly. The dog yipped as he accidentally trod on its tail, now spread out in a feathery fan on the flagstones behind it. "Out!" he demanded without too much hope of being obeyed. The dog grinned, panting hopefully, and stayed where it was.
Hugo's eye next fell on a hat box, or, rather, the bottom half of a hat box. Its lid lay rolled to one side. There were no hats in the box. Instead, he was staring in disbelief at a tortoiseshell cat, her distended sides rhythmically heaving and contracting. As he watched, she delivered a tiny, shiny parcel that she immediately attended to with practiced efficiency. The kitten blindly sought and found its mother's belly and the swollen teat, and the tortoiseshell returned to the business of delivery.
"Ah, you're back, Sir 'Ugo. An' right glad I am to see you. Such goin's-on, as I've never seen." A stout, grizzled man in leather britches, boots, and waistcoat, sporting two large gold earrings, broke into Hugo's fascinated observation of the laboring cat.
"What the hell is going on, Samuel?" he demanded. "What is this?" He jabbed a finger at the hat box.
"Looks like she's started," Samuel observed somewhat redundantly, peering at the contents of the hat box. "She picked the 'at box and since it was so close to 'er time, like, Miss said as 'ow we'd best leave 'er to it."
"I appear to be losing my mind," Hugo declared in a tone of mild interest. "Either that, or I'm still in a drunken stupor in a whorehouse and this is some hideous nightmare. What the hell are you talking about, Samuel. What 'miss?"
"Oh, you're back, I'm so glad. Miss Anstey can go on her way now."
The voice was low and musical, with a most appealing catch in it. Slowly, Hugo raised his head and looked across the chaos in the hall toward the refectory door. The apparent owner of the attractive voice stood smiling with an air of total unconcern.
The years fell away and the room seemed to spin. It was Elizabeth, as she had been sixteen years before, on the day he'd first laid eyes on her. It was Elizabeth… and yet it wasn't. He closed his eyes, massaged his temples, then opened them again. The vision was still standing in the doorway, still trustfully smiling.
"And just who are you?" he demanded, his voice sounding rough and cracked.
"Chloe." The information was imparted as if it were self-evident.
Hugo shook his head in total confusion. "Forgive me, but I remain unenlightened."
A frown crossed the girl's eyes and tiny lines appeared on her brow. "Chloe Gresham," she said, tilting her head to one side as if better to judge his reaction to this further information.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Hugo whispered. She must be Elizabeth's daughter. He didn't know whether he'd ever known her name. She had been three years old on the night of the duel.
"They sent you a letter to expect me," she said, a hint of uncertainty now in her voice. "You did get it?"
"Who's they?" He cleared his throat, struggling to marshal his scattered thoughts.
"Oh, the Misses Trent, Sir Hugo," a second voice chimed in, and he saw that another figure stood just behind the vision that was and was not Elizabeth. A little lady timidly stepped forward. "From the Trent Seminary for Young Ladies, Sir Hugo, in Bolton. They wrote last month to tell you to expect Chloe."
Her head was nodding almost convulsively, her mittened hands twisting, and despite his bemusement and splitting head, Hugo tried to bridle his growing irascibility. "You have the advantage of me, ma'am. We appear not to have been introduced."
"This is Miss Anstey," Chloe put in. "She's going to a situation in London and the Misses Trent thought she should accompany me here on her way. And now that she's seen you and knows that you're not a figment-"
"A what?"
"A figment of the imagination," she said cheerfully. "We were afraid when we arrived and there was no one here that perhaps you were. But since you're not, Miss Anstey can continue her journey, which I know she's anxious to do since she's expected to take up her duties in a week and it's a very long way from Manchester to London."
Hugo listened to this rushed yet somehow lucid speech, wondering rather desperately if the girl always talked so much and so fast, even though he thought he could listen to that delightful voice indefinitely.
"Now, Chloe, you know I can't leave until I know everything is all right with Sir Hugo," Miss Anstey ventured, her head nodding even more violently. "Oh, dear me, no. The Misses Trent would never forgive me."
"Oh, stuff," declared the confident Miss Gresham. "You can see he's here, in the flesh, so you can leave with a good conscience."
Hugo had the feeling that in a minute she would put those small hands on the governess's shoulders and propel her out to the post-chaise. It was certainly clear who was in charge in this twosome.
"Might I ask why you are to be left?" he inquired. "An honor, I'm sure, but rather puzzling nevertheless."
"You're funning," Chloe said, but the uncertainty was back in her voice. "You're my guardian and the Misses Trent sent me to you when they decided I-" She paused, nibbling her bottom lip. "Well, I don't know what they told you in the letter, but I'm sure it was a tissue of lies."
"Oh, Chloe dear, you really mustn't," fluttered Miss Anstey. "So impolite, child."
Hugo ran his hands through his hair; the sense of inhabiting some anarchic dream intensified. "I don't know what the devil you're talking about," he said finally. "The last time I knew anything about you, you were three years old."
"But the lawyers must have told you about Mama's will-that she made you my guardian-"
"Elizabeth is dead?" he interrupted sharply. His heart jolted.
The girl nodded. "Three months ago. I only saw her once or twice a year, so it's hard to miss her as I should."
Hugo turned away, the wrenching sadness filling him. He realized now that he'd always carried a tiny flame of hope that she would let him back into her life.
He walked to the front door, staring through unfocused eyes at the brightness of the morning, trying to organize his thoughts. Was this extraordinary visitation the explanation for that strange note he'd received last year? Hand-delivered from the dower house at Shipton, across the valley, where Elizabeth had lived since her husband's death. The barely legible scrawl had said only that she knew he would honor his long-ago promise to be of service to her however and whenever and wherever she should need it. There was no explanation, no words of friendship, no sense that this was the opening he'd been waiting for all these years. He'd had the impression that even the faint signature had been an lifter-thought, disappearing off the edge of the page.
The note had filled him with such a resurgence of rage and longing that he'd torn it up and tried to put it out of his mind. Since the war had ended and he'd left the navy, they'd lived seven miles from each other. She had made no attempt to contact him and he'd been honor bound to respect her wishes, even after all this time. And then just a scrawled note… a demand. And now this.
He turned back to the hall. The dog had gone to Chloe and sat at her feet, gazing up at her adoringly.
"Letters'll be in the library, I shouldn't wonder," Samuel observed, examining his fingernails. "Wi' t'others yeVe not opened. I always said one day there'd be sum-mat important in there."