wine, teased his nostrils. He took a step down, then realized he had no lantern.
He turned back. Abruptly he slammed the door shut at his back. The violence of the sound jarred the night. He turned the key, hung it back on its hook, extinguished the lamps in the kitchen, lit a carrying candle, and went up to bed.
The bang awoke Dante, who leapt from the bed with a growl. Chloe sat up. "What is it?" Dante was at the door, snuffling at the gap beneath, his tail waving joyously in recognition of the familiar.
It must be Hugo coming to bed. Chloe wondered what the time could be. She seemed to have been asleep for hours, but it was still darkest night beyond the window. Was he once again unable to sleep?
She slipped from bed and quietly opened the door onto the corridor. Hugo's apartments were at the far end, beyond the central hallway. She could see the yellow glimmer of light beneath his door. She waited, shivering slightly, for the light to be extinguished, but it remained for hours, it seemed, much longer than it would take someone to prepare for bed. Thoughtfully, she went back to bed and lay down. Dante settled on her feet again with a sigh that expressed relief that these strange nighttime wanderings had ceased.
Sleep wouldn't return. She lay gazing up into the darkness that her now-accustomed eyes could easily penetrate. Not for the first time, she wondered what it must be like never to know that once night fell, one would sleep and wake refreshed. She could see Hugo's face in repose, when the vibrancy no longer concealed the deeply etched lines of fatigue around his eyes and mouth, the purple shadowing in the hollows beneath his eyes.
She thought he'd slept better since he'd emerged from the days in the library. He looked less depleted, his eyes
clearer, his skin supple. But what did she know about the way he spent the long, dark hours of the night?
She jumped out of bed and went back to the door. The light still glowed beneath the door at the far end of the corridor. Suddenly, she had the unmistakable sensation of pain… of some kind of struggle in the air around her. Was he drinking again? Please, no.
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.