She was still regarding him with anxiety, and he saw the ingenuous girl again. He remembered the openness of her responses. Appetites as such were not wrong if they were not governed by evil. The sins of the father should not be visited upon the child.
"No," he said. "I don't regret it, lass."
Chapter 15
"TT 'm sure there's a simple answer to this, lass, but just why do you never wear shoes these days?" JL Hugo regarded his ward's bare feet as she came into the kitchen from the orchard. The memory of her grass-stained soles of the previous day was still vivid.
"Because I don't have any," she responded simply, taking an apple from the basket and rubbing it against her skirt.
"What do you mean, you don't have any? Of course you have shoes."
"Only brown serge kind of shoes," she explained, scrunching into the apple. "Clumpy half boots that look silly with this dress."
"The dress looks as if it could do with a wash," he observed. "It looks as if you've been mucking out the stables in it."
"Oh, it's just from Rosinante and the dust from the stillroom," she said, flicking carelessly at a smudge on her muslin skirt. "I was trying to encourage Plato to eat one of Beatrice's mice, but I think he's too young. I'll have to dig up worms for him."
"That will certainly improve the condition of your gown," Hugo said dryly. "However, I think we'd better have another shopping trip to see about shoes."
"And a riding hat," Chloe reminded him. "I lost the other one at St. Peter's Fields. I've a mind to purchase a shako. I saw a woman wearing one in Bolton once. It looked very dashing."
"A shako!" Hugo groaned. "You're far too small for such a style, lass."
"Stuff," Chloe declared. "It'll make me look taller. Are we to go this morning?"
"We might as well get it over with," Hugo said.
"Then I'll change into my habit."
"Give me strength," Hugo muttered as the door closed on her energetic departure. "A shako! What the hell's she's going to come up with next'"
"Reckon as 'ow ye'U be able to steer 'er right," Samuel observed, biting off a length of thread. He held up the shirt he'd been mending and shook his head. "Ye'd do as well to buy yerself a new shirt. This one's more patches than anythin'."
"Not with the farrier to pay," Hugo said, getting to his feet. He sighed. "Ah, well, into the breach, I suppose. Wish me luck, Samuel."
Samuel gave him a dry smile. "If n ye think ye needs it."
Hugo's answering smile was rueful. "Oh, make no mistake, Samuel, I'm going to need all the luck in the world to steer a safe path through this maze."
Neither of them was referring to the shopping expedition. Hugo rarely had to tell the old sailor anything directly. His friend missed little of what went on around him.
"Tell the lass to bring down that gown and I'll wash it while yer gone."
"I hardly think it's your place to do her laundry," Hugo said, frowning.
"Right 'andy she is wi' the animals," Samuel said, "but I don't reckon they taught 'er much about washin' an' flat irons in that seminary. She 'ad enough trouble washin' the curtains from 'er room… and she didn't know one end of the iron from t'other, as I recall."
"No, I don't imagine an heiress with eighty thousand
pounds would have been expected to learn the finer arts of domesticity," Hugo said. "But then, I don't imagine such an heiress would expect to be living in quite such spartan surroundings either."
"She's 'appy enough," Samuel said gruffly.
"Are you talking about me?" Chloe's clear voice came from the doorway and both men turned toward her.
"Yes, we were," Hugo said calmly. "Samuel is offering to wash your gown."
"Oh, no, I couldn't let you do that." She crossed the kitchen.
She danced rather than walked, Hugo thought, watching as she bent and kissed Samuel's cheek. And what an amazing capacity for love and friendship, a capacity until now starved of recipients except the lonely, injured, and unloved of the animal kingdom.
"Nonsense," Samuel said, his ruddy cheek glowing. "Just fetch it down 'ere and then get along wi' ye. I've enough to do wi'out all this argumentation."
"Do as he says, lass," Hugo said. "And then let's get moving."
Purple shoes with gold rosettes and three-inch heels, Samuel!" Hugo flung himself into a chair at the kitchen table. "And the hats… you would not believe how many milliners we had to visit before we found a hat that the lass liked and I was prepared to tolerate."
He shook his head, massaging his temples. "There was a cartwheel of straw and tulle… you have never seen its like… but the shako… Dear God, I thought we were going to come to blows over that. Can you imagine what such a minute creature would look like in purple shoes and a foot-high shako with a monstrous dyed scarlet plume?"
"The shoes were lovely," Chloe said indignantly.
"Don't take any notice of him, Samuel. They were the most beautiful shoes I've ever seen, and Hugo is the stuffiest, primmest, most… most old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud!"
Perched on the table, she extended one dainty foot and examined with a grimace of disgust the bronze kid slipper enclosing it. "Look at this, it's so boring."
"It's tasteful," Hugo said. "And elegant."
"It's boring, isn't it, Samuel?"
"Don't bring me into this," Samuel said, stirring the contents of a pot on the lugpole. "I don't know nothin' about such flimflam."
"And I don't like the hat nearly as much as the one I lost." Chloe glared at her guardian. From her point of view, it had not been a successful shopping expedition, and Hugo had shown a dismaying propensity to behave as if their relationship had not changed dramatically as a result of the previous morning's activities.
"Well, you shouldn't have lost the other one, lass," he said, refusing to be drawn. "No one forced you into the midst of a melee, as I recall."
"Oh, yes, they did! Crispin and Jasper did."
"But who chose to be so forced?" His eyebrows lifted and his smile was slightly mocking.
"Oh, you make me so cross sometimes!" Chloe jumped off the table. "I'm going to feed Plato."
"Hey! Not in those slippers," Hugo protested as she stalked to the kitchen door. "You are not going to dig up worms in kid slippers. They cost a small fortune."
"The sooner they're ruined, the sooner I can buy a new pair."
The silly challenge fell into a stony silence, and Chloe bit her lip, her cheeks warming as she heard her petulance. In a subdued voice she said, "I'll put on my clunky boots."
As she passed him on her way to the hall door, Hugo
reached out and caught her around the hips, drawing her dose to his chair. "Don't be cross, lass. I really do know better than you." He smiled up at her, his eyes crinkling with amusement and something else that she couldn't yet read with fluency.
"But you don't know what I like better than I do."
"Oh, I think I might take you up on that later," he said softly. "You might well be surprised."
Her knees were suddenly weak, and the day's irritations faded as if they'd never been. His arm tightened around her, his hand flattening on her thigh, and she drew a shaky breath.