Thoughts and images tumbled in his head. He could see Elizabeth in her daughter, but Elizabeth had had no passion, no hungers. She had been as pure and fragile as crystal despite her husband's attempts to sully her purity.

But Elizabeth's daughter was also Stephen's daughter. A man of passions and deep hungers. And it seemed to Hugo, looking at the abandonment of the woman he'd just initiated, that her father's passions and hungers ran as deeply and as virulently in the daughter.

God help him, but she would have enjoyed the crypt.

The unbidden, loathsome thought brought bile to his mouth, and black spots danced before his eyes. He snatched up her discarded nightgown. "Cover yourself."

The rasping command was so shocking after the silence that Chloe made no attempt to take the garment from him. She lay unmoving, gazing up at him, dismay chasing the soft glow from the blue depths of her eyes.

Hugo dropped the shift on her belly. "Cover yourself." he repeated. "And then go upstairs to your room." He turned from her, pulling up his britches with shaking hands.

In shock and disbelief Chloe sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the couch. Then she just sat there, holding her nightgown on her knees, too stunned to move. Hugo spun around. "Did you hear what I said?" Roughly, he pulled her to her feet. "I told you to put this on." He picked up her nightgown, dropped it over her head, and pushed her arms into the sleeves. "Now go up to your room."

"I don't understand," she whispered, crossing her arms and hugging her breasts. "What have I done?" She quailed before the look in his eyes, where vipers of rage and disgust darted at her. "Get out! Now."

She ran from the room, Dante at her heels. Hugo stood staring into the empty hearth, his mind skittering. Perhaps it hadn't happened… perhaps in a brandy trance he had dreamed it. Brandy played such tricks sometimes, so that one didn't always know what was true and what was fantasy.

But denial was a child's trick to escape consequences, and after a minute he went to close the door Chloe had left open. He glanced sideways at the couch. There was a dark stain on the faded velvet cushion where she'd been lying.

He sat down at the pianoforte, staring bleakly out at the dawn breaking beyond the window. Chloe had not been responsible. Her seductive behavior had been that of a young girl trying her wings. She didn't know her own power any more than she knew not to yield to swirling emotions and hungers she'd never before encountered. It had been his responsibility to provide the control. A sharp snub would have finished the business once and for all… Instead…

Hugo picked up the brandy bottle and hurled it against the paneled wall.

How, in the name of goodness, could three able-bodied idiots fail to lay hands on a seventeen-year-old chit'"

Jasper Gresham stared in disbelief at the three men huddled in the dawn chill of the stable yard at Gresham Hall.

"It weren't our fault, sir." Jethro Grant, the only man still standing upright, spoke now for his wounded companions. "It was that dog from 'ell, bit Jake clean through 'is arm; and we wasn't expectin' no man with a knife on the road neither." A truculent note entered his voice. "You didn't say as 'ow there'd be any guards on 'er, Sir Jasper. Ned's got a demmed great 'ole in 'is shoulder… beggin' your pardon, sir."

Jasper's eyes, unreadable, untouchable, slithered over the man facing him and Jethro shivered, cleared his throat, and his shoulders slumped a little.

"And whose knife did this mighty assailant use?" Jasper demanded quietly. "Don't make excuses for your incompetence. It was a simple enough task, and you botched it." He turned on his heel.

Jethro looked in panic at his wounded companions, then spoke up again, a slight shrillness to his voice. "Sir Jasper… sir, what about our purse? A guinea apiece, you promised."

Jasper spun around and Jethro shrank as the blank, shallow eyes seemed to flay him. "I pay for work done, not for the incompetence of a trio of fools. Get off my land."

"But sir… sir… Ned can't work with that hole in 'is shoulder, and there's kiddies to feed… six of 'em, sir, and another on the way."

"Get off my land, the lot of you, before I set the dogs on you!"

"Oh, Jasper, is that quite fair?" The hesitant question came from a woman wrapped in a shawl, standing to one side of the stableyard.

"Are you questioning my judgment, madam?"

Louise Gresham's rare moment of courage died as her husband looked through her. "No… no, of course not, sir. I wouldn't do such a thing… it was only-" She fell silent.

"Only what, my dear?"

She shook her head abjectly. "Nothing… nothing at all."

"You will catch cold out here, my dear. I'm sure you must have business to attend to in the house." His voice was silky but the command was no less clear. Louise scuttled out of the yard, averting her eyes from the three men she had tried to champion.

"Crispin, see them off the premises."

"Certainly, sir." As his stepfather walked away, Crispin pushed himself away from the wall against which he'd been lounging. He strolled into the tack room and returned, carrying a heavy whip. His eyes gleamed with amusement as the three would-be kidnappers stumbled in terror toward the gate out of the yard. He pursued them lazily, cracking the whip at their heels until they had reached the end of the long drive and stood beyond the gateposts.

"Good day, gentlemen," he said with a mocking bow, then retraced his steps, absently kicking the gravel over the blood so untidily shed by the wounded men.

His mother appeared out of the shadows as he entered the house. She thrust a handful of coins at him and spoke in a scared whisper. "Crispin, you must give this to those men. Ned's wife is about to have another baby, and if he can't work, there'll be no food…"

"Don't be so soft, Mother." Crispin glanced at the small pile of coins, guessing how long it had taken his mother to amass this pathetic sum from the pin money she managed to beg from her husband when in the direst necessity. He took her hand and dropped the coins into her palm. "If Sir Jasper discovers you're trying to meddle-"

"Crispin, you mustn't tell him!" Her hands flew to her worn cheeks and she looked in terror at her son.

Crispin shook his head with a dismissive contempt and stalked toward the breakfast parlor, where he would find his stepfather.

Louise stared after him and tried to remember her son in the days when he'd been a loving little boy… in the days before he'd come to regard his mother through the harsh, derisive eyes of his stepfather. And not just his mother, she thought, turning to go upstairs. And not just the women they took to the crypt. The whole female sex it seemed. Poor little Chloe. She'd been such a bright, lively child despite her mother's illness and neglect. How long would it take Jasper and Crispin to break her too?

It didn't occur to Louise for one minute that her husband and son would fail in their plans for Elizabeth's daughter. Jasper wasn't going to be put off by one setback.

"Dog's come back, then," Samuel observed, lifting a steaming kettle off the fire as Hugo entered the kitchen. The back door stood open, filling the room with the brilliant sunlight of mid-morning.

Hugo winced at the dazzle and ran his hands through his hair. "Where is he?"

"Miss took him outside for a walk." Samuel glanced shrewdly at his employer and added an extra spoonful of coffee to the jug before pouring boiling water on the grounds.

Hugo swore and strode to the door. "Hasn't she got a grain of common sense? Wandering all over the countryside after last night!"

"Don't suppose she's gone far." Samuel stirred the coffee. "Not in 'er nightgown and wi' no shoes." He poured a mug of the thick black aromatic liquid. "Anyways, what about last night?"