"Unfortunately, there was a lovelorn curate, a butcher's boy, and Miss Anne Trent's nephew," Hugo said with a wry grin. "The estimable Misses Trent found the lass too hot to hold. However, there must be another such establishment-"

"No!" Chloe broke in with a cry. "No, I will not go to another seminary. I absolutely will not." Her voice shook at the thought of being packed off yet again like some unwanted animal, banished again to a confinement that had become unendurable in its loneliness. "If you attempt such a thing, I shall simply run away."

Hugo swung his head toward her and the green eyes were no longer clouded. They held her gaze steadily, and she almost fancied little spurts of flame in their vivid depths. "Are you challenging me, Miss Gresham?" he asked very softly.

She wanted to say yes, but those little spurts of flame were too intimidating and the short word wouldn't get past her lips.

"It would be inadvisable to challenge me, you should understand," he continued in the same soft voice that had caused many a midshipman to shiver in his shoes. Chloe recognized the side of her guardian that she had encountered that morning in the bedroom. It was a side with which she had no particular wish to become reacquainted.

There was total silence in the kitchen. Samuel scraped chopped mushrooms into a pan as if oblivious of the tension. Lawyer Scranton stared up at the smoke-blackened timber of the ceiling.

"You don't understand," Chloe said finally in a much more moderate tone. "I couldn't bear it anymore." Then she turned her head away abruptly, biting her lip, desperately blinking away the tears crowding her eyes.

Hugo wondered if she realized how much more persuasive he found appeals to his sympathy than challenges to his authority. If she didn't understand it now, she soon would, if she spent much time under his roof. He remembered her desolate question earlier: Why does no one want me? The urge to scoop her up and cuddle her was as ridiculous as it was inappropriate, but he felt it nevertheless.

"What would you like to do?" he asked with a briskness that disguised his sudden compassion. "Where would you like to go?"

"To London." Chloe looked up, the tears miraculously dried. "I want to be presented at court and have my come-out. And then once I'm married and have my fortune, I want to establish an animal hospital. It shouldn't be too difficult to find a suitable husband," she added reflectively, "one who won't interfere too much. Eighty thousand pounds should count for something, and I'm quite pretty, I think."

Elizabeth's daughter had a talent for understatement, Hugo thought. "It shouldn't prove too difficult to find a husband," he agreed. "But whether you can find one willing to support your philanthropy, lass, I don't know. Husbands can be an unaccommodating breed, or so I've been told."

Chloe frowned. "Of course, Mama said Jasper intended me to marry Crispin. And that I certainly shouldn't care to do."

So that was it! Hugo drained his glass and reached again for the bottle. Simplicity itself. Jasper's stepson from his wife's former marriage would thus control Chloe's fortune. There was no bar to such a union-not a drop of consanguinity. Presumably, Elizabeth had intended him to forestall such a plan. "Why don't you care to?"

Her response was sharp and definite. "Crispin's a brute… just like Jasper. He rode his hunter into the ground once and brought him home foundered and bleeding from his spurs. Oh, and he used to pull the wings off butterflies. I'm sure he hasn't changed."

No, not a suitable mate for someone with a mission to succor needy members of the animal kingdom. "Why has that foul-mouthed parrot only got one leg?" he asked involuntarily.

"I don't know. I found him in Bolton. He'd been left in the gutter and it was raining."

"Beefs ready." Samuel made the laconic declaration as he turned the spit. "Lawyer stayin?"

Scranton looked anxiously to his host and received a calm "If you care to."

"Well, I daresay it'll be way past dinner when I get home," he said, rubbing his hands at the succulent aromas arising from the fireplace. "So I'll thank ye kindly."

"I'm starving," Chloe declared.

"Had enough bread and cheese for nuncheon to feed a regiment," Samuel commented, bringing the meat to the table.

"But that was hours ago. Shall I fetch knives and forks?"

"In the dresser."

That hideous dress did nothing to mask the grace of her movements, Hugo thought, watching her dance around his kitchen with an assumption of familiarity that filled him with foreboding. He went down to the cellar to bring up wine.

Chloe pushed her glass forward expectantly when he drew the cork.

"I've no objection to your drinking burgundy, but this is a particularly fine wine, so don't gulp it like orgeat," he cautioned, filling her glass.

Lawyer Scranton sipped and purred. Eating in the kitchen of a decaying manor house in the company of a man and his servant might be unusual, but there was no fault to be found with the fare.

Chloe seemed to agree. She consumed a quantity of rare beef, mushrooms, and potatoes that astounded Hugo, who wondered where in that tiny frame it could all be stored. Elizabeth, as he recalled, had had the appetite of a sparrow. He shook his head in a bemused gesture that was becoming all too familiar and returned to the issue of first importance.

"Scranton, you know both sides of Miss Gresham's family. Are there any female relatives she could go to?"

"Oh, you can't send me to stay with some elderly aunt who'll expect me to walk an overfed pug and polish the silver," Chloe said.

"I thought you liked animals."

"I do, but I prefer the ones that other people don't like."

Revealing, he thought, but said only, "Do you have such an aunt?"

"Not that I know of," Chloe said. "But there was a girl at the seminary who had one."

Someone else's aunt was not helpful. "Scranton?" Hugo appealed to the lawyer, who wiped his mouth with some deliberation and took another sip of his wine.

"Lady Gresham had no living relatives, Sir Hugo. Hence the size of Miss Gresham's fortune. I don't know about Sir Stephen's side of the family. But perhaps Sir Jasper would be of assistance there."

That was a dead end if he was to honor Elizabeth's unspoken wishes. "I suppose I could employ a governess-no don't interrupt again," he said sharply as Chloe's now-familiar expostulation began. "The lass could be established somewhere in the charge of a respectable female."

"And do what?" Chloe demanded.

It was not an unreasonable question, he was obliged to admit. However…

"I don't see any other solution. Your education isn't yet complete-"

"It's perfectly complete," she interrupted, forgetting the earlier stricture. "I can do everything any schoolroom miss can do, and a great deal else besides."

"Like what'"

"I can mend a bird's broken wing, and deliver a lamb. I know how to treat a sprained fetlock and foot rot-"

"I don't doubt it," he interrupted in his turn. "But it doesn't alter the facts."

"Why can't I stay here?" She asked the simple question almost without emphasis.

"And do what?" Hugo gave her her own again. "Lancashire is a long way from a come-out in London."

"Maybe not," she said quietly.

Now, what the hell did that mean? Hugo gave up. There was clearly nothing to be done tonight. "It seems there's little choice for the moment. You'll have to stay here tonight."

"I told you so," Chloe said to Samuel with a sweet smile, gathering up the dirty plates.

"Reckon you did," Samuel said.