Vixen Read Free Page B

of the library, where Samuel had suggested her credentials might be found.
    The library was as unkempt and dusty as the rest of the house. Dante went snuffling into the corners, his tail wagging furiously as he dug and scrabbled at the skirting board. Mice, presumably, Chloe decided, approaching a table where lay a pile of letters. It was dark in the room despite the brilliance of the morning. The daylight was filtered through grimy diamond-paned windows, and the massive oak beams and dark, paneled walls added to the gloom. She looked for flint and tinder to light one of the tallow candles on the table but couldn’tfind any, so she picked up the pile of papers and took them to the window.
    What kind of a man wouldn’t open his letters? Some of these were six months old, she realized, shuffling through them. Perhaps he read his mail only on New Year’s Day, or maybe that’s when he threw away the previous year’s unread.
    She found an envelope that bore the seal of the Manchester lawyers who had written to her and told her of the conditions of her mother’s will—the conditions that had brought her here. She tucked the letter into her pocket and continued to sift through the remainder. She recognized the thin, spidery writing of Miss Anne Trent, and abstracted this envelope also. She had a fair idea of the contents. They would not be flattering and she’d decide later whether or not to pass on this document to her new guardian.
    With the letters in her pocket she set off to explore the remainder of the house. Dante reluctantly left his mousing and followed her up the great carved staircase. A series of passages ran off the landing at the head of the stairs. The house was a rabbit warren of gloomy corridors, faded tapestries hanging on the paneled walls, piles of dust in the corners, and a closed-in musty smell that Chloe was convinced was mice. Judging by Dante’s eager lunges and scampering pursuits, the dog also thought so.
    She opened doors onto deserted bedrooms with heavy carved furniture and poster beds, the testers and canopies threadbare and in some cases torn and hanging from the frame. She couldn’t imagine sleeping in any of them until she came upon a corner room with three windows and a big fireplace. The bed had dimity hangings, rather grubby and faded, certainly, but intact and much lighter and more pleasing than the tapestries and heavy brocades in the other rooms. An embroideredElizabethan nig covered the dusty wooden floor. The views from the three windows were lovely—across the moor from one side and over the valley on the other.
    She flung open the windows, letting light and air into the room. Dante flopped down in front of the empty hearth with an exaggerated sigh, giving his seal of approval to the choice. The first thing to do, Chloe decided, was to install the cat and her litter away from any further threat of the stables. If they weren’t visible, the master of the house would perhaps forget about them. The parrot too.
    It took fifteen minutes to put the parrot’s cage on the broad windowsill and the hat box with cat and kittens into a cool, dark cupboard. Then Chloe left the room, firmly closing the door on Dante, who yelped frantically for a few minutes as she walked away.
    At the end of another corridor she found double doors. The brass handles were not as tarnished as the others she’d noticed, and she had the sudden conviction that the room beyond was inhabited. It must be Sir Hugo’s apartments. Inveterately curious, she didn’t stop to consider but gently lifted the latch, pushing open the doors, praying they wouldn’t squeak.
    She stood on the threshold and absorbed the room in silence. It was the largest she’d seen, furnished as heavily as the others. The bed was enormous, the pillars carved with strange animallike shapes, the tester and hangings of gold-embroidered brocade. But it was all now shabby, a shadow of its former glory. The curtains around the bed had been left