Vixen Read Online Free PDF

with the sick, wounded, or abandoned and an unfailing nose for finding them. Her acquisitions had not been popular with the Misses Trent any more than had her frequent embarrassing confrontations with neglectful or abusive owners. However, Chloe was not easily turned from a course of action, and when her anger and pity were aroused, it would have taken much more than the combined efforts of Miss Anne and Miss Emily to dissuade her.
    Now she stroked Dante’s head with a soothing rhythm until her flush died down and she could imagine facing her guardian again. Until he’d thrown aside the bedclothes, she hadn’t thought twice about his nakedness beneath the sheet. She hadn’t thought twice about being in a man’s bedroom—a virtual stranger’s bedroom—conducting such a long and relatively intimate conversation. She had little experience to go on, but it did not seem as if that had been a most unusual circumstance. In fact, everything about this business was unusual. Here she was, orphaned and alone, thrust into the clearly unwelcoming arms of a stranger who lived in a decaying Tudor manor house on the Lancashire moorswith only a servant for company. And not an ordinary servant either.
    Dante stood up and went to the door, whining. He needed to go out, and presumably the cat would need to as well. And they had to be fed. The thought of food made her realize that she was starving, and the need to do something practical for her menagerie chased away any lingering embarrassment about the morning’s interview.
    She picked up the cat, who mewed at her sleeping kittens but was not reluctant to be carried away. Dante pranced ahead of her as she hurried down the corridor, hoping she wouldn’t meet Sir Hugo with her arms full of feline. She dashed across the hall and out into the sunny courtyard, where the cat dug herself a tidy hole under a bush and Dante went off, tail flying, to investigate the stables.
    She was halfway across the hall, returning mother to babes, when chaos broke out in the courtyard. The air was split with the frenzied barking of what sounded like half a dozen maddened dogs. The cat leapt from her arms with a high-pitched yowl and belted for the stairs.
    “What the devil’s going on?” Hugo emerged from the kitchen, wiping his mouth on a checkered table napkin. The cat streaked past him and the cacophony from outside grew to new proportions.
    “Beatrice … Beatrice, come here. For heaven’s sake, it’s only Dante.” Chloe ran after the frantic cat, now racing up the stairs.
    “Beatrice!”
Hugo exclaimed. “What sort of a name is that?” Then he shook his head impatiently. “Stupid question. What else would you call her?” He grabbed Chloe’s arm, halting her pursuit. “Leave the cat. If that damn dog of yours is causing trouble out there, lass,
you
will sort it out.”
    “Oh, dear … yes, I suppose so,” Chloe said, staringdistractedly after the cat. “I suppose Beatrice will find her way back to her kittens … mother’s instinct. Don’t you think?”
    “I don’t know the first thing about cats and I don’t give a tinker’s damn. But I want that noise stopped
now.”
    Chloe flung up her hands in defeat and ran back outside. It was hard to distinguish one dog from another in the whirling ball of fur in the courtyard. “Dante!” she yelled, running down the steps.
    “Don’t get in the middle of them!” Hugo called in sudden panic as she raced to the snapping, growling, barking ball of fur.
    Chloe stopped dead. “I’m not a fool! What do you take me for?” Her tone was considerably less than polite. Without waiting for an answer, she ran to the pump in the corner of the courtyard, filled two leather buckets, and lugged them toward the fray.
    Hugo watched the diminutive figure struggle with the heavy buckets, but he was still smarting from that flash of insolent impatience and made no attempt to help her.
    She heaved the contents of the first bucket over the snarling animals,