“Wait for me!” Eve shouted from the shore, and then she was plunging in as well. She was still a bit shorter than her sisters, so the water came further up her body by the time she reached Celeste and Leah, but they took no pity on her. A furious game of splashing ensued, which Emery watched with a mixture of joy and sadness from the shore.
It was so wonderful to see the girls playing together like this, not worrying about being ladylike or proper, just enjoying time together and being a little wild and silly. But it made her sad, too, because she had to wonder if they ever would have done something like this if it weren’t for her.
If I’d actually married for love, I might have doomed these three girls to never having any fun.
The thought was chilling, and she decided not to think too much about it.
“Alright, girls, we should get out of the water!” Emery called, glancing up again at the sky. It was becoming grayer, and she didn’t want them to catch a cold if they were out in the water when it started raining.
Reluctantly, the sisters made their way back to the shore, laughing and splashing each other along the way.
“That was fun!” Eve beamed as she stepped out of the water and Emery wrapped her in a blanket. “Can we do that again sometime?”
“Of course, but perhaps we should wait until the summer,” Emery said. “I do feel a little guilty about having you out in the cold like this.”
“Oh, but by the summer…” Leah trailed off, then looked away, a frown creasing her face.
“By summer what?” Emery prompted. “It will be much more pleasant to swim when it’s warm out, trust me. I used to sneak down to the river near my parents’ estate all the time during the summer.”
“No, it’s not that,” Leah said, accepting the second blanket that Emery had packed for them. She wrapped it around herself and shivered slightly. “It’s just that by summer, I will probably be married, and I won’t be able to go swimming with you three.”
She smiled sadly and dropped her eyes, and Emery felt a hard lump form in her throat. At the same time, Celeste reached out and took her hand.
“We will come visit you at your new home,” she promised. “And then we will swim there.”
“I can’t go swimming once I’m a married lady,” Leah said, shaking her head. “I must be a proper wife! Not go gallivanting around, stripping down to my shirt, and--” she cut herself off again, her face flushing as she caught Emery’s eye. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to imply anything about you not being a proper wife.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Emery said cheerfully. “I have absolutely no interest in being a proper wife. But you also might not be married by the summer. It’s very possible you won’t meet a man you love by then. There’s no rush. Sometimes these things can take time.”
“Not this again,” Leah said, shaking her head. “Lucien is going to be furious, you know, if he finds out you’re trying to convince us to marry for love.”
Emery shrugged. “I can take Lucien’s fury. I’m tougher than I look.”
Once the girls were all wrapped in blankets and Emery could rest assured that they weren’t shivering, they began to trudge back across the grounds toward the house. The lake was a bit farther from the house than Emery had first thought, but there was a shortcut Celeste had shown her through a small wood, so she steered them down this path. Eve was just saying that in the summer they should bring a picnic with them when they returned to swim at the lake when Emery heard a small whimper from somewhere in the bushes to her left.
Stopping short, she held up her hand. “Wait, be quiet for a moment,” she said. “I think I heard something.”
“Something scary?” Eve asked at once.
“No,” Emery said, shaking her head. “Something like…” She listened again. Yes, there it was: a whimper. Followed by a whine. And then--her heart hammered--a small bark. “It’s coming from right there,” she whispered, pointing into the bushes, which were half-concealing the trunk of a large tree that had fallen to the ground. “I think… I think it’s a baby animal.”
She stepped forward without thinking. “Emery, don’t--” she heard Leah cry. “It could be dangerous!”
But she didn’t care. If there was an animal in pain, she knew she had to help it. Carefully, she picked her way through the undergrowth, until she reached the bushes, and then pulled them back. There, sitting in a little hole that seemed to have been dug beneath the fallen tree trunk--as if to keep them safe from the rain--were three little puppies.
“Oh, my!” Emery gasped. “Girls, come quick! You have to see this!”
The three little puppies had looked up at her at her gasp, and she thought her heart might actually melt. They were very small, probably only a week old, with little noses and big eyes that gazed up at her as if hopeful she might be their mother, returned with milk for them. One was brown, one was black and spotted with white, and the other was black with just one patch overhis eye. They were the most adorable creatures Emery had ever seen, and she struggled not to cry as she gazed down at them.
“My goodness, they are so cute!” Leah said, arriving by her side and also staring down at the puppies.
“But how did they get there?” Celeste asked, while next to her, Eve began to squeal at the cuteness of the dogs.
“Their mother must have crawled down there to give birth to them,” Emery said. She looked around. “I wonder where she is…”
“They look thin,” Celeste said, her eyes moving appraisingly over the puppies. “They must be very hungry.”
“We can’t leave them here,” Eve said at once. “What if their mother never comes back! They will die!”
