Her eyes were full of tears, and Emery had to fight not to cry as well. “But the mother might be coming back,” she said uncertainly. “We don’t know. Perhaps she just went to get food.”
“I think we should look for her,” Leah said. “She wouldn’t have gone far from her babies, would she?”
“Probably not,” Emery agreed. “But do we have time to look for the mother?” She glanced up at the sky.It is going to start raining at any moment, and if Lucien finds out I had his sisters out in the rain, especially without proper clothing…
“We have time,” Leah declared, and her face was so determined that Emery knew there was no point in arguing. “It’s going to start raining soon and we can’t let these little puppies be caught out in the rain without their mother. Come on, let’s get going!”
For the next quarter of an hour, they searched. But there was no sign of the mother anywhere, and as the sky darkened, Emery found herself growing more and more worried. After another quarter of an hour, a clap of thunder sounded in the distance, and seconds later, she felt a big, wet drop of rain on her face.
“Alright, that’s enough,” she called out, looking around for where her sisters-in-law had gotten to. “We need to go back to the house now.”
She heard a crashing sound through the woods, and moments later, the girls appeared through the trees. They all had bits of sticks and leaves in their hair, the blankets they still clutched around them were covered in mud, and they looked tired but excited.
“We’re bringing the puppies home with us,” Leah said. It wasn’t a question, and Emery didn’t try to argue with her.
“Of course we are,” she said. “We can’t leave them in the rain and cold without their mother or anything to eat. Come on, let’s go get them.”
All three girls beamed at her, and they made their way together back to the felled tree, where Emery very carefully lifted each of the puppies up and out of the hole and placed them in the girls’blankets. None of her sisters-in-law now had blankets to keep them warm and dry, and the rain was coming down harder now.
“We’re going to have to run back to the house!” She said, as Eve took the last of the three puppies from Emery and clutched it to her chest. “Let’s go!”
And the four of them began to run, in their shifts, without jackets, back along the back, out of the woods, and then across the lawns, as the rain pelted down around them, puppies clutched to their chest.
As they ran up to the front gate, the door swung open, and the butler came out, looking alarmed.
“Your Grace!” he shouted to Emery over the rumble of the approaching storm, “what is this?!”
“We’re going to need blankets and milk,” Emery said, as she skidded to a halt in front of the butler. Leah, Celeste, and Emery all hurtled past her and into the house, each still clutching the puppies.
“Are those… dogs?!” the butler asked, his eyes wide. “Your Grace… the Duke will not approve of any of this!”
“The Duke doesn’t have to know,” she said, smiling mischievously.
The butler frowned. “Well, I think he’s going to find out that there are three new pups in the house.”
Emery grinned and stepped into the hall. “If the Duke has any problems with it, he can talk to me.”
She had a feeling that her battle of wills with the Duke was far from over.
Chapter Ten
“Your Grace, you’re back!”
Lucien frowned at his butler, who was standing in the doorway of Dredford Castle with an anxious look on his face. Although the words the butler had spoken were innocuous enough, Lucien didn’t like the tone of his voice, as if he wished that Lucien hadnotreturned to the castle just now.
“Yes, Wilkes, I’m back,” he said. “And I have faced a very perilous journey in getting here. The roads were completely rained out, and I was stuck in Cornwall for two nights waiting for the mud to harden so that the carriage could get through. It has been an absolute nightmare.”
“That does sound very perilous,” Wilkes agreed. “I just wanted to tell you, sir, that--”
“Can it wait, Wilkes? I’m very tired.” Lucien moved past the butler and began to remove his coat, which the butlerhelped him with. It was soaked through, and Lucien’s clothes underneath were also wet. Although he’d been in the carriage, he’d had to get out at several points during the ride today and dig the carriage wheels out of the mud. He was cold, wet, and exhausted, and all he wanted was a nice hot bath and to sit in front of a cozy fire with a whiskey.
“Well,” his butler said, shuffling nervously, “it’s just that--”
Crash!
The sound reverberated through the entrance hall from somewhere upstairs, and both Lucien and Wilkes started and then stared up at the ceiling.
Very slowly, Lucien turned to look at his butler. “What,” he asked, through gritted teeth, “pray tell, was that?”
