The front doors opened before they reached them.
Rowan already stood in the entrance hall.
For one instant, Emmeline’s body betrayed her so violently that she nearly forgot the muddy puppy entirely. He wore a dark coat today, fitted cleanly over his shoulders, his hair slightly wind-tossed from whatever duty had taken him outside. His gray eyes moved first to her face, then to Aaron, then to the small animal in his son’s arms.
His expression hardened. “What is that?”
Aaron stopped dead. The puppy lifted its head and blinked sleepily.
Emmeline stepped forward before Rowan’s tone could crush the fragile excitement in the boy’s face. “A puppy.”
Rowan’s gaze shifted to her, flat. “I can see that.”
Aaron held the puppy closer. “We f-found him.”
Rowan’s attention returned to him. “Where?”
“Near the east wood,” Emmeline answered. “We heard him whimpering.”
Rowan looked at the puppy again, and his mouth tightened. “You brought a stray animal into my house.”
“Ourhouse,” she said before she could stop herself.
Rowan looked at her, and for a moment, everything else thinned. The servants lingering discreetly at the edges. Miss Harrow’s anxious stillness. Aaron’s careful grip. The puppy’s tiny sigh. There was only Rowan’s gaze, and the memory of his hand against her cheek, and her words between them like a dare.
Then Aaron spoke, breaking the moment. “May we k-keep him, F-Father?”
Rowan exhaled. “No.”
Aaron flinched.
Emmeline’s heart dropped, then flared. “You did not even consider it.”
“I do not need to consider keeping a stray animal in the house.”
“We do not yet know that he is stray,” she said. “That is why I wished to ask whether any neighboring estate keeps dogs. He may have wandered.”
“There is no neighboring estate near enough for a dog this size to wander from.”
Aaron’s eyes brightened with dangerous hope. “Then he has n-nowhere else to-to go!”
Rowan saw the trap the instant the boy spoke. Emmeline saw it too, and had to press her lips together to keep from smiling.
“That is not what I said,” Rowan replied.
“B-but it is true,” Aaron insisted, and the words came quickly now, almost clear in their urgency. “He was alone. And he was cold, a-and frightened. And Comet likes him!”
Rowan blinked. “Comet?”
“My horse.”
“Your wooden horse has offered an opinion?”
Aaron nodded earnestly. “Yes.”
Emmeline lost the battle with her smile.
Rowan’s gaze cut to her, and that almost undid her smile entirely for a different reason.
