“What,” he asked with some aspersion, “are you holding?”
She lifted a puppy. A disgusting, dirt-splattered puppy who couldn’t have weighed more than a clove.
“I’d like to keep him.”
He scowled and drew back.Absolutely not.
But she was flushed with happiness and crooning as if the abomination were something precious.
“Of course,” he found himself saying aloud.
“Oh, thank you!” She twinkled up at him. “Would you drive therest of the way? He’s shaking, he’s so afraid. I want to hold him close.” She demonstrated her intention whispering. “We’ll get you home and then you will be washed and fed.”
His heart shifted in his chest.
She’d always be gentle with something in her care, wouldn’t she?
Even when angered, she did not act in haste or, like many men he knew, out of a need to assert their authority. She’d been furious with him and the worst he’d gotten was a leveled, annoyed glance.
He was lucky, very lucky indeed he’d chosen Cassandra for that fateful waltz. And very lucky she’d proposed. Marrying herhadbeen his best decision.
He glanced warily at the dog.
He only hoped the pup would not prove one of his worst.
*
Cassie pretended shedid not notice Harbury’s distaste for Mercy.
Not everyone, she knew, had a partiality for animals. Her father, for instance, had been renowned for the quality of dogs he raised for the hunt, but had never liked to handle them. Like everything else, the dogs had only been means to advance his ambition. Had he known his daughters played with those dogs when he was not in residence, he would have been mortified.
And objectively, in Mercy’s case, disgust was a natural reaction.
Mercy’s long hair was stringy in some places and completely matted in others. His floppy ears were dotted with things she suspected were pests. When she’d first spotted him by the roadside, she’d thought he was a dead rodent.
Then, rather heroically, he’d lifted himself and scrambled down the ditch.
How had he come to be there?
Had he been hit by a passing cart? Thrown from a carriage?
She smoothed the fur on either side of his face and looked down into his eyes. Apparently, she had a partiality for big brown eyes because she was instantly smitten.
The feeling did not appear to be mutual.
He turned his face toward Harbury and squirmed. She had to grip even tighter to keep the dog from scrambling into her husband’s lap.
She understood the draw. She sighed. Who wouldn’t want a man like Harbury?
“Settle,” she crooned, running her hand from the pup’s head to his tail. “Shhh.”
The little thing’s heart was beating rapidly, his eyes were anxious. A well of anger bubbled up. What kind of monster had left something this precious by the side of the road?
She couldn’t yet tell the breed, if indeed Mercy had one, but he didn’t look like a mongrel. And he didn’t look like a hunter or sheep dog, either. He was the kind of dog preferred by London ladies. A lap dog, she was almost sure.
Another Harbury Hall mystery to solve.
The abandoned puppy’s origin. The unhappiness of supposedly well-managed tenants. The library’s disorganization at only one end. Most disconcerting of all, the unclear desires of a reluctant husband who sometimes appeared no longer reluctant at all.
