Page 11 of Bred By the Duke

“Peregrine.” I get up off the tiles, which takes longer than it should, and my knee makes a sound I intend to ignore for the foreseeable future.

“Don't get up on my account.” He is already shaking out the camping stool one-handed, a thermos wedged under his arm. There’s a paperback with the cover folded back on itself sticking out of his coat pocket. “I said to myself, Peregrine, that dog will do the whole thing at two in the morning in a strange house with nobody sitting with her, and then where will you be?”

“I thought the vet said next week?” I raise a brow at him. My mother’s brother has always been oblivious to what’s happening around him. Especially when it comes to his dogs.

“She did, but you know what it’s like…well, I suppose you don’t. Babies come on their own schedule,” he declares. He plants the stool by the wall and surveys the arrangement on the floor: the two folded blankets, the eiderdown, the bowl of water, the lamp, and Nester lying along Rochelle's thigh. “Well, now. Look at that. She's never taken to anybody that fast, not even me.”

“She is beautiful,” Rochelle says quietly, giving Nester one last stroke on the head before taking my hand and allowing me to help her up.

“That's affection, that is.” Peregrine nods his head to Rochelle and unscrews the thermos. The whole room fills with the smell of strong tea. “This room is perfect. My idea, you know. Cool floor, dark, safely tucked away.”

“You're a natural canine midwife,” I deadpan.

Rochelle makes a sound she turns into a cough.

Peregrine pours himself a cup of tea and watches us with no comprehension whatsoever. “You've been marvelous, my dear. Absolutely marvelous. Lucas, has the marquee gone up?”

“It went up yesterday.”

“There you are, then.” He toasts nobody in particular. “It'll all be fabulous.”

“Vet's on standby from tomorrow. His number is on the board in the kitchen.” I put my hand at the small of Rochelle's back to steer her past the stool without treading on the dog, and I leave it there a half second longer than I need to. “I'll send Mrs. Ivers down with a proper blanket. If anything happens, ring the house phone in the back passage. Don't come up the stairs shouting.” I don’t add ‘like a maniac,’ but it’s inferred.

“Would I?”

“You would.”

He is already pulling his paperback from his pocket. As I pull the door to behind us, he says, to Nester rather than to me, “Lovely girl, that one.”

The back passage is cold at this time of night. Rochelle walks beside me past the boot room and the old bell board, and neither of us says anything until the kitchen, where the range is still throwing out heat and Mrs. Ivers has left a cloth over the proving basket. Every light is switched off apart from the one above the sink.

“He has absolutely no idea,” Rochelle says. “He interrupted us and then complimented me on my dog handling.”

“He'll tell my mother tomorrow that you're marvelous with animals, and she'll be confused as to how he knows that.”

Rochelle laughs, low, and rubs her palms up her arms.

We go up the east stairs. The house has already begun its nightly cycle of sounds. The floorboards in the attic creaking, the old iron pipe to the master suite bathroom clunking, the clock only chiming once on the hour between midnight and six am. I have walked this staircase ten thousand times, but tonight I’m aware of it in a different way.

Four doors from mine, she stops with her hand on the handle of the blue room.

“Elsie put everything back,” she says. “When I came in, she looked on the brink of tears.”

“My mother shouldn’t have asked her to move you in the first place.”

Rochelle turns around and leans her shoulder blades against the door. “You could have let them move me. It would have been easier for you.”

“That’s not the point,” I counter.

She watches me for a moment, waiting to see if I’ll elaborate further. Though I’m not sure I can. What am I supposed to say? If I tell her this is my house and my mother was overstepping, I’ll seem controlling and arrogant. If I tell her that I feel like the blue room is hers and it wouldn’t be right for someone else to use it while she is here, that would come across like I’ve lost my mind.

“There is another room I could use,” she says, lifting her chin slightly. “If you meant what you said earlier. Or you could leave, again.”

“Rochelle.” I shake my head from side to side, wondering how I’ll ever undo the damage of leaving her in the library.

“I won’t be made a fool of again, Lucas. You’ve already done that twice.”

I put my hand flat on the door beside her head. Her bright eyes lift to mine, and the vulnerability in them almost breaks me.