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“So long as it doesn’t delay His Grace. He’s still not back from London. His aunt is going out of her mind.”
Pea’s stomach turned over, but she forced herself to say, “Maybe I should go and speak to her.”
“I can finish up here.”
Pea thanked him and wiped her sweaty palms on her shorts, but then Adam’s phone beeped with a series of messages. He read them, frowning.
“Kethnick says… His Grace is back. Just in time. But…oh.” He glanced at Pea. “It’s Kipper, his old spaniel. She’s passed away.”
Pea felt a cold wash of shock. Her eyes prickled and she pressed a hand to her throat.
“Oh, no. Poor Kipper…and is…is he…?”
She didn’t bother finishing her question. She knew Leo wouldn’t be OK. Everyone knew he loved that old dog, no matter what he said on the subject.
“Do you know where he is?”
“I’d imagine burying the poor thing. Come on, I’ll show you where they used to put the old family pets. Not that there’s been any in a while.”
Pea followed Adam around the edge of the walled garden to a slightly wilder patch of grass outside it. A small buddleia grew in a crack in the wall, and among the sun-dried grass were a row of small, weathered stones. And a dark patch of freshly dug earth.
The Duke stood looking down at it, a spade in one hand, some streaks of soil on his hands and staining his cuffs. He was sweating from the exertion of digging in the heat, his broad chest visibly rising.
He glanced up as they approached, his eyes darting past Adam to Pea, then returning to his friend and assistant where they remained fixed.
Adam went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder, saying some words of sympathy in a low voice. He nodded farewell to Pea then walked away to the big house.
Pea felt frozen to the spot, but sympathy called her courage forward. She walked up to Leo, laying a hand on his wrist where he held the spade. He tensed under her touch.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “She was the best little dog in the world.”
Leo moved away, half-turning back to the house, making her hand slip from his wrist. “It’s only a dog, Pea. It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does matter… It does…”
He started to walk away, shoulders square, back resolute, just another death for him to bear in a long line of deaths.
She had known him when his parents died. Her own father had died some years before, so she knew a little of what he had felt when she had seen him, aged eighteen, so stern and still, dressed all in black and not a tear in his eye as they lowered two coffins together into a double grave.
She had hugged him after and held him for a long time, her face pressed against a chest that was already as broad as a grown man’s. His arms had been strong and tight around her, and somehow she had felt that, even then, on the day he buried his parents, he had been trying to give strength to her, asking her not to grieve on his behalf.
“Leo, wait.”
He stopped and turned back, face unreadable. She went to him and wrapped her small arms around him. He didn’t move. Didn’t hug her back.
“Leo…” she looked up at him. “Please. It’s OK to care, to cry, to love…”
“I regret what happened between us,” he said quickly, firmly, not looking at her. “It shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry and I—”
He stepped out of her arms. “Please… My hands are dirty. I really must wash and change for this dinner. Excuse me.”
He walked to the house without looking back.
Chapter fourteen
Leo
Leostoodattheedge of Thornley Castle’s great hall, dressed immaculately in black tie, a coupe glass of champagne in his hand, and attempted to look as though he wanted to be there.
