Page 61 of The Captive Duke
Lucy dashed around him to kneel before two puppies dozing on an old horse blanket. The puppiesblinked at her sleepily, yawned, and let her pet them. She held a hand up to her father, two fingers raised.
“Yes, there are two.” Mostly because carrying eight puppies home on horseback would not have been practical.
The countess came up beside him. “Oh,my. Christian, what have you done?” She brushed past him to kneel in the straw next to Lucy. “Lucy, just look at them. Look at those paws, and their ears, such silky precious ears, and those handsome eyes…”
Lucy cocked her head, asking the question the countess would not.
“This one…” Christian stroked a hand over the runt, who appeared to have grown in less than twenty-four hours, “is for my dearest Lucy.” He handed his daughter her puppy, as its sibling struggled to his paws. “And this one is for my dearest Gillian. He has no sense, I’m told, but he’s much in need of a friend, lest he stumble into a rain barrel and come to harm. You’re good at befriending strays, my dear. I had to commend him into your keeping.”
“I’m good at…” She cradled the dog to her cheek. “You wretched, awful, odious, low-down…Oh, Christian.” Then the dog was licking Christian’s ear, for the countess had leaned in to hug him as tightly as she could with a wiggling puppy between them. Christian wrapped an arm around the lady, gave her a squeeze, then forced himself to lean away.
“I gather you like your pets, ladies?”
Lucy nodded emphatically, the dog cradled in her embrace.
“What shall you name him, Lucy?”
She pointed without hesitation, and Christian followed the line of her finger.
“Rake?”
She nodded.
“Interesting choice for the fellow who wasn’t the most outgoing of the lot,” Christian said. “You may call him Rake, while I shall call him Runt. This one was Dimwit, but the countess may choose anothernom de maisonfor him.”
The French came out easily, naturally, the way any English aristocrat normally peppered his speech with French—and without even a frisson of nausea.
Interesting. He had the disconcerting thought that Girard would have been proud of him.
Christian assisted Gillian to her feet, keeping an arm around her waist. “Let’s introduce them to the gardens, shall we?”
Lucy put her puppy on the ground, while the countess kept hers in her arms until they reached the garden. Christian strolled along, treasuring the feel of Gillian at his side, silently promising the dog years at the hearth if he continued to provoke such a sentimental mood from the countess.
In captivity, Christian had never been touched in friendship, never known tenderness or kindness at the hands of another. If he was forced to accept a bath, theservice was rendered with disrespect. If he was tended by a doctor, it was without anesthetic or palliative, the care given hurriedly, even fearfully.
And Girard’s hands on him had been businesslike and fleeting—thank a merciful Deity.
Lady Greendale had renewed a certain appetite in him, one he hadn’t realized he’d possessed—for sweet touches, for care and tenderness and tactile loving kindness. She had it in her very nature to offer such touches, and she’d have him believe she even desired him.
He could not atone for that, but neither would he part with her physical presence in his life. If he had to buy her dogs, give her horses, and keep his own animal nature to himself to do it, he would.
By God, he would.
The puppies were effective diplomatic overtures. Gilly understood them clearly for the olive branch they were intended to be. She wasn’t sure what Christian’s motives were with respect to Lucy, but the child adored her pet.
Not Christian.Mercia.
“We’re to have a guest.”
“You startled me, Your Grace.” Gilly put down her embroidery hoop as he took the seat beside her on a bench amid his mother’s rose gardens. Yards away, Lucy tossed a ball to the pups, who grew larger by the day, like creatures from some fairy tale.
“I don’t know who plays harder,” Mercia said, “the child or the dogs, but it’s too quiet, that scene. She should be shrieking with laughter, calling directions to them. Every night, I go to bed telling myself we’re one day closer to when she speaks to us again, but it grows difficult to keep that faith.”
Oh, and wouldn’t he offer just such a confidence, a glimpse of paternal insecurity more dear to Gilly than all his ducal swaggering about the estate with Hancock.
“I have the sense,” he went on, “this silence of hers has a purpose.”
“What sort of purpose?”
