Page 9 of Once Upon a Winter's Tale
“You are right, but they appeared just hungry. Perhaps they developed a pack mentality. He doesn’t seem eager to bite me. But let’s follow your father’s guidance and keep it away from all the other animals until we can be sure it is not infected. I have a feeling about this puppy. It hung back from the others and got caught by the scattershot.”
She leaned down and hugged Nero. “I need to take care of my baby here. There is blood all over him, but I don’t see bites.”
“I will do my best to move the little dog into one of the new cages in an empty stall, Miss Brianna,” Roy offered. “And I will bring out the tub and wash Nero for you. My father will be concerned about any bites, so I’d best get him cleaned up. He loves that dog almost as much as you do.”
“Thank you. I will do my best to see to both. For now, I must return to my chores inside.” With a quick curtsy, Brianna ducked inside the stable.
Chapter Four
Never have Iseen such a breathtakingly handsome man!
Frivolously, Brianna wondered if all dukes were as handsome as this man but knew there couldn’t possibly be a more attractive man.
She gave a sigh of relief as she walked to Clover’s stall and saw mother and baby there. When the doe went for food, she would get Roy to fix the gate, but leave it open. Clover would probably stay there until her mother returned.
For the moment, Brianna leaned back against the wall across from the stall and took a deep breath, glad that her skirt hid her trembling hands. She squeezed them tightly and released them, hoping to calm herself. The Duke of Kendall was here.
She found it hard to focus. It was as if a handsome prince had walked out of the pages of her favorite fairytale. Blond hair, broad shoulders, and muscled thighs she could appreciate because of the tight buckskin britches.
It wasn’t as though she didn’t see men in Devon’s countryside; she saw plenty. But none had ever caused a rapid pulse. And with limited opportunity to interact with men, she spent more time observing.
His green eyes were surely a path to his soul. When he’d looked up from the ground, she felt herself being sucked into their depths.
Mama had received a note from the Duchess of Kendall and mentioned that her son, the new duke, would visit the manor house. The note had emphasized all would be well, and it would please her son to continue the arrangement, but there was a hint of uncertainty there. So she’d asked Brianna not to draw attention to herself—the total opposite of everything Brianna had done. It would upset her mother to learn about the dogs, not to mention how she had looked when she had met the duke.
Unconsciously, she rubbed her face and looked down at her soot-covered hand.I don’t think he recognized my name. Could the duchess have forgotten to speak with her son? Surely not.
It made everything worse for Brianna. She had promised her mother she would maintain proper decorum and keep herself scarce during the duke’s visit, except on the occasions they should attend. But today’s situation dictated otherwise. If not for the bad timing of everything, she might have been in the stable tending to the kittens, or back in the house, instead of standing amid dead and injured animals in front of the stable.
Thank goodness they had not killed Nero. And now she added rabies to her worries. The accepted way to deal with the disease was the death of the animal and any they encountered. But Mr. Benson, Roy’s father, felt quarantining the animal for eight months would provide enough time to know if the dogs were rabid. She trusted Benson. As hard as it would be for her, if Nero had been bitten, she would isolate him as well. But she clung to the hope the dogs were only hungry and not rabid.
Her heart pounded as she listened to the duke speaking to Roy and his footman about the dogs. She had little experience with Society, but surely a duke helping bury dead dogs was not the norm. But he was doing just that, despite Roy’s protests. And he had peeled off his waistcoat and wore a loose-fitting white shirt.
The sight of his working and the sound of his husky voice sent tiny tingles to her midsection. Never had she reacted to a man’s presence so.
“Your Grace, my pa and I can handle this,” she heard Roy say. “Cook and Mrs. Smythe will have our hides if they think we detained you, much less allowed you to bury dead animals.”
“I gave you no choice,” the duke replied. “It is not a big deal and will give me time to get to know you, Roy. This is my first trip to this property. It was my great-aunt’s property, and she bequeathed it to my father. I plan to spend a few days looking around to determine needed repairs.”
“If you insist, Your Grace—here is a shovel,” Roy replied. “Wear gloves when touching the animals. With Miss Brianna and her love of animals, Pa tries to read a lot. He believes animal saliva and blood carry the disease. I don’t know what to reckon about it, so I use gloves.”
She could hear the clanging of the shovels as the men lifted the dogs and placed them in a wagon.
“That’s interesting. Where did your father find out about the saliva?” the duke asked.
“Pa is real smart, he is,” Roy replied. “He reads papers he finds about it. He’s taught Miss Brianna lots about healing. Says Dr. Samuel Bardsley recommends isolating the dog that’s been exposed to see if it gets the disease, but most people kill them. I ’spect if these dogs hadn’t died by the scattershot, we’d have ’ad to shoot them. They weren’t acting right.”
He walked over to the small puppy lying beside a mulberry bush and panting hard. “Miss Brianna is waiting for this one. Said it hung back from the others. She has a big heart, and I hope she is right,” the stable hand said.
Brianna heard the whimpering of the injured dog and stepped into the empty stall beside Clover’s. Gathering the straw in place, she prepared a soft bed before looking around. With the solid panel walls and gated stall door, the puppy presented no threat to the fawn. Roy had nailed boards to the bottom of the gate to keep it inside the stall. It would have to suffer the isolation. She could not expose her animals on the farm to the illness.
“Miss Brianna, your stable hand said you were waiting for this one.”
A deep voice stirred her senses, and she turned and stared into the endless depths of the duke’s cavernous green eyes.
“Your Grace. Th… thank you,” she whispered, barely able to make her lips move.
“I’ve checked him over and didn’t see any scars or bites. He had the misfortune to be starving and was probably a hanger-on,” the duke said, bending down to lay the puppy on the straw.
