“Panache.” Jacob gave a dramatic shudder. “You should see what he wants to do to my barn.”
She snorted. “You would never let him anywhere near your—”
“There’s the sign!” He pointed at a thin column of green smoke rising from the opposite side of the roof.
“How did they turn smokegreen?” Viv asked in awe.
“Stephen and his devices,” Jacob said with a fond shake of his head. “Having a mad genius in the family can be quite useful.”
“What do we do?”
“We? Nothing. It’s Zeus and Hippogriff’s battle now.” He flung open the carriage door and released the hawk into the sky.
Zeus bounded out onto the field. Hippogriff soared up, dove straight through the green smoke, and disappeared. For a dog the size of a pony, Zeus was surprisingly silent as he tore off over the tall grass and leapt through an open ground-floor window.
“Good Lord,” Viv breathed. “I cannot imagine the havoc that dog is wreaking right now.”
“Stephen and Elizabeth are causing even more,” Jacob said confidently as he gave the signal for the driver to turn the carriage back toward town.
Viv expected Jacob to gaze out the window at whatever chaos they might glimpse as they drove away. Instead, he laced his hands behind his neck and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle.
He looked positively delicious. Viv, on the other hand, was a wrinkled mess of drool and dog hair. It was a good thing she’d told him there’d be no more courting until her cousin had been rescued,or she’d be tempted to take a page from Zeus’s book and leap onto Jacob’s lap.
Disheveled or not, he’d probably still let her.
He was dangerous like that.
“So,” he said. “In the mood for a cinnamon-raisin cake?”
Her stomach growled. Or maybe those were the butterflies in her belly. Could imaginary butterflies growl? Jacob could probably teach them to. The safest thing to do was to stay away, and not distract him from finding Quentin.
But once her cousin was home, all bets were off. ShedaredJacob to lounge nonchalantly in front of her then and see what happened!
He raised his eyebrows seductively. “If cinnamon-raisin is not to your liking, I can offer you—”
“The Duke of Faircliffe,” she blurted out.
Jacob blinked. “Not what I had in mind.”
“He—Chloe—invited me back to help with their speeches. His Grace’s speeches. I have three pages of notes in my reticule that I could send by post, but they’re expecting me to discuss each point in person—”
“All right, all right.” Jacob’s expression was amused, rather than irritated. He slid the panel to inform the driver of the new destination. “When you’re done helping, have them send you wherever you need to go in one of their carriages.”
“I can walk home,” she said.
“I know you can. But you shouldn’t have to when your feet are tired from all the walking you already did today. If you’re shy about ordering a duke about, I’ll send this carriage back to you as soon as I arrive home.”
This idea cheered Viv up immensely. “I can order a duke around?”
“Faircliffe responds appropriately to reasonable requests. And unreasonable ones, if his wife or child is asking. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Chloe and Dorian.”
“What about you? Do you want children someday?” Viv bit her tongue as soon as the question was out. No courting meant more than no kisses. It meant no asking questions that betrayed her hope for marital compatibility in the future.
Jacob took a long moment to consider the question before replying.
“I used to think the answer was no,” he said at last. “I have a large family already, not to mention hordes of animals that pass in and out of my barn every year. A baby is a tremendous responsibility. Humans are the only species that’s completely helpless for years.”
“I’ve seen how protective you are of wildcats and pythons,” Viv acknowledged.
