Bruce, the bulldog, had taken possession of the mat before the hearth with a great deal of noisy snuffling before addressing himself to sleep. Fluff, who was not fluffy, and Tiger, who was not fierce, settled on either side of him. They were cats. Benny and Biddy, both dogs, one of them tall and gangly with hangdog eyes and ears and jowls, the other short and long, almost like a sausage, with legs so short that they were invisible from above, circled about each other, sniffing rear ends—it was a considerable stretch for Biddy—until they were satisfied that they had met before, and then plopped down together over by the window. Prudence, the tabby, stood close to the tea tray, her back arched, growling at Hector. Hector, the newest addition to their household—if one discounted the earl—was a smallish dog ofverymixed breed, his thin legs alarmingly spindly, his ribs clearly visible through his dull, patchy coat, his one and a half ears erect, his three-quarters of a tail slightly waving. He stood beside the earl’s chair and gazed up at him with eyes that bulged from a peaked, ugly face, begging silently for something. Mercy, perhaps? Love, maybe?
Aunt Lavinia was flapping her arms in a shooing gesture. None of the animals took the least notice.
“Pray be seated, Cousin Lavinia,” the earl said, a quizzing glass materializing in his right hand from somewhere about his person. “I suppose I was bound to encounter the menagerie sooner or later, and it might as well be sooner. Indeed, I believe I already have a passing acquaintance with the growling tabby. She—he?—ran through the hall while I was in it earlier and expressed displeasure at my arrival.”
“She does not know,” Imogen said, setting down his cup and saucer beside him, “that cats hiss and dogs growl.”
She looked into his face, a foot or so from her own. He was no longer smiling. But he had not, to give him credit, lost any of his poise. Neither had he raised his glass all the way to his eye. She reached down and scooped Blossom off his lap, inadvertently brushing his thigh with the backs of her fingers as she did so. He lofted one eyebrow and looked back at her. She stooped and deposited the cat on the floor.
“Perhaps,” the earl said with ominous civility while Imogen prepared to take him a scone, “someone would care to explain to me why my home appears to be overrun with what I would guess is a pack of strays.”
“No one, certainly,” Cousin Adelaide said, “would have chosen any one of them for a pet. They are a singularly unappealing lot.”
“There are always animals roaming the countryside without a home,” Aunt Lavinia said. “Most people shoo them away or go after them with sticks and brooms and even guns. They always seem to end up here.”
“Perhaps, ma’am,” he said, his voice silky, “that is because you take pity on them.”
He seemed to have forgotten that she wasCousin Laviniaand that they were one happy family.
“Ialwayswanted a pet when I was a child,” she explained with a sigh. “My papa would never allow it. I still wanted one after I grew up and Papa died, but Brandon would not hear of it either. Brandon was my brother, the late earl, your predecessor.”
“Indeed,” he said as he bit into his scone without loading it down with cream and preserves.
“He scolded me when he caught me feeding a stray cat one day,” she said. “Poor little thing. The leftover food would just have gone into the bin. After Brandon died, another cat came. Blossom. She was terribly thin and weak and had almost no coat. I fed her and took her in and gave her a bit of love, and look at her now. And then there was another one—Tiger. And then Benny came—the tall dog—looking as if he was one day away from dying of starvation. What was I to do?”
The earl set his empty plate aside, propped his elbows on the arms of the chair, and steepled his fingers.
“Four cats and four dogs,” he said. “These are all, ma’am?”
“Yes,” she said. “Eight since Hector came last week. He is the dog standing beside you. He is still dreadfully thin and timid. He must have suffered abuse and rejection all his life.”
The earl looked down at the dog, and the dog looked up at him. Disdain—or what Imogen imagined was disdain—gazed steadily back at wavering hope. Hector’s tail flicked once and then again.
The earl’s eyes narrowed.
“I have no love whatsoever for cats,” he said, “unless they earn their living as mousers and stay in parts of houses where they belong. And dogs are to be tolerated if they are good hunters.” He raised his eyes to direct a hard look at Imogen. “It is to be expected, I suppose, that women left to themselves would wax sentimental and quite impractical. What is to be the upper limit of... strays allowed to overrun my home?”
Cousin Adelaide snorted.
Imogen sipped her tea. He was behaving quite true to the character she had assigned him. Women needed men to keep them in line. She did not answer him. Neither did Aunt Lavinia.
“As I thought,” he said curtly. “No upper limit has been set. No plan has been made. And so I must learn to share my drawing room and perhaps my dining room and library and private apartments with a growing number of unappealing felines and canines, mustn’t I?”
“The second housekeeper’s room has been set up for them, Cousin Percy,” Aunt Lavinia said.
“With bars on the windows and doors?” he asked. “And are they always kept there? When they do not escape in a body, that is, and find more comfortable accommodation here? And how does the second housekeeper like sharing her room with them?”
“There is no second housekeeper,” she said. “I am not sure there ever has been. I certainly do not remember any such person. There are no bars on the windows. And they cannot stay there all the time. They need exercise. And affection.”
He looked back down at Hector.
“Affection,” he said, disgust clear in his tone. But the dog took one step forward and rested his chin on the earl’s thigh. It was the first time to Imogen’s knowledge that Hector had voluntarily touched any human. He obviously was not a very discerning dog. The earl addressed him sternly. “You are not planning to become attached to me, are you? You may forget it without further ado if you are. You would get nothing whatsoever in return. Pleading looks do nothing for me. I do not have a soft female heart.”
“Now there is a surprise,” Cousin Adelaide rumbled into her teacup.
The earl removed Hector’s chin from his leg after rubbing his fingers over the dog’s one whole ear for a few moments, and got to his feet.
“We will discuss the matter further, ma’am,” he said, looking down upon Aunt Lavinia. “I will not have Hardford Hall turned into an animal refuge, even in my absence. And if there is some other chair lurking in a little-used room or tucked away somewhere in an attic that is more comfortable than the one on which I have been sitting, almostanyother chair, in fact, I would be much obliged to you if it could be fetched to replace this one before I am required to sit here again. Perhaps you would pass on my compliments to the cook on the superior quality of the scones. I shall see you all again at dinner. Cousin Lavinia? Cousin Imogen? Mrs. Ferby?”
