In exchange for that one simple question, she was rewarded with enough stories to last the rest of the trip. It almost came as a surprise when the carriage pulled up the drive of a large house of grey stone.
She could tell at a glance that it belonged to Frederick Challenger. The shrubs were manicured to such mathematical perfection that she could have balanced a wine glass on the tops of the boxwood hedges. The flower beds were equally well cared for, with not a single weed marring their perfection. Their edges were marked by stone paths free of curves or divots. Everything was as rigidly perfect as he was, down to the last blade of grass.
She held her breath and closed her eyes to shut out the stultifying uniformity of the scene. He had promised a meadow. A stream. A copse of trees. She could cede him an ordered front park and be content with the wilderness in the back. It would be enough.
A servant put down the step for them and Mr Challenger helped her to the ground before turning away and surveying the grounds expectantly. ‘Sargent!’
George winced. He’d shouted in a voice loud enough to carry to the stables. This must be how he had sounded on the battlefield, issuing orders that his men would have obeyed from an instinct more deeply rooted than the fear of his anger. It was not a tone that could be ignored.
She looked to the house for the servant who would answer the call. He was probably some former soldier with an infirmity that would have put the man out into the street to beg, were it not for the concern of his former commander. While she could find many faults with her husband, she was utterly confident in his desire to care for those less fortunate. The fact that he’d married her was proof of it.
But instead of the greeting of a trusted retainer, she heard a distant, answering bay. Then the largest bloodhound she had ever seen came galloping around the corner of an outbuilding, long legs pumping furiously in answer to her husband’s call.
George waited for the inevitable collision of man and dog and the furious wagging and jumping of an animal rendered ecstatic at his master’s homecoming. Instead, as it neared them the four legs seemed to lock and the animal skidded the last few feet, raising a cloud of dust on the sweep as it came to a perfect stop, sitting directly in front of Fred and waiting, still as a statue, to be greeted.
In response, he smiled approval and gave the dog an enthusiastic scratch upon its long floppy ears. ‘Good boy. Come meet your mistress.’
There was a brief hand signal from the owner and the dog stepped cautiously to her, sitting at her feet and looking up with large sad eyes.
‘If you are at all frightened by dogs, you need have no fear of this one,’ Frederick said, with obvious pride. ‘Sargent is perfectly trained.’
‘Of course he is,’ she said weakly. How else would a dog of Major Challenger’s be, but as perfectly ordered and obedient as everything else about his life? Everything except for his wife, of course.
Trying not to brood on her own deficiencies, she bent down to talk to the animal. ‘How do you do, Sargent?’ She offered him her hand, waiting for him to raise a paw.
He looked at her dubiously, as if he had never seen such strange behaviour in his life.
‘You do not shake?’
‘He has never had a reason to,’ Frederick said, surprised that she would expect it. Apparently, his idea of perfect training did not include anything so whimsical.
‘Very well then,’ she said to the dog. ‘We will have to be much less formal. Then she bent over, took the great head in her two hands and kissed him on the nose.
The dog pulled away in surprise and sneezed as if she had tickled him. Then, he looked up and hesitantly wagged his tail.
‘I suppose you have never been kissed before, either.’
By the pinkness of the owner’s cheek’s, if he had ever relaxed enough to show such extremes of affection, he was not about to admit it.
‘Never mind,’ she said, still talking to the dog and not the man. ‘I like dogs very much. I think we shall get along famously together.’ She began to walk towards the house along with her husband, but the dog did not follow.
She turned back to him. ‘Well? Come along, then.’
The dog started forward at something that would have been a scamper in a smaller animal, then pulled up short with a whine.
‘Sargent?’
Her husband looked back to see what she was doing. ‘Dogs are not allowed in the house,’ he said in a tone that brooked no argument.
‘Why?’ she asked simply. From the wag of his tail, Sargent wanted an answer as well.
‘They make a mess,’ he said.
‘I have had dogs all of my life, both in the house and out. On the whole, they are cleaner than people,’ she said.
‘But dogs have never been allowed in my house,’ he said, significantly.
‘And at the altar, you endowed me with all your worldly goods,’ she said, smiling. ‘That would include both the house and the dog.’ She looked down at Sargent. ‘Do not listen to him. You are welcome to stay on my half of the house. And you may sleep at the foot of my bed. Come, Sargent.’
