If it was true, he deserved to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.
At the very least!
“Oh,” she said suddenly, her eyes focusing upon something out in the sunshine while she turned instantly into the prim, outraged schoolteacher. “Oh, just look at that!”
And she strode out onto the wide expanse of grass and began to remonstrate with a working man who was at least three times her size because he had been beating a scrawny black and white dog, which was whining in fright and pain.
Joseph did not immediately go after her.
“You cowardly bully!” she said. It was interesting to hear that she did not yell, though her voice acquired power enough to be heard for some distance. “Stopthat immediately.”
“And ’o is going to stop me?” the man asked insolently as a few passersby paused to watch and listen.
Joseph took one step forward as the man raised his stick and brought it down on the dog’s cringing back again—except that it stopped in midair, Miss Martin’s hand beneath it.
“Your own conscience, it is to be hoped,” she said. “Animals must be loved and fed if they are to give loyal service. They are not to be beaten and starved by brutish louts.”
There was a faint cheer from the bystanders. Joseph grinned.
“ ’Ere,” the man said, “watch ’o you are calling brutish or I’ll give you good reason. And p’rapsyouwant to love and feed the good-for-nothing ’ound if you are so ’igh and mighty about it. ’E’s useless to me.”
“Ah,” Miss Martin said. “So now you would add abandonment to your other sins, would you?”
He looked at her as if he would love nothing better than to plant her a facer—Joseph hurried closer—and then leered, displaying a fine mouthful of rotten teeth.
“Yeh,” he said, stooping down suddenly to scoop the whimpering dog up in one hand and push him against her until her arms came beneath him to hold him. “Yeh, that’s exactly wot I’m doing. Make sure you love and feed ’im, ma’am. And don’t habandon ’im and add to your sins.”
He grinned in appreciation of his own wit and he went striding off across the park to the mingled cheers of a few young blades and the murmured disapproval of other, more genteel bystanders.
“Well,” Miss Martin said, turning toward Joseph, her hat slightly askew on her head, giving her a rakish air, “I seem to have acquired a dog. Whatever am I to do with him?”
“Take him home and bathe and feed him?” Joseph grinned. “He is a border collie but a very poor specimen of his breed, poor thing.”
He also smelled.
“But I have no home to take himto,” she said while the dog looked up at her and whined. “And even if I were in Bath I could not have a dog at the school. Oh, dear me. Is he not adorable?”
Joseph laughed aloud. The dog was anything but.
“I will house him in my stables if you wish,” he said, “and look around for a permanent home for him.”
“In a stable?” she said. “Oh, but he has been dreadfully mistreated. One only has to look into his eyes to know that—even if one had not witnessed that shocking display of brutality. He needs company and he needslove. I will have to take him to Susanna’s and hope that Peter will not toss both him and me out.”
She laughed.
Ah, yes, he thought, she was capable of passion right enough—even if only passion for justice toward the downtrodden.
They walked side by side back along the path to his curricle, and he felt suddenly cheerful again. She was not the sort of woman who would abandon even a dog in need or delegate the giving of tender care to someone else. Surely she would help Lizzie too—though she was under no obligation to do so, of course.
He took the dog from her arms and placed him in the hands of his astonished tiger while he helped her up onto the seat of his curricle again. Then he placed the dog in her lap and she cradled him safely with her skirt and her arms.
“Part of your dream has come true, I believe, ma’am,” he said.
She looked at him with uncomprehending eyes for a moment and then laughed.
“Now all I need is the rustic cottage and the hollyhocks,” she said.
He liked her laughter. It made him feel cheerful and hopeful.
