Yes, Evangeline thought,I am definitely doomed.
Richard’s heart was thumping,and his skin prickled all over. From the moment the little orange dog had come sniffing around his terrace, obviously enticed by the sizzling rashers of bacon Frau Loretz had just brought out, his senses had sharpened to the clarity that he found when facing a river boiling in full flood or a near-vertical wall of rock. Fate was leading her back to him, in the form of a hungry Pomeranian.
Which was not to say he hadn’t played a supporting role. He’d opened the doors wide. He’d set the plate of bacon near them. He’d dropped a few pieces of meat on the flagstones, in case the dog should prove shy, and had to order Hercule back to his place by the hearth to ensure the proper party was ensnared.
Gerhard had begun to laugh when the little dog trotted boldly into the room, his nose in the air and his puffy tail wagging. “Now you are setting lures for dogs?”
“This dog is destined to be a particular friend of mine,” said Richard, his gaze trained on the small animal. “He is our neighbor.”
Gerhard’s brows went up. “Oho! I take it he is the reason you took this house.”
Richard sipped his coffee. “Nonsense. I had not met him then. This house satisfied all my requirements. You told me so yourself when we came to view it.”
“Yet still you hated it, until you went for a walk and saw the grounds.”
“I considered your counsel carefully during that walk. I took the house to please Clemency.”
Gerhard scoffed. “I have known you too long to be treated with this level of contempt! You despised the house and you did not care if that grieved your sister. Something happened on that walk to change your mind, and I wager this impudent little fellow is part of it.”
“Nonsense.” Richard extended his hand with a shred of bacon. The little orange dog walked right up to him and stood on his back paws to nip the meat from his palm.
“No? Then shall I chase him away?”
“Don’t be rude, Gerhard. He is our guest.” Richard watched with quiet satisfaction as the Pomeranian advanced on Hercule. The big dog put his head down on the floor, but his tail gave a few friendly thumps. “Hercule has better manners than you.”
For the next half hour, Richard endured his friend’s teasing while refusing to reveal anything. He had to quell one bout of throat-rumbling from the two dogs, but a fresh plate of bacon resolved the matter amicably. By the time Richard heardfootsteps and a familiar voice calling from the garden, Hercule was allowing the Pomeranian to walk all over him.
When Lady Courtenay came inside to see her dog at ease in his home, Richard mentally ticked that item off his internal campaign plan.Demonstrate respectability. Befriend her dog.When she sipped her tea, he saw her pleased surprise with satisfaction.Entertain her hospitably.
“You dog is a marvelous little fellow,” Gerhard told her.
She laughed. “Fearless in the pursuit of bacon! Wolves could not keep him away, could they, Louis?” The Pomeranian had come around the table to sniff her skirt again.
“No wonder he has taken fondly to Richard.” Gerhard shot a gleaming glance his way. “Adventurers recognize each other.”
“Are you also an explorer, Mr. Rieger?”
Pleased, Gerhard nodded. “I am why Richard sits here today, alive and well.”
Richard sighed as Lady Courtenay turned an impish look on him. “Oh?”
“I have saved him from the depths of the sea, many times. I have plucked him from the brink of a deadly crevasse on a glacier. I have fought off tigers who wished to eat him, a Mongol warrior who wished to gut him, an elephant who would have crushed him to dust beneath its giant feet, a Cossack who?—”
“Lies,” said Richard, now smiling. “Don’t believe a word of it, Lady Courtenay.”
“It sounds like a ripping good tale,” she retorted in delight.
“Of course you may listen to Gerhard’s tale. I only warn you not to believe in it as truth.”
Gerhard shook his head. “After I have risked my life to save your ungrateful person!”
Richard raised his coffee cup in salute. Lady Courtenay laughed. The sound caused a ripple of pleasure inside him. Thedog might be a charming little fellow, but she was the most magnificent creature he had ever met.
“But here, I am interrupting your breakfast,” she said, rising from her chair. “And it looks like rain. Thank you for caring for my wayward dog, but I must get home before the rain comes.”
Richard walked to the window and looked out. “It looks very threatening. You are most welcome to stay until the sky clears.”
She smiled. “I am an Englishwoman, sir. A little rain is nothing to me.”
