The dog lolled his tongue out of one side of his mouth and let out a playful bark. She reached out, allowed him to smell her hand and then began to scratch behind his ear. The dog immediately flopped down, back leg flexing as she scratched.
“You must belong to someone,” she continued, unable to help herself from using the same tone she would with an adorable baby. “A pretty boy like you has to be so loved.”
The bark-whine combination was the only response, and she laughed as the dog rolled on his back and offered his belly for pets. There was no refusing him, so she sank to her knees in the grass and went to work at rubbing the fine, broad chest and belly.
“You are a vicious dog, aren’t you? A guard dog, no doubt. So frightening. Who do you belong to, eh boy? Who is your master?”
“That would be me.”
She jolted at the sound of Nicholas’s voice and looked up to find him coming slowly toward her, cane in one hand. Her breath caught, for from her angle on the ground, he looked impossibly tall and lean and strong. And stern, as the sunlight caught off his expression as he stared down at her and the animal that was apparently his.
“Oh,” she squeaked, and shook her head. God, could she be any more obvious in her attraction to him? That wasn’t good for either of them. “Good day,” she managed, and shoved back to her feet.
He arched a brow at the dog still lolling on the ground at her feet, whining for her to come back and finish what she’d started. “My guard dog seems not to be much on guard.”
She laughed, for at the moment the dog wiggled and his tongue flopped from one side of his mouth to the other. “He’s very sweet.”
“Sweet?” Nicholas repeated, and then he laughed. All the air was sucked from her lungs at that sound she had once loved, craved. How many times had she found amusing things for him just to make him chuckle in that low, husky tone? “Not many would say that about him.”
She struggled to find breath enough to respond. “What is his name?”
“Fortescue,” he said, and at that the dog stopped playing and jerked to his feet. Nicholas smiled as he flicked his hand to his side. The dog trotted over and sat down at full attention. He continued to send Aurora side glances, but now he looked every inch the guard dog Nicholas had said he was.
“Oh,” she said. “So a proud, Norman warrior.”
His smile widened. “Indeed. Despite his drooling over female affection.”
“I’m sure that same desire must have afflicted soldiers of old,” she reassured him. “You cannot blame Fortescue for that.”
Nicholas shifted and his gaze slid over her face, settling on her lips. “No. I suppose not.”
The sun suddenly felt warmer, and she lifted a hand to her throat in the hopes she would cover the flush she felt spreading on her skin. “When did you get him?”
Nicholas held his stare on her a beat too long and then cleared his throat. “Since my dog interrupted your walk, why don’t we join you so that you may continue?”
She hesitated. They had agreed to pretend as if their shared past didn’t exist, and there was no harm in two strangers sharing a walk if they bumped into each other. But it still felt…dangerous. And alluring. And something she wanted more than anything.
So she pushed aside her hesitations and nodded. “As long as it isn’t too taxing on your injuries.”
He glanced at his cane. “I’ve been told to exercise the leg. In order to keep it mobile. So this is my morning constitutional. Perhaps a bit taxing, but essential.”
She blinked up at him anew. His life had changed so much in nine years, but he was never anything but calm about it. Steady. Then again, he always had been. It was something she’d always admired about him.
“Then away we go,” she said with a smile. They fell into step together, she slowing her gait so that he wouldn’t have to push too hard past whatever remained of his injury.
“You asked when Fortescue came into my life,” he said, and reached down to pat the dog’s head as they walked. “After the war.”
She nodded slowly, but in truth he had broached a subject she didn’t know if she could leave be. The war and his time in it had been in her thoughts since well before they met again. “Was he a war dog?”
He gave the dog a playfully stern look and laughed. “I would have said so before I found him offering surrender to an unarmed enemy this morning.”
She knew he meant to be funny, but the statement hit home regardless. “I hope I’m not your enemy,” she said softly. “Or his.”
He didn’t reply but looked off toward the horizon. “Fortescue was trained for patrol, yes,” he said. “And took to me, as I did to him. When I was injured, he wouldn’t leave my side and so was gifted to me.”
She smiled. “Good boy,” she said, and Fortescue’s thick, curved tail thumped as he wagged it. “I’m glad he was with you, I’m sure those must have been difficult days.” She glanced at Nicholas’s leg, memorizing the way his gait had changed with his injury. The limp wasn’t pronounced, but it certainly changed the man she’d once known. “How did it happen?”
He cleared his throat. “I thought we weren’t discussing the past.”
