“Papa.” Lady Pamela was tugging at the leg of his pantaloons. “What did you bring me?”
Those intense dark eyes turned from her to look down at his daughter. He smiled, but the side of his mouth that Fleur could see, the scarred side, did not lift.
She felt a black terror, which had her gasping for air for a moment before she imposed control over her breathing again.
“We had better go down and see,” he said, “or I am not going to have any peace, am I? Sidney grumbled about it all the way from London. I only hope you like it.”
He held out a hand for his daughter’s—a hand with long, well-manicured fingers.
Slowly. In. Out.
“Sidney is silly,” was Lady Pamela’s opinion.
“I shudder to think what Sidney would say if he were ever to hear you say that,” he said.
“Sidney is silly, Sidney is silly,” she chanted, giggling and taking his hand.
Those dark eyes were on her again, Fleur could feel, though she kept her own resolutely on Lady Pamela.
“Miss Hamilton will come down with us,” he said, “and bring you back again before Nanny can send out a search party.”
Fleur walked through the door ahead of him and along the corridor beside him to one of the twin staircases that flanked the great hall.
“Ma’am?” he said at the head of the stairs, extending his free arm to her.
But she heard an inarticulate sound come from her throat, and she shrank farther away from him so that her dress brushed against the wall as they descended. He turned to listen to Lady Pamela’s chatter.
Fleur listened to the echo of their footsteps as they crossed the great hall, noted the smart way a footman sprang forward to open the double doors for them, felt fresh air and sunshine against her face, counted the marble steps as they descended them, and felt beneath her feet the cobbles of the winding avenue that led to the stable block.
She concentrated hard on immediate physical sensation. It was by far the best way to occupy her thoughts.
“Where are we going? What is it?” Lady Pamela tripped along at her father’s side, still clinging to his hand.
“You will see soon enough,” he said. “Poor Sidney.”
“Silly Sidney,” she said.
It was a puppy, a round, snub-nosed little Border collie with white fur about its nose and in a lopsided stripe over its head and about its neck. Two feet and its stomach were white. The rest was black.
It was protesting the fact that it had been placed in a makeshift pen with a pile of straw that it tripped on as it tried to walk. It was crying a loud protest, a demand for its mother.
“Ohhh!” Lady Pamela withdrew her hand from her father’s and stood staring speechlessly until she went down on herknees beside the pen and lifted the little bundle into her arms. The puppy stopped its crying immediately and licked at her face so that she wrinkled her nose and turned aside, giggling.
“Sidney traveled from London with a clean face and nipped fingers,” his grace said. “And frequently with wet breeches.”
“Oh.” Lady Pamela gazed in awe at her present. “He is mine, Papa? All mine?”
“Sidney certainly does not want it,” her father said.
“I am going to take him to my room,” she said. “I am going to sleep with him.”
“He is a she,” the duke said. “And your mother and Nanny might have something to say about a house pet.”
But Lady Pamela was not listening. She was playing with her puppy and laughing as it caught at her fingers with its sharp little teeth.
Fleur kept her eyes on the child and the puppy, her shoulders back, her chin high, her hands clasped together as she felt him turn to her and his eyes pass over her.
“You did not suspect?” he asked her quietly.
