His jaw opened and a curling pink tongue lolled out, dancing slightly with his panting breath. She knew he had no idea what she was talking about so he could hardly be laughing at her, if dogs even laughed. To be fair, she might be laughing at herself if it wasn’t so serious. She had been ecstatic when her turn to be summoned to Aunt Minerva Huntley’s London mansion had arrived, despite her older siblings’ reports about the horrors of their own visits. They had been forbidden to go further afield than the gardens across the road, spoken to no one but the servants, eaten their meagre meals in their rooms while evidence of some serious feasting took place in Aunt Minnie’s chambers and been sent packing again after only a few days. Not one of them had lasted more than a week. And no one, not even Cousin Arthur, had had any luck with Marmaduke.
Aunt Minnie’s very sympathetic butler had managed to convey to her that though the two other, less-favoured pugs in Aunt Minnie’s menagerie were quite docile, no one in the house dared approach Marmaduke since he had an unfortunate habit of producing such heartrending high-pitched squeals that the last servant who had tried to exercise him had been sacked on the spot. Sophie knew her chances were poor, but aside from her own considerations she really believed it would do Marmaduke a world of good.
‘It’s not that I hate Ashton Cove, Duke,’ she told Marmaduke’s behind. ‘But we have to face the facts. I’m not much use to my family as I am. Even if I had wanted to accept the offers of any of the men who showed an interest in me, which I didn’t, I still managed to scare them all off before they actually took the leap. And Augusta always said my one contribution to Papa’s parish work is that I’m good with eccentrics and animals because we think alike and I know not even that really makes up for my peculiarities. And here I am in London with an animal and a reclusive eccentric, apologies to Aunt Minnie, and I am making no headway. If you would only make a little, a teeny-tiny effort so I could prove I have some use? If I can show Aunt Minnie I am actually helping you follow doctor’s orders, I might be allowed to stay a little longer and perhaps even explore the town. What do you say, Duke? Just a little stroll? I promise it will be fun!’
Her bright statement followed its friends into the silence and she stood eyeing the Buddha-like canine. Clearly matters required more than words. With an indrawn breath of resolution she scooped him up from his pillow and strode out into the hallway and towards the front door. Her move, worthy of Wellington’s finest surprise attacks, so confounded Marmaduke he didn’t react even when she strode across the busy road into the gardens. Safely inside, she looped a sturdy curtain cord through the velvet bow at his neck, deposited him on the grass and looked down at her captive. He stared back, eyes wide, mouth closed. Then his head did a strange little turn, taking in the sights of the garden, a brace of pigeons picking at the gravel, a nursemaid leading two young children briskly down the path, the trees gently swaying in the spring breeze.
‘See? It’s not so bad, is it?’ Sophie said encouragingly and was rewarded by a low growl as a pigeon moved threateningly nearby. Marmaduke hauled himself to his feet and the pigeon spread its wings and fluttered upwards. That was encouragement enough and Marmaduke, who Sophie had never seen move more than a yard at a time, mostly from his cushion to his silver food bowl, now proved he could move very quickly indeed. Sophie laughed and tightened her hold on the cord and hurried after her pudgy charge as he set about ridding the garden of all forms of fowl. After ten minutes of this sport he was panting heavily, his tongue out and jaw spread in an alarming grin, and Sophie judged she had done well enough for the day and scooped him up again, heading back towards Huntley House.
He lay so confidingly and comfortably in her arms, wheezing gently, that it never occurred to her he might have more energy left in him. But just as they crossed the street, he spotted another bird at the kerb and gave a mighty leap out of her arms, setting off in pursuit. Sophie was so surprised she did not even manage to grab the cord and watched in dismay as it snaked along in Marmaduke’s wake.
After a second of shocked panic she sprang after him.
‘Duke! Heel!’ she called out sharply, with more hope than conviction, but though Marmaduke paid no heed, a man and woman stopped abruptly on the pavement ahead and the pug hurtled into the man’s Hessian boots. This moment’s check was enough for Sophie. She grabbed the trailing cord before he could recover and looped it about her wrist.
‘There—it’s back to St Helena’s for you, you traitorous little dictator. That’s the last time I take you for a walk if this is how you repay me!’
Marmaduke directed a very supercilious stare at her and bent to sniff at the boots that had been his Waterloo.
Sophie looked up, directing an apologetic glance at the couple who had been her unwitting accomplices.
‘I’m dreadfully sorry about that, but thank you for stopping him. Aunt Minerva would have never forgiven me if he had run off. He’s her favourite, though I don’t know why. Most of the time he does nothing but sit on his cushion and stare at the wall. I hadn’t even realised until today he could do more than shuffle.’ She glanced down at the offender. ‘To be fair, that was a very fine show of spirit, Marmaduke. But perhaps a bit too much of it all at once. We shall try it in stages, no?’
The woman, her dark hair tucked into a fashionable bonnet lined with lilac silk and dressed in a very dashing indigo military-style walking dress with silver facings, looked slightly shocked, but then she glanced up at the tall man beside her and giggled, an incongruous sound from someone so elegant. Sophie, having fully and rather enviously surveyed her fashionable clothes, turned her attention to the man and had the strange sensation of standing before a carefully and magnificently crafted statue of an avenging warrior. Everything about him was powerful and uncompromising and would have graced the portals of the temple of a particularly vengeful god quite adequately. He stood motionless other than his intense dark grey eyes, which narrowed slightly as she met his gaze, and she was thrown back to a memory of getting lost in the gardens of their Cornish cousins in St Ives at night and stumbling into a Greek sculpture of Mars. She had frozen, dwarfed by the moonlit, frowning and half-naked god of War, too scared to move until rationality had prevailed and she had run back to the house.
He bowed slightly and the strange impression dissipated, leaving only a peculiar echoing feeling, like the silence after stepping out of a raucous assembly, a sense of being alone and very separate.
‘That’s quite all right,’ he said in a deep, languid voice that hardly masked his impatience. ‘We were happy to be of service. I think a leash might be more effective than that cord, though.’
Sophie shook herself and tumbled into embarrassed speech. ‘I know, but Aunt Minnie doesn’t believe in going out of doors and refuses to buy leashes. It is quite sad because it’s clear he needs exercise. Look at the poor thing.’
They all glanced down at Marmaduke, who was now seated, as solid as a small boulder, his pink tongue hanging out of his mock grin, and the man’s hard, uncompromising face relaxed into a faint smile. A very nice smile, Sophie thought, surprised by its transforming effect, and the sensation of being set apart increased.
‘I am not sure he qualifies as a poor thing in my book. He looks about as indulged as humanly possible. Is Aunt Minnie by any chance Lady Minerva Huntley?’
‘Yes, do you know her?’
The couple glanced at each other and there was an easy, laughing communication in the glance that connected them and Sophie thought, with a twinge of uncharacteristic envy, that they must be a very loving couple.
‘Not really,’ the woman answered. ‘She doesn’t go out much any more. But we used to see her often when we were children and before Lord Huntley passed away. She was always very grand. Are you staying with her?’
‘Yes.