Miraculously, blessedly, his quiet words had some effect.
Just a few feet away now, one dog sat abruptly, still leaning against his restraint. The other three stopped and stood, leaving Mr. Fox surrounded by a quivering mass of canines, their tongues lolling almost to the ground.
“Good afternoon, Lady Felicity. Miss Burke. Ash,” he said, nodding to each in turn.
Apparently having been reminded of her existence by his friend’s greeting, Lord Ashborough turned slightly to invite her into their circle. Mr. Fox smiled in welcome, clearly considering her a part of the group. Oh, God…what if he expected her to walk with him?
She knew her fear of dogs was irrational. Why, if others had not repeated the story, she would not even remember the details of the childhood trauma that had led to it.
But she could not make herself move closer.
Closing her parasol, Felicity extended one hand to the sitting dog. “Oh, you darling thing,” she cooed. The dog’s tail thumped the ground, but he did not rise. “What’s your name?”
“That’s Tiresias,” Lord Ash supplied on behalf of the dog.
Lady Felicity did not look up. “Are you a sportsman, then, Mr. Fox?”
Mr. Fox, already pink from the exertion of keeping the dogs in check, colored further. “Oh, er, I—that is, well… No,” he managed finally.
“No? Then how did you happen to come into possession of four such fine animals?”
“Oh, well, they’re not, you see. Not fine dogs, I mean.” A frown sketched across Felicity’s brow, and she drew back her hand. “That is, not to my brother’s way of thinking.” He gestured with his chin to the trio on his left. “Achilles was the runt. Lelantos won’t point. And Medea here has lost two litters already.”
Despite herself, Cami smiled at the fanciful names, the warrior’s for the weakest of the litter, the legendary hunter’s to the dog who could not spot his prey. Felicity only shook her head. “And this one?” she asked, ruffling the sitting dog’s ears. But if the name of a blind prophet proved an insufficient clue, Tiresias’s cloudy eyes revealed quite clearly the liability that kept him from the field.
“They were all to be put down,” Fox explained, “so I—”
“You rescued them?” she interjected.
Fox demurred. “Foolish, I know.”
It might have been foolish—in the extreme, to Cami’s way of thinking—but it was difficult not to like Mr. Fox in the face of further evidence of his kind heart. She wished there were any hope at all that her cousin could marry such a man, rather than Lord Ashborough.
Felicity was looking up at Fox with an expression of admiration. “Generous, I should say. Your brother is Lord Branthwaite, is he not? I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance.”
Fox nodded. “I will introduce you, if you would like.”
“Very much,” she replied with an enthusiastic nod. “Then I will be at liberty to give him a proper dressing down for his negligence.” Her gloved fingers traveled along Tiresias’s leash, clearly intending to snake it from Mr. Fox’s grasp.
He hesitated. “I don’t know, ma’am. They’re not very well mannered.”
“Then they must learn how to behave around ladies,” she insisted, tucking her parasol under her arm and grasping the lead more firmly. As Cami knew very well, and Mr. Fox was about to discover, Felicity was unaccustomed to being gainsaid.
His grip on the other three dogs slackened slightly, but before they could take advantage of their shocked master’s moment of leniency, he had reined them in again. A puff of breath escaped Cami’s lips, and she allowed herself to relax ever so slightly.
As she watched Felicity and Mr. Fox walk back in the direction from which he had come, she realized she was being left behind with Lord Ashborough. He seemed to have reached the same conclusion at the same moment, for he stepped closer to her. Too close. One could not observe at such proximity. It distorted the vision and muddled the senses. She could not seem to raise her eyes past the green-striped silk of his waistcoat, or clear her nose of the warm, spicy scent that lingered about him.
Then he spoke, and she would have been willing to swear that she felt his voice as much as heard it. “We’ll have to hurry to catch them, Miss Burke. Unless, of course, you’d rather we be left alone?”
* * * *
Miss Burke stood frozen, face pale, shoulders raised and tense, hands balled into fists at her side. Her posture put him in mind of a small woodland creature hoping to escape the notice of a predator. Vulnerable, just as he had said.
But he found himself suddenly disgusted by the thought. He much preferred yesterday’s show of strength. Despite the obvious alarm Fox’s revelation had produced, he did not think it was he—or at least, not he alone—that she feared.
“Do Foxy’s dogs bother you?” he ventured, keeping his voice light.
She stiffened further, this time in righteous indignation. “I haven’t the faintest notion what you mean, my lord. Whatever would make you say such a thing?”
Her denial was too sharp, too swift, to be entirely honest. “The, er, enthusiasm shown by the pups seemed to startle you,” he explained. “You are no doubt accustomed to the more sedate behavior of your aunt’s pug.”
Her throat worked up and down. “I have reached a—an accommodation with Chien, yes.”
Chien? He could not prevent his eyes from rolling. Who named a dog Dog? Good God, Lady Merrick was lazier than he had thought. Lazy, and also so callous that she ignored her niece’s terror in favor of her own
