Charles glanced down at the still sleeping dog. He’d given the creature a thorough bath yesterday. By the end of it there had been more soapy water on the hotel carpet than there had been in the metal tub that the two liveried footmen had hauled up to his room at Grillon’s.
The dog was clean, at least. Clean, fragrant, and rather well-behaved now he was away from the lure of the busy street. On entering the hotel room, he’d quieted down at once. His large brown eyes had taken in his surroundings with cautious optimism. He’d seemed to recognize that he’d been rescued. After a brief meal—which he ate with gusto—he’d even gone so far as to bestow a grateful lick on Charles’s cheek.
He was just a puppy under all that mud and filth. No more than eight months old, if Charles was to guess. Starving and wretched, but no longer repulsive. The muddy gray had been rinsed away, revealing wiry hair that was an attractive shade of brindle.
“I’m not going to name you,” Charles informed the dog as the carriage rolled on. “That’s Hannah’s province.”
It was his sister’s greatest pleasure to bestow names on the animals in the Heywood family’s ever-increasing menagerie. She’d been fifteen on his last visit home. A burgeoning beauty, with the same mass of dark auburn hair and the same mismatched eyes—one blue and one golden brown—as their mother, but one whose shyness often got the better of her.
Charles had always been protective of Hannah. It was a consequence of there being so many years between them. Children hadn’t come easily to his parents. Only two in the end, both of them unreservedly adored. It had made Charles’s decision to join the Navy even harder to forgive.
Heywood House appeared as they crested the final hill in their path. It was a classical Palladian structure, built of weathered stone, with proportions that spoke less of grandeur than of quiet elegance and gentility. A grand old place, full of warmth and familial happiness, set back amid a lush expanse of untamed parkland.
Home.
It was the dearest sight in the whole word. Charles’s heart swelled with emotion to see it.
The coachman slowed his team as the carriage rolled up the expansive drive.
Charles’s arrival was no surprise. He’d written ahead, informing his family of every stage of his journey. They awaited him at the top of the granite steps, the doors to the house open behind them.
His parents, Arthur and Phyllida Heywood, stood side by side beneath the arched entryway. Hannah was next to them, a grizzled pug dog and a three-legged black spaniel milling around the full skirts of her twilled silk gown.
Charles swallowed hard.
He had always been the mirror of his father. Not so much anymore.
Arthur had celebrated his sixtieth birthday last year. Though still tall and well made, with granite-hewn features and penetrating gray eyes, his hair was now liberally streaked with silver. He balanced some of his weight on his cane. His right leg often ached in the winter months—a consequence of an injury he’d suffered as a cavalry captain in the Peninsular Wars.
Philly’s arm was twined lovingly through her husband’s. The intervening years had been gentle with her. A full nine years younger than Arthur, her dark auburn hair was free of all but the faintest hint of gray. She wore it confined in a haphazard roll at her nape, stray curls framing a sweetly beautiful face that was bright with anticipation as she looked down the drive.
A smiled tugged at the corner of Charles’s mouth. His parents were holding hands. They often did, though outward displays of affection had long been considered unfashionable.
But Arthur and Philly had never cared much for fashion—or for the opinions of fashionable people. They were a love match. The kind local people still talked about with something like reverence. During her first London season, Charles’s mother had famously refused an offer from a wealthy duke in order to elope with Charles’s father, a wounded soldier of modest fortune, somber disposition, and legendary skill with a pistol.
Their early life as a married couple had been fraught with scandal. With danger, too. More of it than Charles’s parents had ever been willing to share with their children. But ultimately there had been happiness. A surfeit of it.
Nearly thirty years later, Arthur Heywood was still deeply in love with his wife, and she with him. It was the sort of love that, as a young man, Charles had aspired to one day have with his own bride.
That hope had diminished over the years.
Indeed, as he’d grown older, Charles had begun to feel that, when measured against the standards set by his parents, he’d fallen woefully short in every way that mattered. It was one of the reasons he’d left home.
He’d been restless here. Impatient to strike out on his own and discover what he was made of. It had seemed important at the time. More important than his parents’ feelings on the matter. More, even, than his sister’s tears when she’d begged him not to go.
“I know you’ll be killed,” she’d said. “Then what will I do? What will Mama and Papa do?”
Charles had thought of her words often these past years, with more regret than Hannah would ever know.
As the carriage came to a halt, she ran down to meet him. The pug and spaniel ran along with her, barking at her heels. They were joined by three other dogs from the house, all of them familiar; an aged lemon-and-white setter named Flurry, a scruffy old Scottish terrier known as Twig, and an ancient mastiff fondly called Ignatius.
“Charles!” Hannah cried. At nineteen, she was taller now and even lovelier than she’d been as a girl.
He opened the door of the carriage and climbed out, pausing only long enough to extract the little dog.
The other dogs raced around Charles’s feet in a chaos of excitement. The pug and spaniel sniffed cautiously at his trousers, while Flurry, Twig, and Ignatius jumped against his legs, pawing at him and nudging him with their heads, demanding his attention
Excited by the pack of strangers converging on him, the new little dog yipped and barked, wriggling to be free.
“Oh!” Hannah said. “You’ve brought a puppy home!” She went straight for it, all thoughts of greeting her brother forgotten. “May I hold him?”
“Of course, you may,” Charles handed the dog to his sister. “He’s yours.”
“Mine?” Hannah gathered the small dog up in her arms. Her voice softened to a soothing murmur. “Poor dear. You’re so painfully thin. You must be starving.” She glanced at Charles. “Where did you find him?”
Charles briefly crouched to pet the dogs clamoring for his attention. He acknowledged them in turn, scratching ears and rubbing backs and shoulders, murmuring their names. “How have you been, Ignatius? And you, Twig? Easy, Flurry. Don’t lick me to death.” He cast a look at his sister. “He was chasing carriages in Bond Street. He’s also exhibited a fondness for attacking ladies’ skirts.”
An image of the blue-eyed young lady who had fallen victim to the dog’s temporary foolishness sprang, unbidden, into Charles’s brain.
Kate.
His blood warmed at the thought of her.
She’d been so bold. So singular. Any normal lady would have succumbed to hysterics at being bitten by a street dog. Kate, however, had taken the insult in stride.
A rarity.
But there was no point in dwelling on her finer qualities. He and Kate—whoever she was—weren’t likely to meet again.