"Yap!" Lettuce repeated.
Many times.
Eleanor put her down and discovered that Lettuce had mastered the art of running in circles and barking at the same time, something Oyster never managed. "She's so intelligent," she said, turning in Leo's arms so she could see his face.
"She certainly is expressive," Leo murmured, looking down at her. She knew the expression burning in his eyes. And if she hadn't known what it meant, she could feel it thrumming throughout her body. "I can't last another two days," he said conversationally. "These have been the longest weeks of my life."
Eleanor put a kiss on his chin and another on the very edge of his mouth. "You want to make love to me in my mother's sitting room?"
He groaned.
He really had been very, very good.
"Now that I have a new puppy, I shall have to take her for walks in the back gardens, even during the night," she informed him. "Thank goodness, the nights are so unseasonably warm."
Leopold froze.
"I shall walk her at two o'clock in the morning. All the way out to the little summerhouse at the end of the gardens... and back."
"Ah," he said, and for just one moment pulled her hard against his body. Then he backed up and bowed. When her mother entered, he was kissing the very tips of her fingers.
"Why, Duke," the duchess called gaily. "May I see your betrothal gift? I confess I am all agog."
"Certainly, Duchess," he said, bowing to her as well. "Here it is." Truly, his manners are beyond reproach, the duchess thought happily—until she turned her eyes in the direction of the duke's pointing finger. At the little dog, squatting on the Aubusson rug.
It was fortunate for the duchess's heart that she didn't happen to glance out of her bedchamber window in the middle of the night. If she had added to the horror of seeing her beloved rug serving, once again, as an impromptu chamber pot, the anguish of seeing her eldest daughter dash stark naked out of the summerhouse, chased by her oh-so-proper fiancé (in a similar state of undress), well...it might have been too much for her.
But as it was, the household slumbered peacefully, while the two happiest people in it danced in the rain until Leo managed to catch his wife-to-be and hold her still long enough to kiss her...and kiss her...and kiss her again.
Epilogue
Seven years later
It was the Duchess of Villiers's birthday.
When Eleanor was growing up, her mother had, by all indications, no birthday. When one makes the decision not to age, birthdays are a necessary sacrifice. When Leopold was growing up, for all he knew his mother might well have celebrated all night long, but she had certainly never invited her children to participate.
Eleanor's thirtieth birthday was of a different sort. The South Parlor of the Duke of Villiers's country house in Essex—as opposed to his houses in Norfolk, Wiltshire, and Devon, not to mention Castle Cary, which had presumably tumbled into an elegant heap—was exploding with excitement. Tobias was in one corner, doing last minute work on the parts for their game of charades, an annual tradition since 1785.
A knot of dogs was frolicking in another corner. A naughty puppy named Muffin was being watched over by his mother. "Yap!" she warned him as he tugged on the curtains. "Yap, Yap!"
Muffin shook his head back and forth, pretending he couldn't hear her. "Woof," his father added, waking up, and Muffin let go of the curtain altogether. His father went back to sleep while his mother launched into a loving, high-pitched diatribe that covered everything from curtains to grooming. Not that Muffin paid much attention.
In a third corner, the duchess was sitting on a snug sofa, nursing a baby. In her delightfully full, chaotic, and joyful seven years of marriage, no babies had joined the household until Theodore came along.
Which explained why Phoebe (who used to be called Phyllinda) and Lucinda (who liked her name just fine) were sitting closely on either side of their mother. Not that the girls had generally been far from their mother's vicinity in the last year. At age twelve, they could sense the slight chill wind that signaled the end of childhood. This last month in
particular they had hardly stirred from Eleanor's side, so fascinated by gummy smiles and plump toes that the twins, who never fought, found themselves squabbling over the privilege of holding their brother.
"May I hold Theodore now?" Lucinda asked. "Please? It looks like he's finally done eating. I never thought anyone could drink milk for so long! I don't even like milk."
"It's different for babies," Eleanor said, lifting roly-poly Theo over her shoulder. He let out a satisfied burp.
"But it's my turn," Phoebe said, intervening in her quiet way.