“I’m sorry,” he said. “Who the hell are you?”
Anyone else would have been offended with his crass, harshly barked query.
Not this woman, who very well may have been a half-wit. She dropped a quick curtsy. “I am Lady Myrtle McQuoid.” Myrtle McQuoid? With a name like that, the girl’s parents clearly hated her. “I do believe we are neighbors.”
The McQuoids, the big family next door filled with children of varying ages who always found themselves at their windows staring at his. “Splendid,” he muttered. They’d more spawn.
Lady Myrtle cupped a hand around her ear and leaned in. “What was that?” she called, using that as an invitation to come closer.
She looked to be five feet nothing, and her cloak hung large on her small form, revealing little of the woman under that emerald-green fabric.
And unlike her siblings, who made it a habit of running when he was in sight, this particular spawn came toward him.
Fucking hell.
At his side, Horace cocked his big head in canine confusion. “I feel you on that, pup,” Val said under his breath for his dog’s benefit.
“It sounded as though you said ‘splendid,’” she jawed. Of course she should also prove to be a damned jabberer. “Which is very kind, as I’m quite happy to meet—”
“I was being sarcastic,” he said tightly, attempting to disabuse the ninny of whatever illusions she’d built in her head to erase the fear she seemed to be absent.
The lady frowned. It was the slightest downturn at the corners of her lips, so faint, like it was a wholly unfamiliar movement for those muscles.
But then she smiled and started forward once more. “I’m generally very good at spotting sarcasm.”
“That I doubt,” he said under his breath.
“I’ve been known to be sarcastic myself, sometimes.” She spoke like she thought he should care. “Mrs. Belden insists it is rude, but I believe it to be quite handy to have many different forms of humor . . .”
And perhaps it was that complete confusion that kept him out here conversing with the silly thing. Nay, not conversing. Speaking with people was another activity he’d let die with his wife. Listening. He was, however, listening to the chatterpot . . . which was more than he’d done with, well, anyone that he could think of.
“I was not being humorous,” he snarled, managing at last to put a nail in the coffin of the unending flow of words falling from her lips.
At his side, Horace took his cue and growled, taking a step forward.
Even with the distance between them, Val spied the way the lady trembled.
Good, she was afraid of Horace. Horace had a nasty bark and growl that he wasn’t afraid to use the rare times anyone came near Val, but never had he bitten. Instead, the dog ensured people kept their distance.
Only, the young lady took a step closer, and another . . . and Val narrowed his eyes as it hit him like a long-ago fall he’d suffered from a horse: she was undeterred.
Val rested a hand on top of the enormous creature’s head, staying his charge.
She licked her lips. “Is that your . . . dog?”
She displayed the same fear that all did around the lupine wolf dog. Val had always loved the pup, but he loved him all the more for keeping bloody humans away from him. This time proved no exception.
“He doesn’t like people,” he said brusquely.
Lady Myrtle chewed at the tip of her glove-encased finger, contemplating Horace. “You’re a person, and he seems just fine with you.”
My God, was she stupid, bold, or just a damned innocent? He’d wager she was a combination of the three all rolled together.
“I love dogs,” she shared. She continued to make her way over.
“Does he look like a dog?” he rumbled, briefly halting her in her tracks.
Horace took up his cue, yapping softly, and there was a greater menace to that bark.
Undeterred, Lady Myrtle McQuoid resumed her march.
She reached his side and angled her head left and then right, peering at Val’s dog. “I . . . He has the fur and mannerisms of a dog.”
Apparently, she was as good at detecting a rhetorical question as she was at spotting sarcasm.
He’d opened his mouth to regale her with pretend tales of the dog’s vicious past when she suddenly dropped to a knee and reached inside the pocket of her cloak.
The lady held out her palm, revealing a Queen’s Cake . . .
“He doesn’t like strangers or treats.” Val bit out each syllable of those words.
Except damned if his loyal dog didn’t suddenly turn traitor and trot over, making a liar of Val.
“Nonsense.” Lady Myrtle cooed that pronouncement more for Horace than Val himself. “Who wouldn’t wish to have a Queen’s Cake?” She praised the beast, who looked all the more enormous next to her diminutive form.
“I wouldn’t,” Val snapped.
“Well, that is just fine, as that means there’s all the more for . . .” She paused and looked to Val. “What is his name?”
Val stared confusedly at her.
Surprise filled the lady’s saucer-size brown eyes. “Never tell me he doesn’t have a name.”
“Of course he has a name,” he mumbled.
“Then what would it be? I don’t think he can tell me.” She instantly switched her attention back to Horace, who’d devoured the whole cake and now licked at the crumbs on the side of his mouth. “Not that you aren’t the most clever of creatures,” she praised, taking the dog gently by his enormous head and touching her tiny, slightly too-pointy nose to the dog’s large black one.
Val rocked back on his heels. My god, the McQuoids’ latest daughter is mad. Along with “stupid,” “bold,” and “damned naive,” he’d throw “mad” into the proverbial mix.
Horace panted, his large, pink tongue coming out as he lapped at the young woman’s cheek.
And Val went motionless, the tableau of lady and dog freezing him more than the frigid cold of the winter day could.
Horace’s affections and loyalties had always and only been reserved for Val. Nay, that wasn’t quite true.
There’d been just one with whom the wolf dog had been playful: the same woman who’d picked him out as a pup and gifted him to Val their first Christmas as a married couple.
And Horace had shown his affections and loyalties to only his mistress and Val. Never any others.
“My sister was adamant he was a wolf,” Lady Myrtle was saying, snapping Val from his stupor.
“And you are of a different opinion,” he said, not knowing where that retort came from. Confused as to why he engaged with her still.
“You see”—the lady dropped her voice to a whisper—“my sister is something of a storyteller. That is, Cassia. Not Fleur.” Once again, she spoke like he should know who in hell these people were, and more . . . as though he should care. “Fleur is just nine. Not that she can’t be a storyteller at the age of nine. She can. But that is not her way.”
“I don’t give a damn about your siblings,” he barked, and apparently, he’d found the one person in all the kingdom unafraid of him.
And at last, he managed to kill that effusive smile. It dimmed, and damned if Horace didn’t turn a frown his way, too. “Well, that is quite rude, Your Grace.”