Page 77 of Last Night with the Duke
“Oh.” Suddenly fearing this might have something to do with the employment agency, she said, “I can’t leave Lady Sara unattended. Would you mind staying here while I go speak to the man?”
Sparks’ eyebrows rose considerably, clearly signaling that what she was suggesting was outside the boundaries of his duties in the household.
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” she whispered under her breath. “Ask the man to come here. I’ll speak to him from the doorway.”
He nodded, and a few moments later the butler returned with a short, rotund man with graying hair and an overly long mustache, stomping down the corridor behind him.
“Miss Swift?” the man asked before he even reached her.
“Yes,” she answered.
“I’m Mr. Verney Chambers,” he proclaimed loudly. “I’m here for the dog. The butler tells me I’ll need to speak to you.”
A shiver of something akin to foreboding skittered up Esmeralda’s spine. Her breath hitched with apprehension. “What are you talking about?”
From the kitchen Napoleon started barking. Josephine yelled, “No!” as the Sky Terrier came running down the corridor as if hellhounds were nipping at his back paws. Josephine was right behind him, screaming his name. The man bent down, and Napoleon jumped into his arms and started licking his face.
A cold chill shook Esmeralda as Josephine skidded to a stop beside her.
Josephine’s face was set with a stern expression. Her angry eyes were fixed on Mr. Chambers. Her small hands lay clutched into tight fists at her side. “You can put him down, now,” she said. “He’s my dog.”
The man rose and looked at Esmeralda with a beaming smile. “No. Spook is my granddaughter’s dog.”
“No, he’s mine!” Josephine yelled loudly at him. “And his name is Napoleon.”
The man’s back bowed. “I won’t be spoken to like that by a child,” he said indignantly.
Instinctively, Esmeralda moved to stand behind Josephine, placed both her hands on her sister’s shoulders, and held firmly. “I’ll take care of this, Josephine.”
“There’s nothing to take care of, Miss Swift.” Mr. Chambers grunted in disdain. “The dog was lost, but now I’ve found him.”
From the corner of her eye, Esmeralda saw Lady Sara and Mr. Lambert approach them. “I’m going to need more of an explanation, sir.”
Mr. Chambers patted Napoleon’s head and the dog licked him again. “I told you. He belongs to my granddaughter, Gracie. She and her family were here visiting with me from Manchester about a year ago when Spook ran off chasing a cat. He never returned.”
Another cold shiver shook Esmeralda. She and Josephine had found Napoleon wet and shivering by their door just about a year ago.
“We searched the area from morning until evening for several days and couldn’t find him. Now I know why. He was locked behind your garden walls.”
“That’s not true!” Josephine said defiantly, crossing her arms over her chest with jerking motions.
Rigid with fear, still trying to process what was happening, Esmeralda’s fingers dug into the top of her sister’s bony shoulders. “Quiet and let me handle this.”
“I had no idea he was only a few streets away until mere moments ago,” the man continued, ignoring Josephine’s outburst.
“We don’t live here, Mr. Chambers. We are only visiting.”
He harrumphed. “Then it was fate that had me walking to the mews at the right time. I saw this girl walking with Spook outside your yew hedge. When I called to her, Spook recognized me and started barking straightaway. He wanted to greet me.” He looked down at Josephine sneeringly while running a thick short hand down Napoleon’s long coat. “But she grabbed him and ran inside. And then locked the gate against me!”
“You probably scared her to death,” Lady Sara said, speaking up for the first time. “A big man like you running after such a little girl. Have you no shame?”
The man huffed at Lady Sara as she looked at him contemptuously.
“Josephine?” Esmeralda whispered her name. “You disobeyed me and went outside the garden?”
She looked up at Esmeralda. Tears had collected in her big, scared green eyes. “I had to,” she sniffed. “I threw the stick over the fence, and Napoleon wanted to go get it.”
“And it’s a good thing she did,” Mr. Chambers added. “Otherwise, I might never have known that you’d taken Spook as your own.”
