Free The Primrose Path by Bárbara Metzger Page A

limp,” she said, as if that explained the dog’s presence.
    “If the dog is injured, why the deuce wasn’t it destroyed?” Bad enough they were harboring singularly inept animals, but breakdowns, too? It would be like a breeder keeping every racehorse past its prime.
    Angelina’s chin rose a notch. “I notice you limp, my lord,” she pointed out. “Has anyone suggested putting you out of your misery?” The sparks in her eyes seemed to indicate that the idea had merit.
    “Devil a bit, are you comparing me to a dog?” He held up a hand. “I take that back, Miss Armstead. I don’t want to know. I’d lose.”
    She ignored him in her eagerness to explain, to convince him, to break through his wall of cynicism and uncaring. “Gemma’s not suffering. Look at her trying to herd the other dogs into one area. She’s just slow, too slow to work Ti’s sheep. But she worked them all her life: winter, summer, cold, and rain. Don’t you think she deserves a peaceful old age?”
    “Well, yes, but Ti—”
    “Ti came to beg Lady Sophie to take her, and he is a proud man. It broke his heart to part with Gemma, and he still visits her when he can, but the old dog had to go when he bought a younger one. Ti simply couldn’t afford to feed another mouth.”
    Corin hit his fist against the windowsill. “I suppose you hold me to blame for that, too, ma’am.”
    She shrugged. “Times have been hard.” And he’d been in London, Paris, Vienna. “Your people needed you.”
    “My people are well looked after, Miss Armstead.” And his land steward would be sacked tomorrow. “You are meddling in affairs and traditions you do not understand. The fact is that farmers and sheepherders do not keep pets.”
    “Precisely. That is why we need the shelter, my lord. I am meeting the architect out at the old Remington place this very afternoon to get started. Isn’t that marvelous?”
    “Splendid.” Miss Armstead not only looked like a newly emerged butterfly, she was acting like one, too. The peagoose was flitting off to meet a total stranger at an isolated property somewhere. “Absolutely perfect. I’ll drive.”
     

Chapter Nine
     
    “You must have been one of those children who brought home every orphaned lamb and broken-winged sparrow,” Lord Knowle commented later that afternoon when they were driving in his curricle to the abandoned estate. A hot bath and a change of clothes had restored his temper—that and the thought of Miss Armstead’s being convinced to move her entire establishment to the new property. The sooner the better for his peace of mind.
    She had on another new frock, he noted, with a matching spencer and a silly little bonnet all trimmed in silk flowers. The companion rivaled the sweetness of May, and it was only April. Spring wasn’t the only thing rising. Corin shifted on the curricle’s seat and dragged his attention back to his cattle. “I can imagine you with a lapful of kittens.” He could imagine her many ways, but this was safest.
    Angelina lowered her eyes. “I was not permitted to have a pet when I was a child.”
    “What, not even a canary?”
    “My grandparents did not allow animals in the house.”
    “What about your parents?” he asked, blatantly fishing for information.
    “They died when I was very young. My grandparents had the task of rearing me. They were religious,” she added, as if that explained everything.
    Corin didn’t think much of a religion that denied a child a playmate, if only a fish in a bowl. He remembered all the frogs and snakes and mice he’d dragged home to terrorize his sisters, all the foxhounds his father kept indoors and out, despite his mother’s protests. There was a tame crow, the kitchen cats, and even a ferret Corin had bought from the rat catcher. He wondered if his old nursery room still held that distinctive odor.
    His had been a privileged childhood, his lordship knew, but even the poorest household in the parish kept a mouser or two.