Tessa Dare - The Wallflower Wager

Nevertheless, the task was well within the realm of possibility. There were several lords and gentlemen in his debt he could press for invitations, if it came to that.

“You mentioned a third thing your aunt’s demanding.”

“The same thing you’re demanding. Be rid of the animals.” She gave the goat a fond scratch behind the ear. “It will break my heart, but I have no choice. I must find them new homes.”

“Done.”

“Done?”

He shrugged. “As good as done, anyway. I’ll find them homes. All of them.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that. It’ll take a week, at the most.”

“I don’t think you understand,” she said. “My pets came to me wounded, abandoned, untamed. They’re the animals no one else wanted. It won’t be an easy task finding them safe, loving homes, with people who’ll treat them as part of the family.”

Part of the family ? She lived in a fantasy land. Even if such “safe, loving” homes existed in the real world, Gabe wouldn’t know how to recognize them. Fortunately, he wasn’t above a falsehood or two.

“Not to worry. Leave it to me. I’ll find them excellent homes.”

She scanned him with narrowed, doubting eyes. “Forgive me, Mr. Duke, but I’m not at all convinced you’re qualified to take on this sort of—”

Her all-too-perceptive statement was interrupted by a flurry of barking. This would not have been remarkable, had said barking not been emanating from the pavement in front of her house.

She turned toward the noise. “Oh, no. Not again.”

Again? Barking pavement was a regular occurrence outside her house? Of course it was.

“Hold this.” She pressed the goat’s leash into Gabe’s hand, and then left the two of them standing there while she ran toward the noise.

As he looked on, utterly baffled, Lady Penelope Campion—daughter of an earl—knelt on the ground and shouted into the small, round iron plate embedded in the pavement. The coal hole.

“Bixby? Bixby, is that you?”

From below, a dog whined in response.

She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the hole in the iron plate. “Don’t worry, darling. Be brave and hold tightly. I’m coming for you straightaway.”

Lady Penelope picked herself up from the pavement, hiked her skirts with both hands, and disappeared into her house.

After a moment’s internal debate, Gabe followed. The scene had piqued his curiosity, to say the least. Not to mention, his alternative seemed to be milling about the square tending the goat.

The hell he would.

“Come along, you,” he grumbled.

He pulled the goat up the stairs and through the door Lady Penelope had just bashed open.

As he entered, the infernal parrot squawked at him from an adjacent room. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Gabe closed the front door behind him and loosed the goat to make a meal of something unfortunate. Hopefully the bird.

“I’m coming, Bixby!” Lady Penelope called in the distance.

Gabe followed the sound down the corridor and then down a flight of stairs. He emerged into the kitchen. There were no servants to be seen, and a kettle looked to be boiling dry on the hob. A jumble of felines curled by the fireplace.

“I’m here, Bixby! Just hold on a little longer.”

A heavy door at one end of the kitchen stood ajar. Gabe crossed to it and nudged it open further.

Nothing but darkness.

A darkness that scurried.

After blinking a few times, he could discern that this was the coal store, and it sat directly beneath the iron plate she’d been shouting through a few moments ago. A small mountain of coal rose at a steep angle, leading from the ground to the coal chute at the top.

And there—somewhere in the darkness at the top of the heap—was Bixby, presumably. The dog emitted a feeble whine.

“Nearly there.” Lady Penelope attempted to scale the mountain, scrambling up the heap on hands and knees, pushing aside loose chunks of coal as she went.

Gabe shook his arms free of his coat and flung it aside. “What the devil has he done?”

“He’s stuck. It’s happened before. He finds a rat, and then he chases it into the store and up to the chute, and then his cart gets stuck on the coal hole hook, and—”

Yes, the cart. So this was the rolling dog.

“His back legs are lamed, and—” She scrambled higher, dislodging yet more coal. “There’s no time to explain. I have to unhook him, or he could slip and hang himself.”

Gabe yanked open his cuffs and pushed his sleeves to his elbows. “I’ll do it.”

“I’m almost—” She lost her footing and slid back to the ground, losing all her progress.

He reached for a shovel propped against the wall. “Stand aside.”

At last, she relented, backing away from the mountain of coal. Gabe climbed as far as the ceiling would allow and dug into the coal, lifting a shovelful of sooty lumps from the top and heaving them to the cellar floor.

Once he found a rhythm, he made quick work of it, jabbing the spade into the coal heap again and again, employing not only the force of his arms, but his back and legs, as well. His muscles retained the memory of what he’d tried to forget. Shoveling coal was nothing he hadn’t done before. Just something he’d sworn to never do again.

While Gabe worked, she called out encouragement from below. Not to him, of course. To the dog.

“Just a bit longer, Bixby!”

The dog’s whines grew mournful.

Gabe could nearly reach him now. He tossed the shovel aside and cleared more coal from beneath the chute. When he’d created enough space, he flattened himself on his belly and wriggled over the coal, using his elbows to drag himself forward until he’d reached the spot beneath the chute.

There he was, the little mongrel. Scarcely bigger than a rat himself. He was caught on the iron hook of the coal hole plate, hung up by a bit of leather strap and struggling against the dead weight of his stumpy hind legs and cart.

“Easy, there. Easy.” Gabe stretched his hand up the chute, twisting for the best angle. Couldn’t quite reach. Even if he could, he had no idea what he was reaching for. How did this cart fit together? Was there a buckle or button he’d need to undo in order to free the dog? If so, it was hopeless. He didn’t have enough light or space to complete any maneuver requiring dexterity.

“Very well, dog. You’ll have to do your part.” Gabe turned onto his side and reached up into the chute again, this time fumbling blind. When his fingertips brushed against fur, he lifted the dog’s weight in his palm and pushed upward, straining his shoulder nearly out of its socket, hoping he’d give Bixby enough slack to wriggle free.

“Come on, you little bastard,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ve destroyed a full suit of clothing on your account, and I’m not handing your mistress a dead dog at the end of it.”

Thank God. It worked.

Gabe knew the moment Bixby was free, because the dog slid down the chute and landed on his face. With a scrabble of sharp little claws, he fled to his mistress. By the time Gabe disengaged the abandoned cart from the hook and made his way down, he found her seated on the kitchen floor, cooing over the soot-covered dog in her arms.

“Bixby.” The pup licked at her neck and face. “You are a naughty, naughty, naughty boy, and I love you so very much.”

Gabe cleared his throat. “Cart’s broken.”

“My friend Nicola will mend it.”

He set the mangled contraption to the side and shut the door to the coal store.

The moment he turned around, Lady Penelope flung herself at him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Thank you.”

Gabe winced, pulling free of her embrace.