She glanced at the dog, who’d been watching every mouthful they took with a mournful gaze. “What about Hamish?”
“What about him?”
“Do we take him with us or leave him here?” She hesitated. “It’s just that this morning he was quite happy to stay here with me, but we don’t know how he is with children. Or other dogs. Or chickens or any other creature. And we don’t know whether the widow would mind us bringing him. But if we make him stay in camp, we’d probably have to tie him up, and after his experience of being chained—the sores around the poor fellow’s neck are starting to heal, but—”
“We won’t chain him or tie him up,” he said decisively.He glanced at the dog and said to it in English, “I don’t suppose you’ve been trained to stay, have you? Otherwise those villains wouldn’t have left you chained up.” Hamish gave him a doggy smile and thumped his tail.
“Look, he knows you’re talking to him,” she exclaimed. “Even though you’re talking in English. Who’s a clever boy, then?”
The tail thumped faster, and she broke off a piece of piecrust and gave it to him. He took it from her gently and swallowed it in a gulp.
“You shouldn’t feed him at the table.”
She gave him a sardonic look, and gestured to her surroundings, which were conspicuously lacking in a table.
He ignored that. “We’ll just have to see how it goes. I’ll tell him to stay and guard the camp, and”—he made a helpless gesture—“hope for the best.”
Zoë spent the rest of the day painting Madame LeBlanc and her three children. The lady had, at first, demurred about letting Zoë paint her. Whether it was a question of preferring a male painter or worries about Zoë’s competence, she wasn’t sure, but all objections vanished when Zoë did a quick pencil sketch of her little girl.
The minute Reynard had strolled off, heading for the property of their next client, the widow had bombarded her with questions: about Reynard, about herself and particularly about their relationship.
As agreed, Zoë said she was Reynard’s cousin, who he was escorting to the next town.
“Cousin?” the woman said suspiciously. “But he is English, surely, and you are French, yes?”
“Yes, but I am half-English, too. The family is split between two countries.”
Madame LeBlanc nodded understandingly. “The war?”
Zoë nodded. “His wife is French, too,” she added recklessly, having no idea whether the wife—or the three he claimed—were real, let alone their nationality.
The widow’s brow cleared at the mention of a wife and she quickly settled down to accept Zoë and let her paint her and the children.
A short time after she’d started painting, the children started smiling and nudging one another. She glanced around and tensed. Hamish stood a few yards away. The LeBlanc dog, a stubby, tough-looking creature, was walking toward him, growling and stiff-legged, his back bristles raised.
Hamish just stood there, looking unperturbed, his plumed tail gently swishing.
She was about to rush up and—do what? She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to let them fight. But before she could move, the LeBlanc dog lowered its bristles, and the two dogs started sniffing each other’s behinds. And two tails, one stumpy, one long and ragged, started wagging.
They weren’t going to fight after all. She heaved a sigh of relief.
“Hamish!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry, madame, we thought he would stay at the camp, but— No, don’t touch him!” she added as the littlest child ran eagerly toward him. She lunged forward and grabbed Hamish by the scruff of fur at his neck just as the little girl reached him.
Hamish merely thumped his tail and licked the child’s hand gently. Zoë breathed again as he endured the enthusiastic attentions of the little girl.
The widow laughed. “You cannot keep that child away from any dog. One day some dog will bite her and teach her to be more cautious, but it obviously won’t be today,” she added as Hamish rolled over to have his tummy scratched. One of the boys whistled, and the LeBlanc dog gave one last sniff and trotted back to his young master.
“It’s all right, mademoiselle, I know this dog. It lives over there.” The little girl waved a vague arm, pointing.
The widow snorted. “Those people…” She shook her head. “They left, and good riddance to them. So, you bought their dog, eh?”
Zoë nodded. There was no point telling the woman how Reynard had found the dog chained up and left to starve to death. She smiled at the sight of the gentle animal patiently enduring having his ears affectionately pulled by the little girl. “He’s a beautiful animal.”
“Beautiful?”The woman snorted with laughter. “They say it’s in the eye of the beholder, but I wouldn’t call that one anything like a beauty. And it’s too big. It’s going to cost you a lot to keep it fed.”
Zoë also decided not to tell her how Hamish had already found and dispatched several rabbits. She hoped he was too full—and hopefully too well mannered—to be interested in the hens that peacefully scratched and clucked around their feet.
The afternoon flew.
