A Loyal Companion (2 page)

T
hey named me Fitz, which in ancient times was used to denote a blot on the family escutcheon, the old bar sinister, a product of an unsanctioned joining. A bastard. Human persons seemed to care a lot about cat dirt like that. I didn't. After all, wasn't everyone always praising both my parents? What more could a body ask? My sire was the finest sheepdog between here and Canis Major. He could think like a sheep, they said. Then again, a rock could think like a sheep. Jack could think for a sheep, for a whole flock of sheep and for the shepherds, too. And my dam never lost a fox. A few horses, their riders, the master of the hunt, but never the fox. No, I had nothing to be ashamed of in my forebears. In fact, I wanted to be just like them.

But sheep? Moving them from place to place to place, when all they talked about was grass and grass and grass, just to let the harebrained shepherd lose them for you? That made no sense to me, no more than fox hunting did. You kill the foxes and what do you get? More rats. And everyone knows what you get then, and it's not just the bubonic plague.

Still, I yearned to fulfill the promise of my breeding, to go beyond mere existence toward excellence. I looked around and there she was, Miss Sonia Randolph. I knew right away—they say it's like that with true vocations—that I had found my calling. I was going to be a companion! Not just any companion; I was going to be the best companion since Hector was a pup.

Please note that I consider myself a companion, not a pet to be pampered and sheltered, smothered and caged for another's pleasure. I accept my soft bed, my regular meals, but I work for them, training Miss Sonia.

There were no more tantrums. Miss Sonia soon learned that I would be banished to the stables for her misbehavior. There were no more missed sessions in the schoolroom either, and no more unfinished lessons. If Miss Merkle was pleased in the mornings, Miss Sonia quickly deduced, then Papa was pleased at luncheon, and we were free to do as we pleased for the afternoon.

No one ever needed to worry about us when we were out and about. Where I was, she was. Where she was, I was. No one had to feel guilty that there were no other children for Miss Sonia, to play with, or had to take a groom away from his chores just to shadow her about. No one had to worry about the eggs disappearing from the henhouse or the vegetable garden being torn up, either. I was a responsible dog now; people trusted me. They knew that, like my mother, I would never get us lost and, like my father, I would defend Miss Sonia to the death.

We went everywhere. We knew every bird nest, every new foal, every gingerbread baker and sausage maker for as far as we could go and still get home in time for supper. We never missed supper.

It was a time to learn, a time to talk. We had discussions with birds, beasts, bugs, even bats. Socrates' cave had nothing on theirs!

As time went on, we were more on our own. Miss Catherine completed her schooling and her Season with honors: a ring from Lord Martin Backhurst, marquess, from Bath. Master George left university to study the bachelor life in London; Master Hugh became Lieutenant Hugh Randolph, posted to Portsmouth. And we expanded our horizons. The pianoforte, watercolors, the reins of a pony cart, the reins of the household, it was all the same. We knew which groom to chivy, what new tweeny needed a kitten in her bed so she wouldn't be homesick, where the sun cast the prettiest shadows, and when Papa liked to hear "Cherry Ripe." We kept growing, learning. I even stopped teasing Deer Park's tame deer. They were too easy.

Squire Randolph was happy. He threw into the trash Lady Atterbury's letters demanding that he send Sonia away to school before the provincial hoyden was permanently freckled. The neighbors were happy that there was a real lady at Deer Park, and Miss Sonia was happy. Why not? Everyone loved her.

I loved her, but I was not happy. I was five years old.

Five is not old for a dog; sixteen is not old for a human person like Miss Sonia. But I worried. We were no longer ignorant children. I, at least, had learned from everyone around me—sparrows and sows, milkmaids and meadow mice—that there is a higher purpose beyond mere survival, beyond even personal success. We each have another calling, a universal—dare I say divine?—raison d'être. Succession. We must carry on.

Sirius knows I was doing my share, and so were those maids out behind the barn, but Miss Sonia was sixteen, and playing chess with her father.

But enough of teleology. I once knew a badger who fancied himself a philosopher. Fellow could bore the fleas off a ferret. I decided to take matters into my own paws. As soon as the family returned from London, I was going to start holding up carriages.

The heir was getting married. George Randolph was taking in holy matrimony the hand of Miss Jennifer Corwith, and he was doing it with all pomp and glory at St. George's, Hanover Square, in full view of half the ton. According to Squire Randolph, smug in the first pew, the boy hadn't done half-bad for himself. Miss Corwith was a handsome enough female with a more-than-handsome dowry. She came from a good family—her mother's people were distantly related to royalty, but not so uppity that they could look down on George's ancestors. Squire scowled at Lady Almeria Atterbury seated next to him, looking more like a jewelry shop mannequin than a dowager duchess. Uppity didn't half describe his mother-in-law. He turned back to the ceremony. The bishop was still spouting incomprehensible eloquence.

The Corwiths were doing themselves up proud. Of course, this affair wasn't nearly as grand as the bash Squire threw for his Catherine's wedding. Then again, Catherine married the Marquess of Backhurst. The Sheltonford chapel in Berkshire had been laughingly dismissed, and a simple ceremony at Atterbury House was out of the question. Balls, breakfasts, bride clothes, Lady Almeria spared no expense. Why should she, when Elvin Randolph was paying? Roses were not good enough; she wanted orchids. A handful of attendants was paltry; every classmate of Catherine's at Miss Meadow's Select Academy became a bridesmaid, it seemed, with every gown, slipper, and hairpiece added to Squire's account. And the reception after, well, the food could have fed every dirt-poor tenant in Berkshire for a year, if the wealthy members of society hadn't devoured it all in a matter of hours. He frowned again, this time encompassing the whole congregation of overfed, overdressed jackaninnies. Then his brow cleared.

It had all been worth it, to show the ton that Backhurst wasn't marrying down, by Jupiter, and to show Lady Almeria Atterbury that Elvin Randolph was no countrified coin clutcher. Mostly, though, it had been worth all the blunt, and the time and botheration, just to see his girls walk down that long aisle.

He didn't actually see Sonia, naturally, for as flower girl, she went before him and Catherine. And his Sunny, didn't quite manage to walk down that white-carpeted path; she skipped. Flowers twisted into her hair, a gap-toothed grin for the bishop, the minx turned and winked at her brothers. Lady Atterbury clutched her vinaigrette the whole time.

Then came Squire's turn, with Catherine. He would never forget the joy on her face nor the hushed awe in the vast cathedral as he led to the altar the most beautiful bride in decades. Not since her mother, they whispered, and tears came to his eyes even now, at quite a different wedding, just remembering. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose.

The dowager poked a bony finger in his ribs. "It's they who ought to be crying, you twit," she hissed, nodding across the aisle to the bride's family, "not you."

His collar was starched too high for him to look. He nodded, barely.

"My goddaughter heard that silly Corwith chit didn't want anyone to compare her wedding with Catherine's—gel can't hold a candle to our Lady Backhurst—so she just picked two attendants. No chance of being cast in the shadow on her day in the sun that way, especially with Catherine stuck in Bath in her condition."

"You know what Backhurst said," the squire whispered back. "Maybe this time, if she stays quiet…"

Lady Atterbury twitched her scrawny body a hairbreadth away on the cushioned seat. "My granddaughter, sir, is not a barnyard creature whose breeding is subject to one of your interminable speculations."

Squire mopped his forehead with the linen he still clenched. "Sorry," he muttered.

The dowager nodded and edged closer so she could continue her conversation. There was nothing Lady Atterbury liked better than a good gossip, unless it was baiting her son-in-law, especially in church, where he couldn't raise his voice or flee to the stables.

"Vain as a peahen, that Corwith girl," the old lady confided. "So she chose her spinster stepsister from Corwith's first marriage as maid of honor. Leah's a plain, shy old ape-leader who never took. And for bridesmaid, Jennifer picked George's harum-scarum little shire-bred sister. Heh heh."

Squire shifted his eyes to see if anyone had heard the old harridan's cackling, then he checked to make sure Sunny hadn't brought a mouse into the church or had her petticoat dragging. No, she was standing there next to Hugh as pretty as when they'd left Atterbury House, for a miracle. Her golden curls were as bright as the braid on her brother's dress uniform. Those same curls, or most of them, anyway, were held up for the first time with a wreath of blue silk flowers. She wore her grandmother's pearls, her mother's smile, her sister's elegant charm—finally, thank heaven!—and that glow that was only Sunny's.

Minds might be wandering as the bishop droned on, but from what the squire could see, most eyes were on the altar where the bridal couple knelt, their attendants to either side. Unfortunately, no one was looking at the bride.

Lady Atterbury did not want Sonia at the wedding breakfast. "Chick ain't full-fledged yet," she said, excusing her granddaughter's early withdrawal. "We'll fire her off next year." Actually, the dowager wanted Sonia out of the way before the untutored chit did something outrageous to give the Quality a disgust of her, before the wedding toasts got too ribald, or before the bride murdered her. She made sure Sonia was escorted home as soon as politely possible.

The squire was not so lucky.

"That one is going to make a stir," the dowager announced to him after she'd dragged Randolph away from a gathering of cronies and a discussion of the latest improvements in crop rotations and opera dancers. "What are you going to do about it, Elvin?"

First he was going to rub his knuckles where she kept tapping them with her fan, then he was going to make sure, he wasn't back in short pants. "Do about, uh, what, Lady Almeria?"

"About finding her a husband, you looby! That one could land a duke, if there was a decent one among the bunch, but she's as sure as salvation going to attract trouble like a magnet. And what are you going to do about it, Elvin? Are you going to find an eligible parti and arrange a good marriage before she lands in the basket? Or are you going to do what you've always done, and give the chit her head?"

"It's a good, level head, ma'am, not stuffed with gewgaws and gossip. Sunny's not more hair than wit like most females her age. She's a wise little puss."

"That's not enough, Elvin. You wouldn't send her to me, you wouldn't hire the females I recommended to school her properly, you wouldn't even send her to Miss Meadow's Select Academy that turned Catherine out so nicely. Sonia don't know how to go on. She could embarrass us all." Before her victim could work himself up to produce the ladylike governess Miss Merkle as a good loud parry, or deliver a thrust about London manners and mores, right there at his son's wedding reception, the dowager delivered the coup de grace. "Worse, planted like a cabbage out in Berkshire, she'll make a mésalliance."

She didn't say it. She didn't say, "like Allison." But he heard it, and his ruddy tan grew ruddier. "If Sunny wants to marry a farmer," he said through gritted teeth, "she has my blessing. She's got too much in her brainbox to fall for a here-and-thereian."

"She's got you wrapped around her finger, you mean, as always. The chit's got more energy and enthusiasm than a colt, and about that much sense of what she owes her name. What if she throws her bonnet over the windmill for some linendraper's assistant? What will you do then?"

He'd bellow the rafters down, that's what, the same as the Duke of Atterbury had done. And he'd swallow his own tongue before he admitted it to this diamond-decked she-devil. "Sunny's young yet; no need to worry about her marrying for ages."

"No? Well, you think about it, you twiddlepoop; you're not getting any younger!"

Squire Randolph did think about getting older, and Sonia getting older, and even that old-maid daughter in the Corwith household getting older. The only ones getting younger were the successive widows he kept in the cottage in the village. He thought about it on the carriage ride home, and looked around when they arrived in Sheltonford.

He looked at the local boys with new eyes and saw gangly gossoons and unlettered lumpkins. Then he compared his Berkshire friends' sons with his son's London friends he'd met at the wedding, and started sending out invitations. Surely among George's Corinthian set there'd be a young buck who could appeal to Sonia, appease Lady Atterbury, and not displease himself too much. Surely, when pigs flew.

"Never seen so many cow-handed fiddlers," he muttered into his newspaper at breakfast, after seeing off the latest of his invitees. This one limped so badly, he wouldn't even stay for the hunt, which was the ostensible reason for the blasted visit.

"What's that, Papa? Did Lord Northcote get off all right?"

"Just fine, poppet." Fine, except for a smashed curricle and worse-damaged ego. The poor fellow'd had to be carried up the drive, chicken feathers blowing out of his hair. Sunny's damn fool dog was barking to raise the dead, so Squire couldn't even get the viscount inside and cleaned up before she saw him. A viscount, deuce take it. He shook his newspaper. "What in the blazes were chickens doing on the roadway? That's what I'd like to know."

Sunny narrowed her eyes and looked sharply at the dog at her feet. She shook her head. No, it couldn't be. "Good dog, Fitz."