Rafe said, “You should go inside. I’ll stay with him.”
“I’m not leaving either of you.”
After rubbing her hands together to warm them, she reached out and placed a gentle touch to Ellingworth’s paw. “What a good boy you are. How proud you’ve done us.”
Rafe stood just long enough to remove his coat. As he sat beside her, he moved to drape the coat over her shoulders. A thoughtful gesture, but Clio stayed it with a shake of her head.
She took the coat from his hands and draped it over the dog instead. “He needs it more than I do.”
One by one, their party grew.
“Oh, dear.” Daphne and Teddy made their way down the path. “Is he . . . ?”
“Soon,” Clio said.
“Jesus and all the saints.” Bruiser joined them, for once not bothering to hide his broad, common accent. “Not now. How can he do this to us now? Surely there’s something to be done.”
Phoebe found them next. “He’s fourteen,” she said, crouching next to Rafe. “The typical life expectancy of a bulldog is no more than twelve years. If you compared his existence to a human life, he would be nearing one hundred years old. So there’s really no reason to be surprised. Or, for that matter, to grieve. He had a long life.”
Rafe nodded. “I know.”
“Just the same, I . . .” Phoebe threw her arms around him in an awkward hug. “I’m sorry about your dog.”
Oh, dear. Now Clio was certainly going to cry.
Ellingworth’s breathing grew rattling, raspy.
“He’s going, isn’t he?” Daphne buried her face in her husband’s lapel. “I can’t look.”
“We’re here, darling.” Clio sniffed back her tears and stroked the dog’s wrinkled head. “We’re all here with you. Be at peace.”
And then the rasping breaths ceased.
All was quiet.
“Here you all are.” Piers joined the group. “Is that Ellingworth under the rosebush?”
No one knew what to say. Clio reached for Rafe’s hand.
“I tried,” Rafe said hoarsely. “I tried my best, but I should have known . . .”
If Piers heard him, he didn’t reply. Instead, he knelt and wedged himself between Rafe and Clio, breaking them apart. He knelt at the dog’s side and lifted the corner of the coat. “Good old Ellingworth. Did you miss me, old fellow?”
“It’s no use,” Rafe said. “He’s gone.”
“No, no. We played this game all the time. He’s only hiding. Aren’t you, pup?”
Beneath Rafe’s coat . . . something moved.
The wheezing canine breaths that had dwindled to nothing . . . resumed again. They began to grow stronger.
The dog’s head lifted. He emerged from under the coat and started to lick Piers’s hand. His stumpy tail wagged to and fro.
“Cor,” Bruiser said. “He’s alive. The dog’s alive.”
Daphne pulled her head from her husband’s lapel. “It’s a miracle.”
And perhaps it was. Ellingworth was like a pup again. Wagging his nonexistent tail, bounding up and sniffing at Piers’s hand.
“That’s a good boy,” Piers chuckled as he scratched the reviving bulldog behind the ears. “It’s fine to see you again. It’s been a few years.”
“He’s glad to see you,” Clio said.
“It would seem he’s happy I’m home.” His eyes caught hers. “Are you happy I’m home?”
“I . . .”
Oh, goodness. Piers had always been handsome, worldly, authoritative . . . but whatever he’d been doing in the past eight years, it had taken those qualities and honed them to weapons. The absence of any vulnerabilities in his demeanor was what convinced Clio those weaknesses must be there somewhere beneath the suave control. When he’d kissed her, she’d felt it. He wasn’t an arrogant young diplomat anymore—but a man who’d come through trials and confronted his mortality. A man who just might be ready to share those vulnerable parts of himself with another, trusted soul.