The Sleeping Beauty by Jacqueline Navin

Author:Jacqueline Navin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises
Published: 2013-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

The dog, Cain, was a bloody nuisance.

Helena squinted at him, her arms crossed, as she decided what was to be done with the mangy looking thing. Not that she would harm him, but he had to be taught to keep away from the house. Adam had spoiled him, feeding him right from the kitchen door that led to the vegetable garden. Now that dog was out there every day, barking like an Irish banshee.

Maddie never complained about him, and Helena suspected she kept the mutt well supplied. But then, she’d feed a band of demons if she thought it would please her beloved Mr. Adam.

Heaving a sigh, Helena decided to use logic to counteract this annoyance. If Adam had trained the dog to come to the kitchen door for food, she would train him otherwise. Gathering a large bowl of scraps from Maddie, she set off to the stables with Cain yapping at her heels.

“You’ll get them, boy. You just have to learn you’ll be fed out here, in the barn.”

She passed Kepper, who grinned broadly at her. “He’s a mite impatient,” he said, indicating the dog.

“Enthusiastic, too.” She glanced down at Cain’s leaping and bounding and other antics spurred by his delirious excitement. “You would think he’d never eaten before. He is as fond of food as his master.”

She placed the bowl down near the barn door, and Cain dipped his head in, snatched a beef bone with scrap meat still clinging to it, and ran off.

“Probably gone to bury it,” Kepper grunted. “Strangest thing, that. Why they want to put the thing in the ground to rot, I’ll never know.”

Then Cain was back.

“That was quick.” Helena watched him take out another item from the bowl, this time a hunk of crust. Without eating it, he ran into the barn. “Odd dog. I suppose he wants privacy.”

“I wonder…” Kepper started out after the dog. Helena followed.

Cain popped out of one of the empty stalls in the back and raced past them, back to the bowl.

“I’ll be damned,” Kepper said, then gruffly apologized for his rough language.

Helena waved away his explanations as she drew alongside him and stared into the stall. A lovely sad-eyed bitch was lying in a heap of straw. Cain’s offerings were scattered around her.

She was either too finicky for such coarse gifts or just plain not hungry.

Helena stepped inside. “Is she sick? See the way she’s panting? Her tongue is kind of lolling. Kepper, is she in pain?”

“Aye, she’s hurting, all right. Come out of there, my lady. The bitch is getting ready to birth. See her belly? And her teats are all swollen. She’s ready to go.”

Cain came back in with another offering and plopped it down with the others. Noticing that his efforts were not being appreciated by the object of his devotion, he barked at her. It sounded astonishingly like a reprimand.

Helena bit back an unexpected giggle. Adam was always after her to eat, too.

Kepper tsked. “And there is the father of the brood, no doubt.

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