The Wicked by Thea Harrison

Author:Thea Harrison [Harrison, Thea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Paranormal, Fiction
ISBN: 9781619219663
Google: _LkW7Kjl9icC
Amazon: B00D89OGB4
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Published: 2013-07-01T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

A SHORT WHILE LATER, THERE was a knock on the door of the solar.

“Enter,” said Sir Odinell.

The groom Herluin entered, a small fell-terrier bitch under one arm. She was about fifteen pounds, stiff-haired, otter-faced. Her bottom left fang had grown askew, coming up outside her upper lip, which gave her a wild-boar expression of ferocity, somewhat at odds with her diminutive size.

He touched his forehead to the Sieur de Chantemerle. “My lord.”

“This is our best ratter?” asked Sir Odinell.

“But yes, my lord. Sweetlove lives to find and kill rats. She’s a mort of trouble, but well worth it. Is it that you wish us to hunt these rooms?”

Sir Odinell looked a question at Molly.

“We will take her with us, and scour the castle from the deep cellars to the parapets,” said Molly.

At this the groom looked unhappy, and shuffled his feet.

“What is troubling you, man?” said Sir Odinell.

“If it please you, my lord, our Sweetlove can be a bit . . . difficult. She’s small, but sometimes I believe her to be part wolf. Even Luc and I—and we her keepers since she was born—have been bitten. We named her before she was a day on live, and did not know how she would grow. Were she not such a nonpareil at ratting, Luc says, he would have had her drowned long since.”

“Let her down, lad,” said Molly pleasantly to Herluin, who was thirty if he was a day.

Herluin looked at Sir Odinell, who nodded.

Herluin did not shrug, but his shoulders twitched, and he bent and let the little dog slip from his opened hands, somehow managing thereby to convey a Pilate-like handwashing.

In the moment it took her to fall the few inches from his grasp to the rush-strewn floor, Sweetlove twisted in midair with a yelp and snapped at Herluin’s hands.

The groom snatched his hands high, muttering a barely audible “Fuck!” under his breath, slowly straightening.

“Sit down,” said Molly quietly, looking the dog in the face. After a moment’s hesitation, the terrier folded her hind legs and sat down, stiffly. She looked up at Molly expectantly, but after a moment, became restless, and began to look past Molly. She squirmed, and whined a bit.

“What ails her, man?” demanded the Sieur de Chantemerle of his groom.

Herluin shrugged. “Nay, my lord, I know not. She is an odd one, and has always been headstrong; sometimes defiant.”

Molly put her hand down toward the dog, palm up. Sweetlove came to her feet and approached in a crouch, tail wagging, ears down. She gave Molly’s hand a lick, then darted around Molly and leaped into Jack’s lap, where she settled with a sigh.

“Christ sitting above us,” muttered Herluin.

Jack placed a large hand on Sweetlove’s back, almost covering the little dog. She wriggled with pleasure, then stretched out along his thigh like a marten along a tree limb, and sighed ostentatiously.

“Sure, and it’s a new friend you’ve found,” said Molly, grinning. “If Master Herluin will be our guide, we’ll start low and work up through Chantemerle.

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