Ice Cold Duke (Frigid Dukes #2)

Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

“ A re you sure this is safe?” Leah asked as she looked down into the crystal-clear blue waters of the lake. “I’m not exactly a great swimmer.”

Leah was standing on the edge of the lakeshore in just her bathing gown, her toes sinking into the mud, while Emery, Celeste, and Eve sat on the rocks behind her, stripping off their shoes and stockings.

“Don’t worry, we’re just going to wade in the shallow end,” Emery said as she peeled her stockings down her leg. She’d promised the girls a swim, after all, and she wasn’t about to renege on her word. But as she glanced at the sky, she couldn’t help but worry that it might start to rain. It won’t exactly be pleasant to go swimming in the rain.

“But what if there is a fearsome creature down there that will drag us to our deaths?” Eve asked, standing and going to the lake’s edge as well, which she stared down into with wide, fearful eyes.

Leah, Celeste, and Emery all laughed at this. “There’s nothing in there, silly,” Leah said, shaking her head and wrapping an arm around her sister. “It’s not Loch Ness!”

“Anyway, if there was anything dangerous, Lucien would have shot it years ago,” Celeste reassured her younger sister. “You know he is determined to never let anything bad happen to us.”

Emery raised her eyebrows. Except, of course, when he is the bad thing that is happening to you by being overprotective and keeping you from enjoying your lives.

But she didn’t say this. She was trying to heed Leah’s advice that she not judge the duke too harshly, not knowing, after all, what had happened to him in this life to make him so overprotective. It was difficult, though.

The man had now been gone for three days and hadn’t even told any of them where he was going. How am I supposed to get to know him and discover what has made him so overprotective if he isn’t even here?

It did, however, allow her time to take the girls on adventures she knew he otherwise would have forbidden, like this excursion to the lake.

“Okay, you’re right,” Eve was saying, a determined look coming over her face. “I’m not scared.”

“That’s right,” Leah said, smiling at her. “It’s just a bit of water.” But she also looked dubious as she hitched up her skirts and stepped out into the lake. “Oh, my goodness!” she cried. “It’s freezing!”

“What were you expecting?” Emery said, laughing. “It’s water!”

“I wasn’t expecting it to be this cold.”

“I suppose swimming isn’t for the faint of heart,” Celeste said lightly, and Leah narrowed her eyes.

“Who said I was faint of heart?”

Celeste shrugged. “You’re the one screaming over a little cold water.”

Leah puffed out her chest indignantly. “I bet I can go deeper than you!”

“Oh yeah?” Celeste’s eyes twinkled. “I take that bet.”

“Just don’t go too deep--” Emery shouted after them as the two sisters began to race each other into the water. However, her cry of warning soon became a snort of laughter as both sisters started to screech at the cold.

They were up their shins, then their knees, then their thighs, howling and flapping their arms, all dignity forgotten. Then Leah got it into her head to splash water on Celeste, and before Emery could stop them, the two of them were splashing each other back and forth, screaming with delight as the water touched their bare arms.

“Wait for me!” Eve shouted from the shore, and then she was plunging in as well. She was still a bit shorter than her sisters, so the water came further up her body by the time she reached Celeste and Leah, but they took no pity on her. A furious game of splashing ensued, which Emery watched with a mixture of joy and sadness from the shore.

It was so wonderful to see the girls playing together like this, not worrying about being ladylike or proper, just enjoying time together and being a little wild and silly. But it made her sad, too, because she had to wonder if they ever would have done something like this if it weren’t for her.

If I’d actually married for love, I might have doomed these three girls to never having any fun.

The thought was chilling, and she decided not to think too much about it.

“Alright, girls, we should get out of the water!” Emery called, glancing up again at the sky. It was becoming grayer, and she didn’t want them to catch a cold if they were out in the water when it started raining.

Reluctantly, the sisters made their way back to the shore, laughing and splashing each other along the way.

“That was fun!” Eve beamed as she stepped out of the water and Emery wrapped her in a blanket. “Can we do that again sometime?”

“Of course, but perhaps we should wait until the summer,” Emery said. “I do feel a little guilty about having you out in the cold like this.”

“Oh, but by the summer…” Leah trailed off, then looked away, a frown creasing her face.

“By summer what?” Emery prompted. “It will be much more pleasant to swim when it’s warm out, trust me. I used to sneak down to the river near my parents’ estate all the time during the summer.”

“No, it’s not that,” Leah said, accepting the second blanket that Emery had packed for them. She wrapped it around herself and shivered slightly. “It’s just that by summer, I will probably be married, and I won’t be able to go swimming with you three.”

She smiled sadly and dropped her eyes, and Emery felt a hard lump form in her throat. At the same time, Celeste reached out and took her hand.

“We will come visit you at your new home,” she promised. “And then we will swim there.”

“I can’t go swimming once I’m a married lady,” Leah said, shaking her head. “I must be a proper wife! Not go gallivanting around, stripping down to my shirt, and--” she cut herself off again, her face flushing as she caught Emery’s eye. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean to imply anything about you not being a proper wife.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Emery said cheerfully. “I have absolutely no interest in being a proper wife. But you also might not be married by the summer. It’s very possible you won’t meet a man you love by then. There’s no rush. Sometimes these things can take time.”

“Not this again,” Leah said, shaking her head. “Lucien is going to be furious, you know, if he finds out you’re trying to convince us to marry for love.”

Emery shrugged. “I can take Lucien’s fury. I’m tougher than I look.”

Once the girls were all wrapped in blankets and Emery could rest assured that they weren’t shivering, they began to trudge back across the grounds toward the house. The lake was a bit farther from the house than Emery had first thought, but there was a shortcut Celeste had shown her through a small wood, so she steered them down this path. Eve was just saying that in the summer they should bring a picnic with them when they returned to swim at the lake when Emery heard a small whimper from somewhere in the bushes to her left.

Stopping short, she held up her hand. “Wait, be quiet for a moment,” she said. “I think I heard something.”

“Something scary?” Eve asked at once.

“No,” Emery said, shaking her head. “Something like…” She listened again. Yes, there it was: a whimper. Followed by a whine. And then--her heart hammered--a small bark. “It’s coming from right there,” she whispered, pointing into the bushes, which were half-concealing the trunk of a large tree that had fallen to the ground. “I think… I think it’s a baby animal.”

She stepped forward without thinking. “Emery, don’t--” she heard Leah cry. “It could be dangerous!”

But she didn’t care. If there was an animal in pain, she knew she had to help it. Carefully, she picked her way through the undergrowth, until she reached the bushes, and then pulled them back. There, sitting in a little hole that seemed to have been dug beneath the fallen tree trunk--as if to keep them safe from the rain--were three little puppies.

“Oh, my!” Emery gasped. “Girls, come quick! You have to see this!”

The three little puppies had looked up at her at her gasp, and she thought her heart might actually melt. They were very small, probably only a week old, with little noses and big eyes that gazed up at her as if hopeful she might be their mother, returned with milk for them. One was brown, one was black and spotted with white, and the other was black with just one patch over his eye. They were the most adorable creatures Emery had ever seen, and she struggled not to cry as she gazed down at them.

“My goodness, they are so cute!” Leah said, arriving by her side and also staring down at the puppies.

“But how did they get there?” Celeste asked, while next to her, Eve began to squeal at the cuteness of the dogs.

“Their mother must have crawled down there to give birth to them,” Emery said. She looked around. “I wonder where she is…”

“They look thin,” Celeste said, her eyes moving appraisingly over the puppies. “They must be very hungry.”

“We can’t leave them here,” Eve said at once. “What if their mother never comes back! They will die!”

Her eyes were full of tears, and Emery had to fight not to cry as well. “But the mother might be coming back,” she said uncertainly. “We don’t know. Perhaps she just went to get food.”

“I think we should look for her,” Leah said. “She wouldn’t have gone far from her babies, would she?”

“Probably not,” Emery agreed. “But do we have time to look for the mother?” She glanced up at the sky. It is going to start raining at any moment, and if Lucien finds out I had his sisters out in the rain, especially without proper clothing…

“We have time,” Leah declared, and her face was so determined that Emery knew there was no point in arguing. “It’s going to start raining soon and we can’t let these little puppies be caught out in the rain without their mother. Come on, let’s get going!”

For the next quarter of an hour, they searched. But there was no sign of the mother anywhere, and as the sky darkened, Emery found herself growing more and more worried. After another quarter of an hour, a clap of thunder sounded in the distance, and seconds later, she felt a big, wet drop of rain on her face.

“Alright, that’s enough,” she called out, looking around for where her sisters-in-law had gotten to. “We need to go back to the house now.”

She heard a crashing sound through the woods, and moments later, the girls appeared through the trees. They all had bits of sticks and leaves in their hair, the blankets they still clutched around them were covered in mud, and they looked tired but excited.

“We’re bringing the puppies home with us,” Leah said. It wasn’t a question, and Emery didn’t try to argue with her.

“Of course we are,” she said. “We can’t leave them in the rain and cold without their mother or anything to eat. Come on, let’s go get them.”

All three girls beamed at her, and they made their way together back to the felled tree, where Emery very carefully lifted each of the puppies up and out of the hole and placed them in the girls’ blankets. None of her sisters-in-law now had blankets to keep them warm and dry, and the rain was coming down harder now.

“We’re going to have to run back to the house!” She said, as Eve took the last of the three puppies from Emery and clutched it to her chest. “Let’s go!”

And the four of them began to run, in their shifts, without jackets, back along the back, out of the woods, and then across the lawns, as the rain pelted down around them, puppies clutched to their chest.

As they ran up to the front gate, the door swung open, and the butler came out, looking alarmed.

“Your Grace!” he shouted to Emery over the rumble of the approaching storm, “what is this?!”

“We’re going to need blankets and milk,” Emery said, as she skidded to a halt in front of the butler. Leah, Celeste, and Emery all hurtled past her and into the house, each still clutching the puppies.

“Are those… dogs?!” the butler asked, his eyes wide. “Your Grace… the Duke will not approve of any of this!”

“The Duke doesn’t have to know,” she said, smiling mischievously.

The butler frowned. “Well, I think he’s going to find out that there are three new pups in the house.”

Emery grinned and stepped into the hall. “If the Duke has any problems with it, he can talk to me.”

She had a feeling that her battle of wills with the Duke was far from over.