The duchesse shook her head. "It is most vexing. I should like to send him down to see what is… all this clamor. Voices at the door, and I heard the strangest sound, my dear, you… would not credit. Nurse says I am dreaming, it's only a dog, but we have no dog, you know!" She shook her head. "And it did not sound like a dog at all. More as the very Horn of Salvation! But sinister. Very low. Almost I could not hear it."
"I heard a dog barkin', madam," the nurse said stubbornly. "Certain as I live."
"Yes, there was a dog too," Madame agreed. "But this was… different."
"Aye, and it may be that your mind is playin' tricks on you, madam, since you haven't yet been bled as the doctor directed." Nurse snapped the sheets taut across the bed. "Too much heat in the brain."
The duchesse made a little face, turning toward Callie so that the nurse could not see. She winked. "Yes, my brain is boiling," she said. "But I wish for my son… to approve my treatments."
"He'd best rouse himself out of bed, then, madam," the nurse said with the disapproval of the righteous for all those who did not rise at first light.
"Indeed," said Madame. "Before my head bursts! Perhaps, Lady Callista, would you be so good as to direct his… manservant to wake him?"
Callie opened her mouth, but nothing emerged. She was certain Trev was far away somewhere, f leeing the law, though she had no idea how to break this news to the duchesse. As she searched for some way to def lect the request, a low vibration rose beneath her very feet, a rumble that was just at the edge of hearing. The long and haunting note seemed to tremble in the walls themselves before it died away below hearing.
"There!" the duchesse exclaimed and was immedi ately overcome by a fit of coughing. She leaned over, struggling to breathe, while men shouted outside. Callie and the nurse hurried to assist Madame, but she waved, pointing to the door. The nurse was wide eyed now, supporting the duchesse's thin shoulders as she coughed, looking up at Callie as if she had seen a ghost.
It was indeed a malevolent and unearthly sound, if one didn't know precisely what earthly beast had produced it. A surge of relief f lowed through Callie, but Hubert's bellow had sounded so close that even she was startled. She looked out the front window, seeing nothing in the garden but the constable's coattails as he ran out of the stable gate toward the lane. He paused, looking up and down in both directions, and then ran across toward the opposite hedgerow. After a moment, a brindled dog raced after him, barking with all the offended frenzy of a shopkeeper chasing a thief.
She turned to the duchesse, who was barely recov ering her breath. "Go!" Madame whispered. "I'm… fine! See what-" She lost her voice in another cough but waved so emphatically toward the door that Callie hurried to it.
"It's only my bull, ma'am; you needn't be alarmed," she said. She lifted her skirts and hastened down the stairs.
Jock stood in the open door with his back to her as she came down, looking out and pointing across the road. "That way!" he yelled to someone outside. Beyond his big shoulders, she caught a glimpse of Major Sturgeon dodging round the horses tied at the garden gate. "Follow the dog!" Jock shouted to him. "It broke through the hedge!"
She was about to dart past him to join the pursuit, when a brutal crash and a woman's scream from the direction of the kitchen stairs made her grab the newel post, turning. Lilly came squealing round the corner, colliding with Callie and springing back, her eyes wide. She stood still, put one hand over her mouth, and gestured wildly toward the kitchen.
Callie heard a familiar low rumble, a thump, and the sound of breaking dishware. "Oh dear," she said. She rounded the corner, already expecting disaster, but the sight that met her was rather more along the lines of a culinary apocalypse.
The kitchen at Dove House was not a large chamber. Four ancient stone steps led down to it from the main body of the house, and at the far end, it gave out on the rear yard. At the moment, the back door stood open, blocked by a brawny woman f lapping her apron with both hands and breathing with such violent agitation that the sounds she made almost equaled the gusty snorts of the colossal bovine occupant who took up the largest part of the room.
For an instant Callie stood stock-still, completely confounded by the sight. She had already braced herself to find Hubert involved in this outlandish pickle, but it wasn't Hubert beside the overturned table. Amid the broken eggs, cooked carrots, and remnants of a perfectly browned apple pie, stood-not Hubert-but a black bull of equally gargantuan proportions, swishing its tail against the cupboard. He munched happily on a head of lettuce, showing no objection to the f lour-sack blindfold across its face. As it swallowed the final head of lettuce leaf, Trevelyan-looking entirely the part of an unshaven and wrinkled fugitive from British justice- offered it a ripe tomato from the mess on the f loor.
"Close the doors," he ordered with such a snap of command in his voice that Callie slammed the kitchen door behind her, nearly catching Lilly's nose in it. The new cook was a little less docile. She only dropped her ample apron to her lap and stood gaping in the open back entry. The bull snuff led, turning its blindfolded face up toward Callie, giving a happy moan as its nostrils f lared.
The entire state of affairs came clear to her in a single burst of comprehension. She recognized Hubert-she should have done so instantly, only he looked so oddly different, like a familiar person wearing a peculiar wig. Trev would be hiding from the constable, of course, and for some absurd reason he meant to conceal Hubert too. They would have been in the stable yard and ducked into the kitchen as the first possible cover with the pursuit so near. She had been through just this sort of close call with Trev any number of times.
By instinct she hopped down the steps and edged past Hubert to reach the back door. "You must come inside." She took the cook-woman by the arm. "This is a perfectly harmless animal, I assure you, but there's a dangerous criminal and a vicious dog out there. Hurry now, shut the door!"
The cook from Bromyard gave a faint scream and banged the door closed behind herself as she stepped gingerly inside. Callie glanced at Trev. "What of Lilly?"
"And good morning to you too, Lady Callista." He grinned at her, that familiar slanted grin that made them instantly conspirators in crime. With a cordial bow, he added, "Jock can manage Lilly, but damn this great ox." He tried to offer Hubert the limp green top of a carrot, but the bull was attempting to turn blindly toward Callie, treading on a fallen bread loaf and shoving the table another foot toward the hearth. The cupboard tottered dangerously. "Can you keep him quiet?"
She lifted her skirt and climbed across the table leg to reach Hubert's head. The bull gave a deep sigh of contentment once she joined him, and ceased his attempt to destroy the kitchen furniture. He accepted the carrot top from Trev's bandaged hand with a gentlemanly swipe of his great tongue.
"What," Callie said fiercely, untying the blindfold so that she could scratch the bull's broad forehead, "are you doing?"
"Ah," Trev said with an airy wave of another carrot top, "we're just having a bite of breakfast, you see."
"I thought you meant to go-" She stopped, remembering the cook.
He gave her a glance, a compelling f lash between them, awareness and a vivid memory of the night before. She looked down and shook away an apple peel that clung to her hem, clearing her throat.
"My lady! Pardon us!" The cook's voice quaked. "But-" She could not seem to gather any further speech as she pointed at Hubert with a muscular arm and shook her head.