Page 74 of The Meaning of Love
“Well”—she shook the rein—“apparently, it’s just us, so where should we go today?”
Ulysses wasn’t the only one still exploring their new home. Intent on furthering her knowledge of the extensive gardens, she’d taken to walking a different section each day. She looked around. She’d already been through the rose garden and had walked the lawn leading down to the river on the castle’s other side. Although walking trails through the home woods beckoned, she wasn’t game to take Ulysses that far yet, and she had said she would stay within the gardens. “The shrubbery, then.”
She headed for the high green hedges that screened the stables from the house. Ulysses gamboled hither and yon, venturing out, then returning.
As she strolled across the well-kept lawn, she reviewed the past few days. From her first morning as Julian’s countess, everything had rolled on remarkably smoothly. Step by step, she was settling into the role, in no small part thanks to Veronica and also Frederick, who still lived at the castle, which, indeed, had always been his home.
Frederick and “Veronica’s boys,” as she termed her sons, got along well. There was no friction between the members of the family living at the castle, which was something of a relief. Indeed, Melissa had yet to detect friction of any sort between anyone at all. All the senior staff had been in their positions for decades, and most had been born and raised on the estate. It was that sort of household, deeply rooted in the local community, and she knew enough to be grateful for that, too. No friction made life for everyone that much more relaxing.
With Veronica’s help and active encouragement, Melissa had been steadily taking up the reins of the castle household and learning a little of the London household along the way. She was also pleased that Jolene, the only staff Melissa had brought with her, had been welcomed into the castle staff with no bother at all.
That didn’t always happen, any more than a new mistress easily settling into a home with an already established household.
As she and Ulysses reached the entrance to the shrubbery, she smiled and informed him, “I’ve been blessed.”
She certainly felt that way as she strolled down the path delineated by the dense green walls. She reached a grassy rectangular clearing hosting a stone-edged lily pond with a stone bench placed at one end, perfect for quiet reflection. But with a puppy on a leash, reflection would have to wait.
Four archways, one at each corner of the rectangle, framed paths leading away from the clearing. She’d walked in along one, but had no idea where the others went. After resettling her heavy train more firmly in her bent arm, she allowed Ulysses, nose to the ground, apparently tracking some animal, to tug her through the nearest archway and along another green-walled avenue.
The path turned right, then left, then twenty feet farther on, turned left again.
Straining at the makeshift leash, snuffling nonstop, Ulysses swung around the corner. She followed—only to almost trip over the puppy, who had halted in the center of the path, legs splayed, a whiny growl issuing from his throat.
She frowned. “What’s the matter?” She looked along the grassy path as the tone of Ulysses’s growl deepened. The path ran straight on, ending in another grassy enclosure. “There’s nothing there.”
Ulysses thought differently; his growl rose to a whiny yelp, and he turned tail and dashed back the way they’d come.
“Wait!” She swung around, dropping her train to grab the leash with both hands.
Clap!
The sudden sound so close behind her had her whirling back—to discover the train of her riding skirt clamped in the steel jaws of a trap.
The leash jerked taut, but she held on as she stared at the torn and crumpled fabric mangled between the metal teeth.
A chill brushed her nape.
She drew in a steadying breath, then another, then she leaned to the side, far enough to look up the path they’d followed from the pond.
Ulysses was sitting facing her with a determined look on his furry face. She gently tugged, but he refused to budge.
“That’s all right. Stay there.” It was probably better that he remained at a distance rather than bouncing around her feet. She studied the trap. Why it was there was a question she thrust aside. More important was how to get free. There had to be some way of releasing the jaws.
She crouched and tugged at her train. It was ripped and ruined, yet even yanking hard, she couldn’t drag it free of the trap’s teeth. Gingerly, she tried to ease the jaws apart, but the force holding them shut was simply too powerful.
If it hadn’t been for Ulysses’s superior senses and his instincts, and him trusting them and acting as he had, he and very likely she would have been seriously hurt. Small as he was, he would likely have died, and she could easily have lost part of her foot or even her leg.
Given the distance the shrubbery was from the house, she might even have bled to death.
She swallowed and, closing her eyes, breathed in and slowly out, pushing down the fear that tried to choke her.
Thanks to Ulysses, he and she hadn’t walked into the trap.
Clinging to the fact that they were both unharmed, she opened her eyes, drew in one last steadying breath, then rose and, avoiding looking at the trap, leaned across to look along the grassy avenue to where Ulysses still stubbornly sat. Grimly, she studied him. “Now what?”
As if he understood her, the puppy tipped back his head and let out a long howl.
Given his size, the sound was surprisingly loud and clearly the canine equivalent of “Help!”
