The Prince of Ravenscar (46 page)

C
letus barked, butted Julian's leg with his nose. “What is it? You wish me to admire your pups? They'll be as big as you are within the year.”

He walked outside to see two spaniels, Tynley and Maude, rolling over and over, barking, yipping, trying to bite each other's necks. Their two siblings lived currently in London with Devlin and Roxanne, city dogs, Sophie snorted, and wouldn't they be spoiled rotten, used to sitting on pillows, waited on hand and paw, not knowing what it was like to face death, racing toward a cliff on a dare?

Roxanne was pregnant, Devlin had written to him, and they were looking forward to bringing a new vampling into the world, and Julian could see the two of them laughing as they sampled this new word.

Sophie came out through the estate-room doorway. It was blowing hard today, and the wind whipped her hair around her head, plastered her skirts to her legs. She waved at him, and he saw she was wearing the damnably ugly ring they'd found in a lead box wrapped in oilskin some two feet under the beach sand, beneath that middle stone Vicky had described. Odd that it fit her perfectly. Odd as well, she said wearing it made her feel blessed. Blessed how? She didn't know, simply blessed. As for any magic in the thing, they'd both played with it, trying to evoke some sort of power. But there didn't seem to be any.

She was striding to him, all beautiful long legs. There was something different about her lately, something different about the way she moved and how she sometimes sat, simply smiling at nothing in particular. But what was it? When he asked, she merely smiled and waved away his words.

Life, he thought, it was a chain of miracles that sometimes gave you a glimpse of Heaven.

REGENCY NOVELS BY CATHERINE COULTER