In a made-to-order story I’m currently writing for the winner of the Bluestocking Belles’ May rafflecopter, my hero has been called to a neighbour’s house. He is good with animals, and she is worried about her toy spaniel.

Thirty minutes later, he handed the reins to one of the Dalrymple grooms, and presented his card at the front door.

“You are to be shown straight up, my lord,” the butler told him.

Lady Dalrymple was sitting on a sofa in the drawing room, little Lady Fluff-fluff on a cushion beside her. Lord Puff-puff, the lady’s other pet, had been lying at Miss Watkin’s feet, but leapt up when Bas entered and hurried towards him, the plume of his tail waving an enthusiastic greeting.

Bas bowed to Lady Dalrymple, patted Puff, and gave Miss Watkin a friendly nod.

“Lord Sebastian, at last you are here.” Lady Dalrymple sighed, dramatically, laying one white ring-bedecked hand on her decollotage. She had once, or so rumour said, been a great beauty—an actress who had achieved the impossible, and married a baron.

He had long since gone to his rest, and she had taken on the role of aristocratic widow with great enthusiasm. Perhaps the actress still showed through at times like this. One could even see remnants of her youthful appeal through the powder and rouge with which she tried to disguise her wrinkles.

She batted her lashes at him and pouted. “I thought you would never arrive.”

He had come immediately, but he would not point that out. “How is my patient?” he asked, instead.

Recalled to the purpose of his visit, Lady Dalrymple turned to the little dog, who at that moment sat up and then jumped down from the cushion, evading Lady Dalrymple’s grasping hands. Fluff-fluff stepped towards him, not in her usual scamper but in a deliberate trudge. Perhaps she really was ill?

“She is restless,” Lady Dalrymple explained, “and she has not finished her meals this past two days. Also, there is a… When I put her on my lap… My dress… I had to move her away, because of the—” she paused, then, in a hissed whisper, “mess!”

As Bas crouched to greet the little lady, a suspicion crossed his mind, and a quick palpation of the swollen abdomen concealed under the fur confirmed his diagnosis. Lady Fluff-fluff was not ill. She was whelping.

He picked the little dog up and examined her more closely, checking her bright eyes, her cold damp nose, the cheery set of her ears and wave of her tail, the indecorous secretions staining her rear end. Yes, the spaniel was going to give birth, and shortly. Certainly within the next day.

Lady Dalrymple looked up at him, anxiously. “Is she very ill, Lord Sebastian? Will she—she will get well, will she not? You can fix her?”

Bas gently put Lady Fluff-fluff down. “She is perfectly well, Lady Dalrymple. She is about to have a litter of puppies, that is all.”

Lady Dalrymple shot to her feet. “That cannot be! She could not… That is to say, her husband, Lord Puff-puff, cannot…”

Ah yes. It had been before he moved to the area, but the village still giggled about how distressed Lady Dalrymple had been by Fluff-fluff’s first season. Declaring that she would not allow her pet to be so humiliated ever again, Lady Dalrymple had commanded one of her shepherds to render poor Lord Puff-puff incapable of another of the performances that so overset his mistress.

It made a man wince, and also wonder about the baron’s bedroom prowess.