Happily anticipating the moment when Piers would have to eat humble pie and Ben would reveal himself to be a perfectly trained and obedient dog, Georgia was unaware of the geese who had decided to land on the large pool the river formed in front of the house, just as she was also unaware of the sleek dark maroon Jaguar that belonged to Piers, or the fact that Piers was driving towards her.
The first intimation she had of impending disaster was when Ben suddenly took off, jerking so hard on his lead that she was tugged with him, completely missing her footing as she tried to pull him back, mistaking the boggy edges of the river bank for solid ground and then gasping out loud in shock as the earth gave way beneath her and she tumbled into the river after Ben.
The geese who had unwittingly precipitated Ben’s flight took off in a flurry of wings and noisy honks whilst Georgia, standing almost knee-deep in the water, made an anxious grab for Ben’s lead as he attempted to swim after the geese, but missed it and had to resort to paddling into the river after him. To her relief, once he realised the geese had actually gone he stopped, giving Georgia a commiserating doggy smile as she caught up with him, as though he assumed that she was as disappointed that the fowl had escaped as he was himself.
‘Oh, Ben,’ Georgia protested ruefully.
Both of them were soaking wet, but she expected that Ben looked far better than she did.
Wearily she fished for his lead, and then, having found it, firmly marched him towards the bank.
As Ben scrambled on to dry land and she followed suit the first thing to catch Georgia’s eye was the immaculate car parked only yards away.
A horrible sense of doom sat unpleasantly in her stomach. That car was Piers’s and there was Piers himself, getting out of the driver’s seat and walking determinedly towards them.
‘Ben,’ Georgia called out frantically, but it was too late. Ben too had seen Piers, and recognised him.
Georgia winced as she saw the wet dog launch himself enthusiastically towards Piers. She couldn’t bear to look—couldn’t bear to see the effect of so many pounds of wet, muddy dog on Piers’s immaculate person. Despairingly she waited for Piers’s vocal fury, but then when she heard nothing other than a very stern, ‘Sit,’ she opened her eyes warily and saw, to her astonishment, that Ben was sitting obediently a yard away from Piers, watching him. Georgia had to admit that Piers was made of stern stuff as he didn’t hesitate to take hold of the wet, slimy lead, his mouth hardening to a wry grimace as he studied the even wetter dog, but the expression in his eyes was nothing to the one she could see there when he finally turned his head in her direction.
For a moment Georgia almost expected him to repeat the command to her that he had just given to the dog. Then the nippy little wind that seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere brushed her water-chilled body and she gave a small convulsive shudder, her teeth starting to chatter, and Piers said abruptly,
‘Inside...’
‘It wasn’t Ben’s fault...’ Georgia started to tell him in between shivers as she had to half run to catch up with his long strides as they headed for the house. ‘He’d been behaving beautifully, and—’
‘Beautifully?’ Piers swung round as he started to unlock the door and stated grimly, ‘He damn nearly drowned you and—’
‘No! It was an accident; he just caught me off guard...’ Georgia protested.
‘And if it had been my godmother he had caught off guard?’ Piers demanded flatly as he pushed open the door.
Georgia bit her lip. Piers did have a point.
‘Upstairs and into a hot bath,’ Piers told her curtly.
‘I don’t...’ Georgia began, fully intending to tell him that she wasn’t a child and that she didn’t need him to tell her what she ought to do, but then she had to stop as she felt a huge sneeze overwhelming her, and she could see from the expression in Piers’s eyes that he wasn’t going to listen to any arguments. Besides, the thought of a delicious warm bath chasing the icy chills from her cold body was too tempting to resist. Even so...
‘Ben needs drying...’ she said, but Piers shook his head.
‘I’ll deal with Ben,’ he told her grimly.
For a moment Georgia hesitated. Ben was soaking wet and needed rubbing dry, and he hadn’t had his evening meal as yet, but then another huge sneeze overwhelmed her, at the same time as Piers took what almost looked like a small, threatening step towards her, and instinct took over. She was in the hallway and halfway up the stairs before she knew it.
In the kitchen Piers found the towels that his godmother used for just such a purpose to briskly rub Ben dry. The dog quite happily stood still whilst Piers dried him, even, a little to Piers’s surprise, obligingly lifting his paws so that they too could have the river mud removed from them.