My Lady Jane(27)

“What is it that you wish her to do?” Edward asked, out of breath. “Shake hands?”

Pet snorted.

“I know I told you never in the palace,” Peter said, as if he were actually having a two-way conversation with Edward’s dog. “But now I’m telling you that it’s safe.”

Another whine.

“Petunia,” Peter scolded. “For the love of Pete. Focus.”

Pet stood up, then lifted her front paws onto the edge of Edward’s bed, her neck thrown back like she was stretching. There was a flash of light, as painful as if Edward had accidentally glanced into the sun, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again there was a naked girl standing at the foot of his bed.

His mouth dropped open.

Peter wordlessly lifted one of Edward’s fur blankets off the bed and wrapped it around the girl, who looked a bit dazed herself.

“Give her a minute,” Peter said.

Edward still had his mouth open.

“It always takes time, after the change,” explained Peter, as if Edward was supposed to know what he was talking about. “Especially after spending so long out of human form.”

The girl shook her head as if to clear it, sending her long blond hair cascading around her shoulders. Then she said, “What is a second opinion?” She asked the question slowly, as if she were carefully choosing each word.

“A second opinion?” Peter repeated.

The girl turned to look at Edward with soft brown eyes, and in that instant he knew unequivocally that this girl was Pet. Pet, his dog. This girl. An E?ian, clearly. A naked E?ian girl.

He closed his mouth.

“What is a second opinion?” she asked again, shifting closer. She didn’t seem to be at all concerned that she was only draped in a fur blanket.

“I just rubbed your belly,” Edward blurted out.

She cocked her head to one side. “You want to rub my belly?”

“She’s been out of human form for a while.” Peter’s face reddened.

“You keep saying that you’re going to get a second opinion,” Pet-the-girl said.

Edward wasn’t really listening. He was too busy thinking, I have been sleeping with this dog for a week. Her body against mine. My dog is actually a naked girl. Naked. Girl. Naked.

“A second opinion is when one doctor tells you something bad, so then you get another doctor to tell you what he thinks. To make sure that the first doctor was right,” Peter said.

Pet nodded. Then she was silent for several heartbeats before she said, ever so carefully: “It is my opinion that Your Majesty is being poisoned.”

That shocked Edward out of his my-dog-is-a-naked-girl reverie.

She bent to scoop a handful of the pie from the floor, holding the blanket around her with one hand and the pie cupped in the palm of the other. She brought it to her face and sniffed.

“There’s a bad smell,” she said. “In the berries. A wicked smell.”

She held the palmful of pie out to Peter, who also sniffed it and then frowned.

“Yes,” Peter said. “That doesn’t smell right. Well done, lass.”

Pet-the-girl smiled, the kind of smile that Edward sensed was the equivalent of a tail wag. He was beginning to feel like he was dreaming, the strangest and most inappropriate dream he’d ever experienced.

“So you’re saying that someone poisoned my blackberry pie,” he said.

“Not someone,” Pet-the-girl said matter-of-factly. “The nurse.”

“Mistress Penne?”

She nodded. “Her body is stiff with lying. The scent of fear is all over her. I watched her. She puts the bad smell in all Your Majesty’s berries.”

She was accusing the woman who had changed his diapers and kissed his boo-boos and sung him to sleep of poisoning his beloved blackberries. It was unbelievable, but Edward believed it nonetheless. He believed Pet. Perhaps only because he couldn’t imagine this plain-spoken creature capable of telling a lie.

“But why would she do that?”

“Because the bad man pays her,” Pet answered.

“What bad man?” Peter frowned.

“The one with the big sniffer.”

Edward rubbed his hands over his eyes. Lord Dudley. Which meant the doctor was probably in on it, too. It was all falling into place. The it they’d been talking about. Assassinating him. So Jane would be crowned queen and then Dudley could rule the kingdom.

He sighed. It was a bit cliché, really. A familiar story, even for back then. The evil, power-hungry duke, grasping at the crown. The villain.

Which made Edward the na?ve, unsuspecting fool.

And he’d married Jane off to the villain’s son.

They were both pawns in a political game.

He wanted to stand up. He wanted to pace and scream and break things. He wanted to send somebody to the dungeon. Torture. The executioner’s block. He wanted to become a lion and roar down the stairs and find the duke’s throat. But even the thoughts tired him, and instead, as if to remind him of his body’s current frailty, he was wracked by a violent coughing fit, which held on to him so long that his vision dimmed and he was afraid he was going to pass out.

“Your Majesty is still breathing?” Pet-the-girl said softly, when he could hear anything outside of his own noise again. He felt her head upon his shoulder, her body against his, offering comfort the way she would in her other form. She still smelled like dog: her breath, a woodsy musk emanating from her skin, mixed with a scent he recognized as his own cologne.