Later, when the newly married pair sat before the fire in Ruthven’s flat, occupying one chair between them, Sykes lay down at their feet with a contented wriggle.

“I believe he planned it from the first,” remarked Ruthven into Katharine’s hair. “You know, your hair smells of violets, darling.”

“Does it?” She laughed a little. “D’you think Sykes really thought it all out?”

“I do. Look at him now! Absolutely triumphant. Sykes, you old rascal, you undertook a superhuman task, for we both hated one another.”

Sykes blinked at him for a moment.

“We did,” averred Katharine. “For—oh, for ages!”

Mr. Sykes snorted scornfully, and disposed himself afresh, with his back to them.

Mr. and Mrs. Ruthven looked at one another.

“I don’t think he believes us,” said Katharine.

“No, I don’t think he does. He’s got too much sense,” answered Ruthven.

Mr. Sykes heard the sound of a long kiss, and he wagged his tail drowsily. Then he rolled over on to his side and closed his eyes. He felt that his labours were at an end.

THE END

READING “THE BULLDOG AND THE BEAST”

One of the great tropes of romantic fiction is the Enemies to Lovers archetype, in which our plucky pair hate each other with some passion at first sight, but eventually snipe their way into love. This is not a trope that is unknown among Heyer’s works, but it is uncommon, and when she does employ the formula it is usually her heroines who despise her heroes, while the heroes are alternately indifferent (Worth in Regency Buck), intrigued (Sylvester in, of course, Sylvester) or utterly smitten (Simon in Simon the Coldheart).

But here, in this very early outing, we have a meet-cute that leads to a very stiff correspondence between two broken people, both of whom are soured on the opposite sex after bad breakups and who have decided to live forever alone, in that very melodramatic way of the recently heartbroken. Slowly, through the kind offices of Mr. Sykes the bulldog, our misogynistic Hugh Ruthven and our misandrist Katharine Testram come to appreciate the good in one another, and when Katharine’s increasing penury draws out Ruthven’s protective instincts, he calls it love.

And then Katharine agrees to marry him, after only “several lunches, two teas and some motor-drives,” and despite having just told him categorically that she is not in love with him, because actually she is, and probably was from the first. Nothing else can fully explain her immediate animosity when Sykes importuned him so grievously as the story commenced.

I have a lot of questions about what is going on with Sykes. How is he permitted to roam the apartment building in which they live? How does he “get out” so often? He’s obviously an inside dog – who is opening the door of Katharine’s locked apartment while she is out and letting him escape? Or is he some kind of mystical dog, as the last paragraph alludes, whose purpose on earth is to matchmake cynics and/or provide providers for apparently unemployable women?